The Reset (20 page)

THIRTY-THREE

Gwen
was dying. Alice and Arthur had slowed the bleeding as best they could, but she
couldn’t catch her breath. They’d lifted her onto the couch, and her bony chest
rose and fell in frantic spasms.

“He took her…he took…our Lucy?” she
croaked, a wetness creeping into her voice.

Ben nodded, taking her hand. “We’ll get
her back, Gwen. I promise. You need to rest now. We need to get you stabilized
so you can pick up with her lessons when she comes home.”

Instead of a smile, Ben’s words brought
a deeply pained expression from the old woman. Any reminder of the normalcy
they had come to so cherish together—of things like counting games and time
spent making art—cut her as deeply as had the blow from the enormous thug that had
broken down the door.

“Atlanta,” she said, before closing her
eyes. The shock of her injuries had overwhelmed her, and she passed out.

“Rest now, hon,” Arthur said. He stroked
her cheek. A tear fell from the tip of his nose onto the lace of her nightgown.
“Rest easy, dear heart.”

“Can you give me a hand?” Ben asked
Alice. “We have to secure the house.”

She nodded, clearly in shock. He locked
the back door and wedged one of the chairs beneath the doorknob before
returning to the living room. “This will have to do. Let’s just shove it in
front of the door.”

The brute had kicked the door clear off
its hinges. He’d splintered the doorjamb, and they strained together against
the bulky china cabinet. After a few minutes, they’d managed to barricade the
opening.

“What happened in there?” he whispered
to her when they were done.

“I had her, Ben. I had her in my arms
and I was going out the back when that bastard snatched her away from me. He…he
was huge, Ben. I couldn’t stop him. He grabbed her and then he was gone, and
then that other fellow came in and hit me with his gun.”

“How did you..?”

“I hit the deck underneath the table.
There was a fork down there—probably one Lucy dropped at lunch. It was just
dumb luck. He knelt down to grab me and I put it in his eye.

“And then I cut his throat.”

“Jesus, Alice,” he said, pulling her
close. He kissed her temple, tasting blood. “How’s your head?”

“I don’t care,” she whispered. “I don’t
care, Ben. It doesn’t matter. We lost her.”

“Let’s see to Gwen, then,” Ben replied.
“First thing’s first. I’ll get blankets. You get the kit.”

She peered up at him and he could see
that she’d been concussed. Still, there was focus there and she nodded her agreement
before making for the bathroom.

Ben saw that Arthur had moved his wife
to the couch and covered her with a comforter.

Alice returned and she and Arthur tended
to Gwen. Ben dressed and unlocked the gun chest. He tucked a handgun into the
back of his jeans and gave weapons to Alice and Arthur.

“I’m going to make sure that we’re
secure, and I might be a while. Stay on your guard—there’s probably more where
these three came from.”

Arthur merely nodded, never taking his
eyes from his wife. He stroked her hand, the gesture one of pure will. If
prayer could save a life, then Gwen would live.

Ben drug the corpse of the man in the
kitchen out behind the barn, leaving a long smear of bright red blood in his
wake. He did the same with the man he’d shot on the front porch. He walked the
perimeter of the property, checking on the ponies and poking his lantern into
every square inch of the barn.

It was after 3:00 when he was finally satisfied
that they were alone. He joined the others in the living room.

Gwen actually looked better.

“We cleaned it and dressed it as best we
could. She’ll need stitches in the morning,” Arthur said.

Yeah
, Ben thought,
if she makes it
that long
. He pulled Alice into his arms. He kissed her forehead. It felt
cool against his lips, and he took that as a good sign.

They sat there in silence for a long
time, incapable of eye contact. Finally, Alice spoke up.

“Who?” she said. “Who did this?”

“I think it’s pretty fucking clear,”
Pastor Lawton spat back. There was blood on his hands and cheeks, and his red-rimmed
eyes were feverish with anger and despair. “With God as my witness, I’ll take
the fucker’s head for this! I’m going to kill the Godless bastard!”

Ben shook his head. “No way. You have to
stay here, Arthur. Your wife needs you.”

“I…don’t…
care
! That little girl
is my affirmation, Ben. She’s all we have left, don’t you see? Without her,
Gwen and I might as well just die. It’s as simple as that. We may as well just
shrivel up and die, because without Lucy there’s nothing left for us.”

“What do you mean?” Alice said. “Your
affirmation of what?”

“That we’re still people,” Arthur
hissed. “That there’s still a sense of rightness in the world. Jesus, Alice, that
there’s…that there’s still hope.”

“Gwen will die without you,” Ben
replied. His voice was soft and even, and his eyes never blinked as he studied
his friend. “You know that, Arthur. What good will any of this be if Lucy comes
home and she doesn’t have her grandma to help her along?”

