Dandelion Iron Book One (29 page)

“Stay there, Cavatica,” Pilate said. “I’ll get her. Or I might not have to. She should be about to drop any minute from her wounds.”

Didn’t look like it to me. Her color was good, like she’d been dancing at a party and spilled fruit punch down her chest.

Pistol shots. Wren’s Colt Terminators pocked from the other side of the buildings.

“Pilate,” Micaiah said. “Aim for the head. The other women can’t heal as well as my aunts can.”

I felt my eyes go wide. “Is that one of your aunts?”

He nodded. Lines of sweat etched through the dust on his skin.

The woman kept her eyes on Pilate. “We have severely underestimated you, and so I will attempt to negotiate. You said you did not like the boy. If you give him to us, you will be rewarded even after this confrontation. We could give you millions. More money than you could spend in a lifetime.”

“Who are you?” Pilate asked.

The leader opened her mouth to answer, but didn’t get a word out. Wren came sauntering from the south, all hips and strutting. Her Colt Terminators filled her hands. Blood dripped off her boots, making rusty footprints in the snow. “Hey you. I killed all your skanks, and now I’m gonna kill you.”

Pilate yelled out, “Wait, Wren!”

Words weren’t gonna stop my psycho sister. She raised her Colts. Pilate shoved a shell into his open quad cannon. The leader woman was quicker than both of them. She was blurry fast. Re-load, click, snap, and her Desert Messiah fired three times and hit Pilate twice. One bullet grazed his head. Another pierced his chest. He fell back, coughing wetly, firing, but poorly. The Homewrecker shell whirled up over the leader woman’s head and hit the south building, blowing out a chunk of concrete.

Pilate fell to his knees. He was working to get another shell out, but his hands were shaking too bad. Blood gushed from his scalp and dribbled from his mouth.

It was all happening faster than I could move. Same for Micaiah.

Wren ducked to the snow to avoid the gunfire from the leader woman, but my sister was up in a minute, firing. The .45 slugs thumped into the leader’s chest. Didn’t stop her at all. She charged Wren. Both women struck each other like freight trains derailed and heading for destruction.

Wren took a swing, but the leader woman dodged it, took her Desert Messiah, and smacked Wren right in the face. Dropped my sister like a bad habit. That sparked me. I raised Tina Machinegun.

Pilate’s Homewrecker clicked shut, he’d reloaded.

The leader woman snatched Wren up by her hair, threw an arm around her throat, and put her revolver right to my sister’s temple.

“The boy! Now!”

“Goddammit, Cavvy!” Wren screeched. “You blow this
kutia’s
head off right now or I’m gonna beat your ass. Kill her! Kill me if you have to! Just get her!”

I looked down Tina’s sights, but couldn’t shoot. I couldn’t make that shot on a sunny day, let alone wounded, in snow, adrenaline roaring in my ears.

The leader woman locked eyes with me. I felt like I was having a staring contest with a rattlesnake. “You cannot kill me,” she started, “I am—”

Wren jammed her Betty knife through the leader woman’s thigh, snatched the Desert Messiah out of her grip, and shot the woman through the head. Didn’t stop until her skull was a smudge in the snow.

I expected some funny quip from Pilate, but he was on his knees. His Homewrecker quivered in his hand before it fell from his hand.

He tumbled over. His chest wound wheezed, like a whistle in meat. He’d been shot in the lung with a large caliber weapon.

A wound like that, without a doctor, he’d die.

(ii)

Wren screamed and cursed.

I thought she was upset about Pilate or my failure at not taking the shot, but then I made out some words. “Skank knocked out my teeth. Knocked out my good front ones. Goddammit. Goddammit.”

She started to weep.

She tripped over to me, big fat tears mixing with the blood on her face, her eyes wounded and vulnerable. Nice to see human eyes after dealing with the demon soldiers we’d been fighting. But still, Wren crying? I wasn’t quite sure it was real.

“How bad did she get me, Cavvy?” she asked. “How ugly am I now?”

My mind spun with what I might say but nothing came out. The drugs in my system coated my every thought in grease. Too much going on—Pilate dying next to me, Petal missing, and Wren finally showing some emotion. Not about people, but her own vanity. It made me want to cry myself. My strong, gunfighter sister, weepy over her lost beauty.

She slumped to her knees in front of me and took my hands. “I need my pretty, Cavvy. I need my pretty!”

