Burn (24 page)
“You were too young. You didn’t understand what was happening—not like we did. No,” Mrs. Hollenback says.
“You don’t understand,” he says. “I killed him. I’m a murderer.”
Mrs. Hollenback is in the frame too—her gaunt face, her charcoal-blackened mouth. “You killed
him
?”
And then he says the words that damn him. “I had to stop my father. I had no choice. He was planning to—”
“Turn it off!” Partridge says. He doesn’t want to hear what Mrs. Hollenback says next, but Foresteed is too slow. “Forgive us. Forgive us all,” he hears her say.
“It’s called patricide,” Foresteed says, “and people don’t care for it. Do you think the Dome wants to be ruled by a murderer?”
Partridge feels sick with anger and shame. “You knew, though. You facilitated the whole thing, didn’t you?”
“How could I have predicted that you’d actually go through with it? I mean, killing one’s own father—that requires a deep corruption of the soul. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Maybe you underestimated me.”
“No. You underestimated me, Partridge. If I show this recording to the people, they’ll call for your execution.”
“Is that your plan?”
Foresteed shakes his head and laughs. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working for your father, it’s the advantages of being the puppeteer, not the puppet.”
Partridge rubs his knuckles. He’d love to punch Foresteed, rip the handheld from his hand, destroy the clip. But he knows that the clip exists in multiple locations. Foresteed is not an idiot. Partridge is powerless now.
“So let’s pretend this meeting went well,” Foresteed says. “I will stop subduing the wretches—as if following orders—and I will even stop the torture program that you interrupted. And you will go along with the wedding. You will concentrate on cake tasting and registering for blenders. I hope you’re taking this all in, Partridge. Because if you don’t do what I say…”
Partridge feels the blood pounding in his face. “What?”
“You know your father’s collection of enemies, all locked up in their frozen chambers? His ‘little relics’?”
Partridge turns his head. He can’t look at Foresteed’s tan face and gleaming teeth.
“You know why your father kept his greatest enemies alive?”
Partridge shakes his head. He doesn’t want to know.
“He’d bring them out every once in a while to torture them, for old times’ sake. Sometimes the mood just struck him. I believe in people being punished for their crimes. And if the crime is truly abhorrent, I believe the punishment should be painful.” Foresteed leans forward. “Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll have a collection of ‘little relics’ of my own.”
“Sounds like something to look forward to.”
Foresteed rubs the leather on the arms of the chair once more and then stands up. “Well, this was pleasant. Let’s do it again soon.”
“Yep,” Partridge says. “Real soon.”
A
t first, El Capitan thinks the kid is following them because he’s lost and dazed and has nowhere else to go. He ignores the boy—a gimp with one stiff leg and his face half-burned. They’re looking for orphans as it is, though he knows they’re likely dead. Still, they don’t need any more lost souls hanging on to them.
He also doesn’t have the heart to tell the kid to shove off, though—not yet.
But then Bradwell says, “Where’s Pressia? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
El Capitan and Helmud both look around. It’s still raining hard, the wind pushing it across the streets. Hastings freezes and sniffs the air.
“Hastings,” Bradwell says, nervous suddenly. “Where’d she go?”
Hastings climbs onto some rubble to get a better view.
“Hastings!” Bradwell says impatiently.
And the boy walks closer. He tugs on El Capitan’s sleeve.
“Not now,” El Capitan says.
The boy cowers but then says, “I got a message from her.”
“Who?” Bradwell says, walking to the boy, who’s afraid of Bradwell’s hulking frame and large wings. He takes a few steps away, and El Capitan has to step in, talking in a quiet voice and getting down on one knee.
“Tell us,” he says.
“Tell us,” Helmud repeats in a soft singsong.
“The one you’re looking for. Pressia Belze.”
He’s got her full name, which means a lot out here. Hastings clambers down from the rubble, and they all gather a little closer.
“What’s the message?” El Capitan says.
“She had to go. She had to head out.”
“Where?” El Capitan shouts.
“We know where!” Bradwell yells.
“Where? Where?” Helmud says to the boy, again using his singsong.
