PARTRIDGE
MOTHERS
THERE’S A SMALL RIP IN THE SEAM of the dark pillowcase over Partridge’s head. He glimpses small bits of his surroundings, but not enough to know where he is. He’s aware that he and Bradwell are being escorted by the heavily armed women and their children—sinew of muscle, larded haunches, strong arched backs—on all sides. One woman is leading. She has an old camping-style lantern, duct-taped to a stick and held high. It bobs, casting shadows on all of them. He can see how the women with children in their upper bodies stride. Those with children in their legs lurch and sway, gaits of exerted effort and drive. And some have no children, and, next to all of the others, they seem stripped, pared down, as if whittled to some smaller version of themselves.
The birds on Bradwell’s back are still. They must be reacting to Bradwell’s fear—or maybe he’s not afraid in these situations anymore. Maybe that’s one of the upsides of being dead. Maybe the birds just know when to keep quiet.
Every once in a while, Bradwell asks where they’re going, and gets no answer.
The women are silent. When the children chatter or whine, they hush them or wrestle something from a pocket and pop it into the child’s mouth. Through the rip, Partridge just sees flashes of the children, peering up from legs, clasped at a waist, draped with an arm. Their eyes are oddly bright, their smiles quick. They still cough, but unlike the children in the market, not with deep rattles.
Partridge can tell that the women are leading them out of a gated community away from the melts. The earth is more rubbled, once cement and tar, and so he assumes they’re heading to what was once a strip mall. He twists his head so that the rip is in front of him. In addition to the lantern, another woman holds a flashlight that she uses to light the strip mall, moving quickly among the remains. There’s part of a movie marquee; two E’s and an L remain and Bradwell recalls eels—the electric kind. Were they fish or snakes? The other shops are unidentifiable—gutted of anything worth salvaging. Even glass and metal have been taken away. There are a few ceiling tiles and then, miraculously, the flashlight touches deep in the shadows, lighting one fluorescent tube that’s still intact.
The echo of their steps is gone. They’re heading toward something large and nearly solid. He can make out one of the monstrous fallen industrial buildings, one that once held prisoners or those like Mrs. Fareling who were hauled away or those dying of viruses. They move in a pack down the length of the wreckage.
One of the women says, “This was my home for three years. Women’s wing. Chamber Twelve Eighty-four. Food under the door. Lights out after prayers.”
Partridge shifts his head under the hood to see who is speaking. It’s one of the childless women.
“I only had one prayer,” another whispers. “Save us, save us, save us.”
No one speaks for a long time. They keep marching until a woman says, “Going down.” And just then the ground disappears beneath Partridge’s feet and he strikes a hard step, then walks down a set of stairs.
Partridge says, “Bradwell, you still here?”
“I’m here.”
“Shut up!” It’s one of the children’s voices.
They file down into what must be a large basement, judging by the acoustics. The temperature cools quickly. The air is damp. The atmosphere is quiet and close. Partridge is shoved into a kneeling position, his hands still bound behind his back. The pillowcase is then ripped off, and it feels good to breathe in the open air, to have his full vision. A dozen or more women, still fully armed, some with children and some without, huddle around them.
Bradwell, now hoodless too, is kneeling beside him. He looks flushed and dazed.
Partridge tucks his chin to his chest, trying to hide his unmarked face. He whispers to Bradwell, “Was this the plan?”
“I think we’re close,” he says.
“Really?” Partridge says. “Close to what? Death?”
The center of the basement is bare and industrial-size, the kind of basement that would exist under a building, maybe a sanatorium. But the edges are packed with a collection of ordinary objects now warped, rusted, burned—big wheels, shovels, bowling balls, ball-peen hammers. There are also rows of folded metal cot frames, iron tubs, and metal mop buckets on rollers.
A woman stands in front of them. She’s holding a blond child of maybe two or three, one arm fused to the child’s head, protectively. Her other arm holds an ax head attached to a baseball bat. She says, “Deaths, what were you doing in Our Good Mother’s land?”
