Machine-Gun Girls Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  Magnificat

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Memorare

  Glossary of Historical Figures, Slang, and Technology

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Books by Shadow Alley Press

  litRPG on Facebook

  GameLit on Facebook

  Dedication

  A Note from the Author

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  IT IS THE YEAR 2058.

  The Sino-American War has decimated several generations of men, and the Sterility Epidemic has made 90% of the surviving males sterile.

  Electricity does not function in five western states. Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana are territories once again. Collectively, they are known as the Juniper.

  It is the most dangerous place on Earth.

  Cavatica Weller and her sisters have one chance to save their family ranch—a desperate post-apocalyptic cattle drive across a violent wasteland. Having escaped from Denver, the Weller family will have to face the worst of the Juniper’s outlaws, the Psycho Princess. And still an inhuman army dogs their every step.

  The mystery deepens—who is the lost boy Micaiah and why would the richest man on earth spend billions to find him? And will Micaiah’s secrets tear the Weller family apart?

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  Magnificat

  Part of the federal government’s responsibility is to secure our borders and provide a stable environment for our citizens to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. The region known as the Juniper is foreign soil. Her grand cities, Denver, Cheyenne, Taos, Salt Lake, Billings, are no more. At best, they are ghost towns from another time. At worst, they are breeding grounds for terrorists and outlaws.

  —President Amanda Swain

  50th President of the United States

  February 8, 2054, on signing the Security, Identity, and Special Borders Injunction (SISBI)

  (i)

  HOLY MARY, MOTHER OF God, help me with this next part ’cause the truths I had to swallow choked me like a magpie wrestling with carrion too big for her craw.

  I’d been plucked from my cozy life in Cleveland, Ohio and thrown back into the Juniper, a place where electricity didn’t work and life was cruel. In the U.S., my days had been filled with ease and comfort. Eterna batteries provided perfect energy and science provided a cure for most diseases, including cancer. America was almost a paradise—gun laws and legal systems, peace and happiness. But for the states-turned-territories—Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana—they’d become a lawless wilderness thrown back two hundred years; the most dangerous place on Earth.

  And I’d grown up there. Twelve years of violence and struggle until Mama sent me away to boarding school to learn electrical engineering. She was certain the power would come back on, and she’d need me.

  I hadn’t wanted to leave. I’d wanted to stay with Mama and my oldest sister, Sharlotte, on the ranch, working cattle and riding horses and carrying guns, ’cause of the Outlaw Warlords.

  I can still remember that cold morning I first left home. We stood on the Burlington platform before first light, waiting for the train, a thruway that would take me to Sterling and then on to Cleveland. You couldn’t see the sagebrush around us, but you could smell it sleeping.

  Mama hugged me for a long time and then let me go. Sharlotte stood cross-armed beside us, she didn’t hug me, only gave me a nod and a murmured, “Good luck.” Wren didn’t even do that. My middle sister, four years older than me and knocking on seventeen, hadn’t come home the night before. She wasn’t there to say goodbye to me. Not surprising, and kind of a relief.

  The train wheezed in, leaking steam and smoke, and chugged off, taking me with it. I only went back once, two years later for Christmas. Wren had already run away, so I didn’t see her again, not until she came to get me in Ohio after Mama died of a heart attack, when I was sixteen. By then I was happy in the World, programming apps on my electric slate, watching internet videos, and hanging out with Yankee girls who hadn’t grown up loading clips for their mother’s M16.

  Then Wren came to collect me. Mama was dead and the ranch in trouble. Like it or not I had to go home, and I didn’t like it, not one bit.

  Wren and I left the westbound train in McCook, in what used to be Nebraska, and we walked the train platform before dawn. It felt like an echo, only this time my home was back in Ohio and the Juniper had become foreign soil.

  American laws and Yankee comforts lay behind me, far away and long gone.

  Wren and I had to fight our way back to Burlington for my poor mother’s funeral. Tore me up to know I’d never hear her sing again. Scared me to death to walk once more on Juniper dirt.

