Chapter Three
The Juniper tests us, but God didn’t create the Juniper to find our weaknesses. God did it so we could find our strengths.
—Mavis Meetchum
Colorado Courier Interview
August 4, 2032
(i)
Before I went to bed, I guzzled a ton of water with my pain medication. Drinking water before bedtime was an old trick to make sure I woke up in the middle of the night. Sure, enough, a little after two in the morning, I got out of bed and used the toilet. Then I tiptoed down the hallway to the steps.
A murmur came from one of the rooms, but it wasn’t talking, too low and muffled. I froze. Waited.
The murmuring stopped. Prolly a Scheutz girl, stressed out and talking in her sleep.
Poor Jenny Bell, it felt like I was betraying her, but what would happen if she knew about Micaiah? What would she say? What could she do?
It was a variable I didn’t want to consider in my already messy equations. In the parlor downstairs, Dolly Day snored like a Cargador with a boiler about to blow.
I moved up the stairs to the attic room, walking on the edges ’cause everyone knows the center of stairs squeak.
A board squealed under my foot nonetheless. Made me stop and listen. Every noise seemed like it would bring all of Jenny Bell’s daughters, if not the woman herself, barreling out to search for who was walking around. After a while, though, when nothing happened, I thought it might be safe and kept on creeping upward.
In the attic, the windows glowed from moonlight, creating dragons and ghosts out of the furniture. The room was how Edger had left it—the desk, the chairs, the whole interrogation chamber. I moved on the pads of my feet, soft as a mouse, ’cause the Scheutzes were asleep directly below. That mothball smell reminded me of cleaning out closets with Mama. She’d pull out an old box, and then always said the same thing. “Why do I keep this stuff? Well, salvage monkeys make great pack rats.”
I’d always laughed. Monkeys and rats and Mama.
The windows showed the Regios fires silhouetting the soldiers on guard. The ranch was a prison, all right, and there wasn’t any kind of escape I could see.
First things first, moving the hutch. I silently cleared boxes away. Four long scratches marked up the floor. I couldn’t shove the hutch again, too loud. Then, abruptly, another memory rose up in me, from when I was little—nine or ten years old at most.
Mama had run our house not as a general, but as a president. Sharlotte was her general, and I’d grown up following her orders. Wren, though, Wren loved to be treasonous. Sisters trying to raise sisters was a bad setup, but Mama was busy running the ranch and doing a million other things, so Shar took up the slack.
When Mama told Sharlotte it was time for spring cleaning, Sharlotte handed down the orders. I got to work. Wren went off on a horse to raise hell out on the plains, which left me alone, which wasn’t so bad, ’cause I liked to work and Wren would only complicate things. However, I was left to move our big china cabinet by myself. I remembered standing in front of the massive piece of furniture, wondering how I’d ever be able to push it back from the wall so I could clean it.
Aunt Bea found me like that, staring at the china cabinet, pondering. It was Bea who showed me how to slide an old fleece blanket under the legs, so we could slide it across the floor.
When Sharlotte came down to check on my progress, she’d nodded in approval. The china cabinet had been moved, I was cleaning behind it, and all was right with the world. Until Wren came in, muddy boots leaving tracks on the floor I’d cleaned. Which led to yelling and fighting.
And Mama, gone most of the time, not able or not wanting to referee the fighting and quiet the yelling.
All those old thoughts and feelings made me miss the ranch, and once more, I couldn’t imagine losing it. Yes, it hadn’t been easy growing up there, but it was home, good or bad, and the nostalgia for it felt both rich and right.
But first, we had to get out of our current predicament before we could continue the task of saving our home by selling the cattle in Nevada.
In the Scheutz attic, I found two thick blankets, one for the back legs and one for the front.
My breathing shallowed; scared I’d make noise and scared of the pain. My wounds stiffened and throbbed, but I managed to get the blankets under the feet of the hutch. It slid easily, noiselessly across the floor. If only I’d used the blankets the first time.
A pull on the string brought the collapsible ladder down, and I carefully, silently, rested the bottom feet on the floor. I climbed up the rungs, wincing at the pain.
Micaiah didn’t whisper or warn. Nothing.
