The Reset (12 page)

NINETEEN

A
kerosene lamp lit the room. Ben watched from the window, squinting through lacy
curtains. The girl played with her toys on a rug in front of a fire. A gaunt
man with glasses balanced on the tip of his long nose was reading a book in a
rocking chair while an older woman worked at a bit of cross stitching.

Ben swallowed thickly, his heart thudding
in his chest. Decision time. Jesus—did he really have the stuff to burst in on
a Norman Rockwell painting?

What were his options? Alice was in
trouble.

He stole around to the back of the house
and tried the door, surprised to find it unlocked. He crept through the kitchen
and into the front hallway, where he could hear the little girl and her mother
humming a familiar tune—harmonizing.

It was the ABCs, and it was sweet.

He flexed his fingers on the stock of
the shotgun and stepped into the doorway.

“Don’t be scared,” he said, aiming for
authoritative and losing it instantly when his voice cracked. “I…I don’t mean
you any harm. Don’t move, please—nobody move,” he said, flicking the barrel back
and forth between the man and the woman.

The man just stared at him; he wore a
stern expression and he blinked his eyes rapidly behind thick lenses. “You
don’t need that weapon in here, young man,” he said. His voice was low and
calm. “Please. Please don’t point that thing at my girls.”

“Who’s here, Papa?”

“We have a visitor, Lucille. It’s no
cause for concern, little one.”

The woman put a hand to her chest, her
brow furrowed. Ben could tell she was fighting the urge to snatch the little
girl up from the floor.

“Did you hear me, young man? I said that
you don’t need that thing in our home.”

“I,” Ben started. He suddenly felt very
foolish, standing there with the gun. “I’m sorry. I need help. My friend—she’s being
held in your town and I—”

“Put it down,” the man interjected. His
voice was even, the tone reassuring. “Just put it down and take a seat. Let’s
talk about this.”

Ben’s eyes darted about the room; the
tables had been turned—if he’d ever really had the upper hand at all, he’d
surely lost it now.

“Okay,” he said, clearing his throat. “Okay,
I will. Thank you. I’m sorry. I…I’m going to sit down now.” He found the
closest chair and cautiously lowered himself, the shotgun resting on his knees.

“Do you want to play?” Lucille asked. She
had a charming smile, and he saw that she was missing some teeth. Nothing
strange about
that
—it was a typical youngster’s gap-toothed grin.

“Not now, Lucy,” the woman said. “Our
guest is…he’s probably thirsty. Arthur—would you fetch us all some tea?”

The man smiled and stood and Ben saw
that he was very tall indeed—well over six feet. “I’m going into the kitchen
now. You can accompany me if you wish, Mr…?”

“My name is Ben. And I’m really sorry
about…about coming in here like this.”

“It’s okay, Ben. We understand,” the
woman replied. “My name is Gwen, and this our granddaughter, Lucille.” She
smiled at her husband. “The tea, Arthur.”

“Be right back.” He loped past Ben and
into the kitchen, where Ben heard tea-making sounds.

“I’m sorry to hear about your friend,”
Gwen said. She put her project aside. There was an intricate pattern there, a
multi-colored landscape taking shape. “Mr. Talmidge does what he has to do to
keep the town safe. It’s not easy, and those are hard choices he makes. He
doesn’t like it and neither do we. But—well, our hands are tied in the matter.”

“What will he do with her? Her name is
Alice, and we only came to Bickley to look for seeds. Nothing more than that.
We don’t want any trouble—we were just looking for supplies.”

She frowned in confusion. “Seeds?”

“What are seeds, Nana?” Lucille said.

“Seeds become plants, Lucy. They become
fruits and vegetables. Trees and flowers.”

Confusion clouded the girl’s futures. Despite
the disfigurement, she captured the expression perfectly.

“Can you…can you really make
things
grow
?” Gwen asked. “Fresh food?”

“Maybe. At least, I
think
we can.
We’ve been clearing space for a garden.”

Now it was the woman’s turn to smile. “A
garden. My
word
!”

“What’s this about a garden?” Arthur
said. He brought a silver tray into the room and set it down on the little
coffee table. He poured steaming tea into cups and distributed them. There was
even a small one for Lucy.

“Ben says they were searching for seeds,
Arthur,” Gwen said. “He says they’ve been clearing space for a garden.”

The man grinned. “No! Really?”

Ben shrugged. “We’re hopeful.”

The tall man nodded. “Oh, so were we once.
We’ve tried and tried to make the land useful again, but it’s amounted to
nothing. The soil—it’s poisoned all the way through, I think. At least around here
it is.”

