Burn (The Pure Trilogy)

by Julianna Baggott

  Fedelma reaches into the small backpack and pulls out a metal box like the one that Kelly had to hold the bacterium, but this one’s thinner and longer. She pops it open quickly and shows Pressia the vial—the only remaining sample of Pressia’s mother’s lifework, the powerful concoction that she injected into the birds on Bradwell’s back, the vial rescued from her mother’s bunker. It sits in a groove of velvet lining, a small folded piece of paper beside it.

  “The vial and formula!” Pressia says.

  “Yes,” Fedelma says, and she shuts the box, snapping its clasp. “You didn’t think we’d keep them, did you?”

  Fedelma puts the box into the backpack and hands it to Pressia.

  Pressia slips the straps over both shoulders and slides the knife between her belt and pants.

  “Thank you,” Pressia says, “for everything.”

  “Be careful out there. Don’t wear your fear. They’re drawn to it.”

  “Who?”

  “We had so many dead. So many. And Bartrand Kelly thought he could create a force for good, a breed that would go out and kill the violent creatures who came after us again and again. But he built and bred them with a hunger that was too strong. Yes, they killed the others, but now the once-dead have turned on us. Be careful.” Fedelma opens her arms and hugs Pressia quickly and roughly and then pulls away. “Especially watch for the fog. Sometimes it has a heartbeat.”

  A heartbeat. “The once-dead? He used the dead. He built and bred them…”

  “They snatch our young. Watch for teeth in the darkness.”

  “And the fog has a heartbeat…” Pressia’s scared and confused.

  “I can’t explain them any better than that. Go on.”

  Pressia runs to the stairs and takes them two at a time. At the final landing, she finds El Capitan and Helmud standing by a door, waiting, the flashlight in El Capitan’s hand.

  “You ready?” El Capitan says.

  “Did you hear about what’s out there?”

  “I heard enough,” he says.

  “Enough,” Helmud says.

  “I’m ready,” Pressia says.

  “I miss my guns,” El Capitan says. “I hope they put ’em back in the airship.”

  “I hope we make it to the airship,” Pressia says.

  El Capitan pushes out the door.

  The fog has a heartbeat.

  Watch for teeth in the darkness.

  People with flashlights roam the fields, call for the missing children. “Carven! Darmott! Saydley!” Some of the calls ring out from within the woods. Their own flashlight glides across the fields and into the nearby thickets and forests.

  “We’re not supposed to show fear,” Pressia says. “The ones who took the children—they sense it.”

  “Like dogs.”

  “Where did the dogs go?” Pressia asks. “They stopped howling.”

  “I don’t want to know, do you?” El Capitan says.

  “I don’t want to know,” Helmud says.

  “Bartrand Kelly made these creatures,” Pressia says. “The ones that have taken the children.”

  El Capitan nods. “Then Kelly deserves what he gets.”

  “Not necessarily,” Pressia says.

  “Don’t we deserve what we get, Helmud?” El Capitan says. “Don’t we reap what we sow?”

  “We reap,” Helmud says. “We sow. We reap. We sow. We reap…” El Capitan doesn’t tell Helmud to shut up. He lets him keep going, over and over, which isn’t like Cap.

  But Pressia doesn’t tell him to stop either. We sow. We reap. We sow. We reap. It’s a singsong enchantment. Maybe it’ll keep them safe. At the very least, it gives a rhythm to their steps that keeps them moving at a quick pace.

  They head into the woods where the vines start to appear. The vines still scare Pressia. She keeps her distance from the areas where they grow thick and twisted. The shadows on either side of the path are dark. The voices calling Carven and Darmott and Saydley are now farther off. Were they identical—the three of them? What’s it like when you’re with living, breathing mirror images of yourself—down to your DNA? Are they still alive?

  Pressia listens for the children too, just in case they’re out here, simply lost.

  “Did you hear what they look like?” El Capitan says.

  “The children?” Pressia asks.

  “The children? What? No. Kelly’s creations. His dead and bred.”

  “We reap. We sow,” Helmud keeps on. “We reap. We sow.”