Arthur’s lips pursed in an expression of
pure sorrow. Jesus, what a spot to be in! “I know it,” he whispered. “I know
it, Ben. But what do you expect me to do? She’s my little girl!”

“She’s
our
little girl too,” Alice
replied. She took Arthur’s hand.

He nodded. “And I know
that
. You
two have been so good to her. So good and so kind. She loves you every bit as much
as she loves her grandma and me.”

He looked up, an exhausted old man on
the verge of losing everything. “So what happens next? If I stay here with
Gwen, what happens to Lucy?”

“Only one thing to do, Arthur,” Ben
replied. “I’m going to Atlanta. I need to have a word with Roan.

THIRTY-FOUR

Atlanta’s
fractured skyline loomed in the distance. Like Jacksonville, what remained of the
city was sliding back into the dust. The place looked utterly deserted. The
Peachtree Towers had toppled over, and much of the top half of The Four Seasons
had been sheared off in the military operations The Human Accord had carried
out in the weeks following the Reset. Like a pair of chipped canine teeth in
gums that had grown soft, One Atlantic Center and the Bank of American Plaza
now bookended enormous piles of broken concrete and steel.

“At least there’s
something
left,” Alice said. They studied the city through binoculars, hidden behind mounds
of concrete that had once been part of the freeway near Buckhead. It was an
impassible route into the city, with precipitous drops every hundred feet or so
as entire sections of the overpass had vanished.

Ben merely nodded. He’d ventured as far south
as the outskirts of Orlando’s fallout zone. No evidence remained that people
had ever existed there, let alone that it had once been home to the world’s
most popular resort. Where Orlando had stood there was now an enormous crater
filled with mounds of swirling ash and pockets of muddy water. There was no
rubble, no skeletal remains that stubbornly proclaimed:
Here! Once, a damned
long time ago, men had lived right
here
!
It had reminded Ben of the
sand dunes outside of Lakeview, back when Mr. Brown had taken the kids on a
field trip to the fossil beds along Oregon’s border with Nevada.

“We should stay off the freeway,” Alice
said. “We won’t see him, but he’ll see us coming from a mile away. It looks
empty, but Roan’s got men positioned throughout the city.”

Ben sighed. He touched her cheek. “I
don’t like you being here, Alice,” he said. It was probably the fiftieth time
he’d made the plea with her; they were almost at the point of no return. “Please,
honey. Won’t you please just go back and look after Gwen? You can…you can scout
that drug store we passed in Rochelle. Maybe get her some antibiotics, in case
that blade wasn’t clean.”

Alice shook her head. “I’d never let you
come here on your own, Ben. You know I wouldn’t do that. I
know
the
city. I know where Roan lives, where he and his men are staying.”

Ben nodded. “But I don’t want you
anywhere near that place, Alice. When the time is right, I’ll present him with
our offer. And I’ll be doing it alone. I need your word on that.”

She forced a smile and nodded her assent.
He kissed her forehead. “Come on. Let’s get down from here.”

They picked their way cautiously through
the rubble, descending from the overpass until they found themselves on
Peachtree Road. On the surface streets, the destruction wasn’t nearly as bad.
Many structures remained largely intact, and they took their care as they made
their way toward the city’s core, darting between rusting vehicles left in the
streets.

Near dark, they slowed their pace.

“Let me get a look around,” Ben said.
They had ducked down an unmarked alley, perhaps three or four miles from the
city’s core, where they found came across an unlocked gate in the middle of a
high fence. Ben nudged it wide and stepped through, his pistol in hand; he had
been delighted to find himself standing on the back patio of what had once
likely been a charming little café or coffee shop. He ducked inside and, when
he was certain the building was empty, waved for Alice to follow. She latched the
gate behind her.

“This looks like a decent place,” she
said. “Oh my God, Ben! Will you look at that?”

A wooden box near the door held a stack
of yellowing paper menus. Grinning, Ben grabbed a couple and handed one to
Alice.

They scanned the menu, salivating over
the options.

“Eggs benedict! Bacon and hashbrowns
and…oh my God, Alice—sourdough toast!”

“Swiss cheese quiche! Country fried
steak!”

“Biscuits and pepper gravy! Orange
juice! Criminy, I think I might trade the entire farm right now for a big glass
of orange juice!”

“Scones with marmalade! Lattes and
mochas and espresso!” Alice gushed.

A wistful expression formed on Ben’s
face. “Mochas. You know, I’ve had those before. If I remember correctly, they
were pretty good.”

Alice stopped reading and looked up at
Ben.

“What?” he said, noting the incredulity
in her expression. “They were chocolate, right?”

With a frown, she replaced the menu and wrapped
her arms around him. “I’m sorry, Ben. Forgive me. I forget sometimes. I so
often forget.”

“Forget what?”

