War Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 5) by Aaron Ritchey (best short novels .TXT) 📕

(iii)

No choice but to go all in.

I hauled wet bag after wet bag full of the explosives out of the raft and threw them into the freezing water which had already froze my feet off.

“What are you doing?” someone asked.

Truthfully, I had lost my mind. I wasn’t about to pause to chat. Once the bags were in the water, they floated because of the air inside. It was raft enough for me, dark and undetectable.

I dove into the frigid hell of the river. It felt like dying, but soon I managed to get a bit of my cold self onto the wet bags. The current caught me.

Best case scenario? I’d lose fingers and toes to frostbite. Worst case? Hypothermia and death. But not before I planted those explosives.

The cold took my breath and put it right into winter’s pocket. My heart tripped like it would fall out of my chest. Every centimeter of my skin, every nerve cell screamed at me. My blood turned to wet mud in my veins.

The reptile part of me wanted me to swim to shore, strip, and find fire, find warmth, find anything.

But the iron part of me, that dandelion iron, hardened further. This was just another chore. It was awful, but I’d get it done and then think about getting warm. And if I lost some of my extremities? Oh well. Sharlotte had lost a leg. I could lose a few toes.

Something gurgled and splashed behind me, but I didn’t turn to look. I gripped the wet bags to keep from sinking as the shivers rocketed through my body.

At least it was night sky above me, no pipes, no spiders, no dead Crete.

The snow falling onto the river sure was pretty.

I floated right on past the two guards on duty, half-asleep it looked like, which meant they were definitely Military Megs and not ARK nightmare troopers.

The big pylons and abutments of the Speer Avenue bridge stood above the black river and the white banks. Closer, closer, I willed the current to speed up. It seemed to. I kicked my feet to move myself across the river but already my fingers were losing feeling and my legs going numb.

Sure, I turned sleepy and laughed at my body. She thought she was so tough and important. No, she wasn’t. I was. Whatever I was buried in the meat, that was where I went, and that part of me, it wouldn’t stop.

Kill me to stop me.

The river laughed. I just might do that. Her murky water stink hit my senses like a fist. Above was the black of the bridge itself, keeping the snow at bay.

Finally, I kicked down and felt mud. I hurried out of the water, pulling the tangle of wet bags behind me. I hauled them out of the water and onto the rocks but found my legs couldn’t hold up my weight. Too cold. I crawled, tugging the RDX-5 behind. Sharp-edged stones bit my knees and they probably hurt my hands, but I’d stopped feeling them.

Behind me, the water splashed. It wasn’t the river. Someone was following me.

I turned and my fingers went to one of my Colt Terminators. Not sure if they would work, water-logged, but I’d try ‘em anyway. I’d left my G18 behind in the raft.

June Mai held up her hands. Didn’t have to talk for me to see it was her. Even in the darkness, I could feel her powerful presence.

She ran in a crouch to get to me.

Without a word, she plucked something out of a pocket. I could hear the crinkle as she worked the package. She smashed it onto my hands. It was a warmer, chemically charging up heat.

My fingers got their feeling and the reptile brain wanted to giggle. This outlaw, my sworn enemy, had come to save me.

“First you try and kill us,” I whispered. “Then you come following me to help. You ever get tired of the paradox?”

“Feet next,” she said.

With our hands better, we stripped off our boots. She had more of the packages, and we pushed them onto our toes. Took a bit, but I could finally wiggle them, and I let out a long sigh.

“You’re not going to like this next part,” she said.

She rummaged through her pack and took out two survival blankets, wrapped in plastic. She tore them out of the protective covering before unzipping and unbuttoning her soaked black ninja suit.

I too started undressing. What we had to do? It wasn’t going to be pretty.

We both didn’t stop until we were naked. Without another word, she pushed her skin against mine, and we wrapped the blankets around us. Shivering, shaking, trembling more than I’d ever done in my life, the heat packs, the blankets, our body heat, started to raise our core temperatures.

“Awkward,” I finally said—all the touching and closeness.

“Not really,” June Mai said. “I’m married and you’re not my type.”

Dang, Tech had said the same thing. Even though I wasn’t interested in them romantically, still, being told that didn’t help my self-esteem much.

I got mad. “But you like ’em young.” My voice came out harsh. “My sister is twenty years younger than you. Such a shame.”

We were too close for me to see her face.

But her words came clear enough. “You told me once you forgave me. That has changed.”

“It has,” I said, feeling a bit of shame. “You destroyed my home. Wiped it off the face of the world. Forgiving you would be betraying my mama’s memory.”

She gripped me harder. “We’ve talked about this. I’ve hated what I’ve had to do. And you do too. We’re trapped in this together, literally. Please, tell me I’m forgiven.”

In any other situation, I’d have run from her and her pleading. However, I had no choice. We were going to have it out, right there.

“Why’d you pick Sharlotte? I’m sure you’ve met hundreds of women. You even flirted with Pilate a bit. Why my sister?”

She didn’t answer for a long time. Which meant she was either trying to come