Head still bowed, Partridge glances at Bradwell.
Bradwell says, “We’re on a mission, and we’ve lost one. We need your Good Mother’s help. It’s a girl. Her name is Pressia. She’s sixteen. We think OSR took her, but we’re not sure.”
“This is ordinary,” the woman says. “OSR takes at sixteen, Death.” She sighs wearily.
“Well, the circumstances aren’t ordinary because he isn’t ordinary.” Bradwell looks at Partridge.
Partridge stares back.
“Show them your face,” Bradwell says.
Partridge looks at Bradwell, wide-eyed. Is he a sacrifice here? A Pure. Was this Bradwell’s plan all along? He shakes his head. “No,” he says to Bradwell. “What are you doing?”
“Show them your face!” Bradwell says.
He has no choice. The women are waiting. He lifts his chin. The women and their children move in closer. They stare and gape.
“Take off your shirt,” the woman says.
“It’s just more of the same,” Partridge says as one of the women unties his hands.
“Do it.”
Partridge unbuttons a few top buttons and pulls the shirt off over his head.
“He’s Pure,” she says.
“Exactly.”
The woman with the blond child says, “Our Good Mother will be pleased. She’s heard the whispers of a Pure. She’ll want to keep him. What do you want in return for him?”
“I can’t really be completely traded,” Partridge says.
“Is he yours to trade?” the woman says to Bradwell.
“Not exactly, but I’m sure we can figure something out.”
“Maybe she will settle for a piece of him,” the woman says to Bradwell.
“Which piece?” Partridge says. “Jesus.”
“The Pure’s mother is still alive, we think. He wants to find her.”
“This may also be of interest to Our Good Mother.”
“Meanwhile,” Bradwell says, “could you put out word to all the mothers about Pressia? She has dark hair and dark almond-shaped eyes and a doll head instead of a hand. She’s petite. She has a scar curved around her left eye—a crescent—and then burns on that side of her face.” As Bradwell describes Pressia, Partridge wonders if he has feelings for her. Does he like her or does he simply feel responsible? It never dawned on him that Bradwell could fall for someone, but of course he can. He’s only human. For a moment, he almost likes Bradwell, feels like they might have some common ground, but then, of course, he remembers that he’s offering a piece of him to strangers.
She nods to Bradwell. “I’ll put out word.”
PRESSIA
SPOKE
PRESSIA ISN’T SURE WHAT HAPPENED TO HER in the farmhouse. She passed out on the floor near the front door. She woke up in the backseat of the car, flying across the Deadlands. No more information. Was she given ether? Was she put under to have her stomach pumped because she’d been poisoned? Why would Ingership do that to her? Maybe because he’s clearly insane, and his wife is too. How else to explain why she would tell Pressia that she won’t put her in harm’s way while she’s poisoning her?
She has a bruised cut on the back of her head as if she hit it against the floor, maybe while struggling with Ingership? She fought. She knows that much. And now, every once in a while, she feels a sharp blow of pain in the top and back of her head, a brilliant shock. She doesn’t feel right in any way. She’s still nauseous, her stomach airy
and sour. Her vision clumps in dense pockets of fog. Clots of ghostly flowers that bloom and fade each time she blinks. Her hearing is muted as if she’s listening to everything through a cup pressed to a wall. The wind hasn’t helped. It whips up the dust to further blur her vision, and funnels through her ears.
And now the driver is gone. No looking back. El Capitan and Helmud are all she has. He’s driving fast through the Deadlands closer to the city. Dusts occasionally appear in the headlights, and he plows through them. Their bodies spray into ash, dirt, and rocks.
She pulls the tracking device from her envelope. The blip is moving through part of the Rubble Fields in a perfectly straight line and with too much speed to be moving on the uneven terrain. She remembers Bradwell telling her that he catches the rat-like beasts by waiting at the ends of the small pipes that remain intact under the rubble, pipes only big enough for vermin. So Bradwell and Partridge must have found a chip, connected it to one of the rat-like creatures, and set it loose.
