Dandelion Iron Book One (6 page)

My sister stood in the aisle near me. She stared out the window, her eyes sharp as razors, her jaw set. I knew she was thinking about how she could take down three women with only two bullets. I couldn’t let that happen. “Wren, don’t kill nobody. Let’s just go to jail, okay?” My guts twisted. If we went to jail, I’d miss Mama’s funeral.

Wren turned to me. “Sharlotte said to get you back to Burlington, and I will.” She reached out a hand and touched my hair in a caress, then drew back. Soft words were on her lips, but she didn’t say them. Instead, her voice came out hard. “I’ll deal with the cops, you get yourself to McCook, then ask around for Sketchy. She’ll get you to Sharlotte. You bury Mama, Cavvy. You live a good life. Tell Shar I did what I was told for once in my goddamn life.”

A lump caught in my throat. I figured Wren didn’t care about family, and she surely didn’t care about me. She had told me our mama was dead with a smile on her face. But now she was going to make sure I got home even if it meant she spent her life in prison. I just couldn’t understand her.

Kane and Pell stepped through the front entrance of the train car. The woman with the charge gun came in through the back door, cutting off our escape.

“We need you to come with us,” Officer Kane said.

“Hey, officer.” Wren grinned. Mask back on. “What’s the problem? You ain’t still mad about us being in the men’s room, are you?”

“Since Elly May doesn’t have any ID, we’d like to bring her downtown to confirm her identity.”

I trembled behind Wren. Her arm curled behind her back, fingers on her gun. I blocked the view of the policewoman behind me, so she couldn’t see Wren’s hand. And she couldn’t see me ease the stunner out of my pocket.

My heart fluttered frantic in my chest.

“Please, officers,” Wren pleaded. “If we miss this train, we’ll miss the funeral. Ain’t nobody in Cleveland who can ID my sister.”

“Sorry,” Kane said, “but we need to take Elly May in.”

“Okay,” Wren whispered, “if that’s the way you want it.” She went to pull the gun, but I was faster. I slammed the stunner into her back and hit my sister with three million volts of Eterna goodness.

Twisting, shaking, Wren crumbled into a seat, right down on her own pistol. I dropped the stunner under her as well. Her mouth churned as she shook from the zap. Looked like a seizure, and suddenly I had a plan.

“Willie!” I wailed.

“What happened to her?” Officer Kane asked.

I leashed my extensive vocabulary and kept my voice dull. “She has spells. She’s sad about her mama. And my auntie. Her mama is dead. Which is to also say my auntie is dead.”

Officer Kane’s eyes showed her doubt.

Pell sighed and shook her head. “This is great. Just great.”

I rolled up a cast-off
Modern Society
magazine and shoved it into Wren’s mouth to keep her from biting off her tongue.

Meanwhile, I plucked the fake ID from Wren’s back pocket and held it out to Kane. “Here, ma’am. This made things okay before, didn’t it?”

Officer Kane ignored the ID. Her eyes darted from her slate to Wren and me. “Are you Cavatica Weller?”

I shook my head ardently. “I’m Elly May Wallach, Willie’s cousin. Please don’t take us away. Please.”

Wren moaned and chewed on the magazine.

I turned to her. “Willie, you had a seizure. Should I get you your eckilepsky medicine? Or do you think you’re going to puke?”

Her eyes flared open. Oh, she was going to smack me good once she got her nervous system back online.

“Do you really think either of them are from the Sally Browne Burke Academy?” Pell asked Officer Kane. “And how are we going to ID them if they really are Juniper girls?”

Hope leapt in my chest. Could this work?

“If she barfs in the car, I’m not cleaning it up,” the third officer grumbled.

“And I’m not doing the paperwork for the hospital visit,” Pell said.

Officer Kane glared at her comrades, then went back to studying me.

I slapped my palms together like I was praying. Heck, I
was
praying. “Please, ma’am, please don’t take her away for being a party girl. She promises she’ll stop. And I won’t do it no more neither. Please let us go to Auntie Carson’s funeral. If you take us downtown, we’ll miss the whole thing.”

“Come on, Dee,” Pell said. “These girls aren’t gunslingers.”

Officer Kane sighed. “Fine. But you keep yourselves clean, okay?”

My head jerked around in a nervous nod. “Yes, ma’am, clean, like how Sally Burke Browne says to be.”

