Chapter Five
Ladies in Waiting—that’s what we call the brave women who were stranded in China, but we have all been waiting, waiting for the nightmare of the Sino to be over. Waiting to see our mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, and cousins again. History books say the Treaty of Honolulu ended the Sino-American War on Easter Sunday, 2045. I say the Sino ends today, with the return of these American heroes. Finally, both the waiting and the war are over.
—President Amanda Swain,
49th President of the United States
April 14, 2055
San Diego, California on the
landing of the U.S.S. Exodus
(i)
The parlor downstairs overflowed with tables and chairs ’cause it was too cold to eat outside. Spring had tripped and winter had stumbled over her. The packed house was hot, but I was happy to drown in the heat. The Regios were gone, and we were together again, all of us except for Micaiah.
Though it was good to see Wren with us again, she worried me. She was throwing back brown bottles of homemade beer as fast as Jenny Bell could bring them to her.
Wren stood near Pilate, a cigar drooping from his mouth. Jenny Bell must have found some for him. He wasn’t smoking it, but just having the cigar in his mouth seemed like he was courting further sickness. Yet, with the cigar and his Starbucks mug from Rome in his fist, he seemed like his old self, only he couldn’t look me in the eye, and a machine-gun cough kept rattling him. Petal was asleep in their room on a quarter dose of the Skye6. Pilate had taken over Petal’s new schedule. He also gave me a pill for my gunshot wounds, and it was working well.
We ate a huge meal until we couldn’t eat any more—beef ribs, beans, coleslaw, potato salad, corn bread, and rhubarb cobbler with more crust and whipped cream than rhubarb, which made it good.
We were all lounging around, letting our food digest in the light of the hissing sapropel lamps, when Pilate asked, “Well, Jenny Bell, I’m not complaining, but I am curious. Where did you get the coffee and cigars?”
And dang me if Jenny Bell didn’t say it outright. “Where do you think? June Mai Angel.”
You could’ve heard an ant’s breath in the quiet. Wren’s bottle froze at her lips. Pilate’s cigar nearly dropped into his lap.
And Sharlotte cursed. “Jacker me down tight.”
If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed it. Upright Sharlotte had just cussed. Then I saw the mug in her hand—her hot toddy—the only liquor Sharlotte ever drank. Oh boy.
Before my sisters could say a thing, I spoke first. “We fought June Mai Angel three times, and she almost killed us all twice. How can you deal with that Outlaw Warlord?”
Jenny Bell tossed back a shooter full of rye and made a face. “You know why June Mai Angel and her girls are out here? Ever wonder why the Psycho Princess is psycho?”
“’Cause their mamas didn’t love ’em?” Wren asked. She’d passed through her fighting drunk to her mellow drunk. I wondered what kind of drunk Sharlotte was going to have.
Jenny Bell discussed the conspiracy like she was talking about her alfalfa crop. “President Swain knows her history. She knows what happens when soldiers come home; especially soldiers who have been away from home for too long. She sent the veterans to the Juniper by the trainload. Gave them a hundred dollars, which buys you exactly nothing out here, then waved goodbye. I must say, though, I’ve read her speech about the landing of the U.S.S Exodus. It was moving.”
“Ladies in Waiting,” Pilate whispered. It was what we called soldier girls who got stuck in China and couldn’t get home ’cause the world had run out of fuel. Vietnam had MIAs. The Sino had the Ladies in Waiting. Some were stranded for a decade until GE perfected their Eterna batteries. The U.S. used them to power the ships and planes to bring the veterans home.
Jenny Bell rolled her shot glass back and forth across the table. “Did you know President Swain could’ve brought the troops home sooner? But first she had to pass the SISBI laws.”
I’d only been in Cleveland a short time when I first heard about the Security, Identity, and Special Borders Injunction, or SISBI. The news had focused on the privacy issues, since it required all U.S. citizens to register eye-scans with the government. The law also gave the U.S. government permission to build a militarized border around the Juniper, though no one cared too much about that since the permanent EM field seemed border enough.
My heart trembled ’cause I could guess where Jenny Bell was headed.
“June Mai herself told us all about it. The rest of the U.S. either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.” Jenny Bell set her shot glass on the table. “Once the SISBI laws were in place, President Swain made a big show of bringing our troops home, and when they started causing trouble, she sent the Ladies in Waiting out here. That way, the U.S. government wouldn’t have to pay for their PTSD therapy, and the good Christian women of the New Morality wouldn’t have to worry about homeless vets filling the streets because of their mental illness, drug addiction, and alcoholism. Just send them all to the Juniper along with the worst of the criminals. That’s why the U.S. has been closing so many prisons. They’ve found the perfect place to send all their problems. Here. With us. Cheap and convenient. And they’ve been doing it for years.”
