Pure (20 page)

“Aribelle Willux… well, originally, Cording.”

She hands the pouch back to Partridge, but he shakes his head. “Bradwell can look at it.”

“Me?” Bradwell says. “I didn’t think I was good enough.”

“You might see something that I don’t.”

“Like what?”

“A clue or something,” Partridge says.

Pressia hands Bradwell the photo, and he starts to study it.

“I remember that trip,” Partridge says. “It was just the two of us. My mother’s mother passed down a house close to the beach. It was kind of cold, and my mother and I both ended up getting sick, a stomach bug. She made us tea, and I threw up in a garbage can next to my bed.” He digs in his backpack and pulls out the envelope of his mother’s things. “Here,” he says. “Maybe if you looked at these things, you’d get some kind of insight. I don’t know… Maybe if you read the birthday card. And there’s a music box and a necklace.”

Bradwell gives the photo back to Partridge, takes the envelope, and looks inside. He picks up the music box, opens it. A little tune starts to play. “I don’t know this song,” Bradwell says.

“It’s weird, but, honestly, I think she made the tune up,” he says. “But then how did she find a music box that played a song she invented?”

“The box looks handmade,” Pressia says. It’s simple and plain. She holds out her hand. “Let me see.” Bradwell hands it to her. She looks inside and sees the small metal fingers striking the nubs on a metal turning spool. “I could make something like this, if I had the right tools.” She closes the box, opens it, closes it again, testing the stopping mechanism.

Bradwell lifts the gold chain, looped over a few fingers. The swan spins. Its body must be solid gold, Pressia thinks. It has a long neck and an oversize jeweled eye, a bright blue stone almost as big as a marble that is visible from both sides. It’s perfect, not a single flaw, untarnished—pure. Pressia can’t take her eyes from it. She’s never really seen something that survived the Detonations, aside from Partridge. Its blue eye is hypnotic.

Finally, Bradwell sets the necklace back into the envelope. He looks at Pressia. His face is soft for a moment like he wants to tell her something, but then he stiffens up. “I got you to Lombard. That was all I promised.” He stands up, but not all the way. He’s too tall for the small space. “People think it’s amazing that I survived on my own since I was nine years old. But the thing is I’ve survived
because
I’ve been alone all this time. Once you start to get involved with other people, they weigh you down. You two will have to make it on your own.”

“Nice sentiment,” Pressia says. “Really generous and charitable.”

“If you were smart, you’d walk away too,” Bradwell says. “Generosity and charity can get you killed.”

“Look,” Partridge says. “I’m fine. I don’t need someone holding my hand.”

Pressia knows he doesn’t stand a chance alone. He’s got to know it, too. But what now? The air in the small space shifts. A bit more sunlit ash sifts down. It grazes the opening overhead and filters into the crypt. It’s morning, and now it’s light enough for her to make out part of the name on the placard,
SAINT
WI, but the rest of the name is lost. The placard is dented, the letters gone. Under that, she can make out only a few other words of any importance—
BORN
IN…
HER
FATHER
WAS…
PATRON
SAINT
OF… ABBESS…
SMALL
CHILDREN…
THREE
MIRACLES… TUBERCULOSIS… Nothing more. Pressia’s parents were married in a church, their reception outside under white tents. She notices that there’s a small dried flower, crisp with age, sitting on the waxy edge. A small offering? “I guess we’ve come to a dead end,” Pressia says.

“Not really. My mother survived the Detonations,” Partridge says. “I got that much.”

“How do you know she survived?” Pressia asks.

“The old lady said so,” Partridge says. “You were there.”

“I thought she said that he broke her heart,” Pressia says. “That doesn’t mean much.”

“He
did
break her heart. He left her here. If she’d died in the Detonations, she wouldn’t have had time to have had a broken heart. But she did. He broke her heart, and this woman knew about it, knew she’d been left behind, and that my father had taken me and my brother with him. That’s what she meant by he broke her heart. She might have been a saint, but she didn’t
die
a saint.” Partridge slips the photograph back into its pouch, fits it into a larger envelope and then an interior pocket of his backpack.

“Even if she survived the blast, which is still a big if,” Bradwell says, “she might not have survived what came after. Not many have.”

