Dandelion Iron Book One (25 page)

She didn’t ask about Wren, and I was glad. Thinking about him and Wren together hurt my heart.

Tech gave me a final squeeze then took off to help Sharlotte and Micaiah secure the mooring lines.

The boy’s nose was sunburned ’cause he didn’t have a hat. Made him cuter. Not that I cared any more.

“Who’d you guys pick up?” Sketchy asked. “Or are they growing handsome boys in Denver now that June Mai is gone?”

I told her the little we knew about him, and Sketchy put on a pout. “That damn outlaw and her Cargadors and grappling hooks. It’s a shame.”

“Do you think he was headed to Vegas?” I asked.

Sketchy shook her head. “Maybe, but such a trip would be a bundle of money and twice the cash. Folks would just as soon go suborbital across the Juniper for the same price.”

I slapped my thigh. “That’s what I thought.”

Micaiah asked Sharlotte something, which elicited a bright smile from my sister.

“Well lookey there.” The
Moby Dick’s
captain breathed out.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, feeling pretty calm about the whole situation.

“Dang, but he looks familiar. Hey, boy!” Sketchy called out. “You spend time in the ZZK?”

He looked confused. And more than a little worried.

“She means Buzzkill, Nebraska,” I explained.

Micaiah wandered over and shook Sketchy’s hand. “No, ma’am,” Micaiah said. “I’ve not spent much time in the Juniper at all.”

Sketchy studied him for a long time. “You famous? Like in Hollywood video? I like video, but I never get to watch any, only when we venture out into the World, which isn’t often. Not sure if Cavvy told you, but we got a Kung Pao Eterna battery, which means we got the fastest Jonesy in the world. Pretty sure. Pretty sure.”

“A Kung Pao?” His eyebrow perked. “Wow, I’d like to see that but not right now. Sharlotte wanted me up front, to keep stragglers in check.” With that he was off.

Our boy, famous? Maybe that was why he had escaped into the Juniper. Got tired of the paparazzi. I did recall how he handled being the center of attention. Then again, he was a boy, and boys either got used to the instant fame or turned dreadfully shy, like Billy Finn.

Sharlotte saw me idle, and she had a fix for that. “Hey, Cavvy, go help Micaiah at the front. The herd is getting restless.”

That was an understatement. Our headcount was thirsty, hungry, mad for being run hard for days on end, and even madder for being crammed onto a freeway. The whining, piping, and moaning of the cows got worse and worse, while our team pulled long, blue collapsible troughs out of the
Moby Dick’s
rear bay doors. The Neofiber troughs could be set up in a second, and Tech had julie-rigged a system of hoses to deliver the water. Soon those beefsteaks would be happy enough.

I threw a leg over Puff Daddy and pushed through to the front of the herd.

A cloud covered the sun for a moment. My nose warned me of the snow.

Micaiah spun around on Mick. Standing his stirrups, he scanned the remnants of houses.

We were still elevated, but ahead of us, the road dropped down a gradual incline to where an off ramp led to the dirt of an old street and the tangled brush of a river glen. If the cattle caught the scent of the water, we wouldn’t be able to stop them.

“What is it?” I asked.

He opened his mouth to answer.

A gunshot answered for him.

(ii)

The report of an MG21 echoed across the landscape. Betty Butter let out a bellow that started in her butt and threw itself out of her mouth.

She wasn’t going to wait for us to unload the
Moby Dick
. The gunshot frightened her, and she took off, and then I watched her eyes go down to the water in the glen. She’d smelled it. She was going there for a drink, and God help anything that stood in her way.

She drove forward, and in that minute, Micaiah and I were staring down a carpet of seething, horned fury, coming right at us. Hundreds and hundreds of cattle. Thousands of hooves. Megatons of moving meat.

The earth-cracking noise of their hooves on the pavement eclipsed any other bullets, any other shouts of alarm, everything else.

It was a stampede. And stampedes mean death.

Puff Daddy ignited on instinct and took off running down the freeway, away from them, as did Mick. Micaiah clung to his horse, face pale. Neither of our ponies was fast—Mick didn’t have the heart for it, and Puff swayed with too much bulk.

Snorting, hot breath, the rage of wet stink from the cattle stifled us as we fled on working legs and pounding hooves.