  “No,” Pressia says, tightening the straps on her backpack. “I don’t know what they look like. Should’ve asked.” She thinks of telling him that the darkness has teeth and the fog a heartbeat, but she’s embarrassed that she knows these stupid things yet didn’t get a description, which now seems such a practical and obvious thing to ask.

  They walk uphill. The airship isn’t far off. In fact, El Capitan raises the beam of the flashlight through the trees, lighting the clearing where he and Helmud and Bradwell almost bled to death in the vines.

  “We reap, we sow, we reap, we sow,” Helmud says, faster now.

  They trudge through the final trees and start across the clearing. The fog has rolled in.

  The fog has a heartbeat.

  The flashlight’s sharp glare strikes the misty air.

  On the other side of the clearing, they hear a cry. Human? It’s hard to tell. Childlike? Carven and Darmott and Saydley—Pressia imagines finding them out here, wrapped in vines.

  El Capitan douses the light, and darkness seems to rush in all around them. Then Pressia feels El Capitan’s hand in hers. It’s rough and calloused. He says, “This way.” She hears Helmud shifting nervously on his back.

  There’s another cry.

  Her eyes slowly adjust to the moonlight.

  They step into a stand of trees and stop. El Capitan lets go of her hand, and she misses the feeling of his sure grip.

  “They’re here,” El Capitan says.

  “No fear, remember?” Pressia says. “No fear.”

  “Reap, sow,” Helmud whispers.

  Pressia nods, but she can’t control her own fear. No one can.

  “We can slip past them,” El Capitan whispers. “The airship is fifty feet away. We can do this.”

  “What if they have the children?”

  “We have more people to save back home than three lost kids.”

  “But where’s Bradwell?”

  “Hopefully he’s already there.”

  “And if he isn’t?”

  El Capitan doesn’t answer. “We’ve got to move quickly,” he says.

  “Let’s go,” Pressia says.

  El Capitan starts running. Pressia pushes off a tree and follows him. It’s hard to navigate the trees with such little light, but soon Pressia—breathless and quick—can just barely see the rounded orb of the airship, pinned down tightly with rooted vines.

  She hears another cry and turns.

  Nothing but thickening fog and trees.

  Then a quick shadow.

  She faces forward and keeps running but trips and falls. She looks back and sees a wild dog, dead and mutilated.

  El Capitan hoarsely whispers her name. She scrambles to her feet. She can’t see him through the fog. In just seconds it’s gotten so dense that she’s surrounded by white.

  Another sharp cry and then another, as if replying.

  She starts moving as fast as she can—harder now with such little visibility. She has to hold out her hand and the doll head to feel her way from trunk to trunk.

  I’m the prey now, she thinks as she skins her palm on the rough bark. She has to protect the metal box in her backpack. She has to get to the airship.

  She hears a footfall behind her. She whips around, but nothing’s there. She keeps her eyes wide open, as if this will help her see, but it doesn’t. White. All around her. White.

  She pushes through the trees, but then something brushes her backpack. She lunges forward—away from it. “Cap!” she
calls out. “Cap!” Fear. She’s showing fear.

  She sees the beam of his flashlight, but in this dense fog, it’s only lighting the mist. “Cap!” Maybe he can follow her voice.

  An arm—long and thin—reaches out and cuffs her elbow. She screams and tries to pull free. The arm is mottled with scars from thick hurried stitches running along its veins. She pulls away but her arm is wrenched so hard that pain shoots up into her shoulder. Still, she manages to stay on her feet.

  She hears strange guttural sounds—a call, a response. A few more ahead of her and then behind. “Cap!” she shouts. “Here!”

  The light keeps gliding past her. The cries echo around them in all directions. How many are there? What did they do to the children? Where’s Bradwell?

  A hand grabs her other arm. This time she yanks the arm toward her and a face suddenly appears—a thick jaw with an underbite, gaunt cheeks covered in thin burnt skin. It widens its mouth, showing its yellowed teeth, and the skin stretches—taut and shiny and damp from the wet air. Its mouth snaps. Its eyes are blind and roving. It wants her in the fog because here she’s nearly as blind as it is.