“Look, you might think it’s stupid, but I think she’s alive,” Partridge says.

“Your father saved you and your brother, but not her?” Bradwell asks.

Partridge nods. “He broke her heart and mine too.” The confession only sits there for a second. Partridge shakes it off. “I want to go back to the old lady. She knew more than she was telling me.”

“It’s light out now,” Pressia says. “We have to be careful. Let me just take a look first.”

“I’ll go,” Partridge says.

“No,” Bradwell says. “I will. I’ll see what kind of damage the Death Spree did.”

“I said I’d go,” Pressia says, standing up and brushing the debris from her head and clothes. She wants to still be of use, to make sure that Partridge knows she’s worth something. She hasn’t given up.

“It’s too dangerous!” Partridge says, and he reaches out and grabs her. His hand clasps her wrist and pulls up the sweater sleeve, exposing the back of the doll’s head. It surprises him, but he doesn’t let go. Instead he looks into her eyes.

She turns her arm, showing him the doll’s face in place of her hand.

“From the blast,” she says. “You wanted to know before. Well, here it is.”

“I see,” Partridge says.

“We wear our marks with pride,” Bradwell says. “We’re survivors.”

Pressia knows that Bradwell wishes this were true, but it’s not, not for her at least.

“I’m going up to look around,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”

Partridge nods and lets her go.

She walks up the stone steps into the light, keeping herself hidden in the church’s crumbled stone remains. She crouches behind part of a wall and looks out at the street. There are a few people on the road standing in front of the old woman’s house in a loose circle. The tarp has been torn from her window. The plywood door is gone. The people shuffle away.

And there on the ground is a pool of blood, glistening with shards of glass.

Pressia’s eyes sting, but she doesn’t cry. She immediately thinks that the woman shouldn’t have been singing like that. She should have stopped. Didn’t she know better? And Pressia is aware of the shift within her, from sympathy to contempt. She hates that shift. She knows it’s wrong, and yet she can’t help it. This woman’s death has to be a lesson. That’s all.

She turns away.

Then there’s a sharp cuff on her arm. A grunt and breath. Someone’s got her by the stomach, lifted her off her feet, and is running. At first, she thinks it must be Partridge or someone from the Death Spree. No. She hears an engine. It’s
OSR
. She reaches for the knife that Bradwell gave her. She fits her hand around the handle, pulls it from her belt, but a hand with one dark metal finger clamps her wrist so tightly that she loses her grip. The knife clatters to the ground.

The hand with the metal finger clamps her mouth. She tries to scream, but it’s muffled. Like the boy with the nubbed toes in the room above the meeting, she bites the meaty center of the hand where there’s soft skin. She hears a curse so vicious that it contracts her captor’s ribs, but the grip on her body only tightens. Her bite has drawn blood. Her mouth tastes of rust and salt. She flexes her back, kicks her captor’s back, and tries to punch with the doll-head fist. Do Bradwell and Partridge know she’s gone? Are they coming for her?

She tries to spit. She feels wind in her hair. She hears the engine. She looks up and sees the back of the truck. They’ve come for her. She knows she’s gone.

AFTER
A
FEW
MINUTES
, Partridge walks to the top of the crypt’s stone steps to see how Pressia is doing. What’s taking her so long? It’s windy. The landscape is bare except for a stain on the ground, fresh blood littered with glass.

He turns back to Bradwell, one hand on each side of the stairwell, his arms outstretched. “Where did she go?”

“What do you mean?” Bradwell shoves past him and takes the stairs three at a time. “What the hell do you mean?”

“Pressia!” Bradwell shouts.

“Pressia!” Partridge shouts now too, even though he knows they shouldn’t. It could draw attention.

Bradwell runs to the spot of blood, and Partridge follows, his stomach turning with dread. He’s not sure what to do. “Do you think it’s her blood?” Partridge asks, his voice choked in his throat.

“There’s a scrim on top where it’s started to coagulate. It’s been here too long.” Bradwell’s eyes are wild, searching.

“She’s gone,” Partridge says. “She’s really gone. Isn’t she?”

Bradwell looks in every direction. “Stop saying that!” he says. “You go look in the old woman’s house. I’ll get up high and try to get a view.”