He cast a rueful glance at the little
girl. “Nothing works out the way it used to. It’s been a lot of trial and error,
and mostly only the latter, if you see my point.”

“But we’re thankful for the blessings that
we have,” Gwen interjected, an edge creeping into her tone. “Mr. Talmidge has
worked very hard to keep the people here safe, hasn’t he Arthur?”

“Aye, he has. And Gwen’s right; we
are
thankful for our blessings. We are indeed. Speaking of which, may I have a
kiss, Lucy?”

The girl flashed that gap-toothed grin
and went to her papa and put a kiss right on his cheek. She threw her arms
around his neck and patted the fabric of his thin cardigan sweater with her tiny
hand.

It was a beautiful thing, that simple
exchange of affection. Arthur rubbed her back in return and whispered something
in her ear, and she returned to her place on the floor, her hands flashing back
and forth between a toy car and about a dozen wooden blocks she had fashioned
into a wall.

Ben sipped his tea. It was good—strong
and hot—and it warmed him. He went into his pocket and removed a small apple.
He held it up and Gwen’s mouth fell open in awe.

“May I give it to her?” Ben said.

Arthur put his tea down and stood in
astonishment. “Is it safe?”

Ben nodded.

“What is it, Papa?”

He ignored her. “What do you think,
Gwen?”

“I think it’s a miracle,” she whispered.
“A genuine
miracle
.”

Lucy stood, impatient. “What
is
it?” she repeated, arms crossed on her chest.

“An apple,” Arthur said. He extended his
hand and Ben gave it to him. The man looked at his wife and then at the apple; he
looked at his grandbaby and then back at the apple.

He bit into it; the sound it made was
crisp.

“What’s that?” Lucy said. “What’s an
apple?”

Arthur chewed and swallowed. “Oh,” he
said. “Oh my, it’s very good, Gwendolyn. Very, very
good
!” Ben had a
moment of déjà vu. Hadn’t he said that very thing to the old man that had shot
him, all those months ago?

“Go ahead then, Arthur. Don’t dilly
dally—share it with her!”

Lucy found her papa. She tugged on his
pants leg. “What
is
it, Papa? Tell me!”

“Here, sweetie. Here, try a bite of
this.” He put it into her hands and she cupped it, letting her fingers caress
the contours of the fruit. She sniffed it and hesitantly nibbled at it.

“Wow!” she exclaimed after swallowing a
small bite. “Oh, wow! That’s really good, Papa! Apples are amazing!”

He loosed a deep, raspy laugh and the
woman joined him and so did Ben, and soon they were all chortling like drunken
teenagers while the little girl polished off the fruit.

“Here. I have another one,” Ben said,
pulling the last of his supply from his coat pocket. There were more in his
pack, back in the brush, and baskets of them in the chilled root cellar at the
farm. He gave it to Gwen. She took a dainty bite and an expression of bliss, of
pure astonished happiness, graced her features. She took another before handing
it to her husband, who just passed it straight on to Lucy.

The girl made short work of it.

“Apples!” Arthur said. “My Lord, but I
was sure I’d seen my last. It’s been
years
, Ben. A decade, at least!”

“Now you understand why I came here. The
woman, my friend—she means,” he paused, measuring his words. What did she mean
to him, exactly? “The woman they took is my life, Arthur. Just as you folks
have each other, she’s all that I have. It’s just the two of us. Will you help
me find her?”

Arthur looked at Gwen. Gwen looked at
Arthur. She nodded.

The man sighed.

“They’ve got her in the old post office.
They’ve turned it into a jail. There’ll be at least a few guards—probably lots
of guns. And it’s just you, isn’t it?”

Ben nodded. “And I only want to have her
back. We’ll leave right away, I promise. Please, Arthur. You have to help us.
We just want to go home.”

“And where is that, Ben? Where is home?
Where did you get that
food
?” Gwen said.

He swallowed. “Home is…well, I hope you
won’t be disappointed if I don’t say anything about that just yet. It’s all the
leverage I have.”

Arthur nodded. “Aye. Smart move. And it’s
good leverage at that, son. Good leverage at that. Perhaps we can help you.
That is,” he pushed the glasses up on his nose and leaned forward in his chair,
“if you can return the favor down the road. Our Lucy would really benefit from some
fresh food. So would Gwen and I, truth to tell. We’re skin and bones is all,
and we’re always sick. Can’t remember the last time we didn’t feel run down.”

Ben nodded. “If I get Alice out of here safely,
I promise you that we’ll come back, Arthur. I give you my word.”

There was a long silence, and the old
man nodded. “Very well, then. I’m inclined to trust you, Ben. Come on out with
me to the barn. I’ve a few things that might help you on your way.”

