“Other boys?” Ben said. He was almost finished with his coffee, the old delicious treat warming him from head to toe. He had to remind himself to slow down, to savor it.
Buck nodded. “Three of them. I don’t recognize ‘em right off, so I can’t say where they’re from for sure, but I reckon they work for Talmidge. They were up into the wee hours, watching you, son,” he pointed at Ben with a large index finger. “Saw you in the firelight.”
“Please, call me Ben. And this is Alice. You…you saw them?”
“Like I said, I was keeping tabs on you. If those boys were going to move on you, I’d have helped you out. But they left long before dawn and I haven’t seen ‘em yet today. If you really want to go to Bickley, it’s just another few hours by foot. I can show you how to get there.”
“We…we’re looking for seeds,” Alice blurted. She waited for his reaction.
“Seeds?” he said, braying laughter. “You uh…you folks plan to do a little farming, do you?”
“Could be,” Ben replied. “We thought we’d give it a shot.”
Buck stroked his beard. “Well, I doubt it’ll work for you, but at least you’re trying. I’ll give you that. I’ve managed to grow some herbs myself—mostly indoors, mind you. Sage and whatnot. Don’t have much of a green thumb, truth to tell. But…well, I guess there’s an old hardware store that just might still have some. It’s out on the Trout River Road. That’ll steer you clear of Bickley—maybe even keep you out of harm’s way in the process. There’s a wicked element in that little town. Eddie Talmidge lives there, and ol’ Eddie doesn’t take kindly to outsiders poking around his little village.”
Ben nodded. “Thanks for the warning. We’ll avoid it if we can. What about this store?”
Buck put on a wistful smile. “Ah, damn! I used to love that place! Ol’ Putt Allen’s Mercantile. I spent a lot of time in there before the Reset. Used to,” he paused and swallowed thickly. A shadow darkened his features. “Oh, I used to have a family of my own to look after in those days. I’d take my boys in there for lumber and hardware and such and ol’ Putt and his little clan would be playing cards and smoking cigarettes and debating the price of Vidalias. Putt always gave my boys sodas from the cooler. Free of charge, every last time. They were good people, those old timers. Good country people…”
They sat in silence for a moment before Buck stood and went to the kitchen. He returned with a pencil and a clean sheet of paper and began to draw, those big rough hands tracing elegant lines. Ben watched, mesmerized. This deer man was talented.
After about fifteen minutes, Buck turned the paper around and put his index finger on an ‘X’ in the center of the map. “Here we are, and these are the woods you just came through. Go back that way and angle south for about…oh, maybe eighty, ninety minutes. You’ll eventually meet up with the Trout River, where you want to go east. Walk its banks another forty minutes or so and you’ll hit an old steel bridge and a gravel road. That road leads to Talmo. Now, before you get any ideas, I’d stay out of Talmo, too. Bad elements there…hell, bad elements everywhere. Don’t walk on the road, but kind of follow it north until you see Putt’s shop. And hear this—I wouldn’t go inside at night. Probably someone bunking down in there, and you don’t want to catch them out like that. What happens when you get to Putt’s is up to you, but this here map’ll get you there.” He finished by tapping it with a meaty index finger.
Ben was shocked. To hear the big man tell it, there were many more people out there than he’d known. True, he’d always stuck to the back roads throughout his travels, but it was both exhilarating and frightening to hear that so many places still held people.
They discussed the terrain and then they were up and the big man was filling their packs with deer jerky. He gave them two or three pounds of the stuff, at least. “Got more than enough to share,” he said when they insisted it was too generous. “It’s nice to be able to help some folks out from time to time. It’s easy to forget what having company over is like.”
“Why?” Alice asked when they were standing outside. “Why give us coffee and draw us a map? You don’t know anything about us.”
Buck laughed. “But I do know people, and it’s like I said—if I thought you were the wrong kind, Miss Alice, you’d already be dead. These are my woods. I know everything that happens here, and I knew from the start that you two were okay. Those others, though.” He shrugged and held their eyes for a long moment. “Be careful out there. That’s about all I can say.”
They shook hands and Ben and Alice set off for the woods. They were almost out of earshot when Ben turned. “Just out of curiosity: where do you find the deer, Buck? I’ve hunted all through the winter and only managed a couple scrawny rabbits and squirrels. Barely got anything out of ‘em.”