“She didn’t say. She said you’d know.”
“We know,” Hastings says.
“She said she’d send you a message once she got there,” the boy says. “She said she’d find her brother, and he’d help her send it.”
“What kind of message?”
“She said she’d tell you to take it down or not. She said you’d know what she meant and that she’d draw a picture on the message.”
“A picture of what?” El Capitan asks.
“She wouldn’t tell me, but she said you’d know by the picture that it was a message from her.”
“See what you did!” El Capitan shouts at Bradwell, who runs his hands through his wet hair and backs away from the kid.
“See what
you
did?” Helmud says, shifting blame back to El Capitan.
“Listen to your brother for once,” Bradwell says, shaking rain from his wings.
“You told her she couldn’t go. You acted like you owned her,” El Capitan shouts, standing back up. “She left the way she did so she wouldn’t have to fight you!”
The boy takes a limp backward and crouches behind some rocks, one straight leg propped to the side, watching.
“You were willing to let her go,” Bradwell says. “You’d let her do whatever she wants because you want her to be in love with you.”
“You want her to be in love with you,” Helmud says to Bradwell coldly.
“What did you say, Helmud?” Bradwell says.
“Helmud means that you want her to still love you so you can punish her with it. At least I told her how I feel,” El Capitan says. “If you weren’t so scared, maybe you would.”
Bradwell charges him, driving his shoulder into El Capitan’s sternum. They hit a brick wall, ramming Helmud into it. El Capitan feels his brother’s ribs contract, airless.
Hastings moves in to break them up, but El Capitan rolls away from him, grabbing Bradwell by the throat. Bradwell rips loose and gets El Capitan in a headlock. Helmud punches Bradwell in the back of the head while El Capitan drives his elbow into Bradwell’s gut. Bradwell loses his grip and falls to one knee.
“Don’t ever shove Helmud around!” El Capitan says, reaching up and supporting the back of his brother’s head. “You hear me? I’ll protect him with every drop of blood in my body. You got that?” He turns his face to his brother’s. “You okay?” he whispers.
Helmud’s breath is ragged. “Okay,” he mutters.
Bradwell and El Capitan are breathless too.
“Did you even think about the bacterium?” El Capitan shouts. “You idiot!” And then he shouts at Helmud. “Check it!”
He feels Helmud’s nimble fingers touch its outline. “Check,” Helmud says weakly.
“Sorry,” Bradwell says, pushing on his head with both hands. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“She’s unprotected,” Hastings says.
“She wouldn’t have it any other way,” El Capitan says.
“She told us she’d send us a message,” Hastings says. “Let’s give her time to assess the situation.”
Bradwell looks at El Capitan sharply.
El Capitan lets his eyes rove the rubble around them, the distant pile of bodies. “She could die before she even gets there.”
Bradwell draws a deep breath. “Why didn’t she at least let us help escort her in?”
“If she dies, it’ll be on her own terms,” El Capitan says. “That’s what you wanted, right? To die on your own terms?”
Bradwell rubs his eyes. Maybe he’s crying. El Capitan can’t tell.
The boy says, “There was something else.”
El Capitan had forgotten about the kid, who steps out from behind the rocks. This time he talks as fast as he can. “She said don’t give up on the kids. Wilda and them. Don’t give up on them. Keep looking.” And before they have a chance to ask him any questions or get in another fight, he turns and runs away.
They’re all silent for a moment.
And then Hastings stands tall. “She might get mad, but I have to at least try to find her and protect her. I still have some loyalty coding, and it’s fixed on her. I have an excuse.” And that’s it. He jerks his head as if flipping his hair out of his eyes and moves off into the rain, swinging his prosthetic in front of him and hopping over it with quick agility.
“I’ve got somewhere I need to go too. Somewhere I can think straight,” Bradwell says. He looks at El Capitan almost pleadingly and then down at the ground. “Will you come with me?”
“Depends. Where?”
“I didn’t say it was someplace I
wanted
to go. I said I
need
to go there. Just say yes. We’ll stay together.”
“Together,” Helmud says.