We needed off the highway. Right then. Or die.

Puff and Mick streaked in a full sprint, shoes striking sparks. I had to direct the escape, but I had to be careful or Puff might freak out completely. A subtle pull on the reins, leaning in the saddle, and Puff knew I needed him to go right. He followed my lead, driving Mick nearer to the concrete wall.

That boy, however green, did the exact thing I needed, like he could read my mind. Or like we’d been rehearsing a suicidal circus act.

He unhooked his left foot from the stirrup, lifted himself on his right, and then offered me his hand.

My
shakti
focused me. I didn’t pause a second. I caught his hand in a steel grip, stepped off Puff Daddy and hurled myself onto Mick for a minute, until I yanked both Micaiah and myself off the saddle and over the concrete wall.

It was ten meters down to the bottom of the glen.

A fall like that could shatter a leg or kill you outright. But then I hit a tree branch, heavy with buds, and another one, and another, until I threw my arm around cottonwood limb, but I was going too fast.

The limb was jerked out of my arms. I fell, again, crashing through more branches. I landed on my belly in a carpet of dry leaves, several seasons worth, cushioning that last plummet.

Micaiah lay next to me, mouth open, but I couldn’t hear his groan, or anything else.

The stampede and gunfire drowned out everything else. The ground shook, and for a second I thought it was from the cattle on the highway, but then I realized it was from horses in front of us.

Women on horseback galloped through the glen. They were dressed in the same half-army, half-cowgirl outfits I’d seen before on the air pirates. June Mai’s soldier girls. So Denver wasn’t deserted after all.

Ironic, but the
Moby Dick
had prolly led the soldiers right to us.

The troop drove their horses under the bridge, wheeled around, then splashed through the river and charged away. They hadn’t seen us, but were they there for the cattle, or were they there for Micaiah?

The boy carefully raised his head and glanced around. He turned to me. “What now?”

Yeah, that certainly was the question.

(iii)

Before I could answer, I had to say a prayer for Mick and Puff Daddy. Our little circus trick had helped us over the edge of the highway, but it might’ve meant the death of them and maybe half of our headcount.

If we were down that much money, Micaiah might be our only way to save the ranch. Six million dollars. He’d said he could match what we’d get in Hays if we got fair-market prices for our beef.

“We have to get you to safety,” I said. “Then I have to go back and help my sisters.” But what could I do? I wasn’t even armed. Not even a pistol.

Micaiah didn’t argue. We picked ourselves up and crossed the river, jumping from rock to rock to rock to avoid the freezing water. A culvert on the other side took us under another highway.

We paused at the mouth of the tunnel for a minute. Heavy machinegun fire mixed with the explosion of grenades. It sounded like a war on the freeway.

Across the street from us sat an old strip-mall complex, mostly split concrete and yellow-weeded dirt.

We ran through an intersection and across the blasted earth of the parking lot toward a huge building. Glass doors leaned empty—no windows, just tall concrete walls.

I recognized the building as an old Costco. So close to I-70, it would be picked clean.

We could speed through it, come out the other side, and then sweep around to get back to our people.

The broken glass of the doors scratched beneath our boots. Darkness swallowed us. From our vantage point, we couldn’t see much of the highway, but we could still hear the remnants of the stampede. And of course, more weapons’ fire.

“Should we—”

Micaiah silenced me with a raised hand.

There, in the intersection, five of June Mai’s soldiers sat tall on horseback. Fully armed. Scanning around, searching.

We moved further into the darkness. Only dust remained on the floor and some drywall litter. Our shifting feet seemed horribly loud. They weren’t, but keyed up, on the run, it sure seemed like the outlaws would hear us.

It got so midnight dark in there that Micaiah finally took my hand. I was glad he did. Not for any romantic reason, but so we’d stay together. My other hand reached and searched so I wouldn’t bang into a shelf or box left behind. Finally, we found a wall.

We stopped and waited. Sweat dripped from my nose while we listened. Nothing.

I led Micaiah down the wall. It hooked around into more blackness. We pushed through doors into the rear automotive garage. The bay doors were gone, leaving an open mouth, facing north. I blinked sight back into my eyes and let out a breath.

Micaiah stood at the opening, already looking for more outlaws.