I felt my throat close up. I remembered the fence I’d seen outside of the Buzzkill. Wren said the U.S. border guards didn’t care about people going into the Juniper, only about people leaving.
My home was a 1.5 million square kilometer prison, a penal colony. Feeling choked, I pulled at the collar of my shirt and wished everyone would stop talking for a minute so I could digest what Jenny Bell had said. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Pilate shook his head. “June Mai Angel rounded the veterans up, gave them a purpose, gave them an illegal economy, and now probably wants to set herself up as the Juniper’s queen.”
“Something like that,” Jenny Bell said. “We trade with June Mai, beef for various supplies. And if she had been around when that Edger woman showed up, well, things would’ve played out far differently.”
Ironic that one of our enemies might have saved us from another. I knew June Mai also dealt in illegal contraband, so I asked, “What about Skye6? Do you have any?” It would help to have a surplus, if Petal needed more time to get clean. Or if we got shot up again.
“Some,” Jenny Bell said. “But mostly we use pain pills or spools of EMAT, for broken bones and such. Most of the time, we trade for luxury goods like sugar, soap, shampoo, new clothes from the World. Yankee stuff.”
Now I knew where my new outfit had come from. And Jenny Bell’s deodorant.
She continued. “June Mai doesn’t take just anyone, though. You have to be well trained, and you have to be stable. The sicker girls go north, to join up with the Psycho Princess. We can’t trade with her or her people because they’re too crazy. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about her killing boys and nailing them to trees. All true. The Psycho Princess knows if she got out of line with us, June Mai would come calling. And the Psycho Princess keeps the Wind River folk from crossing the Wyoming border, so it all balances out. We have a good life here. Most people wouldn’t understand. I figure you may or may not.”
The Wind River people were what we called the Native Americans who’d reclaimed the Montana and Wyoming territories. God help whoever tried to trespass on their land.
I lost it before I could rein myself in. “June Mai took her armies and marched them into Burlington. She’s laying siege to our hometown.”
Jenny Bell frowned. “I knew something was up, though I thought she’d go after Lamar first. She wants the world to know what Swain did with the veterans. She wants justice or money, or maybe even, like Pilate said, to be governor of the territory. The only way she thinks to do it is by the gun, but way out here, we can’t get involved in politics. I’m just glad Edger and those women are gone.”
Wren wobbled up. She talked with her bottle in front of her mouth, to hide her missing teeth. “Aw, no more of this boring talk. I say we have our Irish girl sing. Let’s make this a party. Come on, Red, sing one pretty.”
Others asked as well, so Allie finally stood. “All the talk of the Sino, I know a war song. It’s not a jolly song, but I know it through.”
“Sing anything!” Wren yelled.
Allie opened her mouth and her voice came out strong and heartbreaking. She hadn’t sung a dozen words before most of us were in tears. It was called Another Waltz for Matilda, based on an Australian song about Gallipoli and the horrors of World War I. Like the Sino, that war also left a generation crushed and disillusioned.
Another waltz for Matilda
Another song for the dead
We prayed for a blue sky, got a black one instead
And a little girl weeps
For her sister Matilda gone.
The song is stuck on repeat again
The storms sicken the ground with rain
In darkness we cling to hope slipping into pain
The parades for our daughters have all been in vain
Another waltz for Matilda
Another war to end wars
Until it happens again on some distant shore
And another mother weeps
For another Matilda gone.
As I listened, I felt pity for June Mai Angel. Yes, she’d tried to kill us, but that tragic song made me pity her, and Petal, and all the broken-souled veterans who had been tortured by war so we could be free. I even felt sorry for Pilate.
He sat in his chair motionless. Not sipping his coffee. Not chewing on his cigar. Just sat there until he choked out the words. “If you sing any more, Allie Chambers, I do believe it will kill me.”
“Good!” Sharlotte shrieked. She jumped up. Her face flushed a fiery red, her pretty eyes slitted. From her pocket, she took the piece of paper she’d worried near to pieces. “Good. I wish you dead, you miserable jackerdan. I wish you worse than dead. I wish you Hell bound for what you’ve done to me and my family.”
