Pure (31 page)

“And he’s going to kill them publicly?”

“He’s going to give them back.”

“Give them back?”

“Yes.”

To the Dome. El Capitan realizes that Ingership has been working with the Dome. It’s as if he’s known it without admitting it to himself. Of course, he thinks. This means that
OSR
doesn’t even really exist. El Capitan remembers what it was like looking for the guns he’d buried, his brother dying on his back, how his blood pounded desperately through his body as he looked for landmarks. The world had been stripped, obliterated. His mother already dead, buried in the cemetery outside of an asylum. No bearings. He survived that, he quickly reminds himself. He says, “I’m glad to see that Ingership has earned your allegiance and trust.”

“Absolutely,” Pressia says, still looking out the window. El Capitan keeps his eyes on Pressia’s doll head, which rises now, just an inch off the seat, and twists back and forth. She then turns and looks El Capitan in the eyes. “He has your allegiance and trust too, I hope?”

Is the driver listening and reporting? It doesn’t matter. El Capitan can’t respond. He can’t even nod. This isn’t the way he’s going to go down. There’s a fire in his chest. Helmud is restless, as if El Capitan’s angry heat has spread to him through their shared blood. He’s back there fiddling his fingers like an old lady nervously knitting baby booties.

“Where to?” the driver says.

Pressia shouts, “We’ll tell you when we tell you!” El Capitan is proud of her, relieved to see some blood in her cheeks.

He looks at the handheld again. “You have a plan?”

She nods the doll head, and then says, for effect, “We’ll follow the blip.”

El Capitan puts his finger on the photograph and pulls it across the seat. “Someone you know?”

“My grandfather.”

“Nice setup he’s got there.”

“Yes.”

So, they have Pressia’s grandfather, their hostage. This is the way they play it. El Capitan picks up the single sheet of orders. He skims it. They’re to locate the Pure, gain trust, follow him to the target, his mother, hand the target over to Special Forces, which will arrive when called via walkie-talkie. “Special Forces?”

“The creatures who stole from your traps.”

El Capitan tries to take this all in. He keeps reading. They are to protect the dwelling and all objects within it—at all costs—especially pills, capsules, vials.
Anything that appears to be medicinal.
Belze is in command. El Capitan is to aid and assist. He feels sick and trapped, like the recruits out in the pens. His fists are clenched. His chest feels clenched too.

“You know where we’re going?”

She nods.

“I’m only going to follow orders if you really know what your mission is.”

“As Ingership says, ‘The Dome is good. It watches over us like the benevolent eye of God. It’s asking something of me and you. And we will serve.’ ”

El Capitan can’t help it. He laughs. “I’ve looked at it wrong all these years. Huh. That was stupid of me, right? The Dome isn’t evil at all. We always thought they were the enemy and we’d have to fight them one day. Didn’t we, Helmud?”

Helmud doesn’t say a word. Pressia looks straight out the windshield. “No, we won’t fight,” she says. But El Capitan keeps an eye on Pressia’s doll head. She lifts its knuckled head and lets it fall. Yes. They will fight. Pressia punches the leather seat.

“Okay,” El Capitan says. One thing is clear, he’s got to get rid of the driver. “Why don’t you get the wind in your face a little?” He’s never quite heard himself speak in a tone like this, gently, calmly. “You need to make sure you’ve got your legs under you. Take a little walk.”

Pressia looks at him a minute then nods. She gets out of the car, leaning on the door for support, struggling a minute to stand upright. She holds her head with her good hand, as if she’s dizzy. Then she shuts the door. El Capitan watches her turn the corner of the fallen water tower.

“What the hell?” the driver says, swiveling in his seat.

Helmud is agitated. He starts rocking on El Capitan’s back. “Hell, hell, hell,” he whispers. It’s a warning. El Capitan knows it. Helmud is trying to tell the driver to ease up. But he doesn’t. “Belze has a mission. You interfering with that mission? I should turn you in. Ingership will—”

El Capitan reaches around and punches the driver in the throat. The driver’s head slams into his window. El Capitan gets out of the car, weighted by Helmud, and in a few quick strides, he opens the driver’s door, pulls the driver out by the lapels of his suit. They stagger. El Capitan head-butts him, and throws him to the ground in the glow of the headlights. Helmud’s forehead smacks the back of El Capitan’s skull. El Capitan kicks the driver in the ribs, walks around the driver’s curled body, and kicks him in the kidneys. He slips his hand around the gun in his belt, thinks of shooting him, but decides to let him fend for himself out here in the Deadlands.