“We have to go to Bradwell’s place, near the Rubble Fields,” Pressia says. “That’s the last place I saw the Pure.”
“You know him?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Why would I?”
“Huh.” He glances at Pressia as if he’s now forced to rethink his assumptions.
“Huh,” Helmud says, and he glances at her too. Now she can see Helmud twisting his fingers anxiously. El Capitan jerks his shoulders and mutters, “Knock it off.”
“Knock it off,” Helmud says back.
“You can’t kill the Pure when we find him,” Pressia says. “They aren’t all bad. The Pure, this one we’re looking for, he’s good actually. He’s got a heart. He’s looking for his mother. I can relate to that.”
“Me too,” El Capitan says, and the gentleness of his voice—sad and lonesome—surprises her.
“Me too,” Helmud says.
“We can’t drive through town in this car,” El Capitan says. “It’ll draw too much attention.”
“I know where Bradwell’s place is,” Pressia says. “I’ll go.”
“You’re in no shape to make the trip on foot,” El Capitan says. “Plus, one of us has to stay with the car. I don’t want this beautiful piece of machinery destroyed by Dusts.”
“Fine,” Pressia says. “I’ll draw you a map.”
“I know a spot where we can keep the car out of sight,” he says.
After a while, he pulls up to a billboard that’s fallen but now stands propped on the stand that used to hold it upright. It serves as a lean-to garage. He parks the car.
Nearby, there’s a collapsed roof that once stood over a row of gas pumps. They huddle beside it, hoping to find a break from the dusty wind. There’s a fallen emblem of a B and a P, locked in a green circle. It once meant something. She’s not sure what.
Pressia finds a metal spoke in the dirt that may have once belonged to a motorcycle. She was never good at drawing, but she could take apart her grandfather’s watch and put it back together, fix Freedle’s internal mechanisms, and make the small menagerie—the caterpillar, the turtle, the row of butterflies—because she was accurate and precise. She hopes that attention to detail pays off.
In ashen dirt lit by the headlights, she starts scratching a map, first an aerial view of the city. She points to the edge of the Rubble Fields, the location of Bradwell’s butcher shop, marked with an X.
When El Capitan says he’s got it, she starts on the second one—the butcher shop’s interior, including the cooler where he’s most likely to find things they’ve left behind and the extra weapons. She has to trust him, but she’s not sure she does. He’s hateful, really. But through all of his violence and cruelty, she sees someone who wants to be good. He didn’t really want to play The Game, after all. In a different world, could he be a better person? Maybe they all could be. Maybe, in the end, that’s the greatest gift the Dome can offer: When you live in a place with enough safety and comfort, you can pretend you’d always make the best decision, even in the face of desperation. The awful way he treats Helmud could be seen as hiding his love for his brother, something he can’t show. Helmud is all El Capitan has and there’s something deeply loyal about El Capitan—erratic and hot-tempered, but loyal. And that’s worth something. She wonders how he lost his parents and if he thinks of them as much as Pressia thinks of her own parents and grandfather. But El Capitan is also vicious. And this is something that Pressia lacks. Did El Capitan know that by leaving the driver in the Deadlands he’d be eaten alive by the Dusts? Pressia isn’t sure. She tells herself that there’s a chance that the driver survived. But this is willful. She knows it’s probably not true.
El Capitan stands up. “Let’s go,” he says. “I got it.”
“Got it,” Helmud says.
He pulls the rifle off his back and hands it to her. “Stay in the car, no matter what. Shoot anything that moves.”
“Will do,” she says, though she’s not sure that she could. She gets into the driver’s seat, shuts the door.
“If you need to take off, go ahead,” he says. “The keys are right there in the ignition. I’ll be fine.”
“Fine,” Helmud says.
“I can’t drive.”
