Pure (24 page)

“Pressia Belze.” The guard appears in the door frame again.

Pressia gets up and follows her out the door.

This time, they all watch Pressia go.

Out in the hall, the guard says, “You been invited to play The Game.”

“What kind of game?” Pressia asks.

The guard looks at her like she wants to pop her with the butt of her rifle, but Pressia is going to become an officer. She wears the armband with the claw. “Not sure,” the guard says. And Pressia realizes that the guard is telling the truth. She doesn’t know because she’s never been invited to play The Game.

The guard walks her down a hall and leads Pressia out through a back door, and she is now standing in the cold. It’s midmorning. Pressia is surprised that she’s lost track of time.

Down a slope, there’s a forest, charred and stripped by the Detonations. She can see the ghostly image of the forest as it once was—taller trees, darting birds, rattling leaves. “It must have been beautiful here during the Before,” she says.

“What?” the guard says.

Pressia’s embarrassed. She wishes she hadn’t said it aloud. “Nothing.”

The guard says, “There, down there. See him?”

In the shadows, Pressia spots El Capitan. His brother, Helmud, from this distance, makes El Capitan look like a humpback. The tip of his lit cigar glows. He’s got a rifle at his chest, strapped around him and Helmud.

Pressia turns to the guard. “You play The Game out there?” Had she been expecting a card game? Her grandfather once explained the game of pool to her—the colored balls, bank shots, corner pockets, cues.

“Yep, out there,” the guard says.

Pressia doesn’t like forests and underbrush.

“What’s the name of this game?” Pressia asks.

“The Game,” the guard says.

Pressia doesn’t like the way the guard says it, but Pressia pretends she isn’t nervous. “Very original, like naming a pet cat Cat.”

The woman stares at her for a moment, blankly, then hands her a jacket that’s been hooked over one arm.

“For me?”

“Put it on.”

“Thanks.”

The guard doesn’t say anything. She dips back inside and shuts the door.

Pressia loves the jacket—the way it puffs around her, like walking inside warm risen bread. Nothing gets through it, not the cold, not the wind that whips up and then dies. These are the little things that people should really appreciate, simple pleasures. That’s all she has right this minute. The jacket is warm, and sometimes you should just be thankful for that. When was the last time she felt warm like this in a jacket? She knows she could die out here. This whole officer thing is bullshit. The Game could be a game where she’s the one who gets trapped. She knows this. But still, she thinks, at least she’d die in a warm coat.

She walks down the slope, wondering what she should say to El Capitan. Should she call him El Capitan? It’s a strange name. Did he make it up himself ? If Pressia calls him El Capitan, will it just sound forced or, worse, a little insincere? She wouldn’t want El Capitan to think she’s making fun of him. It’s only a matter of time before he realizes that she has no real ties to the Pure. She met him on the street. She got him to his old address, a pile of rubble. By the time El Capitan figures that out, she hopes she’s on his good side—if good sides matter here. She decides not to say his name at all.

When she gets to the bottom of the hill, she stands there for a moment, not sure how to start. El Capitan puffs on the cigar and his brother stares at Pressia with his wide-set eyes.

El Capitan looks disgusted and already weary. He sizes Pressia up out of the corner of his eye and shakes his head as if disagreeing with the wisdom of all this but resigned to it anyway. He hands Pressia an extra rifle and says, “I’m guessing you can’t shoot.”

Pressia holds it like it might be a musical instrument or a shovel. She’s never seen a gun this close up before, much less held one. She says, “I’ve never had the pleasure.”

“Like this,” El Capitan says, taking the rifle from her hand gruffly. He shows Pressia how to hold the rifle and look through the sight, then hands it back to her.

She holds the trigger with her good hand and then balances the long part of the gun on her doll-head fist.

The doll head gives El Capitan pause; she can tell. But he’s used to deformities. And he’s had his fair share of comments, hasn’t he? A man who carries his brother on his back? He only says, “Can you at least flex it to your wrist, create a firm grip?”

Pressia can, of course. She’s had to develop a grip over the years.