  Father Pilate, our close family friend and a Sino-American War vet, buried Mama. We could bury her body, but we couldn’t bury her debts. Before she died, Mama went deep into debt, borrowed money to pay for my education all the while waiting for the power to come back. Mama then made a deal with a food distribution company executive who’d pay top dollar for Juniper beef, only she wanted our family to drive the cattle west, across the entire length of the Juniper, from Burlington, Colorado to Wendover, Nevada. What a story it would be. And great stories can bring in even greater profits.

  We drove those cattle nearly halfway to Nevada, through outlaws, a blizzard, and a gun battle that left many of us wounded. Along the way we picked up a mysterious boy who I loved and who loved me, but secretly, ’cause wouldn’t you know it, but Sharlotte had romantic feelings for him, too. We made up a love triangle of sharp points and sharper edges.

  Boys were rare back then, ’cause of the Sterility Epidemic. Wren had wanted to sell him, though of course, we wouldn’t let her. If she had known who he really was, well, we wouldn’t have been able to stop her.

  His real name was only the first truth I learned. Others would follow, like the nature of the army sniffing his trail and why they would do anything to find him.

  He wouldn’t tell me his whole story, not for a long time, but that mysterious boy carried the future of the world in his pocket like so much spare change.

  Yet that’s how life is. It’s the small things that give it meaning. Or kills us dead. Big dollar bills of tragedy we can handle, but not the pennies and nickels of our daily suffering and doubt.

  Chapter One

  Certainly the Juniper is a dangerous place, but not because of outlaws, rustlers or stray bullets. No, the real dangers are the wind, solitude, and a drifting mind. When in doubt, I stay in my house and count my money. I never get lonely that way.

  —Robert “Dob” Howerter

  Colorado Courier Interview

  August 3, 2057

  (i)

  THE CUIUS REGIOS WERE coming. I didn’t know it then, but the Regios were on their way and we didn’t have the guns to stop them. />
  The pain from my gunshot wounds barked like a dog on a distant neighbor’s porch. I sat on the floor of the strange room, my back against the bed. I couldn’t move. The Christmas issue of Modern Society magazine lay on my lap. The perfume of a cologne sample wafted from the glossy pages. Micaiah, cleaned and groomed, smiled at me on the cover.

  But his real name wasn’t Micaiah. It was Micah Hoyt, son of the richest man on Earth. His father, Tiberius “Tibbs” Hoyt, was CEO and general jackerdan-in-charge of the American Reproduction Knowledge Initiative, otherwise known as the ARK. Tibbs Hoyt had hired an army to find his son, and we had the bullet wounds to prove it.

  The foot soldiers were known as the Cuius Regios, and their commanders were the Vixx sisters, who could heal almost any wound, which sounded suspiciously like genetic engineering, however unlikely. I’d kept an eye on the popular science websites and hadn’t seen anything close to creating actual people with enhanced biology.

  The idea scared me, scared me deep. How could we fight such a soulless army?

  But why would Daddy Hoyt send in troops to retrieve a son who didn’t want to be found? Then again, if you give a rich man a cause, he can turn a family feud into a world war.

  Before I’d gone unconscious, Micaiah had wanted to run away to protect us. Was he gone? That opened a floodgate of questions. Was Pilate still alive? Had Wren run away for good ’cause of what I’d done to her? And did my oldest sister Sharlotte still have us bound for Wendover, Nevada with our herd of nearly three thousand cattle?

  First things first, I slid the magazine underneath the mattress, not sure what I would do with the information, but it felt dangerous in me.

