Burn (25 page)
She walks to the gutted door, back out on the street. Again, she runs—head down, breathless. She knows the way now. She runs until she can see the bright spot of the Dome, far-off, its cross shining against the dark silk of the clouds.
B
radwell stops on top of some rubble. He lifts a piece of cast-iron gate. “This way.” He goes in first, down a small set of stone steps. El Capitan knows this part of town—or thought he did. He used to make rounds back when he drove the truck, picking up unwilling recruits, but he’s never seen this hole before.
El Capitan says to Helmud, “Where’s he taking us?”
“Us?” Helmud whispers, as if he’d rather stay behind alone.
El Capitan follows Bradwell down the stairs, pulling the gate back into place overhead, covering them.
The room is small, but not just because it’s caved in. No, it was built to be small. “Is this near where the old church used to be?” El Capitan says, trying to get his bearings.
“We’re in it.”
“The church?”
“It’s a crypt.”
Bradwell looks too big for the space. His massive wings rub the walls. He hunches down and keeps his head bowed—because he’s too tall or is he being respectful? He walks to a wall and kneels.
But Bradwell has folded his hands together. He’s whispering into them. Why? El Capitan’s never understood religions.
“I didn’t know you were churchgoing,” El Capitan says, more to himself than Bradwell. At first it looks like Bradwell is praying to a Plexiglas wall, a little shattered but still holding up. Then he sees that the Plexiglas is covering a recess in the wall, and through the splintered plastic, he sees a girl. Her face is slightly lifted; her hands are in her lap. She’s sitting there, wearing a long old-fashioned dress, her hair pulled back from her face—a beautiful face, simple and yet profoundly sad. She’s patient. She’s waiting for something or someone. Maybe she was waiting for Bradwell. Maybe she’s waiting for God.
“Who is she?” El Capitan says, but he knows Bradwell won’t answer. He’s praying. His eyes are clenched, his hands locked together. Dome worshippers used to kneel and pray like this. He’s seen them lined up in the Deadlands before, all pointing toward the Dome.
“Who?” Helmud says. “Who?”
A row of candles on a ledge have melted, covering it in wax. Offerings. Many people have been here. El Capitan spots a placard. He steps up to it closely. Half the words are gone. It’s all banged up. The statue is of a saint whose name started with Wi. He knows that she was a patron saint of something. He sees the word
abbess
but doesn’t know what it means. There’s more about small children and miracles and the word
tuberculosis
, which he knows well. It’s likely how the saint died. A disease of the lungs. His mother died young of a disease. She was like a saint—to him at least.
El Capitan moves to the back wall and sits down, leaning against Helmud. Helmud lets his head rest on El Capitan’s shoulder.
El Capitan wonders how long Bradwell is going to take. He seems pained. His whispers—El Capitan can’t make out the words—sound urgent. Is he praying to the saint to keep Pressia safe? Is he praying to be forgiven? That’s something that always comes up with religions, isn’t it?
El Capitan props his forearms up on his knees and clasps his hands together. He sits that way for a while before he realizes that his hands are linked almost like someone who’s praying. He closes his eyes, wondering if in a place like this, something might come to him.
He whispers, “Saint Wi.” He tries to imagine who she was. Did she help children? What were her miracles? He thinks of her face. He doesn’t have to look at her. Her face is locked in his mind—her way of gazing. She’s waiting patiently. For El Capitan? For him to say what he needs to say?
Say it
, he hears the words in his head whisper.
Say it.
He sees the face of someone he killed. And then another. He remembers driving that truck, making rounds, picking up kids he knew wouldn’t ever be soldiers—too sick, too weak, too fused and deformed.
Say it.
He sees a mangled arm. A festered leg. He sees the cage where he kept the ones who would never make it. He remembers the smell of death in that cage.
Say it.
There was the time he took Pressia, just a fresh recruit herself then, out into the woods to play The Game—hunting down a sickly recruit. Ingership gave the order to have Pressia play The Game, but would Ingership have ever really known if El Capitan hadn’t gone through with it? No. He could’ve faked it. And then the boy, crawling through underbrush, got caught in one of El Capitan’s traps. The metal spokes drove into his ribs, punctured his chest. He begged for them to shoot him. Pressia couldn’t, but El Capitan could and did. It was easy.
