Pure (47 page)

The gauze wrapped around his left hand hides the tip of his missing pinky, but he starts to feel an ache as if it’s there still, throbbing, when Pressia starts talking about the farmhouse. He doesn’t believe her. How could he? A farmhouse out here? An automatic system to seal off the windows and doors to cut down on ash? A chandelier in the dining room? All of it surrounded by fields with workers spraying pesticides?

Any oyster at all—poisonous or not—would be a miracle of science. But there are labs in the Dome that are devoted to reinstating the natural production of food. The farmhouse has to be a product of the Dome. The two worlds are linked in ways he never could have imagined. The car that he’s sitting in is proof. It had to come from the Dome. Where else?

When Pressia tries to describe it, Lyda says, “I saw the tire marks at the Dome. There’s a loading dock. Trucks must move in and out.”

Are they already testing the transition out of the Dome, back home to their rightful paradise, the New Eden? Partridge wonders.
Blessed.
In the Dome, they were
blessed
. Partridge remembers his mother’s voice—
a new order of slaves
. His mother’s voice is like a small slip of fabric that rustles lightly in his mind, and then he feels a swarm in his chest, sick with rage. She’s injured, but Sedge is with her, and Caruso is tending to her, just like he did the last time she was almost left for dead. Human error. No, dead. Both of them, and Caruso will never come aboveground. He’s the only one left. He’ll die there one day—probably one day soon now that Partridge’s father knows where the bunker is.

Mrs. Fareling—he thinks of her and Tyndal. He never got to tell his mother the message—that they survived.
Thank you.
There are so many things he didn’t get to say, too many to count.

After Pressia says that they’re getting close, Lyda turns to Partridge and whispers, “There’s something someone wanted me to tell you.”

“Who?”

“Just a girl I met while I was in the rehabilitation center,” Lyda says, and she seems embarrassed to mention that she was there, but, of course, she was. That’s where someone shaved her head. Partridge wants to ask her how much she’s endured because of him. He wishes he could take it all back. But she doesn’t want to talk about it now. He can tell. What she has to say is important. “She told me to tell you that there are many like her who want to overthrow the Dome. That’s all she could say. Do you understand?”

“Sleeper cells,” he mutters. Lyda is in deep. She’s not just a hostage. She’s a messenger. Does she know that she’s working for his mother’s side now? He wants to tell her everything his mother said about him being the leader, but he can’t. His mind is too jumbled. “Yes,” he manages to say. “I understand.”

They now turn the final cutback. El Capitan pulls the car behind a stand of low bushy orchard trees, planted so close together their limbs are entwined. And there it is—a yellow farmhouse just as Pressia described it, and the dark lush rows of vegetation in a valley, an island farm, the Deadlands stretching in every direction around it like a sea of ash. There’s a red barn with white trim and greenhouses. It disturbs him, the way it suddenly appears as if it’s been ripped up from some other place and time, and screwed into the ground. There are no
OSR
soldiers working in the fields, but there are two ladders leaning against the face of the house, buckets poised on rungs, and two long poles on the ground. “Was someone scrubbing the house?” Partridge says.

Lyda says, “The thing that looks like a small flag in the window. It’s a sign. I’ve seen it before.”

“For the resistance,” Bradwell says. “My parents had a real flag like that, folded in a drawer. It dates way back.”

“Ingership’s wife,” Pressia says. “She’s in trouble, I think.”

“How did this house get here?” Partridge whispers.

“It’s like a house in a magazine,” Pressia says. “But sick, diseased on the inside.”

“It’s not like any old-fashioned Arabs in white tents,” El Capitan says.

Pressia says to Partridge, “Bradwell needs your jacket.” The heat of the battle has worn off, and Bradwell has started to shake. Partridge can see Bradwell’s shoulders rattling. He takes off his jacket, which used to be Bradwell’s anyway, and hands it to him over the seat. Bradwell puts it on. “Thanks,” he says, but his voice sounds almost hollow—or is it that Partridge’s hearing is off ? He can’t trust anything anymore—not what he sees or hears, not houses that appear out of nowhere, not misty blood or his sister’s eyes.

“We can give Ingership the medications in exchange for getting all of this stuff out of your head,” Partridge says. He’s the only one who knows the truth—the medicine is a decoy, meant to buy time.

