There’s no stopping her. As soon as Partridge starts running, she’s after him. They charge to Bradwell and start whacking at the creatures with their knives and hooks. Partridge’s body feels deeply strong and fast. The coding must be getting closer to full effect. But still there are too many of the small Dusts. He can’t keep up. Bradwell staggers forward, then loses his footing. The blanket of earth covers his legs, immobilizing him. He twists his upper body, like a hooked fish, but it’s no use.
The Dusts are on Partridge and Pressia now too. They have claws and sharp teeth. He can see the small dots of blood blooming on his shirt—Pressia’s too—and the small Dusts have moved up Bradwell’s back, attacking the birds beneath his shirt.
Bradwell cries out to Partridge and Pressia, “No, go back!”
But they keep fighting. They kick and flail, slicing the Dusts, shoving them off Bradwell.
But now the next wave of Dusts is rolling at them, chest-high. And behind the wave, there are pillars of Dusts rising. They seem to have heads, horns, spiked backs. Partridge is sure that this is the end. He’ll never get any closer to his mother than this.
But then Pressia shouts above the high-pitched keening of the beasts. “He’s coming! I hear him!”
“Who?” Bradwell says.
Partridge hears another strange sound too, a bass rumble running below the squealing—a growling motor and then a blasting horn.
A car, a miraculous black car, comes barreling through the waves of Dusts, plowing through them. There’s a spray of ribs, teeth, shining eyes. The car skids to a sideways stop right in front of them. Partridge can barely see through the new gust of ash torn loose by the black car, but he hears a voice shouting at them from the car. “Get in, goddamn it! Get in!”
He isn’t sure whether to trust the voice or not, but he’s in no position to be choosy. He turns and sees Pressia help Bradwell to his feet. “Open the door!” Bradwell shouts at him.
Partridge runs for the door, opens it. Bradwell and Pressia jump in, then Partridge beside her. The car takes off before the door slams.
The driver sits close to the steering wheel because of something he’s wearing on his back. He looks over his shoulder at Partridge, his face marred and burned. “That him, Pressia?” he shouts. “That the Pure?”
“Yes!” Pressia shouts. She knows the driver. “And this is Bradwell.”
The driver yanks the wheel, hitting a Dust head-on, creating a cloud of ash that rains dirt and debris on the car. Wiry and lean, he moves like someone charged by a temper. Partridge grips the seat. In the Dome, they all rely on the rails. He barely remembers cars, and he’s never been in a speeding car, driven by a maniac.
“I thought you two were dead,” Pressia says.
“So did we!”
“This is El Capitan!” Pressia says.
Bradwell points to the windshield. “A herd of them! Jesus!” They hit a series of Dusts, each exploding against the car.
“Do we know where we’re going to find the Pure’s mother?” El Capitan says.
Partridge grabs the seat in front of him and pulls himself forward. “What do you know about my mother?”
And then as if from nowhere a head appears on the driver’s back. A face—small, pale, and pruned with scars. He opens the small dark hole of his mouth and says, “Mother.”
“Whoa!” Partridge says and rears back, slamming into the backseat.
The driver laughs, pulls the wheel so hard that Partridge bangs his head against the window.
“And that’s Helmud,” Pressia says. “His brother.”
In addition to all the bites and scratches on Bradwell’s body, one of the two seams running up the back of his shirt has split. Through the rip, Partridge sees one of the birds in Bradwell’s back—gray shifting wings, some tinged with blood. There might be only three birds. Partridge had expected more what with all of their motion. Two shift restlessly. The calmest one, the one he sees clearly, has a beak drilled into Bradwell’s muscle and skin, scarred with old burns. His skin puckers around its red beak. Its shiny dark eye is masked in black feathers. For a moment it seems as if the bird is looking at Partridge, startled—its eye beady and still—as if it wants to ask a question. It looks sickly and limp.
“One of the birds,” Partridge says, his mouth pasty with ash. “It’s injured.”