The air ripples with gray shades of ash. Partridge is disoriented for a moment. Then he sees the old woman’s front door where, not long ago, he found out that his mother survived. And now Pressia is gone. It’s his fault. He runs to the old woman’s place. The plywood is already gone from the door. He tears through the cramped space. “Pressia!” he shouts. The old woman had nothing. A pit for fires where the house was open to the sky, a few roots in a darkened corner, rags bundled on the floor, fashioned to look like a baby; its mouth is dark brown like dried blood.

He hears Bradwell calling outside. “Pressia!”

There’s no response.

Partridge runs out of the room back into the street to Bradwell. “Is she gone?” He isn’t asking a question as much as demanding an answer. Bradwell seems to know everything. He should know this. “Was she taken?”

Bradwell turns and punches Partridge in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Partridge falls to one knee, his arm around his stomach, the knuckles of his other hand on the rock. “What the hell?” he mutters. His voice is a hoarse whisper, the air dying in his lungs.

“Your mother’s dead! You hear me? You come down here and want us to risk everything for a dead woman?” Bradwell shouts.

“I’m sorry,” Partridge says. “I didn’t mean for—”

“You think you’re the only one who ever lost someone and wanted to go home?” Bradwell is furious, the veins on his temples standing out, the strange rustling motion on his back. “Why don’t you go back to your tidy little Dome and stick to the plan—just watch us die
from afar, benevolently.
”

Partridge is still trying to pull air into his chest, and it feels good to be down on the ground. He deserved to be punched. What has he done? Pressia is gone. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know what else to say.”

Bradwell tells him to shut up.

“I’m sorry,” Partridge says.

“She risked her life for you,” Bradwell says.

“Yes, she did.” Partridge knows that Bradwell hates the sight of him.

Bradwell grabs Partridge by the arms and pulls him up, but Partridge feels a rush of anger, and instinctively he shoves Bradwell in the chest. His motions are faster and harder than he expects, almost knocking Bradwell to the ground. “I didn’t lose her on purpose.”

“If you weren’t here,” Bradwell says, “she’d be fine.”

“I know.”

“I got you here,” Bradwell says. “And now you owe me. You owe her. This is the mission. Not your mother. Pressia. We’ve got to find her.”

“We?” Partridge says. “What about that beautiful speech in there about how you survived because you didn’t get involved, because you’ve always been alone.”

“Look, I’ll help you find your mother if and only if we find Pressia first. That’s it.”

Partridge hates himself for thinking about it, but he hesitates. Maybe Bradwell was right in the crypt. Maybe it’s better to go alone. Maybe that’s how to best survive. Could he make it on his own? Where would he go from here? He thinks of Pressia. She threw her shoe, striking the oil drum. Without her, he’d probably already be dead. Maybe this is the way it’s supposed to go. Maybe this is fate. “We have to find Pressia,” Partridge says. “Of course. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

Bradwell says, “They took her for a reason.”

“What?” Partridge says.

“How did you say you figured out how to get out of the Dome?” Bradwell asks. “A blueprint? Is that what you said?”

“One of the original blueprints,” Partridge says. “It was a gift to my father.”

“Let me guess. A
recent
gift, right?”

“Yes, for his twenty years of service. Why?”

“A goddamn blueprint, framed and mounted on a goddamn wall!”

“What’s wrong with that?” Partridge asks, but it’s like he can already sense what’s wrong. He adds quickly, “I figured out the ventilation system myself. I timed it all out, three minutes and forty-two seconds.”

“Did it dawn on you that you were supposed to find the blueprint?” Bradwell says.

“No. It’s not like that. My father would never expect me to do something like escape.” Partridge shakes his head. “You don’t know him.”

“Really?”

“He doesn’t think that highly of me.”

“True. I mean, it’s a little embarrassing that they had to frame the goddamn blueprints and hang them on a wall!”

“Shut up!” Partridge shouts.

“It’s the truth and you know it. You can feel it. A hot little kernel inside of your brain. It all makes sense now. Things are clicking into place. Aren’t they?”

Partridge’s jaw is locked, but his mind is churning. It’s true. He needed things, and there was the opportunity to get them. Glassings had put in a request for a field trip to the Personal Loss Archives for years, and then, out of the blue, it’s finally granted?