Fuse (Pure Trilogy 2) (20 page)

One of the bleached owls gets bold. It dips down low enough to El Capitan’s head that when he takes a swing, he almost makes contact. His fist brushes the outer wings.

“Give me your rifle,” El Capitan says. “Two weeks in? I think I’m a better shot, even a little off balance and with a moving target.”

Riggs stops and pulls the rifle off his back and helps El Capitan secure the strap. It feels good to hold a rifle again. Guns—they always make him feel better. He hears the snorting again and sees a yellowed, twisted tusk poke through some brush, but just as quickly it’s gone.

Wilda sings nervously, her voice trembling, like her hands. “If you ignore our plea, we will kill our hostages.”

El Capitan can see the clearing just beyond the trees. He knows the rest by heart—the broken road leading to what was once a brick archway now toppled and blackened. The road winds between rows of stooped trees and leads to the spokes of a shattered greenhouse, twisted goalposts, hedges that have grown wild, nearly woolly stalks that offer tainted berries in the springtime, and brittle ivy that’s climbed over the stones, blooming yellow flowers with ragged-sharp petals in summer, multiple crusty seed heads that remind El Capitan of three-headed babies. The place feels haunted.

But then Wilda stops and points the flashlight at one spot in the underbrush.

El Capitan tells Riggs to stop. They’re at the edge of the woods. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Riggs says. “She’s spooked.”

“Wilda,” El Capitan says. “What is it?”

The girl bows down, shifting her head so that she can get a better look through the brambles.

“Step away very slowly, Wilda,” El Capitan says softly She doesn’t listen. She lifts her hand to touch something.

El Capitan shouts, “No!”

The wild boar snarls and pounces.

The flashlight thuds to the ground. Wilda snatches her hand to her chest and falls backward. The wild boar—furred like a coyote—lunges onto her narrow chest.

El Capitan shoves Riggs out of the way and swings the gun to his chest, but then a bleached owl swoops down, batting him with wings,
and without the soldier’s support, El Capitan tilts forward, catching himself on his bad leg, which gives. His shot goes off, but it burrows into the dirt.

Wilda screams—like a shrill whistle—which momentarily stuns the furred boar. It looks up sharply, sniffs the air with its rubbery snout. It opens its jaws wide to show sharp fangs and lets out an ungodly squeal.

El Capitan tries to get in position to get off another shot, but as he balances against a tree he knows he’s probably too late, the boar is going to kill Wilda. They go for the jugulars. And she’s going to die here in the woods, under his watch. He told Pressia he was going to get her to the outpost. He’s going to fail.

But then the boar pitches backward and cries—an injured, whimpering cry. There’s a wash of blood from a tiny bullet wound in the meat of its upper thigh. In seconds, the board goes limp. Could it be dead? The wound wasn’t enough to kill it.

Wilda is paralyzed with fear. Her eyes glaze over as if she’s still staring at the Beast, as if it’s still bearing down on her. El Capitan goes to her, cups her chin. “It’s okay now. It’s gone.”

The bleached owls circle and dip. Riggs swings at them, takes one out with a strong blow.

El Capitan scrambles for the flashlight, batting the bleached owls away from Wilda. He grabs her and holds her to his chest. He shines the flashlight on the boar, whose back haunch is marbled with blood, but its ribs rise and fall. Whatever hit it was loaded with a sedative of some sort.

One of the bleached owls strikes Helmud. El Capitan can’t take it anymore. He lets go of Wilda, drops the flashlight, lies back, letting Helmud take his weight, and shoots at the birds. Some fall to the ground, a bloody spray of feathers. Others dart off into the trees.

Soon, they are surrounded by the dead owls. The flashlight’s beam stares out across the hard ground.

“What the hell hit that boar?” El Capitan says breathlessly.

“What the hell?” Helmud says.

And then the Black Box buzzes up to the lit ground, as if moving into a spotlight.

“You did that?” El Capitan says.

Fignan’s lights bob. Yes.

If the box made it this far, it’s a good sign. El Capitan takes a deep breath—almost too filled with hope to ask. “Are Pressia and Bradwell alive?”

Fignan doesn’t move. He doesn’t know.

L
YDA CLIMBS BACK INTO
the confines of the four-poster brass bed frame and curls up as tightly as she can against the cold. The mothers might come for her or they might not. Either way, she’s alone now. When has she really ever been alone in her entire life? Truly alone? Free?