(ii)
Sharlotte swayed on her feet. Zenobia, Jenny Bell’s oldest daughter, tried to help her from falling, but Sharlotte shoved her away. “Get off me. You’re his seed.” Sharlotte shot a finger at Pilate. “I prayed you’d die. When I saw you lying there, I prayed you’d die and I would burn this paper and never say a word. Mama didn’t. And I’m as good as she was.”
Wren’s smile was so sharp I thought she’d decapitate herself with it. Sharlotte was finally taking her turn as the troubled Weller girl, making a cow-patty-wet mess of things.
“Sharlotte, sit down,” Pilate whispered.
I wanted to say something, do something, but I was paralyzed. Pilate and Sharlotte seemed like forces of nature right then, and getting between them would’ve been like running out into a street with a hurricane on one side and a tornado on the other.
“You know what this paper says?” Sharlotte asked. Foamy spit wet her lips. Her eyes spun crazily.
“I have an idea,” Pilate said.
“It’s a medical report I found going through Mama’s papers after she died. Says Daddy wasn’t viable.”
I felt all the blood drain out of my face. The world tilted and I knew the tilt would never go away. I’d have to walk leaning for the rest of my life. My daddy wasn’t my daddy anymore. Charles Weller had been a thin, laughing kind of man, Colorado born and bred, who never left, not even after the Yellowstone Knockout. All the memories stormed through my head—us together, him holding me, and wrestling me, and sips from his beer, and then what he became, in the bed. Sick getting sicker. Dying and getting deader. Mama crying like it would break her.
So who was my father? I could guess, but I needed it said aloud.
Pilate sighed. “I figured this would happen. I prayed it wouldn’t, but I’m coming to understand the Lord resents every one of my prayers. And yet I beseech Him so ardently.”
Sharlotte took a swaying step toward him. I hoped she’d fall down, pass out, and we could burn the paper and forget all about it. Nope. She launched into a speech full of acid and agony. “And if Daddy was sterile, only one other man in Mama’s life, and that was you, famous Father Pilate, wearing a collar and a gun, and hopping from one bed to another and laughing at his vows like they don’t mean nothin’. Laughing at the church and God like they don’t mean nothin’. If you weren’t so good at killing people, I never would’ve allowed you to come with us on this goddamn cattle drive. You bastard. You miserable, jackering bastard. I got your blood in me, and it makes me want to cut my own throat.”
Pilate? My father? I gripped the arms of my chair, praying to get off the wild ride we were on—a rollercoaster plunging down into an abyss.
“Sharlotte, please—” Pilate tried.
Sharlotte, vicious, cut him off. “I’ve seen you and Wren together. She’d come into camp, thinking no one could see. But I saw. Your own daughter. You’re going to hell, Pilate, and I’d gladly shun heaven to spend all of eternity watching you burn.”
Wren burst out with a raw, jagged laugh. Not quite a scream, but close enough. She stood to join in the fight. Here we go, Wren and Sharlotte, the next battle in a never-ending war.
Jenny Bell stood as well. “We should clear the dishes. It’s pretty clear the party is over.”
Sharlotte turned her finger on Jenny Bell. “And you. Pilate fathered at least Zenobia. How could you let him touch you when we all know what kind of filth he is? He pretends to be a priest, just so he can go sniffing around, like a dog lookin’ for a kutia in heat.”
“That’s enough, Sharlotte!” I shouted. Whatever we thought about Jenny Bell’s ethics, it wasn’t right to attack her in front of her daughters. And I heard myself in Sharlotte’s snarling. I’d spent a lot of time judging Pilate and the women he’d given children to. I shouldn’t have. Like Pilate had said, the world wasn’t a paint-by-numbers picture of rainbows and unicorns. Life was messy.
I left my chair to stop the madness, and it was a tableau of the Weller sisters, like an outtake from an all-female version of the Lord of the Flies.
“That’s enough,” I said. “We’re embarrassing ourselves. We can talk about all this later.” No way were we going to stop, though. Might as well try stopping a bad storm from hailing.
Jenny Bell and her family shuffled away even as our employees and hires ducked out the door. Even Aunt Bea. She was right to run. With the Regios gone, our people could sleep in their tents again.
Pilate, of course, stayed.
Jenny Bell was headed for the kitchen when Sharlotte called to her. “You didn’t answer my question, Jenny Bell. You like getting all sweaty with Pilate?”