“It’s Sally Browne Burke.” Officer Kane gestured to Wren. “Is she going to be okay?”

Wren spit out the magazine. “Yeah,” she slurred, “I get spells. I got medicine.”

“I have a sister who had epilepsy,” Pell said, “but we could afford the surgery. Maybe once you get some money, you could look into that.”

I dropped my head. “Ain’t no way we could afford no surgery. But thank you for letting us go.”

Through the speakers, the conductor’s voice announced the train would be leaving.

Officer Pell patted my shoulder. “Take care. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, but things will get better.”

I nodded, embarrassed.

The few seconds it took them to get off the train felt like a lifetime. Once the door slammed behind them, I could breathe again.

The train moved off and passengers threaded their way into the car. I wanted to yell out in relief, but I didn’t. I thought about our sheriff back in Burlington. She would’ve locked us up, but then, that was in the Juniper. Out in the World, things were different, kinder. Far kinder.

Took a few minutes until Wren finally got her tongue back in her mouth, but her make-up was all over the place. She looked like she had just survived a hard night working parties for tips and kisses.

“You gonna hit me, Wren?” I asked, keeping my distance.

“Nope, Cavvy, you done real good.” She reached into her pocket and came up with our tickets. I stowed the pistol and the stunner in Wren’s army duffle. We walked through three cars and finally found our seats. I stuffed our bags into the overhead compartment.

We were in the clear. No more cops. Officer Kane’s instincts had been undone by our Weller girl
shakti
.

(iii)

We got off the train in Chicago ’cause the California Zephyr didn’t leave until the next afternoon. In the lobby of the Amtrak station, I called Anju on my slate, and told her where to find Billy’s car. She said the police were still scratching their heads, wondering how we got away. Anju and I shed more tears, then said goodbye.

Wren was out of cash, but I was hungry, so I sold my slate to a Chicago girl for seventy-five dollars. She was real happy ’cause she had the Hayao 4, which didn’t cache as well as the Version 5. She giggled. I felt like I’d sold my right arm.

Dinner was McDonald’s. Wren ate factory-farmed burgers, which I thought was disgusting, but I was sure my yogurt hadn’t come from happy Juniper cows. We took turns pretending to sleep, sitting upright on benches while janitors cleaned around us.

Once we got on the California Zephyr, I washed the make-up off my face, then changed back into my New Morality dress. I felt so much better out of those vulgar clothes. I’d grown up in a dress, and wearing jeans felt like risking hellfire. Wren, of course, stayed swathed in denim.

My sister wasn’t much for casual conversation, but she obsessed over her dental hygiene. She brushed her teeth every fifteen minutes or so. And she didn’t wait until we crossed into the Juniper to dig her dual Colt .45 Terminators out of her army duffle.

I watched as she strapped them smokewagons on her hips, tying off the holsters to her thighs for a quicker draw. The pistols were completely customized—cherry wood grips, extended sixteen-centimeter barrels, and double-stacked magazines giving her fourteen bullets with one in the chamber. If twenty-nine ACP hollow points weren’t enough, you best run.

She couldn’t have gotten her pistols out in Cleveland ’cause of the gun control laws, and her Terminators were too big to hide. I understood why she had taken a 9mm and why she hadn’t had extra ammo for it. The 9mm was just a toy. Her Colts were her everything.

Until we reached Buzzkill, Nebraska, we were officially under American law, but none of the Yankees on the train dared quote statutes to my sister.

I was nervous about leaving the World, but I didn’t have a choice. The police hadn’t harassed us in Chicago, but we were still vulnerable until we crossed into the Juniper. Our sheriff, Lily, in Burlington often said the Juniper scared Yankee police—they wouldn’t go there chasing criminals.

Wren tucked her long Betty knife into a sheath next to her right holster. All weaponed up, Wren gave me the Springfield 9. Two bullets left.

“I get outta line, Cavvy, put me down for good.”

She was joking, but still, I swallowed hard and stuck the pistol in my dress pocket, hoping I wouldn’t have to use it.

Chapter Five

The Sino-American War sure was a hungry thing. The Sino ate up all of our natural resources just like it ate up our sons, our fathers, our brothers. Then it chewed on all of us during the nuclear winter after the Yellowstone Knockout. It even devoured five whole states. Left nothing behind but salvage.