So why does he see the boy’s face now, begging him to pull the trigger? Why does the pain of it dog him still?
He takes a breath. He feels sick.
Say it.
He gulps air.
He knows he should ask for forgiveness. The thought is there in his head.
Say it. Say it.
He opens his mouth, but instead of saying
I’m sorry
, he says, “We got to go.”
Bradwell lifts his head, turns, stares at him. “Give me a minute.”
“Okay, but that’s all—just a minute.” El Capitan gets to his feet, but his head doesn’t feel right. He lurches toward the statue of the saint, dizzy now. He presses his pale, scarred hands to the splintered Plexiglas, and lowers his head so that it touches the plastic too.
“You okay?” Bradwell asks.
El Capitan straightens up, rubs his face. “Fine,” he says. “We’re fine. Right, Helmud?”
“Right?” Helmud says.
And El Capitan turns and runs up the stone stairs, moves aside the piece of cast-iron gate, and steps into the dusty air. He breathes deeply. He looks up and down the streets. He remembers running through these streets—in Death Sprees. He leans over and spits on the ground.
“Right?” Helmud asks again.
“Not right,” El Capitan says. “Not right at all.” He imagines Pressia making her way to the Dome. She’s the one who has hope, who still believes in Partridge. He’s glad she’s free of them. “She’s out there trying to make something right. And you and me, Helmud? What should we do? What’s the point of the two of us on this earth? You tell me that.”
“You tell me,” Helmud says.
Bradwell climbs up the steps, covers the opening again, and says, “I’m going after her.”
El Capitan feels a spike of jealousy. He wants to tackle Bradwell and beat his head with a rock. That’s how he would have handled something like this—before he met Pressia. “Let her go.”
“No. I have to find her—not to protect her. I have to tell her something.”
El Capitan knows that he loves her, that he’s figured that this might be his last chance to tell her the truth. Bringing down the Dome will likely lead to something like war. God, it would feel good to grind Bradwell’s face into the ground, but this is beyond El Capitan. He has to bow out. He’s got no shot at love. He says, “You’ll go this one alone.”
“I know the ending, Cap.”
“What ending?”
“My own.”
“How does it turn out?”
“It could be better, but I have to see it through.”
“I guess that’s all we can do—see it through.”
“See it through,” Helmud says.
“Will we meet up?” El Capitan says.
“We can meet at the old vault. Should be safe and dry there.”
“The bank?”
“What’s left of it.” Bradwell is about to go, but then he turns back. “What happened to you in there?”
“In there?” Helmud says, reaching around and tapping El Capitan’s chest.
El Capitan doesn’t know, so he doesn’t answer. “Promise me you’ll
really
tell her.” His chest burns. “Tell her the whole truth. Whatever it is. She deserves that much.”
T
he wedding plans come at him nonstop. Iralene insists that he be involved. “You have to be emotionally invested in this,” she whispers, “or they’ll be able to tell. They’ll know! The whole thing could backfire!”
She holds out swatches of fabric for bridesmaid dresses, tablecloths, napkins. She makes him choose silverware patterns and dishes, candlesticks and gravy boats for their registry. A pastry chef brings in cake samples. A cook brings in meal choices and wine—more samples. He tastes and sips and points. “That one.”
“Really?” Iralene says.
“Okay, fine. That one.”
“I want you to love it!”
“What do you want me to say? Which one is the right choice?”
Iralene tears up whenever he gets frustrated. “This is supposed to be a blessed occasion!”
“No,” he says. “The wedding is an event to distract people and raise morale and stop people from killing themselves. It’s not a blessed occasion; it’s not even a marriage. There’s a difference.”
She sighs, as if realizing that she’s pulled out the big guns too soon, then leans toward him and whispers, “Pick the salmon.”
And he picks the salmon. As a concession, he adds, “I like the hollandaise sauce very much.” He looks at Iralene as if to say,
See? I’m trying.
“If you just focus a little,” she says.
