Burn (Pure #3)(57)

His senses have been coded, but the smoke riding on the air limits his vision and sense of smell. “We have to keep moving,” he says.

“Are we being followed?” she asks.

“They’re weak,” he says, “and there aren’t many. We just need to keep going.”

More than once, they hear footsteps, the rattle of brush. Is it Special Forces? Are they being tracked? If it is soldiers, they don’t open fire.

And then, once in the open again, Pressia sees the swaths of blood in the dusty dirt. It’s the scene of a battle—the bloody tracks of bodies being dragged away. But whose bodies were dragged—mothers and their children or Special Forces? They pass a mound of debris caught against a berm. Maybe there was a highway here, maybe a holding pond for water. But the berm caught everything that didn’t blow over it. They pass a pickup truck with vacant headlights, a grocery cart, busted concrete slabs, iron rods, and dirt and ash and stuff so blown it’s beyond recognition. Somebody made the truck. Somebody drove it. Somebody pushed the cart and somebody laid the concrete. And there, under a slur of dried mud, a flattened ball. She can almost hear the child kicking it. It crushes her.

After a while, they come across another bloody mess—this time, the bodies of the survivors that haven’t been taken away. The dead litter the ground, their limbs akimbo, the gunshot wounds gaping and dark with dried blood.

They keep going.

Once in the city, Pressia glimpses the distant cross on top of the Dome. Somewhere in these alleys and rubbled streets, she’ll leave the others behind. But it’s hard to stay focused on the Dome. El Capitan was right; she’s growing desperate to find Wilda and the children. She can’t leave until she knows they’re safe. Closing in on the area where the medical tents once stood, they start calling for Wilda as they make their way.

The rain seems like a miracle at first, clearing the smoke, cooling the rubble, dousing anything that still smolders, but it doesn’t let up. It only gets worse, driving down on them as they search for Wilda and the children, calling and calling through the vacant streets. Their clothes and boots are soaked. Pressia’s hair sticks to her face. Bradwell fares better—his wings bead water.

The pyre to dispose of the dead has gone out, and even if it stops raining, it will be a long time before they can get the wood dry enough to start it up again.

They find a group of survivors digging a mass grave, bodies piled nearby. At least now the ground is no longer frozen and gives a little.

Deeper into the city, they start to hear the cries of new orphans and parents calling for their children. The fresh burns and welts and blisters cover the old scars—a layer of fresh pain on old pain. Pressia is more protective of what’s in her backpack than ever. The vial and the formula can make them whole again, can’t it?

“Wilda!” Pressia keeps shouting, her voice joining the chorus of voices calling for the lost. “Wilda!”

Hastings stays close to them so that it’s clear he’s not a threat—maybe even a prisoner. Pressia asks survivors if they’ve seen the children. “They might have looked like they were shaking. They might have been carried in on people’s backs.”

The survivors give only blank stares and shrugs.

But then Pressia sees a man she recognizes from the outpost. He has a spray of metal on his arms and a gear lodged in his jaw.

“Excuse me,” she says.

He looks up.

“We’re looking for children who were being taken care of in the main building at the outpost. They were sickly. They shook and would have probably been with nurses. You were at the outpost. You know who I mean.”

“Gone,” the man says, the gear in his jaw clicking.

“What do you mean—gone?” Pressia steps closer. “Are they dead?” She feels a swell of dread.

“They carried children out on their backs and kept going. Who knows where? Who cares where? There’s nowhere to go. They were everywhere. They wanted to kill us all. I beat one to death with a rock.” The man looks down at his hands, crusted with metal, his fingers curled like he’s holding the rock at this moment. His eyes flash wide. “And it was a kid. It was just this kid. A dead boy. A bloody, dead boy.” He looks up at Pressia. “Like my own son. That was the thing. He looked like my own son—if my son had been born right and lived.”

Did Partridge do this?

“I’m sorry,” Pressia says. “I’m so sorry.”

The man looks at her clearly, as if he’s just woken up. “They were going to take them to the city—those shaking children on their backs, those pale shaking children. The city. For help. But I saw the smoke coming up from the city too, so who knows where they went? Who knows?” He shuffles on.

Hastings, with his enhanced hearing, is good at locating people moaning from the remains of fallen lean-tos and searching for people trapped inside. They stop and dig, finding bodies—some living, some dead from smoke inhalation. El Capitan works with survivors, tending wounds, making splints. As Pressia digs, pulling up the stones and rocks, she still calls for Wilda. It’s become a song, a prayer. Her voice is rough and worn.

Wilda. She shouts it so many times that it doesn’t sound like a name anymore—just two sounds locked together and echoed again and again.

They keep going, passing people who are barely hanging on. She sees a Groupie sitting on rubble—three women she vaguely recognizes. One is so badly burned she won’t make it. What will happen to the others she’s fused to? They won’t survive the death. One holds a wet rag to the victim’s lips. The third stares off.