But then he nudges one of her elbows, adjusting her stance. For a moment he seems almost brotherly, and Pressia can’t help but think of how her grandfather once taught her to swing an imaginary golf club by wrapping his arms around her, and lacing his fingers around hers. There were sloping green lawns that went on forever, he told her, and the golf clubs themselves were fitted with little specially made knit hats. But this gentleness doesn’t last. El Capitan looks at her and says, “I don’t get it.” He drops his stub of cigar and rubs it out under his boot heel.

“What?”

“Why you?”

She shrugs, and he looks at her suspiciously, then coughs and spits on the ground. “Don’t fire it right now. We don’t want to announce our location. Just practice,” El Capitan says. “Take a deep breath before you pull the trigger, let it out, just halfway. Then fire.”

“Fire,” his brother whispers, startling Pressia. She’d almost forgotten he was there.

Pressia takes aim and thinks about her breathing. She draws it in, holds it, imagines the crack of the gun, then lets her breath out.

“Don’t forget that,” El Capitan says, and he pushes her barrel down. “And don’t point it at me while we’re walking.”

Pressia thinks of Helmud. Shouldn’t El Capitan refer to himself as plural?
Just don’t point it at
us—
right?

El Capitan slaps her on the back. “Follow me.”

His brother whispers, “Follow me.”

“But what’s The Game?” Pressia asks.

“No real rules, just a game of tag. Hunt down your foe. Then shoot instead of tag.”

“What are we hunting down?”

“
Who
are we hunting down,” El Capitan corrects her.

Pressia tries to think of the jacket, like walking in warm bread. “Who then?”

“An incoming. Someone like you. But this one isn’t as lucky as Pressia Belze.” She doesn’t like the way he keeps calling her lucky. It’s like he’s mocking her.

Pressia glances at Helmud.

“Is the incoming armed?” Pressia asks.

“Unarmed. Those were the orders. I’m starting you out at level A,” El Capitan says. “Think of this as part of your officer training.”

They’re on a worn path that cuts through the woods, downhill. “Who sent the orders?” she asks, worried that this is too bold. Officers are supposed to be bold, though, she tells herself.

“Ingership,” El Capitan says. “I was hoping he’d forgotten about The Game. It’d been a while. But orders are orders.”

What if he didn’t shoot the incoming but let the incoming go free? Do orders have to be orders? Maybe this is why she’s in officer training. She’s supposed to learn not to ask these kinds of questions.

Pressia hears a sound behind them. Is it the incoming she’s supposed to shoot? El Capitan doesn’t turn around and so Pressia doesn’t either. She doesn’t want to shoot an incoming, someone just like her but not lucky. Pressia knows that she’s not lucky for good. This is just some kind of error. At some point someone, maybe this Ingership, will call down from some other level and say they got the wrong girl.
Not Belze
, they’ll say.
We meant someone else
. And then she’ll be out here in the woods being hunted down by El Capitan and an officer-in-training who’s never had the pleasure of shooting a gun before. Pressia’s never liked games. She’s never been good at them. Bradwell—she wishes he was out here with her. Would he kill an incoming? No. He’d figure out how to take a stand, do the right thing, make a statement. She’s just trying to stay alive. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, she kind of wishes he could see her now, but just a picture, a girl in the woods with a gun. At least she’s giving the impression that she can take care of herself.

After a while, El Capitan stops. “You hear that?”

Pressia does hear something, the faintest rustling, but it’s just wind through leaves. She looks to her right and sees a shape. It limps from one tree to the next then slips out of sight. A saying from Pressia’s childhood echoes in her head,
Come out! Come out wherever you are!
It fills her with nervous dread. She mentally urges the shape to stay hidden.
Don’t come out. Don’t come out.

El Capitan walks in the opposite direction into the brush and stops. He points his gun at something on the ground. “Look here,” he says.

Pressia walks up and sees writhing reddish fur and then shining eyes, a dainty piggish snout with wiry whiskers but fox-like body. The animal is locked in a small steel trap.

“What is it?”

“Hybrid of some sort. It’s genetically mutated, upscale though. Its generations turn over quicker than ours. See there.” He nudges the animal’s claw, and there’s a metal glint to it. “Survival of the fittest.”

“The fittest,” Helmud says.

“Just like us, right.” El Capitan looks at her. He expects her to agree and she does.

“Right.”

“That’s what’ll happen to our
DNA
over time,” El Capitan says. “Some of us will produce offspring with mergers that make us stronger, and others will die out. This one’s still good to eat.”