“Your mother will have medicine,” El Capitan says. “That’s what the Dome wanted us to protect if we find her. I bet she’ll have something that’ll work on your injuries.”
“Meds?” Bradwell says, looking at Pressia.
“If we ever do find her, they don’t want anything in her possession damaged,” she says.
It dawns on Partridge that he doesn’t really know these people. He’s stepped into the middle of their lives, and they’re strangers to him. He doesn’t understand them or this world they live in. Will his mother be a stranger to him too?
He looks out the window. They’re moving fast. The flat blackened landscape is a blur. Is his mother alive in those hills? Did she tell him the story so that he would remember it all these years later? When was the last time he felt like he knew what he was doing? He stares at the cracked swan pendant hanging from the necklace around Pressia’s neck. It sways with the rhythm of the jostling car, tapping Pressia’s blood-flecked, soot-streaked collarbones. Its blue eye is small and fragile. What’s it good for? What does it mean?
LYDA
IT
AFTER SHE STEPS OUT of the last compartment and the door slides shut behind her, there’s the thunk of a heavy lock. But no one from Special Forces is there to meet her, as the guard told her there would be.
She looks out at the dark landscape, the swirls of ashy dust and, far off, twisted woodlands, and a city—toppled buildings, small but distinct smoke trails lifting into the sky. She’s alone, holding the pale blue box in her hands.
She turns back to the Dome, gazes up at its massive sides. She knocks politely on the door, knowing that there isn’t anyone on the other side. She hears a strange far-off howl from the woods. She doesn’t turn around. She pounds with her fist. “No one’s here!” she shouts. “No one’s here to escort me!” She almost starts to cry and stops herself. She lets her fist slide down the door.
She turns then and notices the wheel ruts. They stop abruptly in front of the Dome, and she can make out the large rectangular seam of what might be the door to the loading dock, the one the guard had mentioned. Maybe he shouldn’t have said something like that to her. Now she knows that the Dome isn’t completely shut off. They’re in communication with the outside. This goes against everything she’s been taught. She shouldn’t be allowed to know about the loading dock. But maybe the guard knew it didn’t matter what she did and didn’t know now—not if she was never coming back.
She takes a few steps forward. Her shoes slip in the grit. She’s used to the tiled halls of the girls’ academy, the stone paths through the turf, unmoving under her feet, and the rubbery grip of the rehab center’s flooring. She’s on a downward slope and so her pace naturally picks up, and she realizes that she is truly alone, under the eye of the real sun, under a bank of clouds that are limitlessly connected to the sky, the universe, and she starts to run. The girls’ academy doesn’t have any athletic teams although they do calisthenics every morning in the gymnasium for a full hour in matching one-piece jumpers—shorts and striped short-sleeved tops that zip up the front. She hates the jumpers and the calisthenics. When was the last time she sprinted like this? She’s a fast runner. Her legs feel strong beneath her.
She runs for a while, closer and closer to the woodlands. And then she hears something buzzing, a low electric pulse. It comes from the stunted trees, but she can’t tell which direction. She stops running but is surprised by how it feels like she’s still in motion. The pounding of her feet on the earth is now the pounding in her chest. She scans the woods and then sees a large figure moving quickly, glinting. Don’t worry, she remembers the guard saying. Th
ey’re creatures. They’re not human.
Was that supposed to be comforting?
“Who is it?” she shouts. “Who’s there?”
The shape glints again, as if its skin reflects light.
And then it stands tall and walks out on long, muscular legs, almost spider-like in the delicacy of its movement. She decides that it’s Special Forces because of its suit, which is formfitting and camouflaged with a dark mix of colors to blend with mud and ash. Pale arms bulky with muscle are secured with weapons, shiny black guns that she has no name for. Its hands are too large for its body, but fitted perfectly into the guns’ handles. She sees the glint of knife blades too, and they scare her more, as if it is also prepared for a more intimate killing.