She isn’t like the bird she once made of wire, locked in a wire cage. Her bones are not that frail and malleable. She’s a hardened knot all her own. She’s the way she first started out, a bundle of cells, organized to make her—not just anyone.
Her
. And she’s stunned to find herself here alone—this is what those cells have become. This person who isn’t a girl anymore. This person who isn’t going to follow Partridge back to an old life. She isn’t walking across the Deadlands, trailing behind him. And as good as this feels—an incredible freedom, like nothing she’s ever felt in her life—it’s met by the sharp ache of Partridge’s absence. And, for a second, she also misses the person she was before she told Partridge that she couldn’t go with him. That person is absent too. She’s someone else, someone she only barely recognizes. She’s new. She turns her face to the sky because she can, because it’s there. It’s snowing again. A snow so light that it swirls up as much as it’s lighting down.

Snow.

P
ARTRIDGE AND HASTINGS
have been walking in silence for hours. Hastings has probably been programmed to be practical with his speech, to use it wisely, cautiously, clearly. But what’s Partridge’s excuse? He hasn’t felt like talking. He keeps seeing Lyda’s face, her expression when she’d just kissed his cheek. Already gone. Already shut off from him. She’d said her good-bye.

Partridge can see the white Dome cresting in the north, caught in the blur of gray snowflakes. He’s more alone than ever; a spike of fear shoots through him. “So, Hastings,” Partridge says, looking for distraction, “how are your parents?” He assumes Hastings won’t answer.

But Hastings stares at him sharply—as if he’s just remembered that he has parents—and then his eyes scan the horizon calmly, as if the question had never been asked.

“Your mom always sent cupcakes in those circular tins, remember? And your father always told jokes when she wasn’t around.” They were an angular couple, tall and thin like their son. His father’s jokes were bawdy, like he wanted to be one of the guys—the way Hastings did. Hastings wanted to fit in. Now he does, in a way. Does that make him happy? Are Special Forces capable of feeling emotions like joy? Do his parents know they’ve lost their son even though he’s still alive?

Partridge wants to jog Hastings’ memory and maybe some old, dormant
emotions. What part of his friend is still there and what part of him is gone? “Did Weed ever get the girl he was trying to talk to? You know, using that laser pen on the lawn of the commons? Remember how you called him a dork, trying to communicate with some dork girl?”

“Arvin Weed is valuable.”

This seems like a start. “Valuable?”

Hastings nods.

“Did you ever get with the girl from the dance? Remember that one you were talking to?”

Hastings stops walking. He fiddles with the mechanisms of his weaponry, as if checking the action.

“So Lyda’s staying behind. I guess you realize that much. But it’s not over between us.”

Hastings pauses and glances at Partridge, an expression that borders on sympathy. Is sympathy the emotion to aim for?

“And my father—what do you think he’s going to do with me in the Dome, Hastings? Any ideas? Any thoughts on that?”

Hastings doesn’t respond.

Partridge punches Hastings in the arm—a little harder than he meant to. “Damn it, Hastings. Talk to me. What the hell am I in for?”

Hastings looks up at the Dome. His eyes are watery. He shakes his head.

“It’s bad in there? Worse now?”

He says, “Flynn, Aria. Age: seventeen. Approximate height: five foot three inches. Approximate weight: one hundred and fourteen pounds. Eye color: hazel. Medical record: clear.”

“Aria Flynn. That’s the name of the girl at the dance! The Flynn girls—she has a sister too. Suzette.”

Hastings walks on, quickly now.

Partridge runs to catch up. “If you remember Aria Flynn, you remember what it was like before I left. Right?”

“That was a very small world,” Hastings says. “There’s more to this world.”

“Yeah, but isn’t it just more of the same—the world all scorched?”

Hastings doesn’t respond.

“They’ve got you bugged, right? Eyes, ears, a ticker in your head?” Hastings keeps walking.

Partridge grabs him by the arm—the meat of his biceps, a spot where there are no weapons, just flesh, nerve endings, a real person. Hastings turns and looks at him. “Why did you come for me?” Partridge asks, knowing that Hastings can’t answer him, that every word might be recorded, but he can’t stop himself from pressing. “Are you on my side? Can I trust you?”