  I stood, moved to the window, and used my right arm to pull open the yellow curtains. My left arm throbbed as I held it to my belly. From the second story of the house, I saw our tents below—our chuckwagon dominated the front yard. Mama and I had fixed up the Chevy Workhouse II with an attachable ASI steam engine, and then found a long trailer for it to pull. We called the whole thing our chuckwagon. Next to it sat the old Ford Excelsior that had saved our lives. Cattle and horses meandered around outbuildings, barns, and hay sheds. I recognized a few of our horses—Elvis, Taylor Quick, and Bob D. Two of our best cows, Charles Goodnight and Betty Butter, stood in the strange yard, chewing cud. To my right rose a ridge of pine trees and craggy rock.

  I searched the skies for the Moby Dick, the zeppelin that we’d hired to re-supply us and scout. There was no sign of it, but then Sketchy, Tech, and Peeperz might still be trying to find us after the blizzard.

  Green grass pushed up from wet soil, which meant I’d been unconscious long enough for the snow to melt. Might’ve been a day. Might’ve been a week. Someone must’ve dribbled water into my mouth and then cleaned me up afterwards. Dang, but I hoped it was family that had done the work to keep me alive.

  Out of the corner of my eye, something flashed in the distance—sunlight off a cast-off hunk of metal, or some bit of chrome, or a mirror, something, southeast of the house. The blinking stopped. Something didn’t feel right about it, but I had other things to worry about.

  Like where I was and who owned the house.

  (ii)

  Getting to the door took most of the energy out of me. My legs were weak, like frayed rubber bands. My head filled with woozy.

  I creaked the door open. Light from my yellow room splashed onto the floor. Shadows clung to the corners of the hallway while the floors gleamed, swept and polished. The wallpaper also didn’t have the dust I’d have expected. It had been washed recently, and I could smell the disinfectant. A set of stairs led down. Another set led up. Doors lined both sides of the hall.

  “Hello?” I asked.

  The door across from me opened.

  Backlit, the outline of a tall woman in pants stood in the doorway. For a moment, my eyes played tricks on me. I could’ve sworn it was my own mother. Could Mama have somehow tricked everyone by faking her own death? If anyone could, it would’ve been her.

  “Mama?” I whispered the question to keep alive my impossible hope.

  “Good morning, Cavatica,” the woman said. Wasn’t Mama. She didn’t have Mama’s voice nor her walk. When the woman drew nearer, the sunlight showed me both their similarities and their differences. This woman was the same age, same shape, and she had Mama’s brown hair going grey. Crow’s feet clustered around her eyes like Mama. But instead of the gray shapelessness of a New Morality dress, this woman wore a maroon cowgirl shirt tucked into jeans. A smile brightened her face. She had a musical way of walking, light and joyful. Mama had stomped around, always busy.

  “Cavatica, what are you doing up? You need to rest.” The woman took me by the arm and helped me back into the bed orbited by medical supplies: pill bottles, bandages, tape, antibiotic cream, and a pair of scissors.

  The woman seemed familiar, but how could I know her? How could I know anyone so far west? Unless we’d turned east.

  She shined a grin on me. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember a thing.” My voice croaked. I swallowed to get it working.

  The woman’s smile deepened her wrinkles. “No, I don’t mean from just now, I mean from a long time ago. I was friends with your mom. I’m Jenny Bell Scheutz.”

  My mouth dropped open. Dim, toddler memories filled my head, memories of a tall woman, hard and lean on the outside, but soft in spirit. Jenny Bell. Her and Mama laughing and talking about the old times. Jenny Bell had run cattle with Mama in the early days and then took off into the wilds. We figured she’d been killed.

  “Are we in Sterling?” I asked. Sharlotte had threatened to sell our headcount to Mavis Meetchum. That would’ve been foolish, though, since Mavis couldn’t give us a fair market price, not with Dob Howerter breathing down her neck. Even if Mavis could pay us reasonable prices, the three-million-dollar loan to Howerter would still put us in the poor house, and we’d lose the ranch.

  And I couldn’t allow that. Never. Our ranch was hallowed ground.

  Before Ms. Scheutz could respond, I answered my own question. “No, couldn’t be. We’re too close to the Rocky Mountains. Where am I, Ms. Scheutz?”

