Wilda nods. She sits up, pulls her legs to her chest, and rests her chin on her knees.
“You didn’t see how they lived or what was in their homes or anything much at all?”
Wilda shakes her head. No. She looks like she’s going to cry, so Pressia changes the subject. “Do you know how to swim?”
The girl stares at her.
Pressia lies down and pretends to swim on her back. “I don’t know if I ever really learned how to swim,” she says. “Funny. It’s something you think I should know about myself, right?”
Wilda lies down and pretends to swim too.
Then they hear a thud—Bradwell’s boots landing in the shallow end. He walks over. “They’ve been sighted. Not far off. What are you two doing?”
“Swimming. What else? We’re in a pool,” Pressia says.
He ducks into the gazebo. “Of course,” he says with a smile.
“Do you know how to swim?” she asks him.
He nods.
She sits up. “Too bad the cadet didn’t know how to swim.”
He looks at her.
“I read the clippings in the morgue.”
“Were you snooping?”
“Were you hiding them?”
“No.”
“Then I wasn’t snooping,” she says. “Why do you have them out?”
Wilda gets up and starts chasing after Freedle, who dances around her head.
“After my parents’ funeral, I found them in a small plastic ziplock bag in their footlocker. My parents were building a case to bring Willux down. They thought they might have a lead.”
“But Willux was awarded the Silver Star for trying to save the cadet. What kind of dirt were they looking for?”
“I’ll never really know.”
“In the clipping, Walrond called Willux’s attempt to save the cadet heroism. Maybe Walrond and Novikov were members of the Seven. My mother said that one of the Seven died young, just after the tattoos were put in.”
“I don’t know about Novikov, but Walrond wasn’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just am.”
“Are you saying you’re going with your instincts here, ignoring reason and fact?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve done research. After my parents were murdered, I followed every lead. The day of the Detonations, my aunt told me to stay close to the house. My uncle was working on the car. They were on the inside, awaiting word. But I didn’t know what was at stake for them that day. I told them I wouldn’t go far, but I rode my bike to the old training grounds. That’s where I was when the Detonations hit. Why do you think I’ve got waterbirds in my back? I was running from the bounce of light on the river. My bike fused to the tree I’d leaned it against. It took me hours to get back to my aunt and uncle’s, where I found them wrecked and dying. It went on for days. You know all that. I was in bad shape, and there was the dead cat in the box, the engine, the way he begged her to turn the key.”
“Yes.” Pressia imagines Bradwell alone by a river, dazed by the bright white light, the searing pain of the burns and the feel of daggers in his back. “I’m sorry.”
“About what? I don’t want your pity any more than you want mine.”
“Okay then,” Pressia says. “Tell me one good reason Walrond can’t be one of the Seven. Just one.”
“Because if he was one of the Seven, it means he became friends with my parents only to pump them for info. It means he was a double agent, and he might have been playing both sides against each other, which could have gotten my parents killed. And even in that stupid little newspaper clipping, did he mean what he said to the reporter, or was he already playing everyone? Was it heroism, or did he know the truth about the cadet?”
Pressia looks at Bradwell. He’s staring out through the gazebo’s tilted frame. His eyes look red, his cheeks flushed and streaked with ash. “What’s the truth?”
“It was murder.”
“What kind of murder?”
“Willux’s first.”
Pressia remembers the grainy newspaper photograph of Ivan Novikov—his seriousness, the haunted expression. She sighs. “Novikov and Walrond were connected to Willux at the time when the Seven was first started—tightly connected. They’re two important names. There’s no way around it.”
“He was good to me,” Bradwell says, and he looks at Pressia. “You know what I mean?”
She nods. “But it doesn’t mean he was all good, all the time, to everyone.”
“We should go. The mothers should be here.”
Wilda is holding Freedle in her cupped hands. She gives the cicada to Pressia, who tucks him back in her pocket and gets up. They walk back to the shallow end and hoist themselves out of the pool. Pressia glances back and tries to imagine what it was like before the Detonations—the blue water, the gazebo, tall and white with gauzy curtains. Who lived this life?
