Dandelion Iron Book One (4 page)

I glanced back and saw a woman in black with a big silver rifle in her hands. She aimed that monstrosity at us, and I was trying to get a word out, when Wren flung herself between the front seats and grabbed the wheel, cranking it to the right. Floating on air, we rocked to the side just as a crackling lightning bolt seared past us and hit a tree, blowing through its roots, bark, and branches like the wrath of God. The tree creaked over, falling toward us. Wren slammed the wheel left and we careened under it.

Billy was a short, chubby boy with bad acne, and you could see every zit stand up tall on his pale face. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I think—”

“Sure thing, Johnson.” Wren sat back down in the backseat. “You can be the big man and drive. I just didn’t want us hit by that charge gun back there.”

“That was a charge gun?” I didn’t know the Armalite Zeus 2 had become standard issue for the Cleveland Police Department. The charge guns could be dialed back to a mere stunner, but when on full power, they could disintegrate flesh. I had no idea what setting the policewoman had her rifle set to, but it seemed pretty dang lethal.

Speaking of stunners, I slid the one Wren threw me into my pocket. Hoped she’d forget about it. I thought about using it on her right then, but like it or not, Wren was my best hope for getting home. Going back to school was impossible now.

Wren tapped Billy on the shoulder. “Okay, Johnson, this is what we’re going to do. Next gas station, you and your girlfriend get out. We’ll call and let you know where we stashed your car. You won’t report your car stolen, will you?”

“No, of course not,” Billy said. His forehead crinkled in confusion. “But my name is not Johnson. And what’s a gas station?”

“Juice plug,” I mumbled.

Wren shrugged at the words. Didn’t mean a thing to her. “All you boys are johnsons. That’s all you’re good for now.”

“Wren! Where are your manners?” Stupid for me to be so shocked, but my world had cracked apart and was currently on fire. My body trembled from the adrenaline of the gunfight, and my brain felt shredded from Wren’s horrible news about our mama, our poor dead mama.

Anju sat speechless in front of us. I felt bad for her ’cause not only had I gotten her into trouble, I was going to have to tell her goodbye forever.

If we weren’t arrested first.

Chapter Three

The Sterility Epidemic is the black plague of our times. Luckily, instead of superstitious priests mumbling chants, we have the American Reproduction Knowledge Initiative. Let the churches and morality movements save your souls. The ARK is here to save our species.

—Tiberius “Tibbs” Hoyt
President and CEO of the ARK
January 1, 2058

(i)

Sitting in the backseat with Wren, I listened to the sirens wailing in the distance. If one of the policewomen had scanned Billy’s license plate, they’d find us easy.

I had to get home. I had to touch Mama one more time before we buried her.

If the police did find us, I knew what would happen—Wren had two bullets left. While I was worrying about Mama and those two bullets, Billy, for some odd reason, was worrying about Wren calling him johnson.

“Excuse me, ma’am, my name is Billy Finn.”

Wren had one hand on Anju’s headrest. “Don’t care who you are.” She pointed with her Springfield 9. “There, at that gas station, you and your girlfriend get out. And thanks for the ride.”

Billy was wise enough not to argue. He drove his frictionless car over to the juice plug.

Becca Olson sure had given him a nice present. The Pegasus had an Eggdrop-class Eterna battery so it didn’t need the juice plugs like the Mushus did. Eggdrops could easily get a thousand kilometers without any trouble. I had a little hero-worship for Maggie Jankowski of the GE Corporation, even though she named her batteries after Chinese food. That took a lot of gall after the horrors of the Sino.

We all piled out. Wren got into the driver’s seat, while I tried to figure out a way to say goodbye to Anju and Billy. I wished I was like Wren, ice-cold inside, or Sharlotte, who had a horseshoe for a heart.

Instead, I was all squish and tears. My life in Cleveland was over, and all the emotions finally caught up with me. I ran over and hugged Anju. “I gotta go, Anju, and I prolly ain’t never comin’ back.”

“What? Cavatica, you don’t mean—”

Wren yelled from behind the wheel, “Enough of that girly ’strogen huggin’. We gotta go!”

I cried full-on as I rambled, “Anju, my mama’s dead and the ranch is in trouble, and my sisters both are crazy, and we don’t have no money for tuition for next year. Coming back would be so hard and expensive. I just love you so much.”

