Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for students TXT) 📕

Pilate squatted down, and he held Wren’s hand, now almost as big as his. I knew he was smart enough to guess what was happening to her. And the last thing in the world Wren needed were nice words or a sermon.

Micaiah looked on with calm eyes, taking it all in for a minute.

Pilate put a hand on my back. “Did you hold Rachel when she died?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She said something about kissing you in our silly heaven. And she said God gave her to the world to save us. She said she finally understood the Christian story.”

I expected a quip or for Pilate to smirk and say, Well, that only took two thousand years. But he didn’t. Instead, he dropped his head on Wren and pushed his face into her hair. And Pilate wept.

Once again, he’d lived, and the woman he loved had died. Not in his arms, but in mine. The results were the same, though. He was alone again.

Sharlotte touched his shoulder and rubbed his back, like she was holding Wren, and all of them, huddled in their pain, made me feel like a stranger.

I stood up.

“We should go.” Micaiah and I said the same words at the same time. Maybe we’d become too much alike.

He looked east. “If we make it across the border, we might find a good place to stay the night. We must avoid the other ARK soldiers. Reinforcements will be coming.”

“He’s right,” I said. I walked over to Marilyn, opened her trunk, and started feeding the firebox.

Pilate, tears on his face, walked over to me and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Getting the Marilyn ready,” I said. “Gotta get the chalkdrive into the World. We have a sacred duty, right? Everyone dying and killing each other ... it’s all ’cause of our goddamn sacred duty. Well, let’s get on with it.”

“We have to bury our dead,” Pilate said quietly. “Should we dig a grave for you as well? Did this finally kill you, Cavvy?”

I knew what he was asking. I knew he was asking it as a metaphor, but still I scoffed, “I ain’t dead. I’m standing here. I’m listening to your stupid silence, which isn’t God, it’s just nothing.”

“I think you’re dead. I wonder if you’ll pull a Lazarus and surprise me.” He didn’t ask it in a loud voice. He said all of it so quietly, so gently.

Didn’t help.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Don’t start your goddamn preaching at me. You can go jacker yourself. And this world can go jacker itself. It don’t deserve us saving it.” My voice broke. “It didn’t deserve Rachel. It deserves a bullet.”

Right between the eyes. Like what my sister had done to the man she loved.

Pilate didn’t press me. He turned and let me do my work while the rest did theirs.

They found enough chunks of concrete to build a cairn for Rachel. We’d come back for her, bury her next to Mama and Daddy. That might be a while, so they wrapped her body in a sheet of dusty plastic we found blown next to a wall. Then they piled the cement on her.

As for Dutch, they pulled him off the street and threw him into a basement. The dog didn’t deserve a grave.

I heard them talk in murmurs while I got the Marilyn running. Nikola had repaired the Stanley’s arm and replaced the Marilyn’s windshield. The old girl had seen a battle and the holes and scars remained, but she was fully functional. If only I could replace my insides as easily.

My sisters kept murmuring behind me.

Sharlotte asked Wren if she wanted a burial for Dutch. I didn’t hear Wren’s response. But I turned and watched her go to where they had thrown the body. With one foot on the foundation wall, she unbuckled her belt and held her holsters up. The custom Colt Terminators, with their long barrels and cherrywood grips, dangled there for a moment, metal and wood, buckles and leather.

She tossed them into the basement next to Dutch. She turned. And walked away.

Who could blame her?

I checked the Marilyn’s pressure, and it looked good. Then I glanced over, and saw Pilate was alone, standing over Rachel’s grave.

I knew what he was thinking. He was alive, horribly alive, and always so horribly lucky. And like when Petal had died, I could guess his final homily over Rachel, a woman he’d counseled away from being a killer.

Heaven isn’t for the good. Heaven is for the broken.

A silly heaven for the damaged souls God mangled when He used this world like a butcher uses a cleaver.

Finally, we marched away from Plainville in the Marilyn. There was no light left in the world, but we had a road running east; a gravel road to freedom. We didn’t really need light, we simply had to aim for the gray between the glow of the yellow grass on each side.

Pilate held Wren in the gunner’s roost; Micaiah, Sharlotte, and I crammed ourselves into the driver’s seat.

I shushed Sharlotte when she wanted to talk about Nikola, the battle, how they had all come together. I wanted quiet. I needed quiet.

I drove our Stanley toward the eastern sky, black with night and clouds.

Pilate’s voice came down through the communication tube. “Cavvy, a Cargador is coming up. Her sapropel lanterns are lit. We should stop and see who they are and take them head on if we have to.”

I stopped, turned. “You know how to use the guns up there?” I asked.

“Uh, not really, but I could probably figure it out.”

“Wren?” I asked.

“Yeah, Cavvy, I can,” she said in a murmur. She sounded how I felt, tired and wanting out of the whole deal but stuck there.

We turned around.

Wren swiveled the Marilyn’s arm guns in a whir of pistons and gears. The few rounds we had left were ready to do their damage.

In the end, we never did use those bullets.

June Mai Angel drove up in the Cargador, and Alice was in the back. She