Chapter 31

 

“Fucking shit!” Ava said.

“How could we have lost Pao?” Dipity asked. “She was right behind us.”

Sterling, the last inside, closed the door.

A hot geyser of hate filled Lena’s gut. She flexed her hands into fists, pacing the darkened front of Grindy’s shop. She wanted to hit something, but Rory gurgling from under her chin kept her from blowing her top.

Such a beautiful girl.

At least the night hadn’t been a complete fuckup. She smiled and bounced the baby against her chest.

“So how are we going to get her back?” Hurley Girly asked.

Rory had to be the most precious thing Lena had ever seen. Even though they looked nothing alike, Lena knew she’d been destined to be her mother. Circumstances, fate, whatever they called it, had brought them together. Maybe there was a God out there, and he paid back his debts even if it was a little late.

“Hey, Horror!” Ava shouted.

Lena jolted, scaring Rory into a whine.

“What are we going to do about Pao?”

“Or was all that talk back there about never leaving our girls behind a bunch of bullshit?” Dipity raised an eyebrow.

“That’s why we’re here,” Lena said. “We need Grindy’s help.” She turned and rocked Rory as she walked away.

“You think she will?” asked Ava. “We’ve pissed on everything she’s tried to hold together.”

“She’s a Daughter,” said Lena. “Always has been. And there’s no more truce for her to defend.”

“Where the hell is everyone?” Hurley Girly asked. “They should have been back by now.”

“Someone get the lights,” Lena said.

Sterling walked over and tried a switch. The dark remained as the light switch sounded an empty click, click. Something was definitely wrong. As they eased through the rows of shelves filled with spare parts and unfinished inventions, shadows played tricks on Lena, flickering at the periphery and making her dart her eyes from one junk-ridden cabinet to another.

A clang to their right. Hurley Girly crouched into shooting position. Her ball shot out and the hairs on the back of Lena’s neck rose. Hurley Girly had successfully murdered a metal cylinder that had rolled off one of the shelves.

They continued on to Grindy’s office. It had been left cracked open, and Lena pointed a finger at Dipity and Sterling to get on either side of the door, while Ava and Hurley Girly squatted further back, facing it.

With a nod from Lena, Dipity pushed the door the rest of the way open. Hurley Girly screamed and Sterling bent over, away from the door, dry heaving. The other two did much the same.

Their reactions told Lena everything, but she wasn’t ready for what she found. She let Rory wrap a tiny hand around her finger and stepped to the open door.

They’d cut Grindy to pieces. Her arms, legs, and head had been nailed to the wall, her face contorted in an inhuman grimace. Where her torso should have been, were the words, No Mo Truce. Blood covered the floor. They must have done it here. Who? The Amazons, who the fuck else?

Lena nestled Rory deeper into the jacket and covered the baby’s nose as she moved in closer. She found the torso. It lay on top of Grindy’s desk, stripped of clothing and most of the flesh.

“These fuckers,” Lena whispered, “are going to wish they never messed with us.”

An ear-splitting scratch came from outside, along with equally detestable laughter. The Daughters sprang to life, casting down their misery, and huddling against the shop’s front door with their backs. Shit was about to get real, but if the Amazons wanted in, they’d have to be stronger than Lena and her gang.

“Daughters,” said a high, singsong voice that could only belong to Farica. “Come out and play!”

The other Amazons whooped and copied Farica’s taunt.

“I’m going to kill them.” Ava rose, and Dipity had to pull her away from the door before she could open it.

“Wait,” Lena said.

Hurley Girly pointed. “We can go out the back. If we leave now, they might not see us.”

“On foot?” Dipity asked.

“There’s no way we’d make it,” Lena said. “But you’re right about the back. They’re going to wise up and come at us from both sides eventually.”

Farica shouted through the door, “We found some gnarly weapons in there that Grindy’s been making. I think she was planning on arming the dwellers with these fucking things.” Something tapped against the street. “Can you believe that? Looks like that blade thing the grim reaper is always carrying around. Sharp glass, too. We gave a bunch of them to our dwellers. I tell you, those crazy sheilas were almost surgical when they cut into Grindy.”

Ava scrambled to get out there. It took nearly all of them to hold her back.

“And now we’re going to use them to fuck up your cyclones.”

That was the last straw as far as Ava was concerned. Lena didn’t know if Ava found some jolt of adrenaline to give her ultra strength or if the other Daughters had loosened their grip on her, but Ava opened the door and got off a shot before Dipity could close it back, just in time, as rang shots hit the glass door in a buzzing thump, thump, thump.

“My foot!” one of them screamed. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, fuckity fuck!”

More laughter came, but it was from Ava, maniacal cackling. “My rang ball is still out there.”

The Amazons were cursing, screaming, and yelling things like, “Duck!” and “The damn thing’s over there!”

The back door crashed through. Lena and the others raised their rangs, ready to shoot the incoming Amazon, but it was Ava’s ball of light come back home. When it returned, Lena yanked Hurley Girly to her feet and they all ran for the back door. Lena followed at the rear.

Loud humming filled the room from behind. Bursting through the door, one of the Daughters’ cyclones hurtled in without a rider. Instinctively, Lena held Rory tighter, as if she could have prevented the oncoming wheels from crushing and burning both her and the child.

Sterling shoved Lena out of the way. When Lena fell onto her back, head smacking the side of a shelf, Rory cried so hard she gagged tiny baby coughs. The cyclone kept coming, throwing Sterling to the ground and rolling over her legs. Unable to scream properly, Sterling moaned like a drowning lawn mower. Tears streamed from her eyes and into her gaping mouth.

The cyclone slammed into a wall. It stayed in place there, buzzing and moving only slightly to one side.

“Get Sterling on that bike,” Lena yelled at Hurley Girly. “Go to the ganghouse. Get ready for an attack.”

They hurried to put Sterling behind Hurley Girly, and the two of them were out the back door in seconds. The other Daughters followed on foot, not bothering to wait around for the Amazons who’d surely be coming through the huge hole in the front of the shop. Lena tried to comfort Rory, who steadily whined as the Daughters crouched along the side of the building. Hurley Girly’s cyclone wheels glowed in the distance before disappearing around a curve.

What the fuck had Sterling been thinking? Sure, Lena was glad to still be alive, for Rory to be OK. But now it was Sterling whose life was on the chopping block. How could she be so stupid? After all the hell Lena had put Sterling through, why did she sacrifice herself? If Sterling lived, she could never walk again, probably couldn’t ride either. It was something they’d take care of later, if they were lucky enough to talk to her again.

“Run for the cyclones,” Lena whispered. “They’re probably coming through the front now. If you see any of them, shoot until they’re on the ground.”

They ran, and Rory’s cries bucked with the movement. When they got to the front, one Amazon waited on her bike, raised her rang. Lena fired; all of the able Daughters did. The Amazon was too slow, and the shots ripped into her, sending the cannibal flat onto the street.

Lena jumped on her cyclone and held up her rang to catch the returning ball. “Grab her rang.”

By the time Hurley Girly nabbed the weapon, Amazons were rushing from the front of Grindy’s. The Daughters rode away as orange rang shots flew past overhead. Lena had to swerve to deflect one with the back of her cyclone. Farica and her girls had wasted time shooting when they could have been on their cyclones and catching up. But there was only one way back to the Daughters’ ganghouse, and the Amazons always had more than one card up their sleeves.