“They’re here,” Bradwell says.
“One at a time,” Wilda says, and she makes the sign of the cross and its circle on her chest.
El Capitan has laid down his gun. He’s kneeling on the ground, bowed at her feet. Helmud has tightened to a fearful knot on his back. And Pressia has the answer to her question. One of the mothers stands before them—scarred, burned, one child fused to her shoulders, legs wrapped and lost around her waist. She’s weary, tough, and lean. The mothers once lived these lives. They once had houses with pools and gazebos. This is the earth they’ve inherited.
Wilda wraps her hand around Pressia’s doll-head fist and whispers, “We want our son returned? This girl?” Pressia is sure she means, Who’s this and what’s going to happen to us now?
EL CAPITAN
BASEMENT BOYS
THEY’RE IN A NICER PART of the Meltlands. The houses’ footprints are larger and more have swimming pools, now just pits of crumbling cement. The mothers agreed to take them to Partridge, but Bradwell and El Capitan had to leave all their weapons. El Capitan locked the car with his rifle inside. The mothers only let Bradwell strap Fignan to his back because Pressia convinced them that he wasn’t a bomb, only a kind of library.
El Capitan’s calf muscle burns deep into the core. The robotic spider’s legs are locked in almost as deep as the bone. Every time he flexes his foot, the pain spikes, shooting up his leg. It reminds him of the scorched ache after the Detonations, when Helmud was fused to him. The pain whispers, “Remember me? Remember that suffering? Feel it still?”
He remembers the morning of the Detonations. His brother was a chatty kid, smart and funny—smarter than El Capitan, that was for sure. The last thing El Capitan said to his brother? “Don’t be a moron, Helmud. Don’t be such a friggin’ moron.” Helmud was on the back of the motorbike with El Capitan driving. They were going Dumpster diving at a minimart. Helmud said he’d distract people by singing. Thing was, Helmud had a beautiful voice. Their mother said God was in it. Their mom was gone by this point, and they both missed her.
And now? Helmud is a friggin’ moron, and all these years of keeping them both alive are about done. They’re going to die in five hours and twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds—last he checked. Strange to know the exact second you’re going to die. A little mystery snipped out of your life.
At some point he and Helmud will peel off, the way dogs sometimes run away to die.
The mother stops and waves them in close. “The air’s uneasy.”
Then a hand-whittled arrow sinks into the ground near their feet. Another skips off a concrete pad. “Basement Boys!” she shouts. “Run for it!”
Basement Boys? What the hell is a Basement Boy? And please, El Capitan thinks, anything but run for it. His leg’s on fire. Jesus. He might not make it. Pressia whips the girl into her arms and takes off. Bradwell’s beside her. El Capitan tries to keep up, but he’s hobbled by pain. He can feel the remains of Helmud’s thighs; the muscles flex as if El Capitan’s a horse that Helmud wants to get going faster. “Ease up, Helmud! Jesus!”
Up ahead, the mother has dived behind a corroded water tank lying on its side next to a low wall. A few more arrows whine through the air. She pulls out a section of metal pipe and a case of thin darts, probably poisoned. She takes aim at a raised lid by the flattened remains of a house across the street.
El Capitan runs to her spot and curls against the water tank. “What the hell’s a Basement Boy?” He grabs his thigh, wincing.
“Teenagers when the Detonations hit,” the mother explains. “They were home from school, their parents worked, and they survived cocooned in basements, playing video games. We’ve tried to tend to them, but they want their independence. Some of their hands are seared to plastic controllers. They hacked them down but the remains are there in their palms. They’ve got homemade weapons.”
“Ah.”
“Pale snipers, they burrow into an area underground. Rumor has it there’s one rogue band of them that killed a few of those Death Dealers, stripped them of weapons, and are now heavily armed.”
“Death Dealers? You mean Special Forces. Smart.” He looks at her sweetly and says, “Too bad we had to leave our weapons.”
The mother eyes him suspiciously.
“What can I say? I’d like to help,” El Capitan says with a smile.
She digs through her heavy skirts into unseen holsters. “You know how to use blow darts?”
