The Reset (25 page)

FORTY-FOUR

Roan
woke up angry. He studied Coraline’s nude body, her back to him in the bed they
shared, with contempt. “I missed you last night, dear. Restless?”

She yawned, feigning disinterest while
her heart thudded. She stretched her arms over her head, rolling over to reveal
the length of her body in hopes of distracting the little tyrant. “I had to
take a walk,” she said. “Too much caffeine last night before bed.”

Roan snorted. “Too much caffeine. Yeah,
that’s it. Do you think I’m stupid, Coral?”

She shook her head. “Why are you talking
like this? Why start the day angry? Jesus!” She turned away, fighting the urge
to bolt from the bed.

“Hey. Hey!” Roan said. “Turn around! Look
at me, my little blue-eyed girl.”

She did, steeling herself with a deep
breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I
feel
something, Coral. I didn’t get here without my instincts, and something inside
me just feels off.”

“Don’t be paranoid,” she said, and this
drew a smile from the little man. He touched the scars on her chest.

“My beautiful little blue-eyed girl,” he
whispered. “My beautiful little blue-eyed girl with the key to the world inside
her chest.”

She felt his excitement against her, and
this time the sensation didn’t repulse her. Instead (and this was so
strange
),
what she felt was liberation.

This would be the last time. She could
endure it, just one more time.

He hovered over her, whispering all the
while. “You’re my special girl, Coral. You know that, don’t you?”

“Mmm,” she replied. It was impossible to
tell if she was agreeing or not, but Roan mistook it for excitement and started
to move faster.

“The key to the world, right there in
your chest. My special girl, Coral. Special…
girl
.”

She stared up at the ceiling while he
finished, thankful that he hadn’t pressed her further on her whereabouts.

He rolled back onto his side of the bed.
“When the time is right, you’ll bring a kingdom to its knees,” he panted. “When
the time is right.”

Coraline turned away, careful to hide
the little smile that lit her features.
If you only knew
, she thought, disgusted
by the wetness between her legs.

If you only knew
.

~

Wary
of betraying any changes in his routine, Ben ditched the morning’s ration of
protein in the toilet. He ate the bread and drank the water and, when he placed
his tray outside of his cell, he did so under the hopeful pretense that it
would be his final meal in captivity.

The young jailer collected the trays a
little while later. He peered into the cell and, when he found Ben crouching in
the darkness at the back of the space, he offered him a little nod, as if to
say,
Be seeing you, partner
.

Then he shuffled off, and Ben’s mind
raced. Was that little prick the mole? Jesus, the guy had hit him with the wand
a half dozen times in the last six weeks!

Whether it was him or not, somebody
inside Roan’s organization was leaking information. That much was certain.

Ben paced. Time crept by, which meant
their plan had already been put into action.

Johnny and Ann had come prepared. They’d
come to Georgia with a tiny army, and that was how they’d found the miracle
farm. It was pure dumb luck that their people had blundered across the place
before Roan’s scouts had.

By now, Gwen and Arthur were safely out
of Georgia—the reverend’s beloved guns securely in tow. Ben had asked the old
man to gather up as many of the seeds as he could manage and put the ponies out
for good. It made his heart ache to think of ol’ Bill and Ms. Josie out there
fending for themselves, but he imagined that if they survived the winter they
would be happier for it in the long run.

Still, they were fine creatures and he
felt a twinge of guilt all the same.

It was impossible to tell the time
without windows, but Coraline had said they would come for him near mid-day.
Roan had plans; today, come hell or high water, he intended to get the
information that would move his agricultural program forward for good.

Ben sat in the dark, waiting patiently
for his appointment with the butcher.

~

Roan
spent part of the morning in the botany lab, interrogating Dr. Trent on the
scope and magnitude of his ineptitude as a scientist.

“I…I…I,” the scientist stammered. He
took a deep breath. “Mr. Roan, it won’t work until we find fertile land. My
assistants have taken samples from as far south as Florida, as far north as
South Carolina. This ground,” he swept a hand at the dozens of garden plots,
“is contaminated. They obviously f-f-found a place where the soil is still
relatively pure, Mr. Roan.”

Roan felt the rage boiling up inside of
him. That little impulse—that feral rat of paranoia that chewed from time to
time at the back of his psyche—had ceased to let him alone.

He was pissed.

“This is unacceptable, Trent. Completely
unacceptable.”