  “Call me Jenny Bell,” she said. “Ms. Scheutz was my mother, only everyone called her Mrs. back in the day.” Jenny Bell sat on the bed. “You’re in my house—on my ranch—just north of Fort Collins. Officially, we are in June Mai Angel’s back yard, but there’s not like a state line or anything.”

  I leaned over and picked up a glass of water, drained half in a blink. The water cooled my throat and got better with every swallow.

  Jenny Bell eased the glass out of my hands. She smelled clean and nice, like American deodorant, but how could that be?

  “Easy, Cavatica. You were hurt bad. We heard about the stampede and the attack, and how you saved the day with the old Ford out front. It’s all a shame, but I guess June Mai was bound to give you some trouble.”

  Jenny Bell hadn’t mentioned the Vixxes nor the Regios. Sharlotte prolly blamed my gunshots on June Mai Angel, and I wondered what my sister had told our people—most likely the same story, or else it might’ve caused morale problems.

  Jenny Bell also hadn’t talked about Micaiah, so I’d keep him a secret. I wasn’t sure yet if knowing about him would keep her safe or put her in more danger. All along, Micaiah said his true identity was like the apple in the Garden of Eden—one bite would damn us all forever. And I’d eaten the whole thing. Yeah, it did upset my stomach.

  “How did I get to be here, Jenny Bell?” I asked, though I couldn’t help but feel funny calling her by her first name. Such informality wasn’t New Morality, but then her jeans proved neither was she.

  “Sharlotte and your people stumbled upon our ranch, and she remembered me, but then she’s what, ten years older than you?”

  “Eight.” I said. Then asked, “What day is it?”

  “April 24.”

  Dang. I’d been unconscious for four days
.

  “Is Pilate here? Is he dead?” I wanted him to still be alive, so I could yell at him. Yeah, he wore a priest’s collar, but he wasn’t a priest. He and Petal had come to run security for the cattle drive. But Petal turned out not only to be a sniper, but a doctor, and a drug addict as well. And it was Pilate who had been giving her the Skye6.

  “He’s here and alive,” Jenny Bell said. “He’s still unconscious in the room next to yours. Bullets aren’t going to stop Pilate. Mark my words, he’ll die of old age in a bed surrounded by women weeping over him.”

  “So you know him?”

  “Oh, yeah. Who doesn’t know Pilate?”

  I felt relieved. Still no mention of Micaiah or Wren, but then Wren was probably gone for good after what I’d done.

  “Cavatica, you need to rest.” She uncapped a medicine bottle and shook a pill out into my hand. “Let me give you a Vicodin. We have new meds, so don’t worry.”

  I did feel terrible, but I didn’t want to break the spell of the moment. Here was a woman who had known my mother, and being so near to her felt like I was connected to the past.

  I held the pill, but didn’t take it.

  Jenny Bell put a soothing hand on my arm. “I’m sorry to hear about your mama, Cavatica. She was the best of women, but stubborn. I tried to get her to come out here with me, but she wanted to stay in Burlington. She thought once the electricity came back on, it would be the gateway to the new Juniper. She could be a hard woman. I never once saw her cry.”

  I had, but only once. When Daddy died, Mama cried like rainclouds stormed inside her, the agony like lightning, her despair the worst of thunder.

  I thought about where Jenny Bell lived. If we were north of Fort Collins, the Wyoming border was only about eighty kilometers away. We’d come a long way, but true halfway remained out of reach.

  “Why did you move all the way out here?” I asked.

  “No competition, Cavatica. Profits don’t go up for small operations, only down. Sooner or later, Howerter or Mavis or even your mother was going to monopolize the whole cattle industry. And to be honest, I wanted to be as far from the World as I could get. The Juniper is special. I saw the opportunity to travel back in time, and I took it. Why not? Probably the last time anyone will ever get to live like it’s the nineteenth century. Yeah, life out here isn’t easy, but there’s a joy in the work and survival.”