“It’s an art.” He’d dabbled in it during one hunting phase early on. “I’m probably rusty.”
She pulls out a second pipe and a set of darts. “Careful,” she says. “Poison-tipped.” Her blue-eyed kid looks at him.
“I’ll be careful!”
“Careful!” Helmud says.
He looks around the edge of the tank and sees a shadowy flicker near the concrete pad across the street. He raises the pipe to his lips and blows just as a pale head appears. The dart rips the Basement Boy’s ear. He cups the ear with his hand as blood pours down his neck. He disappears.
“Nice,” the mother says.
“Nice,” Helmud says back to her, almost as a greeting.
They push on from an old Jacuzzi to a wall someone made from pavers and flagstone to a beat-up, stripped-down minivan. They pick off Basement Boys one by one until they make it out of their territory. El Capitan’s leg feels shot through with fire.
Bradwell, Pressia, and the girl are hiding behind a collapsed two-car garage.
“We’re clear,” the mother says.
Pressia says to El Capitan, “You were limping all the way.” She was watching him?
“Muscle cramp,” he says. “I’m fine.”
“I’m fine,” Helmud says, as if she’d asked.
“Stay straight on this path. Due west,” the mother says.
“You’re not coming with us?” El Capitan says. “I thought we made a good team.”
She pulls off her jacket. Her shoulder’s been grazed. “Not the only ones who know how to poison. Leave us. We’ll never make it.”
“We’ll go for help!” Pressia says.
El Capitan knows that he can’t volunteer to run for help. He might blow up in the process. No time.
“No,” she says. “We’ll be found. Mothers will come for us.”
“Freedle,” Bradwell says. “He can get a bird’s-eye view and find other mothers. Draw them here.”
Pressia pulls Freedle from her pocket. “Should we add a note?”
“Just let him go,” the mother says, sitting down and cupping her child’s head. “They will know.”
Pressia cups Freedle. “Get help. Find mothers, lead them here,” she says. She lifts her hands and Freedle takes off, batting his wings, flitting off into the ashen air.
“Go now. You’ll be fine,” the mother says.
“You sure about that?” El Capitan says.
She squints up at him. “No. I’m not sure of anything.”
PARTRIDGE
TWO BY TWO
FOR THE LAST FEW HOURS, Partridge and Lyda have worked steadily on the maps. Lyda’s been adding details of the girls’ academy, the rehabilitation center, the street where she once lived, its parks and shops.
Partridge feels like a kid again, an art project sprawled on the floor, lying on his stomach across from Lyda. He wants to hold on to this moment—the Christmas lights blinking overhead, Mother Hestra telling Syden a story about a fox, and Lyda bent over her work. Mother Hestra is letting them whisper.
“I just realized,” Lyda says, “that Christmas is coming.”
In the Dome, they exchange simple gifts—no need to create a lot of products with limited resources to fill up a limited space. The women are encouraged to make aprons and pot holders (even though no one cooks much anymore), scarves (even though the Dome is temperaturecontrolled), and beaded jewelry that the men buy from one woman to give to another—identical bead necklaces trading hands.
“I’m glad we’ll miss it,” Partridge says. “Last Christmas, my father gave me file folders—assorted colors.”
“I’ll miss the way the little kids make paper snowflakes and stick them to windows.”
“I stayed with my science teacher, Mr. Hollenback, and his family. We went to the zoo.”
“You didn’t go home?”
“My father’s always in the middle of something. And with Sedge gone, what was the point?”
She looks down at her map. Does she feel sorry for him? He wasn’t trying to elicit sympathy. “What’s the zoo like at Christmas?” she asks.
The academy boys were dragged there on so many field trips that Partridge grew to despise it. Even Hollenback’s two kids seemed to hate it. Julby complained about her saggy balloon, and Mrs. Hollenback kept trying to get Jarv, the two-year-old, to repeat animal noises. “The lion says ‘roar!’” But Jarv refused—either stubborn or not ready. Partridge hated the bleached-out smell of cleansers, the animals’ dimmed expressions, and the guards with their tranquilizer guns. “It was worse at Christmas—as if the animals should have been merry. But they’re never merry, and what do they know about Christmas?” Lyda nods. “You know how most people call it the Two-by-Two?” It was a Noah’s ark reference that stuck. “My friends call it the Cage’s Cage because that’s what it feels like—one set of caged animals looking at another set of caged animals.”
