Burn (Pure #3)(127)

*

The orbs light each room. Iralene has chosen the music—the same song they danced to at the picnic, which seems so long ago. It seeps in from unseen speakers. They hold each other in the living room—they’re swaying more than dancing. There are voices in the hall now, thudding footsteps.

Partridge whispers, “The sunlight isn’t warm. It’s not real.”

“What is reality anyway?” Iralene says.

“They’re coming for us.”

“Let them come.”

“Iralene,” he says. He cups her face and touches her cheeks with his thumbs.

There’s banging on the door, a heavy body throwing itself against it again and again.

*

By the time they reach the street, they can see the sky through the gaping hole. The ash swirls in.

Pressia says, “It’s happening.”

“Ash,” Lyda says.

Beckley is carrying Pressia’s frail grandfather on his back. “I will remember what it was like, won’t I?” Beckley says.

Pressia’s grandfather lifts his hand in the air and catches light flecks of ash in his palm. He looks at Pressia, a shocked expression on his face, and says, “My girl.”

Pressia starts to cry. “Yes,” she says. “I’m here.” Her mother is dead. Bradwell is gone. And Partridge has chosen his own ending. But she has gotten one person back.

There are others on the streets. Some are screaming and crying. They grip their children to their chests. Some are holding on to their valuables—gold candlestick holders, boxes of memorabilia, their guns. In fact, at this distance, they’re holding on so tightly that they look fused to their earthly possessions.

Some start to run—but to where? There’s nowhere to go.

The electrical grid has been compromised. The lights flicker and die. The monorail has come to a grating stop. Beckley leads them to the set of hidden stairs along the secret elevators, now stalled like everything else.

They get to the ground level of the Dome and walk through the vacant grounds of the academy, past dormitories, the darkened windows of classrooms, even across a football field—its white lines striping the fake turf—and by a basketball court behind a chain-link fence. Once upon a time, she’d been told her father was a point guard. Her real father—she’ll probably never hear his voice…He’s out there.

Finally, they come to the soy fields, which are green and leafy. The rows curve with the shape of the Dome. They walk and walk. Pressia can feel the wind sweeping in from somewhere unseen.

Lyda pulls out her spear. The soot is thicker now, whirling in the wind. She says, “It’s snowing.”

Close to the ground, a triangle of the Dome has fallen onto the soy fields, onto the plants with their green leaves and yellow seedpods. The ground, littered with broken shards, crunches under their boots. They walk toward the hole itself and to the edge of the Dome. Pressia looks out into that ashen world, her homeland. Trudging up the hill are the survivors, coming to claim what’s theirs. She starts to run toward them and searches the faces for Bradwell, knowing he won’t be among them.

But there are El Capitan and Helmud—soot streaked and pained. When El Capitan sees Pressia, he stops and falls to his knees. A white piece of paper is clenched in his fist. He raises it over his head like a small white flag.

There is no victory. There’s always loss.

This is his surrender.

This is her surrender.

Her heart is saying, Enough, enough, enough. I give.

And she expects her heart to stop beating.

She’s lost too much.

And she knows that out there, she will find Bradwell’s body. It will hit her again and again that he’s dead. How many blows can she take?

But her heart beats in her chest and keeps beating.

It beats her back to life.

Her own heart will not surrender.

And so this isn’t the end.

This is only another start.

She stops and looks back over her shoulder. Walking through the black snow toward her are Beckley, carrying her grandfather, alive after all, on his back, and Lyda and the baby inside of her, protected under her handmade armor. She turns back to El Capitan. He staggers to his feet, Helmud weighty on his back, and walks toward Pressia. He hugs her. When they were in the fog surrounded by creatures they thought would kill them, El Capitan said, If you were the person standing there with me, I’d always, always stay. This is the promise she needs to believe in. Stand with me. Stay.

This is her family now.

She and El Capitan and Helmud turn and look at the Pures who are heading into the fields, the green soy leaves shimmering around their ankles. They’re pale and wide-eyed, moving like timid ghosts toward the broken edge of their world.

Somewhere, Partridge and Iralene are sitting at a table in a fake kitchen swollen bright with fake sunlight—while batteries inside of orbs are slowly winding down. If people come after them, she hopes that they’ll at least fight. This is the final bit of faith that she must have in him.

But she’s chosen this truth—grotesquely beautiful and beautifully grotesque—this world.

“What are we going to do now?” El Capitan whispers.

“What now?” Helmud says.

“No more blood,” Pressia says.

Her heart beats and beats and beats—each time like a detonation in her own chest—and every moment from here on out is a new world.