Burn (7 page)

“Why are they coming after me? What do they expect to happen now?”

“You’re the one who called them sheep,” Beckley says.

One of the younger guards says, “I’m requesting backup.” He pulls out his two-way radio and gives the name of the upcoming cross street.

“Backup? We’re fine,” Partridge says, trying to laugh. “It’s just some people who had brunch.”

The small crowd has gotten the attention of others stepping out of shops: a tearoom, a gym, a bank. One teller stands behind a caged window, staring at Partridge. Most of them are silent, as if they’re waiting for another speech. But a few call his name.

“Just keep walking,” Beckley says calmly.

“Really? Just ignore them?” Partridge says.

“Yes,” Beckley says firmly.

Partridge stops. He thinks about doing nothing, but that just doesn’t feel like a real option. He turns around quickly and raises his hands in the air.

The crowd stops too. Some turn and walk away, but most just freeze. “I’m not sure what you want, but I gave my speech. I’m not giving any more today.”

They turn and stare at each other as if each one is hoping someone else will talk first.

Finally, a young mother holding a baby says, “Partridge, what should we do?”

“About what? The truth?” Partridge says. “You can try to accept it.”

A man in a dark gray suit says, “Say it’s not true!”

“Let’s keep moving,” Beckley says in a low voice.

Partridge looks at the man in the gray suit. “What I said is the truth. And I’m not taking it back. In fact, I’m going to lead us into the future with that truth.”

“But we’re Pure,” an older woman says, clutching a crocheted pocketbook to her chest. “That’s the truth. We are
Pure
. We deserve what we have.”

The woman with the baby says, “God loves us. That’s why we’re here.”

“Yes,” Partridge says, “but…”

Another man steps forward. He has a thick belly and broad jowls. He’s wearing a dark suit with a button of Willux’s face on it, as if Partridge’s father were running for some kind of reelection. “You called your father a murderer, you little punk.” He spits at Partridge, a white splotch landing at Partridge’s shoes, and the crowd suddenly looks like it could turn on him.

The guards move swiftly. One pops the man in his thick gut with the butt of his rifle. He falls to the ground on all fours, huffing.

“Stop!” Partridge says.

“Let them do their job,” Beckley says.

The other guard cracks his gun over the man’s back. Partridge realizes that the guards are likely coded to do this to any aggressor.

Most of the people turn and walk away quickly, back into storefronts, down alleyways. But some stand their ground.

The man on the ground, now on his side, looks up at Partridge defiantly. His lip is cut; he starts to cough, flecking the ground with blood.

One of the guards pulls the man’s arms behind his back and cuffs him with plastic ties that cinch tight. Two guards yank the man to his feet. His teeth are smeared red.

Beckley pulls out his gun, two handed, steady, and levels it at those who remain. “We’re asking you all to disperse. Please do so now.”

The rest spin off.

“Let’s go,” Beckley says.

Partridge shakes his head. He can’t believe what’s just happened. “I don’t want people to shut up like that,” he says. “I want people to be able to speak their minds, even if they disagree with me.”

“Not much you can do about that,” Beckley says.

A woman in a white jumpsuit with a bucket walks up, kneels, and without a word, scrubs the man’s blood from the ground, making a bleached white stain. Partridge thinks of Bradwell. His lessons in Shadow History—how fast the truth is washed clean.

A car pulls up then—not a golf cart like most people use but a navy blue sedan. Its doors open. A new set of guards file out, flank Partridge, and guide him into the car.

“Take me to Lyda’s,” Partridge says as he sits in the back seat, wedged between two broad-shouldered men.

“You think this is a taxi?” Beckley says from the front seat.

Doors shut. The car rockets forward, bumping a curb and driving through a public park, over soft turf and past fake trees.

“Where are you taking me?”

“We’re on lockdown protocol. You’re going to the war room.”

“The war room?”

“Your father had to have a secured facility in the Dome,” Beckley explains. “The war room is it.”

“You really think the people are that angry? You think they’re dangerous?”

Beckley keeps his eyes straight ahead. “You forget these are the people who elbowed their way into the Dome, sir. Nothing sweet about them, down deep.”