“That you were just a kid when all of
this happened. You really had coffee like that just a few times?”

Ben pulled back and held up the appropriate
number of fingers. “Three, to be exact. We never had stuff like that back on
the ranch. And I was still so new at my job back then and, well, I just hadn’t
spent much time thinking about things like…like coffee.”

Alice kissed him. “There’ll be time again,
Ben. In the future, when things improve, there’ll be time for you yet to experience
the good of what we had before.” She smiled. “When we get out of here, I’ll
make you a mocha myself. That’s a promise. I don’t know how I’ll find the
ingredients, but I promise that I’ll make it happen.”

They scarfed a quick dinner of dried
fruit and deer jerky and, when darkness fell and the temperature dropped, they
huddled for warmth beneath the old front counter.

“How does it feel?” Ben whispered, when
they were both very near sleep.

“What’s that?”

“To be home. How does it feel?”

Alice sighed. “It’s not home anymore,
Ben. We have to remember that, or it could go pretty badly for us. This
place…it belongs to somebody else now.”

THIRTY-FIVE

They
had made it as far as Piedmont Park—fair progress, by Alice’s reckoning—when
they were ambushed. They’d stopped to eat lunch on a little stone bridge, huddling
on benches in the shadows of a decomposing gazebo. A few scrawny birds paddled about
in the murky water lazing by beneath the bridge.

“There won’t
be
a front door,”
Alice said. “One of the last things Brian discovered was that Roan had seriously
fortified the building. He’d taken these enormous steel plates and welded them together,
blocking the entire first floor—shutting off the front entrance and any windows
that allowed access. He put up razor wire and built guard stations. Our best
bet—
your
best bet, if you still insist on doing this alone—will be to speak
with one of his soldiers without getting shot, give him a gift to take inside,
and then request an audience. And that’s just what it would be, Ben. Roan
fancies himself some sort of royalty.”

“So…where did this guy come from? Do you
know his story?”

Alice offered a rueful smile. “He was an
accountant, of all things. Before the Reset, he’d been a regular ol’ bean
counter for Coca Cola, working a plum job in the primary economy. Just a cog in
the machine—an anonymous number cruncher advancing the politics of the era. But
he
was
a little bit different, I suppose. He’d put his hand in the
cookie jar and had it chopped off, so to speak, so he wasn’t your average
‘go-along-to-get-along’ corporate drone. Roan is a snake and a thief, a white-collar
criminal that had been convicted of embezzlement before serving time in USP
Atlanta.”

Ben frowned in confusion.

“It was the old federal prison. The
Human Accord torched the place a few hours after the corrections staff walked
off the job for good. Civil services simply failed in the months after the
Reset. Absenteeism was about 25% in the weeks directly following the attacks. A
month later, there was nobody left to keep the streets safe or put out the
fires. The world burned, and we just watched it go.

“Most of the jailed starved in their
cells. They hadn’t been looked after. The rest, with the exception of a few
stragglers like Roan, who had been quartered in a minimum security ‘camp’
outside the fences, died in the fires.”

“That’s just…Jesus, Alice, that’s
barbaric!”

Alice finished her smoked catfish and
shrugged her shoulders. “What were their options? Open the doors and put them all
out on the streets? It would have aggravated an already terrible situation.
There was no
law
, Ben. ‘Survival of the fittest,’ and ‘protect your
family.’ Those were the new paradigms. Adding a vicious criminal element to the
equation was considered bad public policy. It was easier just to erase the
problem.”

“Still…”

“Hey, that’s just one example. After the
writing was on the wall, this was maybe in June or July of 2038, HA security
forces began a systematic eradication of
anybody
who had been linked to
the marginalized economies. Take that basic Darwinian philosophy and add a dash
of Thomas Malthus, maybe a pinch of Hitler, and you had The Human Accord’s
end-game strategy: eliminate the unfortunate and let the wealthy rebuild.”

Ben studied the deserted park—the empty
city. “I guess it worked.”

Alice grew thoughtful.

“Yes, and no. I mean, look where it put
us, am I right? There used to be this great video clip that you could watch
online. These two boxers both throw stiff punches. They catch each other flush
and
wham!
” she clapped her hands for emphasis, “both of them hit the
canvas! Double knock out—game over. That’s what happened here. That’s where we are.
The financial elite couldn’t survive in the world they had created, and they
killed so many of the poor that rebuilding wasn’t realistic.

“The Human Accord hadn’t expected such
an intense resistance. The country’s largest population centers shifted to the towns
and small cities that Calvin hadn’t targeted. For a period of about two months,
America had been run from a renovated Holiday Inn in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Places
like Tallahassee, Omaha, Des Moines and Flagstaff adopted new and important
roles. These were the biggies now, and HA security forces rolled through them
like lead-spitting tsunamis. Men, women and children—almost all of them poor—were
eliminated in droves as the forces went door to door, neighborhood to
neighborhood. Of course, it didn’t help that the detonation in Phoenix had
destroyed the military’s biological weapons laboratories. Hundreds of thousands
that didn’t fall to bullets lost their lives to VX9, the fastest-killing,
human-engineered flu virus the world had ever known.”