“Are you going to shoot it?” Pressia asks.

“Shooting it is bad for the meat. So don’t, if you can avoid it.” El Capitan looks around and picks up a rock. He holds the rock over its head for a moment, taking aim, and then bashes the skull so that it caves in. The animal twitches. Its metal claw clenches, then its eyes turn dull and glassy.

The brutality makes Pressia feel sick, but she refuses to show it. El Capitan keeps an eye on her, gauging her toughness. Or so it seems.

“I caught a dog-size rat a couple weeks back with a tail made of chain. It’s sick out here. Perversions of all kinds.”

“Perversions,” his brother says.

Pressia is shaken. Her hand is trembling. To hide it, she grips the gun tightly. “Why did you ask me out here?” Pressia says. “Just to play The Game?”

“It’s all a game now,” El Capitan says, unlocking the trap. “You lose, you’re dead. Winning means you just keep playing. Sometimes I wish I’d lose. Tired. I get tired, that’s all. Do you know what I mean?”

She does but she’s surprised he’s said it aloud, something so honest and vulnerable. She remembers the time she made the cut to her wrist. Was she trying to cut herself loose from the doll head or was she really just tired? She wonders for a moment if he’s testing her. Should she tell him that she has no idea what he’s talking about, that she’s tough, officer material? There’s something in the way he looks at her, though, and she can’t lie. She nods. “I know what you mean.”

El Capitan motions to the dead animal, picks it up, pulls a cloth sack from the interior of his jacket, and drops in the beast. The sack is immediately splotched red, a bright seeping of blood. “This is the first time I’ve found a whole beast to eat in a week.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something’s been getting to my traps and eating what’s there before I pick up what I need.”

“What do you think it is?”

El Capitan resets the trap with his boot. He talks over his shoulder to his brother. “We can trust her, right? We can trust this Pressia Belze?”

“Belze, Belze!” his brother says excitedly, but it sounds like
bells, bells
to Pressia, like he’s expecting something to start ringing.

“Look,” El Capitan says, “I’m willing to be generous with you. We can have our own meat, you and me. Not have to rely on that shit they serve here daily.” He stares at Pressia. “That chicken looked pretty good to you the other day, no?”

Pressia nods. “But my meal wasn’t bad. Better than the others’.”

“The others don’t know a damn thing,” El Capitan says. “They never will. But you…” His eyes rove the forest.

“What about me?”

“Stick close,” he says. “I hear ’em. Sometimes they move so fast, it’s like hummingbirds. You hear ’em?”

Pressia strains to hear something, anything.
Don’t come out. Don’t come out wherever you are.
“What am I listening for?”

“The air goes electric when they’re around.” El Capitan hunches over and walks slowly, quietly.

Pressia follows him. She likes the weight of the gun in her hand now. She’s relieved it’s not just a golf club. She wishes her grandfather had taught her about guns rather than imaginary wedges, nine irons, putters.

El Capitan squats down in some brush, nods to Pressia to get next to him. “Look at that.”

There’s a field where a house used to sit. Now it’s a broken mound. Beside it, there’s a lump of plastic that probably used to be a jungle gym. There’s also a huge metal fist, curled in on itself, as if a metal ladder had gotten wrapped up in it. Pressia couldn’t define the thing.

“There they are.” El Capitan is strangely calm, transfixed.

Moving in the shadows of trees on the other side of the field, she sees quick bodies. Nothing like the limping figure that was hiding behind trees, these are large, fleet, and shifting in a pattern. She sees two and then a third. They emerge from the woods, and she can see that they are men, young with broad faces. They wear tight-fitting dark ashen camouflage suits that leave their arms bare. Their sleek hairless skin, so pristine, seems to glow. Their arms are rippled with muscle but also guns, thick black metal, attached, if not built in. They tilt their heads as if hearing things from far off and sniff the air. Their bodies are muscular. Two have barrel chests. The other has enormous thighs. They all have short hair. When they aren’t moving with great speed with their breath steaming behind them in the chilled air, they lope almost elegantly. They have oversize hands—no, claws—but are still human. Normally, Pressia would be terrified, but because of the creatures’ odd elegance and El Capitan’s rapt fearlessness, she isn’t.