THE RESET
DANIEL POWELL
DISTILLATIONS PRESS
The Reset © 2014 by Daniel Powell
This edition of The Reset © 2014 by Distillations Press
Cover by Alchemy Book Covers & Design
Interior layout and design by Canopy Studios
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including printing, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Kindle First Edition
ASIN: B00IO3793G
A young man with a terrible secret buried deep in his chest staggers through what remains of the American South. The destruction is total—the landscape scrubbed bare by the fires of the Reset. The sun rarely penetrates the daily ash storms, and the last of the Earth’s plants and animals are slowly dying out.
And yet, there are survivors. Benjamin Stone is one of them, and he’s searching for the only person who can share his pain, another who was biologically altered at birth to become a weapon capable of bringing the world to its knees. He has nothing, save the few supplies that sustain him in his search for a new life.
Nothing but a will to survive and the desire to find someplace safe—someplace better.
The Reset is a story of perseverance. It examines a future in which fragmentation and devolution have decimated society, and in which terrorism represents the final desperate attempt at shuffling the deck. With thematic elements similar to Stephen King’s The Stand and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, it’s a post-apocalyptic story about the survivors of humanity’s cruelest intentions, and their essential impulse to rebuild.
Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.
~ Victor Hugo
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PART I
THE MIRACLE FARM
ONE
“Somewhere,” he whispered, adjusting his pack as he trudged through the dust and ash.
It hadn’t yet become a mantra, but it was getting damned close. The idea of finding a place—any place—clawed its way into his thoughts often as he trudged from structure to structure and town to town.
It had been that way for months.
He saw the house in the early afternoon—a tiny dot on a distant horizon. He focused on it, time passing slowly as he made his way down the dusty road. His strength (and most of the afternoon’s light) was nearly gone when he finally stopped outside the front gate.
He shifted the pack on his shoulders as he studied the structure rising from the Georgia clay before him. Instinct told him to keep moving, but he simply couldn’t help himself.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered. He coughed and spat, ignoring the crimson flecks there.
The road had taken him through acres of barren, ash-clogged farmland. A cold wind rustled the spindly poplars framing the front porch, their blighted leaves fluttering in the current.
He was debating whether to open the gate when the sound of a hammer being cocked on a pistol carried across the front yard. There was a moment of silence, an instant of perfect clarity in which he understood that his life was not his own to keep, and then a gruff voice called out from somewhere inside.
“What’s yer business?”
The wanderer scanned the empty windows. Slowly, he showed the house palms that were cracked and calloused from all that time in the elements.
“I’m just passing through,” he rasped in reply, another consequence of the stubborn illness that had seemed to become a part of him. “I don’t mean any harm, I swear. It’s just that…well, it’s been a long time since I saw such a place.”
Silence spun out between them, the only sound the rustling of those tenuous poplar leaves. After a time, movement echoed inside the house. Thunks and scratches—chains and deadbolts.
The door squeaked open and a bandy-legged old man ventured out onto the porch. He had a shotgun levered casually beneath his right armpit and a pistol in his left hand. The pistol he aimed at his visitor’s chest—the barrel shaking a bit in his unsteady hand.
“Oh, I know it. This here house is kind of a spectacle, or so I’ve been told. Not many like it still standing in these parts. Not any, I’d wager. Yes indeed, I’ve kept the ol’ place up. People…well, people forget how it used to be.”
The traveler nodded. “I can see why they stop. There’s hope in what you’ve done here; it shows that some folks still care.”
The old man took a cautious step forward. “So tell me again, son, so I have it on yer honor—do ye’ mean an old man harm?”
“No sir. I’m just going north and I…well, I happened across your place here. Pure blind luck is all it was. I probably couldn’t find it again if I had to, truth to tell. It…it caught me off guard, and I had to stop a minute. I’ll pass right on through if you’ll let me go.”
The old man licked his lips as he considered the reply. He had a shock of bushy silver hair combed into a part, cheekbones like ruddy crabapples and thin, burgundy lips. He might be in his sixties, and maybe even older than that, though age didn’t mean much anymore.
Life wasn’t any better for the young than for the old, truth be told. Race, age, money—none of it meant a thing. Death, in keeping with its nature, had leveled the playing field.
“North, eh? That’s a hard direction, young man. That’s surely a hard way to go. If it suits ye’, then ye’ can rest a moment here, I suppose. Or not—it makes no difference to me. But travelers are sparse up the ol’ Orchard Road there,” he motioned with the pistol at the pair of dirt troughs the man had followed, “and I might have a bit of supper to share with you. That is, if you enter my home without malice in your heart.”
The man smiled in gratitude; he lowered his hands. “Thank you. May I…may I open the gate?”
