Fuse (Pure Trilogy 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

it.
    Beneath the word, the creature seems to draw some kind of symbol.
    It’s all too far away to read. Plus, it’s upside down.
    The creature backs away, takes a few leaps into the woods, then jumps, gripping the girth of a tree—its top half gone and its pulp dug out by bugs.
    El Capitan takes a tentative step forward. He looks at the creature, who is still staring off into the trees. El Capitan walks around the word and reads it to himself—Hastings. Is it a name? A place? He thinks of the word battle . Doesn’t Hastings have to do with war somehow? El Capitan knows not to say the word aloud. He stares at the symbol. It’s a cross, which is the way the Dome ended its Message—just after the Detonations—on small slips of paper that fell down from the sky. A cross with a circle around the center.
    “I don’t know what he wants from me,” El Capitan says to Helmud.
    The soldier leaps from the tree and starts to run. But then he pauses.
    “He wants us to follow,” El Capitan says.
    “Follow,” Helmud says.
    El Capitan nods and follows the soldier through the woods for almost a mile, keeping a brisk pace. Finally he comes to a clearing that overlooks the city, or what used to be the city. From this height, it’s easy to see how it’s been reduced to the Rubble Fields, black markets, hulls of old buildings, a grid of alleys, and nameless streets.
    El Capitan looks around for the soldier. He’s gone. El Capitan is breathless. Helmud’s heart is beating fast too, but maybe only becauseEl Capitan’s heart has pumped the blood so hard. “Damn it,” El Capitan mutters. “Why’d he bring me here?”
    “Bring me here,” Helmud says.
    El Capitan can see the Dome too, the white curve of it on the distant hill, its cross glinting through the ashen sky. “Did he think I didn’t know where he came from?” He rubs his eyes with his knuckles.
    “Where he came from,” Helmud says, and he points out across the barren, near-desert land that surrounds the Dome to a clump of people dragging timber and arranging it on the iced ground.
    “Some crazies trying to build something out in front of the Dome?”
    “In front of the Dome?” Helmud repeats.
    Why in front of the Dome? Is this what the soldier wanted him to see? If so, why? El Capitan watches the way the people move. They’re organized, shuttling things along like ants in ordered rows. “I don’t like it,” he says. “Almost looks like they’re going to try to build a fire.”
    “Fire,” Helmud says.
    El Capitan looks up at the Dome. “Why the hell would they do that?”

P RESSIA
SEVEN
    T HE MORGUE IS COLD AND BARE with one long steel table. Since the last time she was here, a couple of weeks ago, Bradwell has spread out even more papers and books. Portions of his parents’ unfinished manuscript are arranged in piles. On the wall, Bradwell has taped the Message, an original her grandfather kept for years. She gave it to Bradwell after he went back to the barbershop to pick up what was left. He’s the archivist, after all.
    We know you are here, our brothers and sisters.
We will, one day, emerge from the Dome
to join you in peace.
For now, we watch from afar, benevolently.

    When the Message first fell from the hull of an airship to the ground in the days after the Detonations, it must have felt like a promise. Now it feels like a threat.
    Bradwell slides a heavy bar across the door—a handmade lock bolted to the wall.
    “Nice place you’ve got here,” she says.
    He walks to his pallet and straightens the covers. “No complaints.”
    Pressia moves to the table where she sees the bell she gave him in the farmhouse. She found it in the burned-out barbershop just before she left home. It has no clapper. It sits on a news clipping that must have survived the Detonations, probably in Bradwell’s parents’ footlocker. It’s not as ashen and charred as some of the other documents. He’s taken good care of it. Bradwell has always taken care of the