Burn (Pure #3)(72)

The mother in the wool cap shakes her head and glares at the other mother.

“You can’t be trusted,” the mother with the white hair says.

“But I need to know. Lyda’s my friend. She’s like a sister to me. You understand?” The mothers have built their lives around the notion of sisterhood. They exchange a glance.

“No,” the mother with the white hair says. “We will tell you nothing.”

They walk through the forest, deeper and deeper, until it’s almost completely dark. They come to a small camp of lean-tos. The mothers lead Pressia to one of the tiny tents.

The mother with the white hair says, “You can drop your hands now.”

Pressia rubs her arms, tingling from the lack of blood. The mother in the wool cap sees the doll head, reaches out and cups it in her pale, raw hands.

The mother with the white hair nods and says, “It’s like she’s one of us.”

The mother in the wool cap purrs again.

“One of you? Why do you say that?” Pressia says. She’s nothing like the mothers. She isn’t a woman who’s been deserted, and she never will be. She has Bradwell—here, now, and beyond. The mothers scare her. They always have. Their underlying strength is shot through with something vicious. It’s how they’ve stayed alive. “It’s just a doll.”

“It’s part of you, isn’t it?” the mother with the white hair says. “It defines you completely, and then again it doesn’t define you at all—like motherhood. You’ll be one of us. It’s a matter of time.”

Pressia pulls the doll head to her chest but doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want to be part of this tribe of women. She wants to get through this and build a life with Bradwell. If we don’t see each other again—the thought alone scares her.

The mother with the white hair says, “We will be standing guard. Don’t try to leave, or the next time we shoot, we will aim at your heart.”





PARTRIDGE





STRAWBERRY




Just a couple of days later, Partridge and Iralene are at a picnic surrounded by a low gate. Where did the gate come from? Was it put up overnight? It’s the kind of gate that was used to enclose people’s front yards during the Before inside of the larger gated communities—gates within gates. It’s in place now so people know not to get too close. This picnic—though unannounced—has a growing audience.

“Act natural,” says one of the women in Iralene’s entourage as she fixes the collar of Iralene’s dress.

“Act natural?” Partridge says. “Isn’t that an oxymoron? I’m acting and so it’s not natural.”

The woman sniffs and walks off.

These women were the first to gather at the gate, but soon there are over a hundred people. “Who knew anyone would want to spend their time watching me eat a triangulated sandwich and sip lemonade?” Partridge only picks at his food, shoves it around on the paper plate.

“Not you,” Iralene corrects. “Us.”

“Us,” he says. “Sorry.” He thinks of Lyda—that’s the us he’s supposed to be a part of.

“Now I know how fish feel at the aquarium,” Partridge says.

“Don’t tap the glass!” Iralene says.

He looks at the upscale apartment buildings surrounding the park. One of them is where he stayed when he was first brought back into the Dome—where, on one of the lower floors, there are people suspended in time, each in their own dark, icy capsule. “You know we’re not far from them,” he says.

“I know,” she says so quickly and unemotionally that he’s not sure if she really knows what he’s talking about. She lifts a strawberry. “It looks real. Doesn’t it?”

“Isn’t it real?”

“I think it’s edible.”

“That’s different from real,” he says.

She bites and the crowd—people who mainly survive on soytex pills and supplements—seems to lean in. She smiles and says, “Mmmmm.” Then she lifts the strawberry and holds it to Partridge’s lips. “Eat it.” He wants to ask her if she’s still on board as a guide among the capsules.

He opens his mouth. She pulls the strawberry away, and then as he starts to protest, she fits it into his mouth so his teeth bite into the cool sweetness. The crowd murmurs happily.

“You know that if I tapped your nose right now, they’d erupt in awwws,” she says. “We have a lot of power.”

“I’ve never had less power in my life.”

Partridge glances at the crowd. He catches the eye of the young woman who told him to act natural. She waves a cautionary finger at him; he’s not supposed to acknowledge the crowd because it makes them uncomfortable. And they do, in fact, shift their feet and look away.

He turns back to Iralene.

“We do have a lot of power, Partridge.” She taps him on the nose, and the crowd awwws—maybe led by the entourage, but the awing is considerable. It makes him nervous—the immediacy of it.

He lies back, as if he’s at a real picnic, arms crossed under his head, staring up at the false sky—all the better to pretend the audience isn’t there, surrounding them.