Its face is thick-jawed, lean and masculine, although she can’t quite think of it as male. Its eyes are narrow slits, hooded by a forehead that juts out. It stares at her then walks up close. She doesn’t move.
“You’re here to meet me?” she asks. “You’re Special Forces?”
It sniffs the air around her and nods.
“Do you know who I am?”
It nods again. If it’s not human, what is it? How did it come to work for the Dome? Is it a wretch that they’ve rebuilt for the Dome’s protection?
“Do you know where you’re supposed to take me?”
“Yes.” The voice is human. In fact, it’s shot through with melancholy and longing. He says, “I know you.”
This is frightening. She can’t say why. “I’m your charge,” she says, hoping that this was what he meant. “Or maybe hostage is the better word?”
“Of course,” he says, and then he turns and crouches. “I will carry you. It’s fastest.”
She hesitates. “A piggyback ride?” She’s surprised she’s used the term. It’s been ages.
He doesn’t respond, just stays still.
She looks around. She has no other options. “I have this box,” she says. “I’m supposed to deliver it.”
He reaches up and takes the box from her. “I’ll keep it safe.”
She pauses again but then climbs onto his back. She locks her wrists around his thick neck. “Okay,” she says.
He sets off, hurtling through the woods, away from the city. His gait is fast and smooth and nearly silent. Even when he jumps large outcroppings of underbrush, he lands softly. Sometimes he stops abruptly, hides behind a stand of trees. Lyda hears the sharp yap of an errant dog, and someone singing. Singing! Here, outside the Dome, singing endures. The idea surprises her.
And now they’re running again. The cold air fills her lungs. She’s breathless. Her scarf covers her nose and mouth, but also her ears, creating loud tunnels of wind. Is this what it was like when people used to ride horses—all wind and trees and speed? She’s on the soldier’s back—her arms around his neck, her legs around his back, as if she were a child. But he’s not a soldier. He’s not wholly human. And she’s not a child. She’s an offering.
She hears the electrical buzzing sound. It’s coming from all different directions. He stops, raises his hand to his mouth, and makes some kind of call that Lyda can’t hear—maybe a sound out of her register. But she knows it’s a call because she feels the vibration through his ribs locked in her knees. He stands stock-still.
“We’ll wait,” he says and bends to his knees, letting her get down.
She stands, feeling wobbly. “You know who we’re looking for?” she says.
He looks at her sharply over his shoulder as if he’s hurt by some kind of accusation. “Of course.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
They wait awhile longer.
“How do you know me?” she says.
He looks at her through his narrow eyes. “I was,” he says.
“You were what?” she asks.
“I was,” he says again. “And now I’m not.”
She sees clearly now that he’s not old—just about half a dozen years older than she is, perhaps. His face doesn’t resemble anything she’s ever seen before—the thick brow, the heavy jaw—and yet could he have once been someone else? “Do I know you from the academy? Did you attend?”
He stares at her as if he’s trying to remember something long lost.
“You were an academy boy. You became Special Forces. This is what they turned you into?” She thinks of the small, elite corps. This can’t be what was done to them. It would be impossibly cruel. She lifts her hand. She touches one of the guns. She can see the place in his arm where the metal meets the folds of his skin.
He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move. His eyes simply shift to her face.
“What about your family? Do they know you’re here?”
“I was,” he says again. “And now I’m not.”
PRESSIA
LIGHT
PRESSIA FEELS LOST. The dust swirls around the car. The barren landscape stretches on before them. East. What was once a national preserve. That’s all they have. And that might not even be a real clue. It might mean nothing. She says, “Smoke signals would help.”
Bradwell looks at her sharply. “You’re right,” he says as if he’s been thinking along the same lines. “The Dome would see smoke signals, though, but we need something like it.”
“Recite it all again,” Pressia says to Partridge. “The birthday card. Take it from the top. El Capitan hasn’t heard it yet.”
“It’s useless,” Partridge says. “There’s nothing out here. There’s nothing farther east but a hill and beyond that more dead barren nothingness. What are we doing out here, except risking our lives?”