Anju held me while she sobbed. “Oh, Cavatica, I’ll write to you about Billy and me. We’re going steady, and it’s all because of you. Your plan worked!”

We hugged, cried buckets, and I worried that Wren might think I was
gillian
, but another part of me didn’t care ’cause I loved Anju so much. Friends like that were worth more than all of the money Maggie Jankowski and Tibbs Hoyt had put together and gathering interest.

I got in and held Anju’s hand through the passenger’s window until Wren cursed us and drove off.

Wren
tsked
. “What a display, Cavatica Jeanne Weller. I don’t think I could live with myself after all that.”

I didn’t realize my hands were trembling until I wiped the tears from my face.

Couldn’t believe I was on the run from the cops. Couldn’t believe I’d pinned all my hopes for getting home on Wren. Couldn’t believe I had to go back to the Juniper without a mother there to protect me. Couldn’t believe any of it.

(ii)

I tried to calm myself by focusing on my breath, something I’d learned from Anju. Breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. At the same time, I said a Hail Mary, every phrase either an inhale or an exhale.

Slowly, I got to feeling a little better. Staring out the window also helped. The streets became prettier and richer with every kilometer. Immaculate gardens and pristine flower beds lined perfectly maintained streets. Being from the Juniper, I could appreciate unblemished asphalt, but then they had road crews constantly laying down blacktop.

Everyone was working. Unemployment was close to zero percent due to the low population after the Sino and the Sterility Epidemic. I know it might sound sexist, but with fewer boys we had less crime and less violence. I’d done a research paper on prison populations during the last half of the twentieth century, and the ratio of incarcerated men to women did make one pause. Now, America was closing down women’s prisons. We just didn’t need as many anymore.

Out in the World, America prospered with unlimited energy, a strong economy, flying cars, and sunshine. Pretty much a paradise, and I was Eve, disgraced and exiled back to the Juniper.

Wren drove slowly, so we wouldn’t draw attention to ourselves. Still, it seemed every street had a police cruiser on it. From the window of one cruiser, the flash of a scanner hit the ID chips in our vehicle, but they’d just show a car registered to Billy Finn, an upstanding member of society. If they called him, Billy would cover for me.

Part of me wished the police would find us, but another part knew I had to leave Eden to go home and bury Mama. Her funeral was just three days away. No Ash Wednesday smudges for me.

My lungs felt heavy, and I prayed to God for forgiveness and strength.

We drove past the ARK clinic in Shaker Heights, and like always, guards stood out front to escort people in and keep protestors out. I watched as a teenage boy and his parents swagger up the steps. He wasn’t going in there to test his viability, no, he was going in there to sell.

Some viable boys strutted around like stallions, others, like Billy Finn, were far more bashful. For them, going to an ARK clinic meant humiliation regardless of the paycheck. Everyone knew what they did in the little rooms. I’d have died of embarrassment if I’d been a viable boy.

The ARK, otherwise known as the American Reproduction Knowledge Initiative, was a company run by Tibbs Hoyt, the richest man in the world. The ARK’s business was researching our boy problem and selling Male Product. Since the boy was viable, he and his parents were making a bundle selling what he was lucky enough to have.

So few boys were around. The Sino-American War had decimated whole generations of men, and to make matters worse, at the very height of the casualties, fewer and fewer boys were born until it got to the point that only one out of every ten babies was male. Of those boys, only one in ten was viable, meaning they weren’t sterile. Most people thought it was Chinese bio-warfare gone wrong ’cause it affected the whole world. Religious folk thought it was the wrath of God punishing us for our many sins.

And some blamed the Sterility Epidemic on the Yellowstone Knockout. It made a certain amount of sense—this huge cataclysm created the Juniper and started the Sterility Epidemic all at the same time, but part of me didn’t like how convenient it all seemed.

I glanced over at Wren. She was driving tight-fisted and tight-jawed. “Hey, Cavvy, look up the Amtrak schedule on your computer thingy. I can’t remember when the train to Chicago leaves.”

Hands shaking, I was about to thumb on my slate when I realized the police would be scanning for my MAC address. I had to register my slate with the school to get on their satellite network, and the minute I popped on, the police would use it to track me.