The old man slipped his finger outside of the trigger guard and stepped down into the yard. “Okay. Come on in with ye’, then.”
The traveler shrugged out of his pack and let it fall at the foot of the steps.
“My name is Bert,” the old man said; they shook hands. “Bertram Winston. This here’s my place. Always has been—ever since I was a young’un.”
“I’m Ben. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Winston. I’m in your debt.”
�
�Just Ben?”
He hesitated. “Benjamin James Stone. My folks—I lost them when I was a child, long before any of the rest of this mess.”
“So sorry to hear it, Benjamin Stone. Although I suppose it’s a comfort knowing they didn’t have to live through the Reset.”
Ben merely nodded. He placed his hand on the recently painted railing as they climbed the steps. The grounds were trim and well maintained. The exterior of the house was clean—no small feat with the daily ash storms. The windows gleamed and the porch had been swept.
Winston opened the door. They crossed the threshold and stepped back in time. There was a tidy parlor with a fan of faded magazines on a little table beside an overstuffed recliner. An antique sofa had a hand-knitted afghan spanning the length of its spine. The mantle over the fireplace was home to dozens of porcelain knick knacks and a fancy clock in a glass case.
There was a life inside this house—not a monument to decay, as had been the case in almost every other building he’d summoned the courage to investigate throughout his years of drifting.
“Oh, I’ve managed to hold things together,” Winston conceded, recognizing his guest’s naked wonderment with obvious pride. He tucked the pistol into the waistband of his work pants, which were held in place with faded red suspenders. After ejecting the shells, he propped the shotgun in the corner by the front door and refastened the locks.
Ben marveled at the sight of the man. His boots were old, but they’d been recently shined. His shirt was clean. He looked frail, but healthy enough overall.
His wasn’t a life of transience and filth, of hunger and despair.
“Yes sir,” Winston reiterated. “I’ve managed to keep the old place going, despite all the rest of it.”
Ben studied his own shabby clothes and his cheeks burned with shame. He wore layers of soiled rags and his shoes were held together with knotted strips of plastic and bands of grimy tape. He sported a thick layer of ash anywhere his skin was exposed; it coated him like finely ground pepper.
“We’ll eat in the kitchen. This way,” the man said. “You can wash up at the sink there.”
The smell of cooking food was almost unbearable. Hunger pangs tore through Ben’s gut as he noticed the stew simmering atop a cast-iron stove in the corner. How long had it been since he’d eaten a proper meal?
Two months? Three? It had probably been the squirrel he’d shared with the stranger on the blistered road outside of Pensacola.
An electric stove and a dishwasher and a refrigerator conspicuously maintained their positions in the room—useless monuments to a way of life that had perished in a series of shimmering explosions so many years before.
Ben went to the sink; he locked eyes with his host.
“Go ahead! Give it a try,” Winston urged. He wore a bemused smile. “It’s rigged to yonder well. Runs on a rechargeable battery. I can actually power this whole place up, truth be told. I do it from time to time, ye’ know. Right around the anniversary of the end of the whole durned mess. Heck, I even watch it sometimes. I got me a television set in the back parlor, and a recording of the minute that the world fell into ruin.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “A recording? What do you mean?”
“I mean the Reset, son. I got the whole durned wickedness on the DVR! The moment when the world went bright for an instant and plunged down into darkness!”
Ben nodded, turning back to the sink, his heart racing. Could Winston be telling the truth? Ben thought he probably was. It was as though the wildfires had simply cut a detour right around the place. Here was a link to the past, a genuine link to what had happened. It was a connection beyond the rumors and lies he’d listened to around campfires for the last ten years.
He worked the faucet and cold, clean water trickled into the basin. He put his hands beneath the stream and the dirt and ash slid away in filthy torrents.
He grinned at Winston. “God, I’d forgotten how it felt! The clean water, I mean. It feels—I don’t know how else to say it, but it feels sort of slimy!”
“Oh, I know, son. I know.” Winston said. He pointed to a ball of crude soap and Ben laughed heartily as pale flesh emerged from beneath the ashen crust. He scrubbed his hands and wrists until they were pink and turned his attention to the window. There was a large yard out back and a clothesline laden with garments, flapping in the cool fall wind. A barn stood in the distance.
The light was fading, but enough remained for a tour. Ben felt certain there were other surprises, and he was overcome with excitement and curiosity.
“Can I have a look around before we eat, Mr. Winston? Before it gets too dark to see?”
“Ye’ can call me Bert. And sure, son, we can take the two-cent tour. I rarely have any company, and dinner’ll keep a while yet. Let me fetch my coat.”