He can’t focus. There’s one thing that Foresteed said that’s stuck with him—his father’s little relics, a collection of his greatest enemies. Partridge remembers the chamber that was different from all the rest—the one Iralene showed him once while they were walking those long halls. It was unmarked and heavily secured. Partridge didn’t know how to break into it. But if his father’s little relics are truly his greatest enemies—ones he kept around so he could pull them out and torture them when the mood struck—then who’s in
that
chamber? Could his father’s greatest enemy be Partridge’s greatest ally?
He wants to get to that chamber somehow and try to open it. He keeps wondering if it’s possible that one of the Seven is kept there. His father’s greatest enemy was a personal one: Hideki Imanaka, the man Partridge’s mother fell in love with, had an affair—with Pressia’s father.
Also, Pressia’s grandfather is still in one of those suspension chambers. Is Weed on Partridge’s side or not? Is he even trying to bring Belze out of suspension? Now that he’s punched Weed, he’ll either be more compliant or refuse to help.
How will Partridge get down there? He’s faced with relentless wedding plans—being fitted for a tux and shiny shoes, picking flower arrangements, talking about seating the guests in a very strict social hierarchy that he doesn’t understand or care about.
Partridge feels light-headed. He hasn’t been eating much—not with this gnawing in his stomach all the time. He’s started taking some indigestion pills—chalky and bitter—but they don’t help. He feels like one of the big cats at the zoo—like the pads of his feet are worn raw from pacing the hard cement. He feels locked up.
And then, while it’s just the two of them and Iralene is asking him about ribbon trim on centerpieces, she grabs his hand and gives it a squeeze. “Which is your favorite?”
Her hand is so cold it shocks him, and he remembers that Iralene spent most of her life in suspension. She’s told him that she thinks of those halls of chambers as her childhood home. Iralene is his suspension specialist. She was the one who first showed them to him.
He puts his hand on hers. She looks up, startled. “Iralene,” he whispers, “I want you to do something for me.”
“What?” Her eyes are bright and wide. It scares him sometimes how desperate she is to please him.
“I want to go to the chambers again.”
She shakes her head. “That part of my life is over,” she says with a quivering smile.
“I need your help. I wouldn’t ask this otherwise.”
“Don’t make me go back.” She bites her lower lip.
“I need a guide. I need you to explain all of it to me. I need you to take me to the unmarked high-security chamber.” He can’t just announce his plans. He’s no longer his own person now that Foresteed has wielded his power over him. He wants to keep this visit quiet, and he doesn’t know who to trust. Iralene is trustworthy, and she knows that building.
She shakes her head, closes her eyes.
“I need you. I can return the favor somehow. I promise.”
She crosses her arms on her chest and stares at him coolly. “Without any conditions. A favor. At any time in the future. You’ll owe me.”
He’s a little scared; he’s not sure what he’s gotten himself into. “Yes. I mean, I don’t want to have to—”
“No conditions.”
“Okay,” he says. “Fine. Can you get us there undetected?”
She thinks about it. “With Beckley’s help, yes.”
“I want to see if Odwald Belze has been taken out of suspension too.”
“Up for air,” she says. “That’s what we call it.”
Up for air.
Partridge wants to come up for air.
All the while, he misses Lyda. It’s worse at night when there aren’t as many awful distractions. Foresteed has sent word that Partridge can’t see Lyda until after the wedding, after the scrutiny dies down. It would be too dangerous if word got out to the public.
Later, Partridge sets up his bed on the sofa. Now that Iralene sleeps in Partridge’s old bedroom and Glassings in his father’s bedroom, Partridge has started sleeping in the living room. But he has trouble sleeping. He writes Lyda letters and passes them to Beckley, like Partridge is just a school kid passing notes in class. His letters at first were short—
I love you. I miss you…
He doesn’t tell her that he’s under Foresteed’s thumb. He knows he should, but he can’t. He’s too embarrassed. The writing does help him clear his thoughts, though, so he’s started to try to carve out some kind of future. Tonight he writes,
I haven’t given up on the idea of a council. Pressia should be the head of it. Bradwell needs to be in charge of writing the new history, the truth, so we can start to get that information out to everyone. And we need someone like El Capitan to take over the military. We’ll still need to be able to keep the peace…