That lean, hard Juniper cowgirl turned. In a low voice, strong and sure, she said, “I wanted a big family and I needed hands for the ranch. If you weren’t drunk, you’d know that. But you are drunk. And it’s a shame. I want you off my property in the morning. Out of respect for your mama, I’ll let you stay the night.” It was what our own mother would’ve done with a guest who turned nasty.
Jenny Bell and her daughters cleared out.
Wren grabbed someone’s half-finished drink. Drained it in a second. “I tried to kiss Pilate when I turned eighteen. Did kiss him.” She downed another glass. Had plenty to choose from—the Scheutzes sure weren’t going to come back to clean up. “It wasn’t Pilate’s fault. It was back in his drinking days, and I went for him. ’Cause I’m wrong in places that’ll never be right. Like you are, Sharlotte. Only Cavvy is good and clean. Only my baby, Cavvy.”
Pilate lowered his face. Couldn’t tell what he was feeling, but then it dawned on me. Pilate got sober right around the time Wren turned eighteen three years ago. Call it intuition, but I knew why he’d quit drinking. Wren’s kiss bottomed him out.
I thought he might be crying, but then he laughed, and the sound of it made us all jump. It was manly, deep, very Pilate. It surprised us so much that Sharlotte fell back into a chair. Wren tripped and suddenly we were all sitting down.
Pilate stood—laundered shirt, priest’s collar, scratchy beard, and long hair, more rock star than priest. “Are you sure you want the truth, Sharlotte? Because the truth just might get in the way of you hating me. And we wouldn’t want that, would we? I think with Abigail gone your hate for me is all you’re sure of.”
“You can’t tell the truth,” Sharlotte grumbled. “You’re the father of lies.”
“Tell me, what’s the date on the report?”
Sharlotte snapped the paper in front of her face. “Why does that matter? Most likely Daddy went sterile before he even met Mama. First cases of the Sterility Epidemic were found in the early 2030s.”
“The date, please,” Pilate said patiently.
“February 2, 2039. But that don’t mean nothin’.”
“It means everything,” Pilate said. “The report is dated after Wren was born. Charles Weller was her father. He was your father, too, Sharlotte. After Wren, when your Mama couldn’t get pregnant, that’s when they had him tested. The results were hard on them both, but we all know how tough Abigail was. Not just tough, focused. She was growing her cattle business and she needed hands. Family works for free … that’s what she said to me when she and I talked. We made the same deal I’ve made with a whole passel of women all over the Juniper. I do the bed part, someone else does the fathering part because that’s the important work. What I do means nothing. Less than nothing. I’m only a body. A real father is heart, mind, and spirit. Your dad loved all three of you like he loved nothing else on this planet. He fought his cancer for years because he couldn’t let go of you.”
“Pilate,” I whispered, “are you my daddy?”
He smiled at me. “Biologically, yes, and you’re my little brown spider. Araneus Cavaticus. Named after literature’s most famous arachnid and your mother’s favorite book, Charlotte’s Web. We were so happy when your mama carried you to term, after all your other sisters died.” His voice failed him and he had to close his eyes. “You were destined to live, Cavvy. You’re one of the best things God ever gave to the Juniper. Someday, everyone will know your name.”
My life kept on tilting, throwing me around some more. Pilate was my father. I felt that when he held me after Mama’s funeral. Him looking at me when he thought I didn’t notice, his eyes so full of love. Like Sharlotte, I wanted to hate Pilate ’cause of his sins, but my hate always faded and I ended up loving him again. Sure, Pilate wasn’t a saint, but deep down, he was kind, caring, and sad underneath the laughing and violence. Why else would he have taken Petal under his wing? Or agree to run security for us? Or try to rescue Micaiah when he knew it was suicide?
Wren spoke next in a slur. “You wanna know what Pilate and I did in the tent all those nights, Sharlotte?” The alcohol half-shut her eyes. “He held me and petted my hair and said people loved me in the world. Mama did, though she had trouble with me. And that you loved me, Shar. And Cavvy loved me. And he loved me and forgave me all my sins. He’d hold me and say I didn’t have to kill myself ’cause someday, someday I’d have a family.”
Sharlotte sat crumpled in her chair, leaning heavily on her arm. We all waited for her to talk now that the truth was out.