My heart turned to wood in my chest. If he was gone it would make things simpler in a lot of ways, but I didn’t want a simple life. I wanted him.
I pulled myself up into the crawl space by one of the struts holding up the ceiling. Not sure how wide the space was, ’cause my eyes strained in the blackness. A little light glowed down the way. I crawled off the ladder and onto dusty, grimy wood. Something brushed me, and at first I thought it was a spider, but then I reached out and touched plastic. It seemed like bedding, maybe winter blankets, wrapped in plastic for storage. The musty smell of ancient insulation filled the dusty air.
“Cavatica?” Micaiah whispered.
“Yeah, it’s me.” A little spark of joy lit me up.
On my hands and knees, I eased over to him, reaching out until I could feel his jeans. Light spilled in from a square of screen where the attic fan had been. Of course it’d been removed, since after the Yellowstone Knockout it wouldn’t have worked.
I got closer. He’d made a little bed of blankets, taken from the plastic. Petal’s sniper rifle and Pilate’s Beijing Homewrecker lay next to him against the wall. I drew up close, right next to the screen, so we could see each other in a silvery light.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure for how much longer. God, it’s so good to see you.” He bent forward to kiss me, and I pressed him gently back.
“Sorry, Micaiah, I can’t. Not now.” I thought back to my conversation with Sharlotte and how hurt she’d been. And I’d wanted to hurt her more. Shame on me.
Sharlotte aside, I’d made it clear, I needed him to be truthful before I could be with him. I believed in his quest, but that didn’t mean we needed to get all kissy and sweaty.
Still, even in the nothing bit of light, such love filled his eyes. Like always, his dirty blond hair was just long enough to be perfect. A few wisps hung over his eyes. His lips swelled so full, red, and kissable.
No, once we reached Nevada, and once he could tell me everything, then I could kiss him again. Until then, he’d have to be okay holding my hand. But his touch was dangerous. It had melted my resolve before.
“I should’ve left,” Micaiah said with a sigh, so strong I felt his breath on my cheek. “I listened to Praetor Edger, interrogating you all, talking about the shell casings they found in Strasburg and Broomfield, and it killed me. Dolly Day got mean and nasty, and Crete cried until she couldn’t talk, and they were all so scared. And it’s all because of me. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
I felt my forehead crinkle at the sound of his guilt and sorrow. “It’s okay. We’ll make it okay. But what’s a Praetor?”
“The ARK armies use the old Roman military system … praetors, legates, that sort of thing.”
“That’s right,” I whispered. “I’d forgotten. History class feels like a long time ago.”
He dropped his head. “I was going to take off after we met up with Sharlotte at the mall, but I couldn’t leave without knowing you’d be okay. And to be honest, I’m afraid I won’t be able to get to Nevada without help.”
I couldn’t stop myself. I took his hand in mine. “We want to help you. I believe in you.”
Another long sigh. “After everything that’s happened? Really?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll figure this all out. Not sure what we’ll do, but we’ll get through this together.”
He raised his eyes to take me in. “I’m just thankful you don’t know anything about me, not really.”
I’d lied to my sister. No way was I going to lie to Micaiah. “But I do. I know who you are, now, Micah Hoyt.”
Everything, and I mean everything, changed in a second. He jerked his hand away, his lips tightened, and I could hear his sharp gasp. “No. You can’t know. How? How?”
He didn’t raise his voice, but those last two words came out harsh.
My mouth went dry. “Under the bed, I found a Modern Society magazine. You were on the cover.”
He clenched both hands into fists and his eyes squeezed shut. “No. Now you’re dead. You’re all dead. I’ve killed you.”
His words scared me, but I missed his hand in mine. I missed how we were before. It was gone. What would remain?
I generally talk when I don’t know what else to do. Not sure where I picked up that particular genetic trait since Wren and Sharlotte and Mama wouldn’t say two words if they didn’t have to. “Okay, I know who you are, now. What does this change? How is that going to kill me?”
“No one can know,” he whispered. His eyes were open, but he was looking past me, into some kind of horrible place. “If they think you know who I am, they’ll kill you to keep you quiet. Because you might know other things.”