The driver writhes on the ground and coughs a spray of blood, which flecks the sand. El Capitan pats the hood of the car. He remembers his motorbike, how it was almost like flying. He gets in the driver’s seat, rubs the dash, grips the wheel with both hands. He used to know all there was to know about flying planes, and he knows he’ll never get to. But maybe this will feel like it, just a little.

He buzzes the window down and whistles through his teeth. “Pressia?”

Pressia reappears, looking a little stronger.

“Get in the passenger seat. The driver’s feeling a little incapacitated. I’m driving.”

Pressia gets in the car and shuts the door. She doesn’t ask any questions. The air inside the car’s cavity seems electric. El Capitan hits the gas, puts it in reverse, drives backward, and then puts the car in drive. He pulls the wheel to avoid the driver. The tires spin and then catch, and the car jolts forward with a guttural rumble that he feels in his ribs, leaving a swirl of dust that twists in its wake where a Dust quickly forms. El Capitan sees it through the rearview mirror, lit by his taillights. And as if nearly animal and drawn by the driver’s blood, the Dust lunges at the driver’s body, which is lost in a frenzy of sand, kicking his cap across the Deadlands.

THERE’S A
SMALL
RIP
IN
THE
SEAM
of the dark pillowcase over Partridge’s head. He glimpses small bits of his surroundings, but not enough to know where he is. He’s aware that he and Bradwell are being escorted by the heavily armed women and their children—sinew of muscle, larded haunches, strong arched backs—on all sides. One woman is leading. She has an old camping-style lantern, duct-taped to a stick and held high. It bobs, casting shadows on all of them. He can see how the women with children in their upper bodies stride. Those with children in their legs lurch and sway, gaits of exerted effort and drive. And some have no children, and, next to all of the others, they seem stripped, pared down, as if whittled to some smaller version of themselves.

The birds on Bradwell’s back are still. They must be reacting to Bradwell’s fear—or maybe he’s not afraid in these situations anymore. Maybe that’s one of the upsides of being dead. Maybe the birds just know when to keep quiet.

Every once in a while, Bradwell asks where they’re going, and gets no answer.

The women are silent. When the children chatter or whine, they hush them or wrestle something from a pocket and pop it into the child’s mouth. Through the rip, Partridge just sees flashes of the children, peering up from legs, clasped at a waist, draped with an arm. Their eyes are oddly bright, their smiles quick. They still cough, but unlike the children in the market, not with deep rattles.

Partridge can tell that the women are leading them out of a gated community away from the melts. The earth is more rubbled, once cement and tar, and so he assumes they’re heading to what was once a strip mall. He twists his head so that the rip is in front of him. In addition to the lantern, another woman holds a flashlight that she uses to light the strip mall, moving quickly among the remains. There’s part of a movie marquee; two
E
’s and an
L
remain and Bradwell recalls eels—the electric kind. Were they fish or snakes? The other shops are unidentifiable—gutted of anything worth salvaging. Even glass and metal have been taken away. There are a few ceiling tiles and then, miraculously, the flashlight touches deep in the shadows, lighting one fluorescent tube that’s still intact.

The echo of their steps is gone. They’re heading toward something large and nearly solid. He can make out one of the monstrous fallen industrial buildings, one that once held prisoners or those like Mrs. Fareling who were hauled away or those dying of viruses. They move in a pack down the length of the wreckage.

One of the women says, “This was my home for three years. Women’s wing. Chamber Twelve Eighty-four. Food under the door. Lights out after prayers.”

Partridge shifts his head under the hood to see who is speaking. It’s one of the childless women.

“I only had one prayer,” another whispers. “Save us, save us, save us.”

No one speaks for a long time. They keep marching until a woman says, “Going down.” And just then the ground disappears beneath Partridge’s feet and he strikes a hard step, then walks down a set of stairs.

Partridge says, “Bradwell, you still here?”

“I’m here.”

“Shut up!” It’s one of the children’s voices.

They file down into what must be a large basement, judging by the acoustics. The temperature cools quickly. The air is damp. The atmosphere is quiet and close. Partridge is shoved into a kneeling position, his hands still bound behind his back. The pillowcase is then ripped off, and it feels good to breathe in the open air, to have his full vision. A dozen or more women, still fully armed, some with children and some without, huddle around them.