But I could get around that. I had downloaded some pirated
Lonely Moon
episodes for Anju until the guilt got to me. I went to confession and Father Stein was clear, no more pirating. Still, I had batch files to re-route my connection to servers in Finland, so I started up my slate in safe mode, tweaked some settings, then rebooted and like magic, my connection was re-routed through Helsinki, complete with a phony MAC address.

Right away, there, on my homepage, news alerts, video all about Cleveland and all about us. Roadblocks, street teams sweeping the avenues, and our pictures, both terrible and unflattering. Eyewitness accounts of the gunfight said it was as vicious as the O.K. Corral.

Wren glanced over and smirked. “Nobody even got killed. But yeah, the Yankees would blow this all out of proportion.” Her smirk turned frowny. “This is the wrong car to be in, way too conspicuous. We can’t drive outta town. And even if we could afford it, the airport would be suicide. Train is our only hope. Gotta be in McCook, Nebraska, Friday morning, or we’ll miss the funeral. Sharlotte’ll kill me.” A pause. “Well, she’ll try.”

“Why McCook? Ain’t nothin’ there. We can pick up the thruway rail in Sterling and that will take us to Burlington. That’s what I did when I came home for Christmas a couple years ago. You weren’t around.”

Wren didn’t respond. She just drove, her brow pinched.

On my slate, I found the Capital Limited train bound for Chicago leaving the Amtrak station at 12:58 PM. Even with a long layover in Chicago, we would make it to McCook early Friday morning. If we could get out of Cleveland at all.

Like Wren said, going to the airport would’ve gotten us caught, and regardless, we couldn’t fly into the Juniper. No electricity. We could’ve gotten close though. Back in 2044, I had flown into Omaha and then took a train to Sterling. But that was when we had money.

Wren was dangerous, sure, and I could’ve used the stunner on her and took off on my own, but then I’d never make the funeral on Saturday. I needed Wren, but I couldn’t figure out her plan. If we got into McCook on Friday morning, we still couldn’t get to Burlington in a day. It was a 142 kilometers by the old highways. Even with a fast stage, it was a two-day journey. A full two days driving the horses into a sweat.

“Tell me, Wren. Why McCook? And why Saturday for Mama’s funeral? Why so quick?”

“You’ll see,” was all the answer I got.

We parked in a parking garage downtown next to a Chevy Landspeeder, named after the old
Star Wars
video. ’Speeders were one of the first frictionless cars to hit the market, thanks to American ingenuity.

I was on my slate, about to message Anju, when Wren stopped me. “Don’t tell them where the car is yet. Not until we’re safe.”

“But Wren—”

Her stare stopped me from saying more.

We had to walk a bit, but we finally made it through the doors of the train station, a tiny place, just a couple of benches, a place for luggage, and the ticket counter. Wren bought our tickets with lots of wrinkled-up money. I didn’t have a dime. I guess I could’ve sold my electric slate ’cause once we hit Buzzkill, Nebraska, my slate would be as useless as a soggy paper plate. The Juniper’s electromagnetic field wiped hard drives clean. It chewed up computers and spit out the parts—only good for the gold in the motherboards.

Still, I couldn’t part with my slate, not right then.

Wren went to the baggage counter with tickets to exchange for luggage. The clerk brought Wren’s old army duffle as well as a brand new backpack. My sister shouldered both bags and turned. That was when the three policewomen came through the front door.

Three women, searching faces, searching for us.

My mouth went open, my feet iced up solid to the floor, but Wren pulled me into the men’s bathroom quick, before they saw us and before I could argue.

All my concerns faded right away when I realized we were trapped. No windows. Only way out was through the police outside.

(iii)

Even though us being in the men’s room wasn’t proper, Wren was smart—not a lot of men to use the men’s room. We hurried to the handicap stall at the very end. My knees hardly held me upright, I was shaking so bad.

“Now for disguises, right quick and in a hurry,” Wren said. “Hopefully it’ll take them girls a bit before they check the men’s room.”

From her army duffle, she took out two pairs of jeans, her jeans, way too small for me. And two frilly blouses, again, her size.

“Wren! I can’t—”

“Shut up.” She threw the jeans at me then pulled little bottles and square containers out of her army duffle and balanced them on the toilet. Lipsticks, rouge, and whatnot. She took off her dress in a big swoop of fabric and dropped it to the floor.