Ben stood and so did Gwen. “Come now,
Lucy. Let’s get ready for bed.”

“Good night, Lucy,” Ben said. The little
girl grinned and crossed the room. She turned her head to him and he knelt. She
put her arms around his neck and gave him a big smacking kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks for visiting, Ben. If you come back, will you bring more apples?”

“I’ll bring more apples,” he said. Her
touch brought tears to his eyes. He hadn’t felt a child’s touch since he’d lost
Lina, and the sensation was a blow. There was life here in Bickley. Just as the
Winstons had, these people were trying. “I’ll come back, Lucy, and I’ll bring
more apples.”

She smiled and nodded and then the woman
took her hand and they disappeared down the hallway.

“She’s a good girl,” Arthur said. “I
love both of my girls. I love them with everything that I have left inside me. It’s
why helping you is so hard for me, Ben. I hope you understand the risk that I’m
taking. I’ll do what I can to help you get Alice back, but if you succeed it’s
going to be bad for our town. It’ll be bad for Bickley if those men in Atlanta
hold us all accountable. You can’t tell another soul that I helped you. Swear
it to me right now, Ben.”

“I swear it, Arthur. I won’t say a word,
no matter how this goes.”

“And you can’t forget your promise to
look after us if you make it out of here. I’m counting on it.”

Ben nodded and they shook hands.

“This way, then. Your Alice completes
this year’s quota, so you don’t have much time. Talmidge will be trucking the
girls up to Atlanta soon, now that he’s made Roan’s number.”

TWENTY

Quade
marched her across the street and over to the old postal station. It took him
some time to unclasp the padlocks on the heavy front door; apparently, there
was a precious stock of prisoners inside. He finally cracked the door and a sour
stench—sweat and feces and the acidic tang of stomach bile—came whistling
through the opening.

“Rank, eh?” he grunted. “Lucky for you,
though. You just have a one-night stay here at Bickley’s little Waldorf.
Shouldn’t offend your delicate senses too greatly, Miss Alice.”

He shoved her into the dim room. A
cluster of women huddled, chained together, on the far side of the room. The
service counters had been demolished, leaving pieces of drywall dangling from
the ceiling like broken teeth. A poster with the USPS icon hunk askew on the
wall; it bore a large, reddish stain.

Three men rounded a table, playing
cards. “Quade! Quade, come sit in for a minute! Give us a fourth, willya!” one
of them called across the room. His speech was slurred, and that’s when Alice noticed
the jars on the table.

“I’m busy,” Quade replied. “You know, we
have preparations to make for the trip north tomorrow. Important preparations.
Ye’d do well to remember that, Umber. Mr. Talmidge won’t look kindly on ye in
the morning if yer hung over.”

Umber, a portly mound of pale, freckled
flesh with curly red hair, waived a hand in response. “I can handle my hooch,
Quade. I’ll be fine, and these tarts’ll be prim and ready when it’s time to make
our move. Might make a few deposits, actually, before that train leaves the
station. Send Roan some fine southern Georgia stock just to get things
started!”

This brought laughter from the other two
at the table. One was skinny—impossibly so—and Alice instantly associated his
appearance with fetal alcohol syndrome. His elbows curved inward, like a
praying mantis, and he had a greasy wedge of black hair and a little beard that
looked like a spider waving goodbye on his chin.

The third man at the table scared her.
He stared right at her—those dark eyes filled with naked hunger. He was tall
and muscular, with long dark hair and a square jaw. No mutations there, at least
on the outside. A tongue of tattooed flesh licked up the side of his neck and clear
around to behind his right ear.

Tough and mean—that was her first
impression. She’d seen it plenty of times in Atlanta.

“Cuffs?” Quade said, and the big guy
stood and unclipped a pair from his belt. He tossed them across the room and
Quade snapped one manacle tight onto her wrist. “Right this way, Miss Alice.
Step lively.”

They trudged through filth, puddles of rank
liquid that pooled here and there on the concrete floor.

The women warily appraised their new
companion. There were four of them, all cuffed to a heavy chain that had been
drilled into a pair of concrete blocks at the rear of the building.

Alice’s heart sank as Quade pushed her
to her knees before securing her to the chain. The finality of her capture was
total, and she fought the sudden urge to weep.

Just when she thought there might
actually be a future…

“There,” Quade grunted. “Snug as a bug
in a rug.” He leaned in, his breath a mixture of nicotine and rot. “I finish
with my preparations early, I’ll pay ye a visit later on, Miss Alice. That’s
a
promise
. We can settle our accounts for that little jab ye gave me back
there in the field.”