“What about Ingership’s wife?” Pressia says. “Can we help her?”

“Isn’t she the one who put you under?” Bradwell says.

“I don’t know,” Pressia says.

Fat birds, almost chicken-like, waddle across the road. They’re grotesque, with two-clawed legs pitching them around awkwardly. They don’t have feathers. Instead they seem to be covered in scales, as if the scaly skin that covers their legs has grown to cover their entire bodies. Their wings are bony things that edge up and down awkwardly at their sides.

“You didn’t see those in the magazines,” Bradwell says.

Partridge thinks of his father, diseased on the inside like this house. “When we walk up, hold the pills close to your head,” he says to Pressia.

“No,” Bradwell says, reaching over the seat and putting his hand on Partridge’s chest. “That’s too much.”

“What?” Partridge says. “This is how he operates. He’d blow her up but not the pills.” His father’s a killer. He closes his eyes for a moment, as if trying to clear his vision. But he knows that his father didn’t flip any switch until he saw that the pill bottle was in Partridge’s fist, far enough away. “It’s for her protection.”

“He’s right,” Pressia says to Bradwell.

Partridge imagines his father watching on, knowing every word, every gesture. His father must be in communication with Ingership inside the house because, just now, two young soldiers in
OSR
uniforms walk out onto the porch. They’re wretches, but well armed. They move to the edge of the porch and stand like sentries.

El Capitan squints through the windshield. “You know what pisses me off ? These are my goddamn recruits. They can’t even handle a weapon right. Works to our advantage, I guess.”

“Pisses me off,” Helmud whispers, his voice a rough whisper.

Bradwell says, “Okay, ready?”

Partridge wants to say more. He wants them to make a pact, here in the car, before they go in. But he’s not sure what he’d have them swear to.

El Capitan says, “Hey, I forgot this.” He tugs something from his jacket pocket and holds it up. “This belong to anyone?”

It’s their mother’s handmade music box, blackened from smoke.

“Take it,” Pressia says.

“No,” Partridge says. “You can have it.”

“It plays a tune that only you two really know,” Pressia says. “It’s yours now.”

Partridge takes it, rubs it with his thumb. The gritty soot smears. “Thanks.” He feels like he’s holding something essential, some part of his mother that he can keep forever.

“Are we ready?” Pressia says.

Everyone nods.

El Capitan puts the car in drive and guns it toward the house. The recruits don’t shoot. Instead, they run and bang on the door. El Capitan slams on the brakes a little late, ramming the porch steps. Struck by the grille, they buckle and splinter.

They all get out of the car. El Capitan has his rifle. Partridge and Lyda have knives and meat hooks. Bradwell holds a knife. Pressia holds the bottle of pills clenched in her hand, raised to her head, her knuckles pressed against her temple.

“Where’s Ingership?” El Capitan shouts.

The recruits exchange a nervous glance but don’t say anything. They’re thin and, even with their seared skin, they look freshly beaten. Bruises and welts run across their exposed arms and face.

Just then an upper window slides open, one on the opposite side of the house from the red-stained hand towel. Ingership leans out, his arms stiff and chin high. The metallic plates on his face shine. He smiles. “You’re here!” His voice is cheery, but he looks like he’s been in a fight. On the exposed skin of his left cheek, there’s a row of scratch marks. “Have any trouble finding the place?”

El Capitan cocks the rifle and fires. The shot sends a shock through Partridge’s body. He sees the explosion again in his mind’s eye—his brother, his mother, the air filled with a fine spray of their blood.

“Jesus!” Ingership shouts, ducking into the window. “That’s not civilized!”

In a delayed reaction, one of the recruits shoots the side of their car.

El Capitan fires again, this time taking out a downstairs window.

“Stop!” Partridge says.

“I wasn’t going to hit him,” El Capitan says.

“Hit him,” Helmud says.

“It’s okay now,” Partridge says. “We’re not shooting.”

“Your father could have this place surrounded,” Ingership shouts at Partridge. “He could have already gunned you down. You know that, boy? He’s playing nice with you!”

Partridge knows he’s wrong. Special Forces is a very new elite corps. There were six, all dead now. He knows those who were next in line—the academy boys who were part of the herd. But they couldn’t be ready for battle like Special Forces. There hasn’t been enough time for that kind of transformation and training.