Bradwell, now hoodless too, is kneeling beside him. He looks flushed and dazed.

Partridge tucks his chin to his chest, trying to hide his unmarked face. He whispers to Bradwell, “Was this the plan?”

“I think we’re close,” he says.

“Really?” Partridge says. “Close to what? Death?”

The center of the basement is bare and industrial-size, the kind of basement that would exist under a building, maybe a sanatorium. But the edges are packed with a collection of ordinary objects now warped, rusted, burned—big wheels, shovels, bowling balls, ball-peen hammers. There are also rows of folded metal cot frames, iron tubs, and metal mop buckets on rollers.

A woman stands in front of them. She’s holding a blond child of maybe two or three, one arm fused to the child’s head, protectively. Her other arm holds an ax head attached to a baseball bat. She says, “Deaths, what were you doing in Our Good Mother’s land?”

Head still bowed, Partridge glances at Bradwell.

Bradwell says, “We’re on a mission, and we’ve lost one. We need your Good Mother’s help. It’s a girl. Her name is Pressia. She’s sixteen. We think
OSR
took her, but we’re not sure.”

“This is ordinary,” the woman says. “
OSR
takes at sixteen, Death.” She sighs wearily.

“Well, the circumstances aren’t ordinary because he isn’t ordinary.” Bradwell looks at Partridge.

Partridge stares back.

“Show them your face,” Bradwell says.

Partridge looks at Bradwell, wide-eyed. Is he a sacrifice here? A Pure. Was this Bradwell’s plan all along? He shakes his head. “No,” he says to Bradwell. “What are you doing?”

“Show them your face!” Bradwell says.

He has no choice. The women are waiting. He lifts his chin. The women and their children move in closer. They stare and gape.

“Take off your shirt,” the woman says.

“It’s just more of the same,” Partridge says as one of the women unties his hands.

“Do it.”

Partridge unbuttons a few top buttons and pulls the shirt off over his head.

“He’s Pure,” she says.

“Exactly.”

The woman with the blond child says, “Our Good Mother will be pleased. She’s heard the whispers of a Pure. She’ll want to keep him. What do you want in return for him?”

“I can’t really be completely traded,” Partridge says.

“Is he yours to trade?” the woman says to Bradwell.

“Not exactly, but I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“Maybe she will settle for a piece of him,” the woman says to Bradwell.

“Which piece?” Partridge says. “Jesus.”

“The Pure’s mother is still alive, we think. He wants to find her.”

“This may also be of interest to Our Good Mother.”

“Meanwhile,” Bradwell says, “could you put out word to all the mothers about Pressia? She has dark hair and dark almond-shaped eyes and a doll head instead of a hand. She’s petite. She has a scar curved around her left eye—a crescent—and then burns on that side of her face.” As Bradwell describes Pressia, Partridge wonders if he has feelings for her. Does he like her or does he simply feel responsible? It never dawned on him that Bradwell could fall for someone, but of course he can. He’s only human. For a moment, he almost likes Bradwell, feels like they might have some common ground, but then, of course, he remembers that he’s offering a piece of him to strangers.

She nods to Bradwell. “I’ll put out word.”

PRESSIA
ISN’T
SURE
WHAT
HAPPENED
TO
HER
in the farmhouse. She passed out on the floor near the front door. She woke up in the backseat of the car, flying across the Deadlands. No more information. Was she given ether? Was she put under to have her stomach pumped because she’d been poisoned? Why would Ingership do that to her? Maybe because he’s clearly insane, and his wife is too. How else to explain why she would tell Pressia that she won’t put her in harm’s way while she’s poisoning her?

She has a bruised cut on the back of her head as if she hit it against the floor, maybe while struggling with Ingership? She fought. She knows that much. And now, every once in a while, she feels a sharp blow of pain in the top and back of her head, a brilliant shock. She doesn’t feel right in any way. She’s still nauseous, her stomach airy and sour. Her vision clumps in dense pockets of fog. Clots of ghostly flowers that bloom and fade each time she blinks. Her hearing is muted as if she’s listening to everything through a cup pressed to a wall. The wind hasn’t helped. It whips up the dust to further blur her vision, and funnels through her ears.