“We need the lo-lo-lo,” another pause,
“location of their farm. That’s the key. Find it, and we’ll be able to replicate
their success. I promise you.”

Roan seethed. With a sweep of his arm,
he shoved everything—microscope and sample rack and binder and coffee mug—to
the linoleum floor, where it all shattered with a terrific crash. In one fluid
motion, he pulled the little stiletto from the scabbard clipped to the back of
his belt. The blade glinted in the sterile laboratory lights, and Trent
shrieked, his pudgy fingers splayed in terrified supplication as Roan advanced
on him.

“No! P-p-please, Mr. Roan!”

Roan snarled, plunging the knife into the
man’s soft belly. It made a puncturing sound, and then the scientist’s blood sloshed
onto the linoleum in thick gouts.

“If you can’t
make
the food,” Roan
hissed, twisting the blade as awareness leaked from the poor man’s eyes, “then
you’ll
be
the food.”

When Trent was dead, Roan let him fall
to the floor. He straightened his jacket and went to the nearest sink, where he
cleaned and dried his blade.

“Time to find that fucking farm, I
guess,” he said, patting the sides of his hair in the little mirror over the
basin.

“There’s fresh meat in there,” he told
the guard stationed just outside the laboratory. “See to it that Dr. Trent is
properly processed.”

He strode down the hallway, the ill
feeling in his gut temporarily forgotten.

FORTY-FIVE

The
explosions rocked Atlanta at just a few minutes past noon. They echoed through
a city made quiet by rationed electricity and shuttered factories, and they had
the desired effect on the people subsisting inside Roan’s fortified walls.

They were synchronized blasts, and they
leveled homes and office buildings alike in quadrant four with devastating
precision. Mansions in Candler Park and Chelsea Heights were reduced to
splinters; the few buildings that remained on Emory’s derelict campus were
targeted, and Roan’s security forces—already depleted as hundreds of scouts
searched in vain for the Stones’ farm—scrambled to quell the uprising that took
root in quad three.

Somebody within the Montana contingent
clearly knew explosives.

The people were tired. The men had grown
weary of life under the constant threat of imprisonment. The women were
exhausted from the degradation and fear that had accompanied Roan’s maniacal
plans to expand the population.

They took to the streets with rocks and
bottles. A few had guns, and the gutters ran red while they clashed on Peachtree
Street.

Marks was escorting Ben to the butcher
shop when the alarms clanged throughout the prison. There was an immediate
reaction, as hundreds of detainees sprang to life. They hammered at the bars of
their cells, howling at the guards that ran up and down the corridor like so
many disoriented ants in a flash flood. Emaciated arms stretched through the
bars, snatching at the uniforms of Roan’s soldiers. The crackle of dosing wands
filled the air as guards touched them to the iron bars. The air filled with an
acrid stench—the sickly combination of singed flesh and hot metal.

“Merrick!” the security officer spat
into his radio. “We need live rounds in cellblock nine! Things are falling
apart down here!”

An expression formed on the big man’s
face—confusion and anger. “Who is this?” he snarled, unsnapping his holster and
drawing his sidearm. “Where is the warden?”

There was an electronic bleat as the
locks on the cell doors were deactivated.

A call—had it come from Finney?—stabbed
through the confusion.

“WHOO!”

Then the doors were opening, the
detainees flooding into the hallway in droves. Some scooted forward on their
hands, springing forward with the agility of squirrels. Ben watched in horror
as three of them took a guard to the ground and began to claw at the man with
their fingers.

His cries died abruptly, and Ben saw
them using their teeth.

They were starving, these men, and they
were coming his way.

Marks shoved the barrel of the gun into
his back. “Move!” he said. All around them, Roan’s guards were losing the
battle. There were just too many detainees—too many furious, starving men.

“Pick it up!” Marks said, and they
jogged for the door. They made it just ahead of the pack of men giving chase.
Marks put his shoulder into it, but the door wouldn’t budge. Eight inches of
thick metal, and the thing wasn’t moving.

He wheeled, looking to the ceiling where
a camera blinked down at him. It took him three shots, but he got it.

He turned the gun on the advancing
detainees. Ben was frightened. The madness in their eyes—the combination of
ravenous hunger and furious madness made his knees weak.