  She imagines the teeth gouging her flesh and muscle. She tries to pull her arm free, but others appear out of the thick fog and grab her. Their grips are too strong. How many? Five, six? She can’t tell. They force her to the ground. She writhes and kicks, but still they pin her on her back. She can feel the sharp outline of the metal box holding the vial and formula. The ground is cold and wet. She manages to cry out for El Capitan. “Cap! Cap!” Is he here?

  “Pressia!” he shouts. She turns in the direction of his voice and sees only his flashlight falling and bouncing, and then it goes out.

  She whispers his name as two faces loom above her. There’s darkened blood on their skin, splotches of it—from the thorns or from the wild dogs or… “Where are the children?” Pressia says.

  They don’t seem to understand her. One reaches out and touches her forehead. It runs its cold, bony hand down her face. She twists away but the hand follows. She clamps her lips, and one secures her head with an incredibly strong grip, pressing one side of her face into the dirt. But the creatures have a strange calm about them. They’re moving slowly. She’s hoping to find their weakness, or hoping for a distraction.

  They start humming now—tuneless and dull. One touches her hair softly. This chills her.

  Maybe they don’t want to kill her.

  Maybe they want her.

  And now she starts to fight with everything she’s got. She throws her legs in the air and kicks one of the creatures in the chest. She rolls away from the other. Its fingernails claw her arm. Her shoulder is wrenched. She gets to her feet. Not being able to see clearly makes her dizzy, disoriented. Her heart is pounding. The fog has a heartbeat—it’s her own, hammering.

  She pulls out her knife and holds the blade in front of her. The fog thins when there’s a breeze, and she can see them—if only for an instant at a time—shifting around her, four of them. They can’t see the knife, of course, but they seem to react to her energy. They’re misshapen with uneven limbs and staggered gaits. Their scars are Detonation marks and burns and thick ropy keloids, but also scars from stitches. She knows stitches. Her grandfather, the mortician, the flesh-tailor, was known for his tidy work. These stitches were rushed and messy. The scars run around their shoulders, down some of their arms and chests.

  They sniff at her—smelling her fear, the small blade of her confidence. Are more being drawn in? Kelly’s dead and bred—there’s an animalism to them. Were they bred to be vicious carnivores? To be insatiably blood hungry? They’re mostly bare but for some mossy kind of homemade coats to keep them warm. She can see now that the one female has turned away from the others as if she’s drawn to something far-off.

  Pressia takes a few steps backward. The pain in her shoulder intensifies with each step. They know she’s moving. They step toward her quickly then stop—do they sense the knife? Is it the fog—is it that the moisture in the air connects them all, like some kind of web?

  “Cap! Helmud!” Pressia calls out. “Damn it! Where are you?”

  And then she hears a dim echo. “Damn it! Where are you?”

  Helmud—at least he’s alive, but his voice sounds choked. Was this what the female creature was smelling in the air? More prey?

  Pressia lunges at the creatures grunting brutishly, then turns and starts running as quickly as she can without being able to see well. She puts the knife back in her belt and holds her good hand out in front of her. Each time she feels a tree, she grabs it and pulls herself around it. She can hear them behind her. Their panting seems low to the ground. Are they on all fours?

  “Helmud! Call to me!”

  “Call to me! Call to me!” Helmud says.

  She’s getting closer. “Keep calling!”

  “Calling,” Helmud cries.

  Then she hears the growling. She takes out the knife again. The fog ripples enough that she can see one of the creatures has El Capitan and Helmud shoved to the ground. His clawed hands are on El Capitan’s throat.

  But the creature must sense Pressia—the vibration through thickened air? The fog has a heartbeat.

  This time she moves decisively, running at the creature with her knife. He jumps off of El Capitan and Helmud, and, his eyes glazed over, he has enough of his senses intact to dodge her attack. And then, in one quick snatch, he grabs her wrist with such force she drops the knife. She has nothing.

  El Capitan gasps for breath and manages to stand up. Helmud gasps too—though maybe he’s only an echo.

  The other four creatures have been drawn close and start to circle.

  El Capitan says, his voice raw, “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Pressia says, gripping her arm to her ribs. “We’re about to be eaten.”

  “True.”

