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

on our ranch, which we’ll rebuild, you and I can sit around drinking coffee and I’ll talk about my goddamn feelings. Until then, I don’t have any. It works better that way.”

I expected her to fight me. “Yes,” she said. “Good or bad, it is better. I worry that I won’t be able to feel again. Sharlotte helps with that. I look at her and I remember what it feels like to be a person and not a soldier.”

“Outlaw,” I corrected. “June Mai Angel, Outlaw Warlord, worst the Juniper has ever seen.”

“Cavatica Ann Weller,” June said, “outlaw, murderer, terrorist.”

She had me there. Another checkmate. Damn woman was just too damn smart.

We got back to the fire station just as dawn flooded the world with light muted by clouds and snow.

No hot shower for me. But I got new clothes, an American-made U.S. military-approved uniform. We had them so we could sneak into the Pepsi Center the next day.

I was dead tired, but again, I couldn’t stand being in a basement. The culvert had ruined me for sleeping underground. It was better out in the cold in the Marilyn Monroe.

Sharlotte found me there and we bedded down for the day. ’Cause that night we had an impossible wall to build. The Gammas would work on the fence while the Stanleys secured the banks of the two rivers. Other of our troops would light the fuses to blow the bridges.

Once my oldest sister and I were snug in the cockpit of the Stanley, Sharlotte shot me a grin. “I heard you got naked with my wife.”

I knew she was joking, but I still had to blush. “You know it wasn’t like that.”

“I know,” said Sharlotte, “but I had to tease you. Pilate is not here to do it.”

“The hell I’m not,” a voice said. Pilate hopped up the ladder on the Marilyn, babying his hurt leg. He opened the door and slid in. “I’m tired of being underground. And it looks like the snow is keeping the temperature up. Out of the breeze, it’ll be right comfy in here.”

“Are you healing up?” I asked.

Pilate held up his arms. His left one was still in a sling, but he flexed his right fist. “Almost brand new. Doctor Jan is helping me regain the strength, stamina, and endurance of my youth.”

“What about your leg?”

“I only need one leg. Sharlotte does okay.”

“How come you don’t have your collar on?” Sharlotte asked. “You done being a priest?”

Pilate closed his eyes.

The air in the cockpit changed. Sharlotte had meant it as a light-spirited jab, but Pilate didn’t take it like that.

“I’m sorry,” Sharlotte said quickly. “You know how you are, Pilate. I figured I could make a joke. I take it back.”

Pilate opened his eyes and coughed through his blasted lung. “Oh, you know, I was never much of a priest. I might as well be honest about it now.”

“You are a priest,” Sharlotte said. “I didn’t like your brand of Catholic back then, but after your homily in Green River? You saved me when no one else could. You are a priest of God as sure as I’m sitting here.”

Their interplay was so different, so unexpected, and a part of me felt sorrowful for it. Pilate’s grip on the divine had loosened, thanks to me and my training.

“You’re going to say Mass for us, right?” I asked, surprised at myself, but then Catholicism runs deep. “Before we go and build the fence tonight, before we go and fetch President Jack tomorrow morning, you’re going to do a service, aren’t you?”

Pilate shook his head. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Easy,” Sharlotte said. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You start there. I can help.”

“Maybe after I sleep some more,” Pilate said. “Maybe then.”

We all cuddled close to get some rest, and I watched snow fall. And every time I tried to close my eyes, I remembered all we’d done to get to where we were.

In Shakespeare, the king can’t sleep before the night of the battle. Something about St. Crispin’s Day. That was me without all the flowery language.

Sharlotte fell into sleep as did Pilate, but I finally gave up trying.

I tried praying but felt nothing inside me. Only worry for Wren. Only fear for the coming night and our plan, which couldn’t possibly work.

If the snow stopped, the ARK and the American army would see us building the fence. And how were we going to find President Jack? Baptista said she could take care of that part, but I wasn’t so sure.

We needed the Heartbreaker to get away. How were we ever going to find Sketchy, Tech, and Peeperz?

And there was the Octo to consider. I knew the ARK had brewed up more than just one of those monsters.

Pilate woke and saw me sitting there, fretting.

“You have to sleep, Cavatica,” he said.

“Can’t,” I said. “Inside me is all sharp edges and yuck. I’ve never been less tired in my life.”

“Do it for Sharlotte,” he said. “Don’t sleep for yourself, sleep for the army. Sleep is a weapon.”

“Like hope,” I said. “I told Rachel hope was a weapon.”

“Both are.” He turned over and fell back asleep.

I never did.

(iv)

That evening, after sunset, we all came together in the big bays of the West Metro Fire Rescue Training Center, Gammas, our team, our people.

Pilate and Sharlotte said Mass together. He didn’t wear his collar but stood there in jeans and a cowboy’s black button-up. While I thought Sharlotte would throw on a New Morality dress, she didn’t. She wore a conservative skirt that showed her prosthetic leg and a nice frilly blouse. She looked so good.

When Pilate failed, out of doubt, shame, or coughing, Sharlotte took over, and they shared the broken ideas of God, which is better than no God at all. And maybe that’s why religions sometimes fail to give us peace. They want us to have a perfect faith, and there isn’t anything perfect in this world. Being Juniper-born, you