I shivered. I’d been right about the Regios murdering us to keep us quiet.
“I won’t tell anyone, especially not Edger. And I won’t treat you any differently.”
“You will.” Micaiah slapped a hand across his eyes. “How can you not? Now I’m not just some mysterious rich boy. I’m the mysterious rich boy. And I know you, Cavatica, you’ll start making connections. I’m the son of Tibbs Hoyt. That, right there, is the secret of me. The son. You can’t …” his voice failed him. “You can’t think too much about this … about me, or why my father wants me. Okay?”
It all came down to that. Why would his father send in a squadron of highly trained soldiers using a fortune in diesel to retrieve his son? Especially when that son didn’t want to be retrieved. The Vixxes and the Regios certainly didn’t seem like they were on a rescue mission.
It was like he could hear me thinking. “Don’t, Cavatica. Don’t.”
“The apple, again,” I said, sighing. “But, Micaiah, I already know so much.”
“But not everything,” he said firmly. “You’re still in Eden, whether you know it or not.”
“I don’t think there are soldiers and interrogation rooms in Eden,” I said quietly.
“Still.” He wasn’t reaching for my hand. He’d tried to kiss me before, but now seemed distant. Maybe I wasn’t the problem. Maybe he couldn’t handle me knowing the truth.
“So should I call you Micah or Micaiah?” I asked.
“Micaiah,” he answered immediately. “You don’t want to know Micah Hoyt. He was bad, limited, damaged. Who I am in the Juniper? Micaiah? He’s okay. Not perfect, but far better.”
Before I could say another word, he reached out and touched my cheek. “I love having you here, but you need to leave. It’s too dangerous. For you. For everyone in this house.”
“You’ll need food and water,” I said softly. “And a jar for, you know, stuff.” A blush warmed my cheeks.
“Eventually,” he said, “but I should be okay for a bit. Water is the main problem. I’ll go and get a drink now, with you, and then I’ll come back. I should be good until tomorrow night.”
“Edger is going to stay until the Vixxes get here.”
“I know.” He swallowed hard. “People will die, Cavvy, if we don’t figure a way out. The Vixxes will do anything to get the truth. They aren’t above torture. They aren’t … human.”
That little bit of truth wasn’t hyperbole. I’d watched Renee Vixx get shot through the heart then the throat and keep on fighting. They weren’t human, but then, what were they? Micaiah wasn’t going to tell me, not if he thought it would put me in danger. Made me love him and hate him at the same time.
“Well, we’ll just have to outwit them. I’ll come up with a plan.” Ha, that was a laugh. My head was empty.
“We probably have until the day after tomorrow,” Micaiah said. “I would imagine it would take a day for a Regio scout to reach them, and a day for them to reach us.”
And just like that, he started up a doomsday clock. Thirty-six hours until the end of the world.
Think, Cavatica Weller, think.
(ii)
We snuck down through the house. Micaiah used the bathroom, drank a bunch of water, and returned to his hiding place at the top of the house. I slid the hutch back into place, thinking about Anne Frank and the Nazis. We’d read her diary in school, and here I was, living out the book.
I hoped our story had a better ending.
After the hutch was in place, I slid the blankets out from under the hutch and folded them. I stacked the boxes back around the hutch. This time, I made sure all the scratch marks were covered.
I crept back to the yellow room and got back in bed.
My gunshot wounds ached, so I took another pain pill, as prescribed by Petal, who knew all about drugs and pain. I tossed around in the bed, got too hot, got too cold, my head running like a demon on fire. I’d given up all hope of finding sleep, but somehow, sleep found me.
I woke up with sunshine making that yellow room glow.
My mind immediately came to life again, the fire demon clawing and chewing on the problem of the Regios and the doomsday countdown. Guards surrounded us. Micaiah lay trapped up in the attic. Pilate was out of commission. Wren was gone. Petal? She couldn’t go up against those hard soldier girls alone, and besides, she’d started to crack from only half-doses of the Skye6.
The only plan I had required suicide. If one or more of us went up into the attic and used the guns there, we might create enough of a distraction for everyone else to run.
But whoever did the shooting would certainly die, and Jenny Bell’s house might be blown to bits. No, there had to be another way. I had to come up with a better plan.