  “Eaten!” Helmud shouts as loudly as he can. “Eaten!”

  The creatures shout back at him in yawps and caws. They keep circling, some on all fours, others upright. The curtain of fog sometimes parts, revealing a thick thigh with stitches across it, a bit of moss on a back, the glisten of eye whites.

  El Capitan says, “I want you to know something.”

  “What?”

  “I wouldn’t do what Bradwell’s done. I would have forgiven you right away.”

  She looks at him, wide-eyed, trying to make out his expression through the fog.

  “If you were the person standing there with me,” he says, “I’d always, always stay.”

  This is what Pressia wants to believe in—the kind of love that stays, no matter what. It’s a declaration that’s come out of the wrong mouth. As if El Capitan knows what she’s thinking, he says, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to feel the same way about me. I just needed to say it.”

  “I understand, yes,” Pressia says. Yes, yes, yes, she wants to say, because he’s made it better. He’s made her feel a little forgiven.

  “I’m glad about the fog,” he says. “This way we don’t have to see each other get killed.”

  “Killed?” Helmud whispers.

  The creatures start to growl, low and deep. She feels like crying, not because she’s afraid—which she is—but because El Capitan deserves to be loved the way he loves her. It’s wrong to die without that. Unfair. She wants to tell him that she loves him. Why not? They’re going to die, but she can’t say it unless it’s true. Really true.

  “You’re good,” she says instead. “You really are full of goodness, Cap. Helmud too.”

  “Ah,” he says. “I get it.” His voice cracks. She’s afraid she’s only made it worse.

  The creatures dare to move in more closely. They reach out and claw at them. They rip Pressia’s pants, her coat. One cuts Helmud’s cheek. The blood spills down his neck. El Capitan punches one, but the others howl and snap at the air near his face.

  When there’s a small break in the fog, Pressia has enough aim to kick one with her boots, but it’s up a
gain quickly, unfazed.

  Pressia feels an arm around one leg and then the other, and she falls hard. El Capitan is tackled next. They fight and kick and claw back, but it’s little use. The creatures’ faces cut in and out of the fog—the scars, the teeth, the blind eyes.

  “I don’t want to die like this!” Pressia shouts, and then she thinks of Bradwell. She doesn’t want to die unforgiven.

  “I don’t want to die!” Helmud cries.

  “Pressia!” El Capitan shouts, trying to crawl toward her. “Pressia!”

  But it’s no use. The creatures were bred to be strong and heartless. Pressia remembers the mutilated wild dog. That’s how she’ll look—she knows it—in a matter of minutes.

  And then she hears Bradwell’s voice. “Back off! Get off them!” He’s fighting one of the creatures, but then the others jerk their heads toward the noise. They start to run toward the agitation of molecules, the fresh heartbeat. She sees Fignan’s row of lights blinking in the fog.

  “Run!” Bradwell shouts. “Get to the ship! I’ll be there!”

  “You won’t make it!” Pressia says.

  El Capitan starts running. “Trust him!” he shouts, taking off toward the ship. “I’m going to cut it loose so we’re ready to take off. Come on!”

  “No!” Pressia shouts. Her fear makes some of the creatures turn toward her.

  Then she hears Bradwell fighting hard. His wings are wide and beating the air. Fignan lets out a shrill alarm she’s never heard before. “Go!” Bradwell shouts. “Pressia, go!”

  “I’m not leaving you!”

  His pulsing wings are creating a breeze that cuts the fog, creating more curtains that lift and rise. She can see more of the creatures and kicks the nearest one, on all fours, in the stomach. It lets out a moan but then quickly springs to its feet. Bradwell’s wings keep pushing the fog—rippling, rippling. And suddenly, the creature seems lost and truly blind. Another one holds out its hands and pats the air.

  “Keep beating your wings!” Pressia shouts breathlessly. “They need the constant fog to sense where they are and where we are.”

  Bradwell beats his wings harder, the fog gusting now all around them. His wings—she’s never seen them fully spread, massive and strong. She wants to tell him that this is how he was meant to be—as wrong as it was for her to do this to him, as wrong as it feels, he is this person in this moment, and there’s nothing more beautiful.