She opened her mouth. Both of her front teeth were gone, the bottom ones cracked jagged. “How bad is it?”

Broken nose, broken teeth, even healed, she’d look like a Juniper hard luck story, a hillbilly, like Dolly Day Cornpone.

Didn’t have the heart to tell her that. And we had other problems. Pilate continued to bleed. “Micaiah, can you help him?” I asked.

Micaiah looked pale even under the layer of dust coating him. He shook his head.

Wren noticed Pilate for the first time, and she darted over to him. “Petal! Petal, we need you! Petal!” Panic raged in her voice.

I didn’t know how a sniper could help us.

A dusty Petal stumbled out of the building at last. She limped on her right leg, gashed up bad. She leaned Mickey Mauser carefully against a wall, then bent over Pilate and put her ear to his chest.

Didn’t need to do that. His chest whistled loud despite the wind. Collapsed lung. Might as well get the shovels out.

Petal sprang to her feet. “Take him into the office building. Hurry. I’ll get my bag of tricks.” She limped off, half-running.

“What can she do?” I asked.

“Petal’s a doctor. She’ll help.” Wren slammed a fresh clip into an AZ3 and slid the strap over her shoulder. “I’ll find more skanks to kill for making me ugly. I’ll kill ’em, kill ’em all. But first Pilate. God, I don’t know what I’ll do if he goes.”

He couldn’t die. We wouldn’t let him. But how could Petal be both a doctor and a sniper?

Wren and Micaiah carried Pilate into the office building. Inside, wires trailed down the scratched-up walls. Drywall scraps dusted over bare concrete, but we found a swatch of carpet and laid Pilate on top of it. Outside the western window, snow drifted up the glass.

Petal came back with a black bag, a bottle of Pains whiskey, and more bandages. She and Wren stripped Pilate, revealing his hairy, muscled torso. A little red hole puckered the white skin of his chest. Blood foamed around the edges.

Dead for sure. Pilate dead. Hard thought to hold in my head.

“Cavvy,” Wren barked, making me jump. “Go find our horses. Petal needs me, and you don’t want to see all this blood.”

I went to protest, but Wren wouldn’t have it. She shoved the AZ3 into my hands. “Shoot to kill, little sister. These
kutias
deserve every bit of hurt we can give ’em.”

I staggered outside, trembling, my mind still a mess from the drugs and violence. Wren was right, my job was the horses, and they’d come back to me if they’d come at all.

Snow fell in whipping tornados. My wet leggings and dress froze stiff. I put up a hand, squinted, and ran to where Lambchop and Mary B lay dead half buried under white drifts. The blizzard had scraped the ground clean of any tracks.

I circled the northern section. Then I saw one of the horses, out of the wind and protected by the eastern section. “Christina Pink!” I yelled. “Come over here, girl!”

For once, she listened and trotted over. I brushed some snow off her and petted her nose. “You seen Windshadow around? Can you help me?”

She reared and went to pull away. Such a foul-tempered horse. I figured she missed Wren, since birds of a feather flock together.

I got her settled enough to slip a boot into the stirrup. On horseback, I was higher, but still couldn’t see a thing, not even a couple meters.

I circled around to the southern building, to where the enemy horses had been tied. Those ponies were long gone, but stacked next to the wall were five twenty-liter geri fuel cans. They were lined up in a row like green upright soldiers. My heart shivered in my chest. I got off Christina Pink and walked over.

“Can’t be,” I whispered.

I flipped open the container and took a whiff. The rank smell of diesel greeted me. The geri cans were not from the salvaging days, no way. So the mysterious soldiers who grabbed Micaiah didn’t have just horses, they had other vehicles, diesel-powered. Had to be diesel ’cause straight-up gasoline engines needed continuous electricity to work. Some engineers had worked on a flint-and-steel type of ignition system for gas engines, but there hadn’t been a market for it. Not a lot of gas left in the world, and what was around was a ton of money. Diesel was just as expensive. How could Micaiah’s aunts afford it all?

I didn’t know. But those geri cans meant soldiers were coming back. Another round for us to fight, and we were all so wounded. We had to get out of there and quick.

I gave up on trying to find Windshadow. If Pilate lived, he’d be heartbroken. He loved that horse.

