Burn (Pure #3)(65)

She wants to be saved again.

She thinks of the shoes her grandfather gave her for her sixteenth birthday—that pair of clogs—as if he knew she was leaving soon and wanted her to have sturdy shoes at least so that she could make it in the world. And what kind of world was it?

Nothing she could have ever imagined.

As awful and bloody and filled with suffering and death as it is, she fell in love in that world. Love. Who would ever have guessed that it could still exist—after everything—but it does.

She touches her fingers to the cabinet door lightly. It creaks open. The room is more or less intact. The table is singed but not gone. Her grandfather’s old pallet went up in smoke. It’s small and blackened—mostly soot. But the brick is there. It sits by the back door.

She can tell that someone else lived here since her grandfather was taken. There was a sack hanging on a hook in the wall. The sack is mostly gone, but the handle still rests on the hook. The table is covered in bits of what looks like an attempt to rebuild something electronic—a radio, a computer, a simple toaster? Impossible to say.

This is no longer her home. Her grandfather is gone. It’s as if he never existed.

She closes the door and climbs back out through the fake panel into the barbershop and brushes herself off. She’s wasted time. She feels guilty about it but then angry. Would Bradwell go back if he could to a time when he had parents to watch over him? Wouldn’t El Capitan take Helmud back to the place in the woods where they lived with their mother before she was taken away?

Is that why she wants to get the vial and the formula to the Dome laboratories? Because she thinks that if enough people can return to the way they once were, it won’t just feel like they’ve been cured but that they’ve been able to erase this awfulness and return to a time when…what? When they felt safe? Has she ever felt truly safe? By safe, maybe she just means not alone in the world.

What if Bradwell and El Capitan are right? Maybe the world doesn’t need more intervention from science and medicine. Maybe they just need to even the playing field and take down the Dome.

She has to see Partridge first, though. She can’t be a part of that unless she knows what’s happened. She still has faith in him. She has to. If she loses faith in him, her faith in everyone slips. And she can’t afford to lose any more faith. It’s too precious.

She walks to the gutted door, back out on the street. Again, she runs—head down, breathless. She knows the way now. She runs until she can see the bright spot of the Dome, far-off, its cross shining against the dark silk of the clouds.





EL CAPITAN





SAINT




Bradwell stops on top of some rubble. He lifts a piece of cast-iron gate. “This way.” He goes in first, down a small set of stone steps. El Capitan knows this part of town—or thought he did. He used to make rounds back when he drove the truck, picking up unwilling recruits, but he’s never seen this hole before.

El Capitan says to Helmud, “Where’s he taking us?”

“Us?” Helmud whispers, as if he’d rather stay behind alone.

El Capitan follows Bradwell down the stairs, pulling the gate back into place overhead, covering them.

The room is small, but not just because it’s caved in. No, it was built to be small. “Is this near where the old church used to be?” El Capitan says, trying to get his bearings.

“We’re in it.”

“The church?”

“It’s a crypt.”

Bradwell looks too big for the space. His massive wings rub the walls. He hunches down and keeps his head bowed—because he’s too tall or is he being respectful? He walks to a wall and kneels.

But Bradwell has folded his hands together. He’s whispering into them. Why? El Capitan’s never understood religions.

“I didn’t know you were churchgoing,” El Capitan says, more to himself than Bradwell. At first it looks like Bradwell is praying to a Plexiglas wall, a little shattered but still holding up. Then he sees that the Plexiglas is covering a recess in the wall, and through the splintered plastic, he sees a girl. Her face is slightly lifted; her hands are in her lap. She’s sitting there, wearing a long old-fashioned dress, her hair pulled back from her face—a beautiful face, simple and yet profoundly sad. She’s patient. She’s waiting for something or someone. Maybe she was waiting for Bradwell. Maybe she’s waiting for God.

“Who is she?” El Capitan says, but he knows Bradwell won’t answer. He’s praying. His eyes are clenched, his hands locked together. Dome worshippers used to kneel and pray like this. He’s seen them lined up in the Deadlands before, all pointing toward the Dome.

“Who?” Helmud says. “Who?”

A row of candles on a ledge have melted, covering it in wax. Offerings. Many people have been here. El Capitan spots a placard. He steps up to it closely. Half the words are gone. It’s all banged up. The statue is of a saint whose name started with Wi. He knows that she was a patron saint of something. He sees the word abbess but doesn’t know what it means. There’s more about small children and miracles and the word tuberculosis, which he knows well. It’s likely how the saint died. A disease of the lungs. His mother died young of a disease. She was like a saint—to him at least.

El Capitan moves to the back wall and sits down, leaning against Helmud. Helmud lets his head rest on El Capitan’s shoulder.