I thought and thought until it felt like my head might pop right off my shoulders.
Staying in bed wasn’t going to help me. Normally, I would’ve taken off on a pony and ridden until my head came up with a solution, but Edger wasn’t about to let me leave.
Well, no matter what I did, I couldn’t do it dressed in a nightgown. I got up and went to the closet. There I found clothes—a silver-buttoned red cowgirl shirt and a pair of jeans. A shelf unit held several pairs of Nferno socks still in the wrapper and even some underwear and brassieres, also new by the look of them. How could Jenny Bell have new underwear lying around? I recalled the smell of her deodorant, quite fancy, way out west.
My old New Morality dress also hung there in the closet on a wire hanger. It had been washed, stitched.
Jeans or the dress?
Who did I want to be?
I held up the jeans. Should I put them on? What kind of person would that make me? I knew the girl who wore the dress. That girl had been young, in some ways innocent, in a lot of ways naïve.
I’d liked her all right, but I wasn’t her anymore.
Then I laughed. The jeans, the dress, were only clothes. Jenny Bell wore jeans and she was a good, kind woman.
Still, putting on the denim felt like risking hellfire. I put them on. They didn’t cling flirty like the tight jeans Wren had forced me into back in Cleveland when we were running from the cops. Nope. The jeans fit nicely. The brassiere was a little snug but new and not frayed like my old one.
I gazed at myself in the mirror on the back of the door. Did it for a long time. The cattle drive had thinned out my face. My brown eyes stared back at me, big and watering. It wasn’t that I thought I was pretty; it went deeper than that. I felt powerful, smart, and looked gunslinger cool. I had survived things other people hadn’t, and I had a boy who liked kissing me. Well, at least I thought he did. He sure did get all moany.
I felt powerful, not from the clothes, not from the boy, but from who I was and who I was becoming.
I knew, right then, even in jeans, Mama would’ve been proud of me. I knew she had been with me during the hard parts, and she’d continue to guide me. Sharlotte was horribly wrong, hating Mama like she did.
I checked the right pocket of the New Morality dress and searched for the .45 caliber bullet, the one I’d retrieved after I’d pointed our family’s M16 at Wren to keep her from beating the truth out of Micaiah. She’d been drunk. That didn’t make me feel any less guilty.
The bullet was gone. Not surprising. It could’ve fallen out in the wash, or maybe it had tumbled out when I was unconscious. I didn’t think much of it.
I did feel bad, though—losing such a memento. If anything was symbolic of my sister, it was a bullet.
The smell of coffee drifted up from downstairs.
From a room next door, Pilate’s voice rang out. “Hey, if there’s coffee, can someone get this old ex-drunk a cup of Joe before he dies?”
Pilate, awake, alive, it felt like Christmas for a minute. Then I remembered Petal, the drugs, and the part Pilate played in keeping her addicted. Yeah, it felt like Christmas, but I wanted to kill Santa Claus.
(iii)
I waited in my room while Jenny Bell, her daughters, and some of our people made a big fuss over Pilate. They loudly congratulated him on being alive, then murmured about the Regios outside. No doubt they mentioned the shell casings Edger found and her theories.
When he was alone, I went out into the hall and threw open the door. Petal was sleeping in a chair—not sleeping, drugged, now that I knew the truth.
I barged in and got right to it. “Okay, before we talk about the Regios outside and how we’re gonna deal with ’em, you and I need to have it out. You kept Petal hooked on Skye6. Don’t even try denying it.”
Pilate sat on the bed in a white t-shirt, with a blanket over his lap. His regular clothes lay patched, laundered, and folded on top of the dresser. Guess Jenny Bell didn’t have extra men’s clothes lying around.
Pilate smiled up at me. His thick dark hair was long, like always, but I could see the line in his scalp where Renee Vixx’s bullet had nearly lobotomized him. Dark whiskers crept up his cheeks. I’d never seen him with such a full beard. I didn’t like it and I didn’t like him, not anymore.
“Oh, Cavvy,” he said, “it’s so good to see you. It’s so good to still be alive and breathing.”
I didn’t say a word.