“So do we stay here?” he asked in a whisper. “Or do we try and make a run for it? Maybe circle around to get back to your sisters and the cattle. Or maybe the
Moby Dick
might come looking for us and we can hitch a ride with Sketchy. I hope your people weren’t captured.”

“Not likely,” I said. “Wren would die before she ever surrendered. And you saw how Pilate and Petal were in a fight. I just hope the rest of our crew is okay.”

Horses clopped in the distance, women yelled, but their calls faded away, going south. It was prolly the five soldiers we saw out front.

We seemed safe for a minute.

“So what do we do?” he asked.

I did a quick check of my knowledge of local geography and recalled all the planning we’d done. We’d wanted to get across Denver then head north in the valley between the hogsback and the foothills of the Rockies. The way would take us up through the ghost towns of Golden, Boulder, Longmont, and Fort Collins. Rivers ran down from the mountains, so there would be water, and it was pretty remote, so we thought we wouldn’t come across any more outlaws.

“We should head for Golden,” I said. “If we try and find our people now, we’re just as likely to get caught by June Mai’s soldiers. If Sharlotte and the others survived, Golden is the most logical rendezvous point.”

“If I gave myself up to the soldiers, maybe they would let you go. I mean, that was the plan.” His eyes dropped. His chest rose and fell rapidly. He was scared, and not just a little.

“That was Pilate’s evil plan,” I whispered back. “Not mine.”

“What’s your plan?” he asked, and he wasn’t teasing, not then.

“Can you really pay us six million dollars to get you to Nevada?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Then you are my plan.” I said it wrong, like in a romantic way, and I blushed as much as he did, though he didn’t turn away. In fact, he got closer.

I stopped him with a hand. Now my own breath was coming fast. “But you’re keeping stuff from us. If I bet on you, I need all our cards on the table.”

He stiffened and retreated. “You know about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from the Book of Genesis, right?”

I nodded. Didn’t anticipate Bible study at a time like that.

“Who I am, the fruit I bear, it’s the apple, Cavatica. If you know the truth about me, if you eat the apple, you will know things, and that knowledge is poisonous.” He swallowed hard. “I won’t murder you and your family by telling you the truth. I know it sounds crazy, I know it does, but you’ll have to trust me.”

He raised his eyes, and I looked into them. I wasn’t shy, and I wasn’t hateful, and I wasn’t even lustful for him. No, a great compassion welled up in my chest. I did trust him.

“So you’re telling me you’re the apple and not the snake,” I whispered. “What about the Tree of Life?”

He closed his eyes. “It’s all about the Tree of Life. We have to protect it.”

“What if I don’t care about staying in Eden?” I asked. “What if I want to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?”

“I can’t do that to you. I can’t be the Satan that kills you.”

A frown weighed down my face. “All right, Micaiah, okay, but what’s gonna happen between you and Sharlotte once we get you to safety? Are you going to tell her the truth?”

“Yes.” He said. “But Cavatica, me and Sharlotte, you understand how it is, right?” His eyes said everything else. I closed mine ’cause I couldn’t bear to hear what his next words might be. They’d either break my heart or Sharlotte’s or maybe both at once.

I moved far away to the other side of the bay. “Let’s go. So we run north for a bit, then in Arvada, we can cut over west. We can salvage food, though it won’t be easy. This place has been picked over. But Mama taught me a thing or two about finding food tucked away in trash.”

My mind shook me back and forth, going over every one of a million scenarios in great bloody detail. All of our headcount dead in the stampede or stolen by June Mai Angel to feed her troops. All of my family and the crew dead. Or maybe Wren, Pilate, and Petal had defeated the outlaws and were worried sick about me and Micaiah. They’d have to track us.

At every bit of leftover wood, I carved “AW” with the “A” and the “W” sharing the “A’s” right-side line. It was our brand and Mama’s initials, Abigail Weller, and if Wren were searching for our spoor, she’d see it. Only, what if she were dead?

Or Sharlotte, what if she’d died in the attack?

I’d be left alone with her boy—such a danger to my uncertain heart.

(iv)

That night, Micaiah and I found a suburban ranch-style house, a packrat’s nest of paper, so much paper, and a variety of other crapjack not worth a dime. Mama said a hoarder’s nest held goodies if you could scrape off the litter. Most salvage monkeys kept right on going to cleaner, easier pickings.