“He wants something and we have it,” Partridge says. “It’s that simple.”

Ingership pauses. “You have the medication from the bunker?”

“Do you have the remote switch that explodes Pressia’s head?” Bradwell counters.

“We’ll make a deal,” Partridge says.

Ingership disappears. There’s some noise from the upstairs window. The two recruits on the porch keep their guns poised on them.

Then a deep buzz rises from the house, a release of the automatic rubber seals that keep out the ash.

The front door clicks and then swings wide.

In the upper window with the bloody hand towel, Partridge sees a white face—Ingership’s wife?—then a pale hand pressed to the glass pane.

THEY
STEP
INTO
THE
FRONT
HALL—the chair rails, white walls, the flowered runner, and wide stairs leading to the second floor. It floods Pressia with a sharp sense of being penned, trapped. She still holds the bottle to her head, her fingers stiff, her entire body aching. She looks into the dining room; again she’s startled by the brilliance of the chandelier trembling over the long table. She hears footsteps overhead—Ingership’s wife? The chandelier makes Pressia think of her grandfather, the picture of him in the hospital bed. She tries to remember that feeling of hopefulness, but then recalls the dinner knife in her hand, the latex gloves, the burning in her stomach, and how the doorknob wouldn’t turn. It only clicked and then the click quickly becomes the trigger of the gun, the jolt of it in her arm, up into her shoulder. She squeezes her eyes shut for a second then opens them.

The two soldiers keep their guns trained on them. Ingership appears at the top of the stairs and walks down to greet them. A bit unsteady on his feet, he slides his hand along the mahogany railing. There are claw marks on one cheek. Pressia thinks of Ingership’s wife. Is she locked in that bedroom? Was there a fight?

“Leave all your weapons here,” Ingership says. “My men will too. We’re not barbarians.”

“Only if we can pat you down too,” Bradwell says.

“Fine. But trust is an undervalued stock, if you ask me.”

“Looks like you’ve been expecting us,” Partridge says.

“There are things that the Dome chooses to tell me, and I’m one of your father’s confidants.”

“Really.” Partridge sounds doubtful. And from what little Pressia knows about Ellery Willux, she doubts he has any confidants, much less Ingership as one. Willux doesn’t seem like the confiding type.

“All weapons on the lowboy,” Ingership says, pointing to the table along the wall.

They put down their guns and knives and hooks, as do the recruits, nervously. El Capitan pats down his own soldiers. He looks them in the eyes, but they look away. Pressia assumes he’s trying to gauge their loyalty. They didn’t shoot him when he opened fire in the yard. Only one of them shot the car. Does this mean that their loyalty is divided? If Pressia was one of them, she’d do what they’re doing, which is playing both sides, trying to survive.

Bradwell pats down Ingership. Later, Pressia thinks she’ll ask him what it was like. How much of him is real? Did the metal on half of his face exist all down one side of his body? It might, she thinks. Pressia wonders what Bradwell thinks of her now. Her cheek holds on to the memory of his warm skin, the pounding of his heart. Her finger remembers his cut lip. She told him not to die, and he promised he would try not to. Does he feel for her the way she feels for him—a headlong, heart-pounding rush? She’s lost so much, and all she knows now is that she can’t lose him. Not ever.

The soldiers pat them down, taking turns. Pressia stands next to Lyda. The soldiers run their hands over their bodies quickly.

“I don’t like being shot at,” Ingership says to El Capitan.

“Who does?” El Capitan says.

“Who does?” Helmud says.

“The soldiers will accompany me, just for good measure,” Ingership says, “and the girls will wait in the parlor.”

Pressia stiffens. She looks at Lyda, who shakes her head. The parlor stands to their left. It’s filled with drapes and overstuffed furniture and throw pillows.

“No, thanks,” Pressia says. She thinks of the back room of the barbershop, the cabinet that she once hid in. No more hiding. She thinks of the smiley face she drew in ash. Gone now, ash layered upon ash. She’s not going back to hiding or being hidden.

“Wait in the parlor!” Ingership shouts so loudly that it startles Pressia.

Lyda glances at Pressia then says calmly, “We’ll do what we want.”