One of the guards makes a very soft bleating noise. “Baa, baa, baa.” It’s so soft that Partridge isn’t sure he really heard it. Did he imagine it or is one of them making fun of his speech—how he called them sheep?

“Who has access to this room?” Partridge says gruffly, trying to maintain his dignity.

“Your father held meetings there, but within it there’s a chamber that was only for him. The most secure place in the entire Dome. It’s been retooled so that only you can enter it now—retinal scans, fingerprints.”

“A war room,” Partridge says. “My old man had a war room with a chamber just for him?”

“And now
you
have one,” Beckley says.

“A real old-fashioned hand-me-down,” Partridge says. He sees his father’s face just before he died, his eyes widening as he realized Partridge was killing him. “Why didn’t I hear about this before? A room
just
for him? If there was an attack, was he going to come to get me or just leave me at the academy?”

Beckley doesn’t say anything. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to tell Partridge the truth.

Partridge remembers his winter holidays with the Hollenbacks. If the survivors had risen up and attacked, is that who he’d have died with? “I want Lyda Mertz to be able to enter it too. Retool it again.”

“Lyda Mertz? Are you sure, sir?” one of the guards asks.

“Dead sure.” She’s the only person he can really trust. If anything happened to him, she could still get in. He won’t have a room that only he can enter. He won’t be that person. “Get someone to bring Lyda to the war room. I have to see her.”

“Yes, sir,” Beckley says.

They’ve come out the other side of the park now. People have taken to the streets. Some wander aimlessly. Others charge through the crowds as if looking for someone they’ve lost. They shout and cry. One woman stands stock-still, tears rolling down her face.

A few fights have broken out. One woman grabs another by her arm, twisting her bare skin. Two young men are on the ground, pummeling each other.

“Hopefully they’ll wear themselves out,” Beckley says.

Partridge isn’t so sure. They’ve held on to a lot of guilt and anger and blame for a long time. “What if this is just the beginning?” Some guards jog down an alleyway in tight formation. More appear on the other side of the street. “I don’t want this to get bloody,” Partridge says.

“Did you really think that you could do what you did without bloodshed?” Beckley says.

“I want peace, Beckley. That’s what I’m after. In here and out there.”

“And that’s usually paid for in blood,” Beckley says.

Partridge recognizes some of the faces here and there—not anyone he can attach a name to, but there are only so many faces in the Dome. They circulate and become familiar. But maybe it’s hard to place them now because they look different—desperate, helpless, lost.

A few people spot the long dark car and assume there’s someone important inside of it, so they run after it for a block or two, gesturing wildly and angrily. One boy is fast. He jumps onto the back of the car, pounding it with one fist. “Slow down! There’s a kid on the car!” Partridge says.

“You want him to climb inside?” the driver asks.

“I said slow down!”

The driver slows the car but then fishtails enough that the boy jerks backward and then falls to the ground, stunned.

Partridge stares out the back window—the boy is on his back, kicking the ground, while others are running and shouting and brawling. Amid the chaos, there’s an older man, wearing a necktie, standing in the middle of the street. Partridge knows this man. Tommy. That’s all he has—a first name. Tommy was his father’s barber. He got dressed up for the broadcast. His sport coat is folded over his arm. His chin tucked to his chest, he rubs his eyes. Is he crying? He then staggers a little and stares straight up as if expecting to see the sky.

*  *  *

Surrounded by bodyguards, Partridge is ushered from the car and taken to the set of elevators reserved for the Dome’s elite. The war room is buried in the core of the Dome on the lowest subterranean level. The elevator doors open, and they step into a building with mazelike halls that echo loudly with the clomp of their bootheels.

One of the guards opens the door to the war room with a series of codes typed into a wall-mounted keypad. The door opens, revealing a long mahogany table surrounded by leather chairs. The walls are covered with black screens, now dark and glassy, almost wet-looking.

The guard ushers Partridge in along with Beckley.