“Better to have the keys than not to.” He rests his hand on the hood. “Be careful.” El Capitan has clearly fallen in love with the car.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Pressia tells him. She feels she owes him. Who else would have helped her like this? She wouldn’t have made it without him. “You got me this far.”
He shakes his head. “Take care of yourself, okay?” He looks toward the grim skyline of the demolished city. “I’m following this buckle,” he says. “I know this one. It’ll take me close to the Rubble Fields. And I’ll use it to find my way back.”
Pressia watches him go, but her vision is shrouded. This stretch of Deadlands is made of ash. Dust ferrets and twists across the flat terrain. It’s scarred with lots of asphalt clotting the earth, proof that a highway once ran through here. The last thing she sees is Helmud. He turns and waves his long thin arm. And then, within moments, El Capitan and Helmud fade into the murky vaporous distance. She has to cut the headlights. All goes dark.
EL CAPITAN
COOLER
EL CAPITAN SLIDES DOWN THE RAMP from the stunning pen, past the vats and shelves and railed ceiling. He reaches up and grabs a hook. “Jesus,” he says to Helmud, “this place is perfect.”
“Perfect,” Helmud says.
“We could’ve survived on our own here, Helmud. Do you know that?”
“Know that?”
“This Bradwell is a lucky shit,” El Capitan mutters.
“Lucky shit,” Helmud says.
They’d gotten here quicker than El Capitan thought. The streets were quiet. The few people he came across quickly ran from him, dipping back into dim doorways or running down alleys. If they didn’t recognize Helmud and him specifically, they saw the uniform, which is usually enough.
He is still moving as fast as he can. He admits that he loves that damn car. One of the reasons he beat up the driver was that he wanted to gun the engine through the Deadlands. So yes, he wants to get back to it, but also he wants it to keep Pressia safe. If he comes back and she’s gone or only parts of her remain, he isn’t sure he can take it. There’s something about the girl. She’s good-hearted. He hasn’t met someone like that in a long time—or is it that he just stopped looking?
It’s strange to have someone out there, waiting for him. There are stories, legendary ones, of lovers who died for each other during the Detonations. People who, like El Capitan, knew it might be coming. They’d made escape plans, had holdout supplies and meeting places. The meeting places, though, didn’t work for these lovers. One would wait for the other. Maybe, according to the plans, you were only supposed to wait so long—half an hour, forty minutes—and then move on to safer ground. But these lovers always waited too
long. They waited forever. They waited until the skies turned to red ash. He heard someone sing a song about lovers like this once and never forgot it. It was strange. The guy was just standing there on the street singing.
Standing on the station platform
nothing comes here anymore.
Watch the trails of vapor rise
and settle on the floor.
I see my ascending lover
glance at her watch and smile.
She knows that I’ve been waiting
for a lifetime and a while.
And then the wind it lifts her
and she breezes out of here.
I’m stuck with windblown ash
that fastens to my tears.
Ash and water, ash and water makes the perfect stone.
I’ll stand right here and wait forever ’til I’ve turned to stone.
El Capitan had been younger, on patrol, when he heard the song. One of the other soldiers said, “Jesus, shoot him already.” But El Capitan said, “No. Just let him sing.” He never forgot the song.
He walks into the cooler and, sure enough, there’s one of the rat-like animals in a cage, just as Pressia’s map promised. He thinks of stealing it. It’s plump. The smell of charred meat is strong. He hears Helmud start to make clicking noises as if he’s calling to the animal. “Mmmm,” Helmud moans.
“Yes, yes. Mmmm. But we can’t get distracted.”
The problem is that El Capitan doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Something out of place? Not easy to do when you’ve never been somewhere before. There are the two unstuffed armchairs, the footlocker, the metal walls, the railings, and hooks. There’s a metal bucket of burned cloth, the charred remains of a backpack, and a small metal box. He picks up the box, opens it; it makes a strange plinking noise then goes dead. He shoves it in his pocket, just in case it’s important.
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