“But the people—how long did they stand
against The Human Accord?”

“For most of the rest of the year. Militias
were formed in almost every population zone with a little size. Some of those
groups might still exist today—there’s no way of knowing without a
communications grid. That’s part of Roan’s grand plan. He wants to get the
phones back online, or at least that’s the rumor.”

“Sounds kind of nice, actually. I wonder
if he’s had any success.”

Alice shook her head in disgust. “Roan’s
no different than The Human Accord. He uses violence in the same ways they did:
to intimidate, to coerce, to terrify. You see, there were three options back
then, Ben: fight, die, or hide. The Human Accord swept through and killed most
of the survivors. When
it
was thrown over, warlords like Roan stepped in
to finish the job.” Her eyes grew wet at the memory of her husband. “Regardless
of how he thinks of himself, he’s no messiah. He’s a petty, angry little man
who has fallen into a position of power through blind luck and bully tactics.

“Before the Reset, he’d been a
soft-bellied snake. He had a sharp business mind, though, and he had
connections. He had money. He used those resources to build his influence in
prison. If you needed something from the outside, Roan could get it for you.
And that’s not his real name, by the way.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. His given name is Robert
Roanicke. He took up with some of the other prisoners that had survived the USP
Atlanta fire and built a militia. They defended Buckhead against HA forces,
gaining strength with every successful mission. What remained back then of the
media first started calling him ‘Roan,’ and the name stuck.

“He outlasted The Human Accord and his
army grew. It wasn’t long before he had taken control of East Lake, Ormewood,
Bankhead, and Kirkwood. Before the news stations fell into static, he had begun
weekly addresses, using propaganda and promising prosperity to those who stood
with him against the diminishing strength of The Human Accord.”

“And he won,” Ben said. Roan’s rise to
power fascinated him. History was filled with people just like him—ordinary
people in the right place at the right time.

Alice smirked. “The Human Accord was stumbling
around on dying legs by then. It didn’t take much for Roan’s armies to sweep
them up. He burned their dead in a monstrous pyre on the infield of the old
baseball stadium. Atlanta reeked for weeks. That smell,” she said, shaking her
head. “I’ll never forget it.

“He moved into city hall. Brian said he
was working to get the power back online, at least in a few parts of the city.
He was trying to get the sewers figured out, too.”

“That doesn’t sound
all
bad,” Ben
said.

“Look, they were selfish efforts, Ben.
He doesn’t do them with an eye toward rebuilding—toward making life more
bearable for others. He does them so
he
can feel better. I’m here because
I love you, Ben, but also because, if I can, I want to help those women we left
behind in Bickley. If it’s true—if he’s forcing them to bear children against
their will—then he’s every bit the monster I knew him to be when his men murdered
my husband. He’s a thief and a…well, a
cannibal
, Ben! I hate admitting
that, given what happened to my husband, but there it is.

“He’s an opportunistic parasite that
would sooner see Atlanta burned to the ground than flourishing in prosperity.”

A distant thunderclap punctuated her
bitter words. Ben looked to the horizon, where storm clouds were massing, rapidly
converging on the city.

Ben grinned. “And this is the guy we’re
trying to bargain with?”

Alice reached over and pinched his arm
playfully. “It was
your
bright idea, buster. We’d better pray that we
don’t get the Talmidge treatment like you saw back there in Bickley.”

Ben nodded somberly. He knelt to stow
the remnants of his lunch in his pack. “I don’t know if we have a choice,
Alice. You heard Arthur. That little girl is his life. If we didn’t come, he
would. You know that.”

Alice nodded. “I admire your courage.
Who knows—perhaps he’ll take the seeds and build a beautiful garden, right here
in Atlanta. We’ll get Lucy back and maybe things will work out just fine in the
end.” Her eyes betrayed her optimism, though, and Ben felt the skin on the back
of his neck prickle.

The wind tossed the first smattering of
raindrops hard to the Earth. “Better take cover,” Ben said. He looked north—to
the city center. When he turned back, Alice was on the ground, gasping for air
like a gaffed tarpon.

“Alice!” he cried, scooping her into his
arms. Something bit his neck—a sudden vicious pain screaming through him. His
fingers, already growing clumsy, clutched at the dart and plucked it free.
“Alice!” he croaked, the words all wrong—tumbling from his mouth like syrup.
His lips were numb, his vision blurred.

The last thing he registered was the
love of his life struggling for a breath of air while the world grew fuzzy and
then disappeared altogether
.