She started slow. “I guess I should feel relieved that Pilate isn’t my daddy, but it was wrong for Mama to keep the truth from us. And I love Cavvy, always will. However, let me make one thing perfectly clear.” Sharlotte sat up real straight in her chair to look Wren in the eye. “You think I’m going to get all weepy ’cause you feel bad about yourself, Irene? You think you can ever change what you did to me, to Mama, to our family? You can’t. You are a selfish child of chaos, evil to the core. You made our lives hell, and then left us and never came back. I hate you, Irene. I hate you, and I curse you.” She staggered up. “I’m done with this goddamn cattle drive. Howerter can go jack himself. I’m gonna sell the headcount to Jenny Bell just enough to make payroll, and then I’m going to go live in the World. It’s over.”
She tottered out the door. Watching her go crushed my heart. Flattened it like a tin can. Sharlotte was through. Now what would happen? How could we save the ranch if we didn’t pay Howerter back? Micaiah’s promised reward money would do it, but then what?
Wren had to squint to pry open an eye. Sharlotte’s words must’ve bounced right off her drunkenness. “Hell, Pilate, with how I am, I figured you were my daddy all along. I reckoned I was damned for certain on account of that kiss.”
Pilate smiled and shook his head. “Wren Weller, you think hell would have you? Satan would spit you right back out like a rotten sunflower seed. Nope. Only Jesus has the patience to love you like you need.”
“You gonna cheat Him with me once we’re dead? Cheat that Jesus at poker with me, Pilate?”
Pilate nodded. “Yeah, Wren. You, me, and Petal.”
“And me?” I asked, feeling left out.
Pilate got up and knelt down at my feet. “You won’t have to cheat Jesus. He’ll take you right to your mansion of glory, and you’ll be safe and secure and loved forever. You’re good, Cavvy. You’re my little brown spider.”
Tears shimmered in his eyes, and I had the idea that out of all the many kids he had fathered, I was the only one he’d ever held like his own. The only one he ever let himself get close to.
I cried as he hugged me. My hate was all gone, and it was blood on blood. I saw him now, for who he was and for what he did for women who needed children, for what he did for Wren. And I knew, if I asked, Pilate would help me get Micaiah to Nevada.
But maybe Sharlotte would change her mind when she sobered up. But what if she didn’t?
While we hugged, Wren collapsed onto the floor. Out cold.
We both had us a little chuckle.
Then I said, “Pilate, alcohol sure makes a mess of things. I can see why you don’t drink.”
“Amen, to that. Amen to the third power.”
“Pilate?”
“Yeah, Cavvy?”
“I just want to keep calling you Pilate. You’re my daddy and all, but like you said, my real daddy died. You’re more of my Pilate. Is that okay?”
“Sure, Cavvy. I’d like it better that way anyway.”
“Pilate?”
“Yeah, Cavvy.”
“You really think there isn’t another side for people like us? For my sisters? Or for Petal? Do you really think we can’t get to the other side of our pain?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Pilate’s weak lungs caught up with him, and he lapsed into a coughing spell.
We moved Wren to a sofa and covered her with a blanket. Then Pilate and I returned to our rooms upstairs.
I went to my window and looked out at the glowing tents in the dark yard. Most likely, all our hands were gossiping about how messed up the Weller girls were. Well, it wasn’t gossip. It was the truth.
The cattle drive might be over. Pilate was my daddy. Sharlotte really did hate Wren. And Mama, well, Mama was still dead.
As for the boy? Yeah, my liar boy. Right then, I didn’t care about his secrets. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t care about the reward either.
It seemed like the end of the world, and I could do whatever I wanted.
Right then, I wanted to do it all.
(iii)
I waited until the house settled, then I crept back up into the attic. I moved the hutch aside and unfolded the ladder.
My heart swelled like it was about to pop a valve. Every centimeter of my skin buzzed, like I’d been plugged into an Eterna battery. All my promises to stay true to myself had burned to coals, to ash, then blown away.
I climbed the ladder and crawled across the wood to where Micaiah was sleeping in his nest of blankets by the screen.
What was I doing? Who was I right then? I didn’t know.
I was Cavatica, but I wasn’t. She’d died the minute Pilate said he was my daddy. Now I was just a little brown spider, nameless, as I scuttled over to Micaiah, finding his mouth in the glow of the night, grabbing him between his legs.
He gasped and kissed me back and I put his hand on my chest. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Hard question to ask when you don’t know who you are. He pulled back. “Cavvy, what the hell? What are you doing?”