—Former President Jack Kanton
On the 28th Anniversary of the Yellowstone Knockout
March 30, 2057

(i)

The train rolled into Buzzkill, Nebraska after sunset on Thursday night, a day and a half after I used the stunner on Wren. The buildings of the town tumbled together, all squat and gaudy, painted in bright colors. The Hindu elephant god, Ganesha, dressed up like a cowboy, welcomed us from a neon billboard glowing brightly thanks to Eterna batteries. Across the way slumped a hotel painted an eye-biting yellow. A mural of Sita and Rama covered the side. I knew who they were ’cause my friend Satya Nayar did a report on
The Ramayana
in the fourth grade. Anju also gave me an education, though she’d see me get uncomfortable and switch topics. I’d found the stories interesting, but being Roman Catholic, learning about other gods felt blasphemous.

However, I’d studied enough European history to know religious intolerance led to mass murder, and I wasn’t going to sin by letting hate and fear govern me. So I went out of my way to befriend people of other cultures, including those from a religion that didn’t just have one or two other gods, but millions. Besides, I’d grown up surrounded by Hindus.

The Sino had cut the U.S. population in half, and the Sterility Epidemic didn’t help things any. Employers couldn’t run their businesses without employees, so President Jack relaxed immigration laws and brought over anyone who wanted to come. Mostly, East Indians had answered the call. India hadn’t been pulled into the Sino, and their country was overflowing with folks. As we’ve seen throughout history, immigrant labor is more fluid and more desperate. A lot of Hindus ended up in the Juniper, so in the territories, we had cowgirls and two kinds of Indians, Native Americans and Hindus. Ironic.

Before the Yellowstone Knockout, that section of Nebraska had been empty except for a few ranches and farms, but once folks figured out it had become the edge of civilization, the city of Buzzkill sprang up overnight to handle the salvage work. Mama had told us stories about the early days of Buzzkill. She said it had been a shantytown, more tents than buildings, with stacks of salvage teetering in towers—stuff like used cabling, copper piping, wood, furniture, Nintendo ShockBoxes, and other electronics. It’d lie in piles until auctioneers could sell it off to salvage merchants who would take it east in trains or trucks. Billions of dollars and megatons of junk moved through there.

Now Buzzkill thrived on Juniper livestock and produce. Marketing people, hired by the likes of Dob Howerter and Mavis Meetchum, had convinced the Yankees that Juniper homegrown was healthier for them than anything factory farmed. And better tasting, I might add, though President Jack said Juniper beef tasted like sagebrush and sorrow.

Thanks to some bipartisan hijinks circumnavigating the 22nd Amendment, that man had four terms as president. It gave him ample opportunity to say a lot of clever things, but I never cared much for him. President Jack was no Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he gave up too quickly on the Juniper, in my opinion. First thing he did in office was sign the Masterson-Wayne Act, which officially set the states affected by the Yellowstone Knockout back to being dusty territories, barely governed.

The only real law was the cattle barons and the Outlaw Warlords. Some said Howerter was as bad as an outlaw, though he didn’t move around as much. The Warlords scrapped over territory, trade routes, and taxes. Not that there were real taxes involved, only protection money. Give them cash or they’d burn down your farm and steal your livestock.

Even though it was late, people packed the streets of Buzzkill, Yankees and Juniper folk alike. Women in rainbow saris mixed with girls in worn cowgirl leathers. Quite a party. I could smell the spicy food, and my mouth watered. The food on the train was pretty good, but it wasn’t like down-home Hindu lentils or Mexican
carnitas
.

The train stopped at the depot near the border of the Juniper, which was the part of Buzzkill I liked the best. Outside were stacks and stacks of computer monitors, TVs, every type of screen, from 25 centimeter slate ECDs to the 550 centimeter Sony Reality Simulator Displays. The screens showed all kinds of video—cooking shows, music Youtubes, old-timey Westerns, that new science fiction show,
Altered
, and, of course,
Lonely Moon
.

On the edges of the Juniper, electricity flickered. The screens would buzz out and go dead. Thirty seconds later, they would light back up and the parade of video would go on.

The train’s whistle howled, letting us know the engineers were transitioning from batteries to steam. The firebox prolly burned Old Growth coal, synthesized out of old-growth forests—something about the carbon in the aged wood—but of course the environmentalists were against cutting down ancient trees to use in the Juniper. Only a matter of time before Old Growth was outlawed since most Yankees cared more about old trees than Juniper people.