Burn (Pure #3)(77)

EL CAPITAN





BETTER OFF




Dusk is coming on, but how many days have passed? Where’s Bradwell? The broken, smoldering city is losing its edges. The shadows fill in like tidal pools. The Rubble Fields are quiet. Have all the Dusts been burned alive? The streets are nearly silent. El Capitan passes a pile of bodies covered with a tarp, but he can see a folded burned hand, a stiffened foot embedded with metal.

Bradwell’s gone to tell Pressia that he loves her. Has he found her already? Will he ever show up at the meeting place? El Capitan knows she loves Bradwell and that she’ll never love El Capitan. “Better off,” he whispers, and it’s an old thought—one he used to rely on when he killed wretches, used them as live targets, counted the bodies after the Death Sprees. Better off dead than living this life, which is just a long death.

Helmud is quiet. He must remember El Capitan’s dark moods. He shrinks on his brother’s back, doesn’t twitch, doesn’t hum.

El Capitan is making his way to the old bank vault. There’s a good chance survivors are already huddled down there. He’ll tell them to get the hell out. He wants to be alone. He wants to be completely alone. He never will be.

He pulls his collar up around his neck and walks next to a wall that used to be a building. At this very moment, Pressia and Bradwell might be falling in love again. He remembers finding them in the stone underpass, kissing. And he has the sudden desire to ram his brother into the wall, to find a stick and beat Helmud with it. All the old habits, comforts—that’s what he’s drawn to: the power he once knew, the power that once knew him.

He stops walking, clenches his fists, and stares up at the sky, smoke scudding across it.

It used to be that beating his brother made him feel a little more alive. He doesn’t know how or why. Maybe because it was the closest thing to beating himself.

“We’ve got nothing,” El Capitan whispers. “Nothing.” He grips the front of his coat, twists it, and then screams. He can’t remember the last time he screamed like this.

Helmud tightens to a knot on his back.

“Get off me!” El Capitan shouts. And he throws his elbows into his brother’s ribs. He reaches over his shoulders and grabs Helmud’s arms and yanks him forward so hard that El Capitan falls to his knees. “Get off me!” he shouts, clawing at Helmud.

“Get off me!” Helmud shouts, jerking backward as hard as he can, twisting across the wet ground. “Get off me! Get off! Me! Me! Me!”

“No, me!” El Capitan shouts. He reaches wildly for his brother, who arches and weaves. “Me!” He doesn’t care about the bacterium. Nothing matters. He can feel the tape ripping up from his skin.

Then Helmud punches El Capitan hard across the jaw. El Capitan is stunned. He freezes on all fours. Helmud cocks his fist and punches him again. El Capitan rolls over and piledrives his brother into the ground. Helmud gets a choke hold around El Capitan’s neck and keeps punching El Capitan in the head.

“I’ve got nothing,” El Capitan shouts at his brother. “I’ve got nothing!” Helmud keeps beating on him.

And then El Capitan stops fighting. He covers his head with his arms, curls up, and lets Helmud punch him. Helmud is breathless. His knuckles are sharp, and his jabs come at El Capitan hard and fast. “I’ve got nothing,” El Capitan says over and over.

And then Helmud says, “Me, me, me.” But he keeps pounding his brother, keeps beating him until he grows weak, until finally he gives out and lies down, holding El Capitan’s shoulders. They lie there in the wet dirt, muttering—nothing and me and nothing—until El Capitan isn’t even sure which of them is saying what.

Nothing.

Me.

Nothing.





PARTRIDGE





KNOWING




It’s his wedding day. Foresteed pushed it up without telling Partridge and Iralene why, and maybe there’s no other reason than Foresteed exerting his power. But the thought—wedding day, my wedding day—keeps jolting Partridge like a sharp electrical shock. It hits him now as he stands in front of a tall mirror rolled into the apartment by the tailor who made his tuxedo. Partridge is wearing black pants and socks and is buttoning up his dress shirt as the tailor, a small and quiet man, unzips a hanging bag that holds the tux’s jacket, cummerbund, and bow tie. And Partridge just stares at it. It’s all wrong. Everything has gone so horribly wrong—one small step at a time. He whispers, “A wedding. My wedding.”

“Sir?” the tailor says.

“Nothing,” Partridge says.

No way to get to Lyda. No response to his letters. No way to go back to the high-security chamber. No way to know if Peekins has brought Belze up from suspension or not. No way to return to his father’s war room without rousing suspicion, and part of him wishes he’d never see that room again. The thought of it turns his stomach. Those pictures of the past, those love notes from his loveless father. No way to find out what’s really going on outside of the Dome.

Where are Pressia, Bradwell, El Capitan and Helmud? Weed sent word that the airship landed safely, but beyond that he knows nothing and has no means of communication.

And Glassings has gotten worse. He said he wouldn’t recover, and maybe he won’t. Partridge has been staying up late, sitting in the chair pulled to his bedside. He waits for the moment when Glassings will wake up and be conscious enough to talk to him, but it hasn’t happened. And since his visit to the high-security chamber, Partridge has been keeping busy writing a growing list of possible passwords to unlock it. Is he crazy to pin his hopes on the idea of one of his father’s greatest enemies being not only alive but able to help him? He’s not sure when or if he’ll get another shot at unlocking the chamber. After Partridge’s time in the suspension chambers, security has gotten tighter. Foresteed has to have gotten wind of something. For now, Partridge has to maintain the facade that he has power so that he can quietly take Foresteed down. How? He’s not sure.