Chapter Nineteen

You think the Sino was about Taiwan? Please. A hundred years ago China invaded Tibet and only actors and poets seemed to mind. No, the Sino-American War wasn’t about invasion. It was about a half-a-trillion dollar trade deficit. That’s a whole lotta of Hayao tablets, made in China and shipped to the U.S. And all we gave them was blue jeans and cheeseburgers.

—Former President Jack Kanton
48th President of the United States
Unconfirmed comments from a private conversation
August, 2057

(i)

I led Christina Pink into the western section of the office complex and twisted her reins around a rail in the hallway. She shook to stamp the snow off. Her hooves on the cement sounded like pistol shots. I was already on edge when I heard Wren howl.

I sped into the main room and right into a horror movie. Wren was bent over next to the window in nothing but her jeans and a brassiere. She clutched the bottle of Pains whiskey in a fist. Petal knelt next to her. Our sniper turned doctor held forceps over Wren’s bloody back. The forceps must’ve come from Petal’s bag of tricks. Petal, a doctor, still couldn’t quite believe it, but who was I to argue with such a miracle?

Micaiah cringed off to the side, looking terrified and miserable. He’d found a coat for himself, scavenged off one of the fallen soldiers. It was thick, looked real warm and nice with synthetic fibers and a compressed down lining. Prolly found gloves and a hat as well. But not better boots. Those alligator ones were still on his feet.

Wren straightened, took a long pull of the Pains whiskey that must’ve hurt like hell on her broken teeth. Way she was tipping that bottle, though, it looked like sobriety hurt more.

Petal screeched, “
Besharam besiya
, let me give you a shot!”

“No, gotta save the painkiller for Pilate and Cavvy,” Wren wheezed back. After another hit from her bottle, she bent over again. “I got Pains whiskey. Pains for the pain just like in the newspaper advertisements. Come on, Petal. Here’s your chance to hurt me like you always wanted. You saved Pilate. Now save me.”

Relief made me feel light. Pilate alive. He lay on his back, with some kind of little tent on his chest. His bandolier coiled in a pile beside him.

Petal dug into my sister’s body, and she caterwauled until Petal withdrew.

Wren laughed jaggedly. “Oh, that was a good one, Rosie. Now, you’re lovin’ this, right? You did good with my nose. That’s the important thing. Once we cash out in Nevada, I’ll go and have everything put right. Find me a good plastic surgeon and a better cosmetic dentist. Now, Rosie, hit me again! Get on that jackerdan!”

Wren screamed worse than ever.

Petal removed her forceps from my sister’s flesh and dropped the bullet to the floor. “Got it.
Little bug, little bug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are all stoned.
”

I let us all get a breath in, and then I hit them with the bad news. I told them about the cans of diesel and what they meant.

Wren whistled. “Your boy must’ve grown up sleeping in gold-plated beds. Whoever has that kind of money, well, we should go through the pockets of those dead girls out there.”

“No,” I said. “We have to run.”

Wren took a last gulp and then capped the bottle. She made no motion to cover up even though Micaiah could clearly see her cleavage. She gave me a close-mouthed grin. “Run? That involves me getting sweaty and not in the good way.”

“Wren!” I wished she wouldn’t say such things. And I wished she’d put on a shirt.

Petal finished cleaning Wren’s wound and then applied instant sutures. “Now, Irene, this is important.” Her words came out urgent, panicked. “I need my medicine. It will be in Pilate’s saddlebags on Windshadow. I found Lambchop dead, found my bag of tricks, but I couldn’t find Windshadow. Please, I need my medicine.”

“I looked,” I said, “but I only found Christina Pink. But really, we have to get out of here before more soldiers come.”

The room fell quiet. Wind gusted against the window, shaking it. Snowflakes pecked the glass.

“No!” Petal wept, wringing her hands, face twisted with terror. “No, no, no. I need it. You don’t understand.”

Her whole demeanor changed, and it was like watching a demon possession in progress. Petal pushed her face into Wren’s. “You lie, you jackering
kutia
skank. You lie! You have my medicine. You do.”

Wren took a step back, “Easy, Rosie. Easy.”

I also took a step back.

Petal shrieked her nonsense rhyming.

Jack and Jill killed the hill

and murdered each other beside her!

Micaiah approached Petal bravely. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t. That strange woman seized him in a Judo hold, quick as spit. In seconds, she had her arms around his neck, squeezing the life out of him.

“Where’s my medicine?” Petal howled. Her eyes were inky marbles in her face.

Little Jack Horner, sat in a corner,