“Recite it again,” Bradwell says.
Partridge sighs. “Always walk in the light. Follow your soul. May it have wings. You are my guiding star, like the one that rose in the east and guided the Wise Men. Happy 9th Birthday, Partridge! Love, Mom. Ta da!”
“Always walk in the light,” El Capitan says.
“The light,” Helmud says.
“I’ve got nothing,” El Capitan says.
“Nothing,” Helmud says.
Pressia unclasps the necklace, pain slicing through the back of her neck. She stares at it in her palm, its blue jewel of an eye. She puts it up to one of her own eyes and squints through it, tinging the desolate land blue. She says, “How did 3-D glasses work? You know, the ones in the movie theaters that the people wore while eating from little paper buckets?”
“There were different kinds,” Bradwell says. “Some used two different-colored lenses, one red and one blue, which made sense of a film that really had two images running at the same time. Other glasses were polarized, horizontal and vertical images being worked out by the lenses.”
“Could someone send a light message that only people looking through a certain lens could see?” Pressia asks, musing aloud.
“In the Dome, there was this kid named Arvin Weed who sent messages to the girls’ dorm shining a laser pen on the grass lawn of the commons,” Partridge says, tapping the window with his knuckle, gazing off as if he’s trying to picture the grass lawn now. “Some said he was trying to invent a type of laser that only his girlfriend could see.”
“So if you want to be found and you can’t use smoke signals,” Pressia says, “you might use a kind of light that can only be seen through a certain lens.”
Bradwell says, “What do you know about photons, Partridge? Infrared or UV? Do they teach a lot of science in the Dome?”
“I wasn’t the best student,” he says. “We have ways of detecting these kinds of light pretty simply. But Weed’s right. There are other levels of light. He could send a beam right at his girlfriend—from his window to hers—and she could see it through a lens that only sees different frequencies of light out of our visual range. You know, two sixty-two, three forty-nine, three seventy-five.” Pressia and Bradwell exchange a glance. No, neither of them knows this kind of thing. Pressia sees a twinge in Bradwell’s face. She thinks of how much he loves to know things. They’ve both been robbed of an education that
Partridge has taken for granted. Partridge doesn’t notice. He goes on, “And they could need a lens to be detected. The beams would also have to be directed right at the person looking through that lens, right? Because lasers don’t scatter light.”
“It’s like how dogs can hear whistles that are out of our hearing range,” Bradwell says.
“I guess so,” Partridge says. “I never had a dog.”
“Light can exist on a spectrum that can be seen only through one kind of filter? Is that right?” Pressia says.
“Exactly,” Partridge says.
Pressia feels a shiver run through her body. She holds the swan’s blue eye to hers again. The landscape swims in front of her again, awash in blue light. “What if this isn’t just the blue eye of a swan. What if it’s our lens, our filter.”
“Always walk in the light,” Bradwell says.
Pressia looks at the hills before them, and sweeps back and forth. She passes a small glinting white light, stops, and returns to it. The light sits like a beacon, like a star on top of a Christmas tree during the Before.
“What is it?” Bradwell asks.
“I don’t know,” she says. “A small white light.” Pressia readjusts her view and sees another white light, flickering on top of another distant tree on the hillside. “Could it be her?” If this is the work of her mother, then it’s the first real thing Pressia has ever known of her—on her own, without stories and photographs, and the murky past. Her mother is a flickering white light pulsing in trees.
“Aribelle Cording Willux,” Bradwell says again, like the last time, a little awed and mystified.
“Can I look?” Partridge asks.
Pressia hands him the gem.
Partridge pulls himself to the middle of the backseat, up to the edge. He lowers his head and squints through the gem. “It’s just a cloudy blue haze.”
“Keep looking,” she says. She isn’t crazy. She saw the light. It was there, flashing.
And then he sees it too. Pressia knows he does. “Wait,” he says. “It’s straight ahead.”
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