Partridge walks the length of the table and runs his hand over the back of the chair at the head of the table. His father’s chair. His father’s body was once here. His mind flashes on his father’s face again—his skin festered red and, in some spots, already blackened with necrosis, and his hands, curled inward, shaking with a constant palsy. Willux had overdosed for decades on drugs to enhance his mental abilities. It caught up with him, causing Rapid Cell Degeneration. Partridge tries to remind himself that his father had done himself in, but it doesn’t mute the guilt. There’s no way to let it go. “Has anyone been inside the chamber since my father’s death?”

“No, sir,” Beckley says. “We were under strict orders only to retool the codes. We weren’t allowed to enter—only outfit it so that you could.”

Partridge wonders if this room is really meant for his protection—or was it a trap, a way to eliminate him if he didn’t perform exactly as the Dome wanted him to? Is this something that his father dreamed up for his successor, or has it been rigged by Foresteed so that he can take over? Partridge feels a cool ridge of sweat across his back, and he thinks about his father, who was a leader for so long. Is this the kind of doubt and suspicion he lived with all the time? Is that why he ruled with such an iron fist?

Partridge looks at the guard who opened the door. Partridge has never been completely sure who he can trust. Even his trust of Beckley has been hard-earned and sometimes feels shaky. But now that he’s spoken the truth about his father, Partridge is even less sure who’s been rocked by that news and how they might decide to turn on him. These are the Pures—not the types to rise up. But he still has to be careful. He glances at Beckley, trying to gauge his read on this guard. Partridge doesn’t want to go into the chamber only to be isolated and get attacked.

Beckley looks back at him calmly. “You okay?” he asks.

“Fine,” Partridge says. He has no choice but to trust those around him. They’re all he has. “Let’s see it.”

Beckley nods to the guard, who reaches under the head of the table, perhaps pressing a button hidden there, and one wall breaks into panels and opens, revealing a door.

On the other side of the door could be his father’s secrets. He’s never understood his father. His father was so absent—even when he was in the same room, his mind was working on something else. Partridge doesn’t remember ever having the feeling that his father was actually looking at him. His father was more than aloof. He seemed nearly hollow. But he hadn’t always been like that; there was something about his father—once upon a time—that had made Partridge’s mother fall in love with him. Hadn’t he once been funny? Thoughtful? Maybe even a little vulnerable?

He’s also well aware that on the other side of the door there might be proof that he could offer the people here—proof that his father was the mastermind behind it all, that the people on the outside need their help.

He walks up to the door. “How do we do this?”

“You look into this beam of light for the retinal scan,” the guard says, “and press your hand on this square to check your fingerprint.” The beam is blue and it appears from a small camera-like lens in the wall. The square is made of glass, but it too has a bluish glow.

Partridge leans into the beam. Something inside of the lens clicks. He presses his hand to the glass square, and he hears another series of clicks. Partridge puts his hand on the knob, but the door opens automatically. The room is dark.

Beckley moves forward to usher him in.

“Wait for me outside,” Partridge says. “All the way out. In the hall.”

“Yes, sir,” Beckley says, and he tells the rest of the guards to back out of the room.

Partridge steps just inside the dark room; he can tell that it’s relatively small, and it feels cluttered. From the dim light cast by the war room, he can see that the chamber walls are covered in something that seems to shiver. He thinks of wings—the birds on Bradwell’s back and how, when they shifted, his shirt would flutter.

Is his father’s chamber filled with batting wings? He wants to call this off, back out of the room, but he can’t. He’s gone too far now. They’d know he’s afraid.

It’s not logical, but he feels like he’s about to move into his father’s mind. He always sensed that his father held infinite secrets, that he seemed so absent because there was a version of himself that he refused to share. A secret self.

And Partridge has uncovered so many secrets—destruction, death, so many layers of lies. He doesn’t want to know any more of them.

He shudders then takes a step past the threshold.

Immediately, the lights flicker on. The room fills with light. The door slams shut behind him.

The walls are covered with sheets of paper—hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Some are glossy and thick, others white and papery.

The glossy sheets are photographs, and the papers are covered in his father’s handwriting. Partridge walks to a wall. He sees his mother’s face, poised over a baby swaddled in a blanket. Sedge is at her side, peering at the baby. It’s Partridge, a newborn.