They stepped out into the crisp evening, Ben inhaling with pleasure. It was the same air he’d breathed, not an hour before, with malaise. Seeing the old ways—even a tiny glimpse into a life filled with order and dignity—had energized him.
They crunched across a gravel lot. “It’s just you out here?”
Winston nodded. “Ayuh. Just me.”
They strolled the length of a wooden fence. Beyond it, a pair of swaybacked ponies nibbled at tufts of grass beneath a productive apple orchard. There was fruit on the trees. Ben’s mouth fell open. “How on Earth..?”
Winston laughed. “Amazin’, eh? Got the green thumb, ye’ could say. And I’m a faithful person. The good Lord looks out for me.”
Ben studied him. There was something about the eyes—about the way they shined in the dusky light—that gave him pause. “It really is something, Bert. It truly is. May I?” He pointed to the nearest branch.
“Be my guest. I’ve plenty to share.”
Ben bit into an apple, the rush of tangy acids triggering sensations in the corners of his mouth he hadn’t felt in years. Sweet liquid trickled down his throat, and he tore into the fruit. He wolfed it down—the seeds, the core—every bit of it, and grinned at his host.
“It’s good,” he said, swiping a trickle of juice from the whiskers on his chin.
Winston cackled. “Have another then, but don’t spoil your appetite. A man can get sick on apples, and it’d be a shame to waste ‘em on the way back out.”
Ben took another and ate it slowly, savoring it. Jesus—fresh fruit!
“Can I see the barn? Maybe get a look at the machines?”
Winston stared at him for a long moment and then sighed. “Oh, I suppose so. No harm in it. Anymore, I really only run the tractor and the tiller. Gasoline—well, it’s the most precious thing that’s left in the world, to my thinking. I still manage to salvage a little from time to time when I take my jaunts into Hazelhurst or Pine Grove, but it’s hit or miss. Most of what I find is no better than horse piss anyway after all these years. I been rationing, though. Still got a little put aside for another harvest or two.”
Winston unfastened the padlock on the door with a key he kept on a string around his neck. Five empty stalls lined the far wall. Beyond them, a half dozen pieces of heavy machinery sat beneath a rectangle of dusky light filtering through a hatch in the roof: tractor, tiller, thresher—some others Ben couldn’t place.
He hadn’t seen anything like it since his time on the ranch—all those lifetimes ago, when he had been a child in Oregon. When all of them were together, and he still had Coraline.
Ben went to the tractor and touched the engine housing. “You…you actually make a go of the land out here, Bert? Other than the apples, I mean?”
Winston’s eyes narrowed. “Why do ye’ care, son? What business is that to a traveler passing through?”
“It’s just remarkable. I’m…well I’m stunned. It’s a lot for me to process all at once. I’ve wandered these parts for years—from Florida up through Georgia and out as far west as Texas. This is the first place, and I mean the only place, where I’ve seen fresh food. What you’ve done here, Bert…well, you were rig
ht in what you said back there about God looking out for you. This farm—it’s a genuine miracle.”
Winston blushed. “Oh, I don’t know that it’s all that. Place has always been productive. All these years. Good Georgia clay. It’s like—it’s like the things that blighted the world passed over us here, because…” his eyes went vacant as he lost himself in memory. “Because I’ve been here…well, I’ve been here since I was a boy. Little Bert Winston, ayuh, that was me. This was my place. Always has been.”
Ben studied the old man, watching him lost in a private memory. It suddenly occurred to him that Winston stood on the banks of a very wide river—a river of age and confusion and lost time. Could be old age or it could have been the fallout drifting north out of Orlando, but it didn’t matter how it happened. The fact was, Bert Winston was stumbling toward senility. How many winters did he have left before that river swallowed him up and carried him off for good?
Ben left him to his memories and started to climb the ladder to the loft. He was almost at the top rung when the old man emerged from his stupor.
“Oh, hey now! What’s the durned idea, boy? Come on down! Nothin’ up there to see! It’s just an old loft. Let’s head back up to the house and get that supper…”
Ben offered a benign smile. “Just a quick look, Bert. I grew up on a farm, and I promise I won’t touch anyth—”
Winston had the pistol out in a hurry. Hand shaking, he put the gun on Ben. “I said for ye’ to come down, boy. This ain’t a debate we’re having here.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “I didn’t mean any harm. Take it easy, Bert.” As he descended, his eyes went to the loft. There was something up there, but he couldn’t quite make it out.
For the second time that day, Winston cocked the hammer. “I’m not playing with ye’ boy. That loft is none of ye’ durned business.”
Ben exhaled, suddenly exhausted. Despite appearances, despite the fact that there was fresh food—this place was no different than any of the others he’d poked his head into.
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