He finally answered my initial question with a smirk, “Yes, Skye6, that’s her medicine. There’s a great deal of synthetic morphine going through the Juniper. It’s the drug of choice for your typical outlaw skank, to quote Wren. You didn’t tell Petal what the medicine was, did you?”
“No, she figured it out, but I think she must’ve known all along. How can you keep giving it to her like it’s okay? Like drugs ain’t evil?” I stood there trying to glare him to death.
His smart aleck smile left him all at once. He sighed. “How can I? How can I not? You think you’re free once you fight your way out of hell? Well, it doesn’t work that way. When Satan claws his way into your heart, sometimes you can’t get him out, no matter what you do.” Another sigh that ended in a horrible, wheezing cough. Wet. Deep.
Took him awhile to get his breath so he could finish. “Hell is in Petal. It crawled in during the Battle of the Hutongs and it’s taken root. We’ve tried the church. We’ve tried twelve-step programs, talk therapy, electroshock therapy. We’ve tried stews of psychotropic drugs, soups of anti-psychotics, teas and broths and compresses of every root, herb, and chemical known to science and superstition. And the only thing that helps, the only thing, is the Skye6. Go ahead and hate me for doing it, but I would hate me more if I didn’t. For some people, there is no other side to their pain. There is only hell.”
Before I knew it, my voice had become a vicious hiss. “According to who? You? I bet you told her there was no other side for her. How can you take away hope from people? And I saw Wren going into your tent, and I know about Betsy and all those other women. I know you ain’t no real priest, the way you tricked that soldier girl in Strasburg into running by quoting scripture. And you ruined Mama’s funeral with your atheism. Where’s your goddamn faith?” I cursed and didn’t apologize. I was wiping away tears as fast as I could cry them. If we hadn’t been surrounded by the enemy, I’d have screamed at him.
Pilate sat on his bed, face in his hands, not saying a word. And this was Pilate, who loved talking like he loved cigars and coffee.
“Well, say something,” I said.
He looked up at me. He was so gaunt now. The light had gone out in his eyes. Like a dog, whipped for no reason by a cruel master.
“Say something, dammit,” I said again.
He swallowed and rattled off another deep cough.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Sorrier than most.” He shut his eyes, then clenched his teeth and growled, “But you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re young and stupid and you think life is all going to come together like a paint-by-numbers picture of rainbows and unicorns.”
“I don’t think that,” I said, but I didn’t sound very convincing. I wanted to hate on him some more, but he looked brutalized.
“And here we are, once again,” he said. “The enemy is at the gate, and we are outnumbered and outgunned, and it’s all turned to crapjack. And the only thing that might save us would be how well we can shoot. All of us. Petal included. But in order to shoot, she’ll need her medicine.”
“I can’t.” When Petal talked, we both jumped.
“Sorry,” she whispered, “but I can’t wait until we reach Nevada to stop. Before the Regios came, Micaiah put me on a schedule to wean me off slowly.” She paused, took in a deep breath, and went on. “First do no harm. I’m not going to harm myself anymore. And I’m not going to harm anyone else. No more shooting. No more drugs. No more rhymes.”
Once again, even if Micaiah and the truth had trouble getting along, my boy showed me how wonderful he could be by helping Petal get clean.
However, I didn’t want her to give up killing until after we figured out a way through Edger. I knew it was selfish, but Pilate was right. We needed every gun we could get.
Petal got up and crawled onto the bed so Pilate could hold her. He did, gripping her hard. His jaw muscles tightened.
Petal whispered, “I’m gonna find my other side, Pilate. I’m gonna find it even though you don’t think I can.”
He didn’t say anything else ’cause Petal had said the truth about him. Though his shirt folded on the rocking chair had a priest’s collar, he was a man who had lost his faith.
I should’ve pitied him. I couldn’t.
The tromp and clatter of troops entering the house ended our conversation. Edger appeared in the door.
“You.” She pointed a finger at me. She held out her hand. The .45-caliber bullet I’d had in my pocket sat like Judas Iscariot’s corpse in her palm.
I must’ve turned white as death ’cause she smiled at me.
“Bring them all outside,” Edger said.
Regios poured into the room.