“Okay,” El Capitan says. “We’ll stick together.”
P
ressia steps in through what was once the doorway, her boots crunching the broken glass. Its roof is gone, like a gaping maw over her head. The floor shines with dark puddles of rain. There’s the old striped pole, lying on its side, the row of blasted mirrors, and tucked in way back, up against the solid wall, the one remaining barbershop chair, the counter, the combs upright in an old glass Barbasol container. The fire made its way here. The walls are even more blackened, the remaining shards of the mirrors fogged gray as if sealed shut. Pressia reminds herself that it hasn’t been that long since she was here. But that doesn’t help. Everything is different.
There could be snipers near, but she doesn’t care.
Kill me
, she thinks. Wilda and the children are dead. If she’d gotten here faster, if she’d never left them so unprotected… It’s her fault.
She sees the fake panel that her grandfather built along the back wall—her escape hatch—fitted back into place. It leads to the barbershop’s back room, her childhood home. She walks up to the panel, wedges it loose.
And there is the cabinet where she once slept. She rubs her hand on the wood, the fine grit of ash. This was where she drew the lopsided grin of the smiley face. She promised her grandfather she’d come back, and now here she is, finally. Even though he’s dead, she should be true to that promise—to herself if no one else.
The cabinet door is slightly ajar, and she can see the old storage room—the table legs, her grandfather’s chair. She crawls into the cabinet and fits the panel back into place. Once inside the small space, she tightens the cabinet door from within. It’s dark, and she feels small again. She tucks the doll head under her chin. She tries to remember what it was like to be here that first time—the cramped space, the fine motes of dust and ash spinning in the air, and how some part of her hoped she could survive just by being good and quiet and small. She remembers her grandfather sitting in his usual spot by the door, his stump knotted with the veins of wires, the brick on his lap, the fan in his throat whirring one way and then the other with each of his ragged breaths.
She misses him. She misses who she once was in this cabinet. She was his granddaughter. He’s dead, and it turns out she wasn’t even his granddaughter. She was just a lost little girl surrounded by dead people in an airport. He saved her.
She wants to be saved again.
She thinks of the shoes her grandfather gave her for her sixteenth birthday—that pair of clogs—as if he knew she was leaving soon and wanted her to have sturdy shoes at least so that she could make it in the world. And what kind of world was it?
Nothing she could have ever imagined.
As awful and bloody and filled with suffering and death as it is, she fell in love in that world. Love. Who would ever have guessed that it could still exist—after everything—but it does.
She touches her fingers to the cabinet door lightly. It creaks open. The room is more or less intact. The table is singed but not gone. Her grandfather’s old pallet went up in smoke. It’s small and blackened—mostly soot. But the brick is there. It sits by the back door.
She can tell that someone else lived here since her grandfather was taken. There was a sack hanging on a hook in the wall. The sack is mostly gone, but the handle still rests on the hook. The table is covered in bits of what looks like an attempt to rebuild something electronic—a radio, a computer, a simple toaster? Impossible to say.
This is no longer her home. Her grandfather is gone. It’s as if he never existed.
She closes the door and climbs back out through the fake panel into the barbershop and brushes herself off. She’s wasted time. She feels guilty about it but then angry. Would Bradwell go back if he could to a time when he had parents to watch over him? Wouldn’t El Capitan take Helmud back to the place in the woods where they lived with their mother before she was taken away?
Is that why she wants to get the vial and the formula to the Dome laboratories? Because she thinks that if enough people can return to the way they once were, it won’t just feel like they’ve been cured but that they’ve been able to erase this awfulness and return to a time when…what? When they felt safe? Has she ever felt truly safe? By safe, maybe she just means not alone in the world.
What if Bradwell and El Capitan are right? Maybe the world doesn’t need more intervention from science and medicine. Maybe they just need to even the playing field and take down the Dome.
She has to see Partridge first, though. She can’t be a part of that unless she knows what’s happened. She still has faith in him. She has to. If she loses faith in him, her faith in everyone slips. And she can’t afford to lose any more faith. It’s too precious.