Took me a bit, but I finally got enough breath to speak. “Back at the deserted house, you asked why I couldn’t just enjoy myself with you. Well, I can now. It’s the end of the world. Sharlotte cancelled the cattle drive, which means we’ll just have to get you to Nevada so you can help us pay back Howerter. Oh, and Pilate is my daddy. And Jenny Bell is dealing with June Mai Angel, and she has Skye6 for Petal, if we need it. Not sure how much Jenny Bell has. You know, we could try using pain pills or maybe a strip of EMAT. Not sure if that would work on account of the differences in the chemical make-up. We don’t know how she would react on a microcellular level.”
Muted light from the screen shown on his face. His mouth gaped. His eyes widened.
“Cavvy, um, I need for you to tell me what happened slowly. Go slow. I was sound asleep when you, uh, attacked me.”
That seemed reasonable to me. I would tell him a bunch of stuff and then we could have the sex. However, talking slowly, the words etched themselves into my mind, like a river carving out a valley, and when I was done, I didn’t feel sexy anymore.
I felt weepy. I felt lost. I felt alone. And it wasn’t ’cause Pilate was my father, or that Mama had kept the truth from me, or that we failed to get the cattle to Nevada, or that we’d lose the ranch, our sacred ground, where my parents and baby sisters were buried.
No. It was the way Sharlotte had acted. I needed her to be my rock. I needed her to be in control. Without Sharlotte, the world couldn’t take care of itself. I couldn’t take care of myself. God needed Sharlotte to run the universe ’cause He couldn’t do it alone.
When Mama died, Sharlotte had taken over as the one person I felt I could depend on. When she got drunk and nasty, well, it was like losing another mother. Once again, I felt like an orphan.
So, like any confused girl who had her life unzipped and turned inside out, I cried. And Micaiah held me. He didn’t kiss me, or touch me inappropriately, he simply held me and promised me everything would be okay. In his arms, I didn’t just feel comforted, I felt complete. Somehow, with his touches and his whispers, he glued the cracks inside me together.
Once my tears were dry and my sobs subsided, he slipped something around my wrist, on my right arm ’cause my Moto Moto watch was on my left. In the firelight, I saw the twisted wires and grasses of a homemade bracelet. I could just make out the colors, red and white and the dusty brown of dry winter grass.
“Keys taught me how to weave it,” Micaiah whispered. “I saw her making one for Breeze, and I wanted you to have something.”
I turned to him. Then kissed him. “I love it.”
“I’m glad.” He returned my kiss, but he felt distant, almost as if he wasn’t all there. I’d been so wrapped up in my own drama that I hadn’t noticed, but yes, something was different about him.
“You can’t run off,” I said. “I need you. We’ll sneak you out of here tonight. I figure we’ll take off in the morning. We can hide you.”
He didn’t say a word, but leaned in close and kissed me, softly, gently, and I knew it meant he didn’t want to argue.
I couldn’t let it go. “You’ll stay, right? Promise me.”
Staring into my eyes, not blinking, he didn’t lie. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t lie. He went back to holding me, and he felt so good next to me, I couldn’t help but fall asleep in his arms.
I woke up in the attic alone. Morning light swirled the dust. Micaiah was gone.
It took me a minute to realize what woke me—the chugga, chugga, chugga of an airship’s steam engine hovering over us. Someone was yelling, I think it was Kasey Romero, one of our hired hands, who’d taken the morning watch.
Why was she yelling? I was pretty sure it was only Sketchy, Tech, and Peeperz in the Moby Dick, flying in to check on us.
I had to find Micaiah. He couldn’t just leave. If Sharlotte was giving up on the cattle drive, I needed him to help us with our debts.
Fear of losing Micaiah and a desire to save the ranch took me back across the attic and down the ladder, though I did take a minute to move the hutch under the trapdoor. Micaiah might be gone, but our guns in the attic could still give us away. Might as well keep them hidden. I hurried down the steps, but I noticed the house seemed empty. But why? What was going on?
I came out of the house and all the Scheutzes, all of my people, were in the yard, looking up with mouths agape.
Four Johnny zeppelins filled the sky—the biggest blimps I’d ever seen. Battalions of uniformed Regios repelled down ropes dangling from the zeppelin like tentacles from an octopus.
I ran for my ponies, to grab Bob D, and make a run for it.
Not even a second later, my face struck the dirt. Someone had taken me down, too fast for me to react. Strong hands wrenched my shoulders and zip tied my wrists together. I cried out.
Edger drove her knee into my back and hissed into my ear. “Remember this pain, Cavatica Weller. Reb and Ronnie Vixx will do far worse unless you tell them the truth.”