Marks fired into the throng. Ben watched
in horror as the back of a man’s head exploded, misting the others in pink and
gray tissue fragments. Another took a blast in the chest, the force lifting him
up off the ground and sending him tumbling like a thistle on the wind.

This only further enraged them, and now
there were more. With Roan’s guards neutralized, the entire cellblock was
coming. Ben pushed his back to the wall while Marks snapped off shot after
shot. How many did he have?

Blood slicked the corridor, and then the
detainees fell over the security chief like a wave. They pulled him down,
restraining him even as he tried to put the barrel to his temple. A man, still
whole, wrestled the gun away and tucked it into the waistband of his trousers.

Marks screamed. It was a horrible thing,
that scream, born of raw fear and excruciating pain as dozens of sharp fingers
dipped into his belly and pulled at his flesh, tearing and rending the man into
shreds with wet, sloshing sounds. He screamed, even as bearded faces dipped
into his chest and came up crimson.

Ben hammered on the door, but the
detainees did not touch him. Instead, a few looked at him with something
bordering on reverence.

“Wonder boy!” Finney called. He scooted
over to Ben and fixed him with a glare. “You and Ms. Coral, huh?” he said.

Ben nodded. “We knew each other, many
years ago.”

Finney nodded. “Well, God be with you, wonder
boy. God be with you.”

There was a heavy metallic thud behind
him. The lock. He worked the handle, pushed the door open.

“Wait!” the man with the gun called. He
pulled it out, checked the magazine and handed it to Ben. “Three shots left. Be
careful.”

Ben nodded. He went to the nearest
fallen guard, rifling through his pockets until he had what he needed. He took
the dead man’s handcuffs and his tazer, then turned and ran, flying through the
chaos of fleeing prison guards and the detainees from the adjacent cellblocks
who had overrun the building. He found the stairs and climbed two flights to the
lobby, where he prayed they would be waiting for him.

The glass doors were shut, and he
couldn’t pry them open. He used a bullet on the glass, stepped through, and ran
out into the street. Four inches of fresh powder had accumulated, though it was
not snowing. The day was gray and cold and clear, the sun a shrouded orb tracking
out toward the west.

The street was deserted.

He started to trot south, toward the
house where he’d met the Montanans. He stuck to the sidewalk, hoping he might
be able to quickly duck into one of the dilapidated buildings if Roan’s men
came down the lane.

But nobody came. The running warmed him
up, and soon he had his bearings. He found the house. A burly truck with an
extended cab sat idling in the driveway.

Ben went around back and opened the
kitchen. Coraline and Alice were there. So was Ann.

And so was Johnny. He lay prone on the
kitchen table, unconscious, his torso a bloody mess.

“Alice!” Ben said, but she was already
in his arms. Her embrace was fierce.

“Oh my God, you’re alive!” she cried.
Tears covered cheeks that were streaked with dried blood. “You made it!”

He held her face. “Are you hurt?” he
said.

She nodded at Johnny “I’m okay. He…he
saved me. It’s bad, Ben. He was hit three times.”

Coraline pressed a towel over the seeping
wounds. They filled with blood quickly, and Ben noticed a pile of rags on the
floor.

“Johnny?” he said. He reached for his
hand. It was cool to the touch.

The man’s eyes fluttered open. He gave a
little nod. “Go west…Great Falls,” he said, wincing a little. “West.”

Ben nodded, and the injured man seemed
to take it as a promise. His eyes clouded, and then he was gone.

Ann closed his eyes and squeezed his
hand and then something shifted in her demeanor and she was all business. She
wiped the tears from her eyes.

“Let’s get out on the road,” she said.
“Our people have left the city. We need to do the same.”

“What about Lucy?” Alice said. “We can’t
go without her.”

Ann frowned. “Roan’s got her. It’s too
dangerous.”

Alice shook her head. “We can’t go with
you. I’m sorry, but we just can’t do it.”

Ann set her jaw. Her eyes darted from
Coraline to Ben to Alice and back to Coraline. “Do we have time?”

Coraline nodded.

“Come on,” Ann said. “We’ll pay Roan a
quick visit. If he doesn’t have the girl, then I’m leaving you two behind. Our
mission here is complete.”

“Not without Lucy it’s not,” Alice said.
“Not without her.”

Ann shrugged. She took a blanket from
her pack and covered Johnny’s body, then leaned forward and planted a kiss on
the man’s forehead. “Better days, old friend,” she said. She covered his face
and strode out to the truck.