She turned away. In that moment, death
seemed perfectly preferable to what Quade was intimating.

He straightened. “I’m off to tidy the
wagon, gents. Be wary now, Chad. Her man’s still creeping around out there. It
could get interesting if he comes for her in the night. I’d quit the game and set
up a watch if I was you.”

Chad. That was the tough one’s name. He
nodded and gave Quade a mock salute that ended with an extended middle finger.
“We got it under control, Captain Quade. You handle your business, I’ll handle
mine.” The last part he said while staring directly at Alice, a sneer on his
face.

Quade left and the men returned to their
game. Just like that, they were lost in it. Alice turned to the others.

She met their eyes; in each, she found nothing
but resignation. Fatigue. These women were utterly without hope.

“I’m Alice,” she whispered.

“You can speak up,” the woman at the end
of the chain replied. “It don’t make no difference. They’re off in their own
little world, gambling and drinking, and we’re just…we’re just hanging around,
I guess.”

She shook her shackled hands to drive
home the point. If it was a joke, nobody laughed.

“Damn you!” the youngest hissed at Alice,
the anger raw in her expression. She was maybe in her middle teens. “Damn you to
hell for getting caught out like that, you bitch! Now we’re really in for it.
Now, they’ll be taking us straight to Atlanta!”

The oldest among them offered a
sorrowful nod of agreement. She pursed her lips. “No sense in beating up on her,
though. We’re all in the same boat here, honey.”

The young girl sighed; her shoulders
slumped and her eyes became glassy behind tears that trickled down her cheeks.
“But now things will only get worse, Momma. Now things will only
get worse
!”

The women considered this in silence
until one of the two who had not yet spoken opened her mouth. Her face was
scarred by the fallout. “Is it true what he said? You really have a man out
there?”

Alice nodded. “I lost track of him back
on the main road. We were gathering supplies at a hardware store when they took
me prisoner. Our plan had been to rendezvous at the home of a man we met
earlier in the woods if things got tricky.”

“Buck? You mean the deer hunter?” the
last to speak said. She was coltish, probably in her twenties, with blond hair
that was forming crusty little dreadlocks. Alice imagined that, under different
circumstances, she was quite a beautiful young woman.

Alice nodded.

“Oh jeez, that’s bad,” Momma said.
“That’s a terrible thing, if your man goes there. You said you already
met
the hunter?”

Alice nodded, her expression a question
mark.

“I’m surprised he let you go. He’s
mad
,”
the blond said. “Crazy as an August rooster. I’m Brinn, by the way. This is
Carol, but we call her Momma. And Loren,” she motioned to the woman with the
scars, “and the little one there is Delaney.”

Alice forced a smile.

“Buck lost his family after the Reset.
Roan’s raiders took his wife. They killed his sons. He…he buried them out behind
that cabin, and he’s been out there in the woods ever since. Nobody ventures
onto his land. Nobody goes near his cabin.”

Alice shook her head. “But he was kind
to us. He gave us coffee and he fed us; he…he even drew us a map to Putt’s.”

“Then he also probably sold you out,”
Momma said. “It was no accident that those men found you. Buck might not live
in
Bickley, but he understands how important it is to make the quota.”

“So what does Roan really want with us?”
Alice said. She knew, but she had to hear the words spoken out loud. There had
been whispers of his activities in Atlanta. Rumors about his warped views on
rebuilding.

“Forced breeding,” Loren said, a
sarcastic smile on her cracked lips. “He’s got some crazy name for it. Lebens—
lebensomething
.
We’re his next batch of mares.”

Something delicate inside of Alice broke
when she heard it.
Lebensborn
. She cut her eyes in disgust. All those
years! All that time that she and Brian had stayed hidden—miserable and afraid,
like a couple of rats in the wall. All the times she’d shut herself away in
that coffin of a crawlspace after he’d died, shaking in fear while Roan’s men
clomped about outside, tearing houses apart in search of the few refugees that eked
out an existence in what remained of the city.

All those years living in darkness, and finally
she’d gathered the nerve to leave, to turn her back on the home they’d made
together. On the life they’d made together. And then, close to death, she had
stumbled across an oasis in the form of the miracle farm and Ben Stone.

And now there she was, going back to
Roan after all.

“Cheer up,” Delaney said ruefully. “You aren’t
the youngest. It won’t be quite as bad for
you
.”

The men erupted in laughter at the
outcome of a card game. The fat man had his head in his hands as Chad raked the
chips from the center of the table. He winked at Alice as he stacked them.

He mouthed something to her and she
understood every word, even from across the room:
Gonna get you, girl
.