“One Christmas,” Lyda says, “before my father left, he gave me a snow globe of children sledding. He told me to shake it. So, I did. And the snow swirled up.” She stops speaking.
“What?”
“I just knew in that moment that I was a girl in a dome shaking a dome with a girl in it.”
“That’s the way I always felt at the zoo. A boy in a cage staring at animals in cages.”
She tilts her head and smiles sadly. “We’ll miss the winter formal.”
He remembers dancing with her under the streamers and fake stars. “I’d like to feed you some of those cupcakes,” he whispers.
“I’m going to make you a present,” she says.
“What kind of present?”
“I’ll think of something.”
There’s a knock at the end of the tunnel leading to the subway car, and he knows this moment is over. It’s that kind of knock—sharp, urgent, bad news. “Don’t move,” Mother Hestra says then limps to the tunnel, Syden bobbing along with her, and crawls up.
Partridge pulls himself forward on his elbows like a soldier until his face and Lyda’s are just an inch apart. He tilts his head toward hers and kisses her. Her lips are sweet and soft. “Paper snowflakes,” he whispers. “Is that all it would take to make you happy?” They kiss again.
“Yes,” she whispers. “And you.” She kisses him. “This.”
The hatch is opened; light spills down. There’s rustling. Lyda jerks away and leans into her map, smiling.
Mother Hestra reappears. “They intercepted a message,” she says, brushing dirt from her clothes. “Your people are here.”
“Our people?” Partridge says.
>
“Something’s wrong in the city. Trouble from the Dome. I’m going to leave you; I’ve got to go for reinforcements.”
“Leave us?” Lyda asks.
“Who’s here?” Partridge says.
After Mother Hestra departs, there’s more noise in the tunnel. A voice says, “Where the hell does this take us?”
And then the dim echo: “Take us.”
El Capitan arrives, boots first. “We made it,” he says, dirt-streaked and ashen. He reaches for the back of one of the subway seats and eases himself into it with a grunt.
“Who’s we?” Partridge says. Hard to say if he means just Helmud and him or someone else.
Bradwell emerges from the tunnel next, then Pressia.
Partridge’s sister. His sister!
They’re dirty, sooty, breathless.
Pressia turns to help someone. And there’s a little girl. She’s pale and wide-eyed with shiny red hair—a child from the Dome? A Pure? For a second, he thinks of Christmas again—the academy girls, flanked by chaperones, caroling down the halls of the boys’ dormitory. But they aren’t here to sing. Partridge feels a buzz of excitement in his limbs. He didn’t know that some part of himself was waiting for them to arrive—to free Lyda and him from the mothers? He wants out.
But then too there’s a sick churn in his gut. Something’s wrong. “This isn’t good, is it?” he says.
“Nope,” Bradwell says, shaking his head. “And nice to see you again too.”
Within a few minutes, the subway car is abuzz. Lyda is getting food and water for everyone, using their provisions, but it’s necessary. The group is haggard. Partridge can’t look away from Pressia. He sees his mother in her freckles, the way she dips her head when she smiles, and the gentle way she leads this little girl to a seat, whispering something that makes the girl smile, even though she looks scared. Who is this girl with no marks or fusings?
Lyda whispers to Partridge, “Is she a Pure?”
He shrugs.
Partridge walks up to Pressia. Should he hug her? She doesn’t seem the type. She holds the girl’s hand. “How are you doing?” he asks quietly. He wonders if she dreams about their mom the way he does, doomed to find her dead body everywhere he goes. Would Pressia ever confess to dreams like his? He doubts it. She holds things in. Still, she knows what it’s like to have found your mother after years of thinking she was dead, only to have her taken again. If they never talk about it, it’s still something they share.
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