Hastings doesn’t answer. The dirty snow flutters around his head—like Lyda’s memory of the snow globe, shaking it and feeling trapped inside of it at the same time.

“None of this went the way I expected. Everything fell apart out here, Hastings. My father killed my brother and my mother. Sedge was Special Forces like you and he had a ticker in his head. Remember when we talked about tickers the night of the dance? And I said they weren’t real and you thought they were? You were right. And now they’re gone—Sedge and my mother. Dead. He could kill both of us too.”

“My orders are to return you to the Dome.” And then he stiffens and turns, his nostrils sensing something in the air. “They’re coming.”

“Who?”

“They will take you the rest of the way. Not me. They’re coming from the Dome.”

Partridge looks toward the Dome now, and he sees shapes emerging from a small door. “There was a door? All along? It was as simple as a door?”

“They will bind your hands like a prisoner.”

“Is that what I am?”

“We’re all prisoners now,” Hastings says, stoic.

“Listen, you need to get back to El Capitan. Find him.”

“I’m a soldier. I’m loyal. You’re the traitor.” He stands tall and points his gun at Partridge. It’s clear now that Hastings has captured him—for real or for show? Partridge can’t tell.

The other soldiers are coming at Hastings and Partridge with great speed.

“What should I do?”

“Raise your hands. Be very still.”

The soldiers are grotesque, deformed by overgrown muscles, misshapen bones, and protruding skulls. Their weapons are burrowed so deeply into their bodies that they might be fused to bone. One soldier quickly swipes Partridge’s feet out from under him. He lands hard. “I know you’re still you, Hastings. I know it. Find El Capitan. Promise me that!”

Hastings doesn’t respond.

A soldier yanks Partridge’s arms behind his back, ties his wrists with plastic cuffs. “Are you still in there, Hastings?” Partridge shouts from the ground, dirt and snow in his mouth. “The real thing? You? Are you going to stand up for what you believe in?”

Hastings reaches down and pulls Partridge to his feet, roughly. Hastings is much taller than Partridge, so when Hastings leans in, he bows his head until his face is close to Partridge’s, and in a low, angry voice that seems almost steely, as if his voice box relies, in part, on electrical wiring, he says, “I could ask the same of you.”

E
L CAPITAN SITS IN AN
old folding chair, reinforced with ropes to keep it held together. His bum leg is straight in front of him, the foot splayed. He’s waiting for someone to douse it with antiseptic and rewrap it. Meanwhile, he refuses to look at the wounds. Bent-beaked swallows coo in the eaves. Helmud coos back at them. Riggs has stoked the fire and gone off for supplies. The chimney is supposed to reach all three floors of the house, but the top two floors are gone. The first floor is capped by a new roof, a mess of a thing—warped and buckling, completely gone in one corner. El Capitan can see the smoke rising up the half-gone chimney before it drifts off—the ash mixing with the wafting snow.

Wilda is asleep on a pallet in a corner where the roof is good. It’s quiet. Even the people out in the tents are hushed. He won’t be able to sleep without news about Pressia and Bradwell. Darce sent a search party out to find them, but as soon as they arrived here, El Capitan sent out another party, with Fignan as their guide. He’s so restless with nerves, he wishes he could pace to get the anxiety out of his body.

Riggs walks back into the room with a jug of alcohol and fresh bandages.

“Can’t I get someone with a medical background?” El Capitan says.

“They sent me.”

El Capitan sighs. Helmud does too. Riggs kneels down and unwraps the bloody strips of Helmud’s shirt.

“How bad is it? Festering?” El Capitan asks.

“Dark red, swollen, some pus.” He opens the jug. “This is going to hurt.”

“I’ve been through worse.”

“Worse,” Helmud says.

“Do it fast.”

The rubbing alcohol sets each puncture blazing. El Capitan draws in a sharp, quick breath. Helmud does too—out of sympathy?

Riggs wraps the wound again quickly.

El Capitan sits back, letting Helmud prop his back. He says, “Riggs?”

“Yes, sir?”

“What have you heard about me? What am I to you?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Yes, you do. What do people say?”

“They say all kinds of things. You’re a leader, though, so I don’t think any of it matters.”

He thinks of Pressia, waiting by the smokestack for Bradwell. Would she have waited for El Capitan? Would he and Helmud have been worth it? “I think it might matter what people think of me,” El Capitan says. “It might.”