“Oh, the deer are out there, Ben. You just have to know where to look. You want to know something? The world’s coming back. It’ll never be the way it was before, thank the good Lord, but it’s coming back just the same. Don’t you forget it, now. It’s not all gloom and doom out here. It’s not all misery and heartache. The world’s coming back.”
Ben nodded and they turned and left him there.
“Bring me some tomatoes if you get ‘em to take!” Buck called when they were almost out of the clearing.
Alice waved in reply and they stepped into the brush, keeping one eye on the map and another on the forest. Silently, carefully, they made for the river.
FOURTEEN
As they approached the Trout River, reminders of the old world were everywhere. The skeletal remains of all sorts of vehicles—combines and trucks, mostly, but more than a few abandoned cars as well—pocked flatlands that had once produced blueberries, collard greens, and Vidalia onions. They passed dozens of dilapidated homes, those sad monuments collapsing in the clay, all charred timber and shattered glass.
They found the Trout River and hiked east, following the lazy water’s passage on its way to the ocean. There were tracks all along the banks—deer and raccoon and what looked like some sizable paw prints.
“Even if we don’t find what we need,” Alice said, “I’m glad that we gave it a shot. It’s heartening to see others hanging in there—that there’s more out here than just blowing ash and dying trees.”
“Yeah, and I have to admit that I kind of liked Buck. I think he’d make a decent neighbor. We’ll have to pay him a visit down the road—bring him some apples, at the very least. Return the favor for the jerky.”
It had been delicious, that jerky—instant energy in the form of salty deer flesh. It had been better than anything Ben had eaten in years—since the cookouts in the Beamers’ back yard or the family-style meals Ms. Black had prepared on the ranch.
The river ducked under a bridge and they scampered up the bank, walking briskly at the edge of the open road. Ben thought about the previous night’s encounter. It gnawed at him, the enormity of what they’d shared, coupled with the foolish guilt that he now felt at betraying the memory of a girl who had almost surely been dead for more than a decade. There were those things to consider, as well as the shared knowledge of what he truly was.
Alice knew.
She knew what Dr. White had put inside of him. She understood the destructive power that he represented with every breath he drew.
Finally, he just had to stop. “Alice? Hey, listen! Can we please just talk about what happened last night? Just for a moment? It’s killing me.”
She turned to face him. The day was warming, and she’d stripped down to a tee-shirt. Ben studied her, overcome with emotion. She was lean and fit. Her eyes were clear, her thick red hair swept back in a ponytail to reveal the graceful arch of her neck. The winter had been good to her, and she had grown strong and healthy.
Dang, but seeing her that way made him happy.
“Doesn’t it bother you, Alice? Knowing what I am? Aren’t you…aren’t you scared to be around me?” His heart was beating so fast that he was scared he might blow right the
n and there.
She laughed and darted forward, hugging him hard and placing her cheek against his chest. His arms fell across her back and, after a moment, he returned the hug. She peered up at him.
“When I lost Brian, it was like the Reset had happened all over again. It was…well, it was my own personal apocalypse, Ben. It was my own private dissolution of all the things that made life worth living. When I fled Atlanta, I did it because I wanted to die. I just didn’t want to give Roan the satisfaction of capturing me, and I couldn’t reconcile the way things had become there with…with any kind of purposeful life, I suppose. You have to understand that I didn’t bring any supplies with me, Ben. I left without a plan, without a compass, without hope. I was giving up and I was giving in, and that was fine with me. I’d made my piece with it.
“I wasn’t looking for anything—other than a way out of that hell. I wasn’t looking for anything, and yet…what I found was you.”
Ben grinned. “Hey, now. If we’re being technical here, I found you.”
She nodded. “That’s right, Ben. You found me and you saved me. You took me in, and you showed me another chance at life, so I don’t fear you at all, Ben. I have absolutely no fear of you. Only love and affection.
“What happened last night was wonderful,” she said, and her cheeks flushed. “It was...well, I’m just excited to have another chance, Ben. I’ll leave it at that, and I hope you know it in your heart. I don’t fear you at all. I don’t think I ever could.”
He looked away, swiping the tears from his eyes. He kissed the top of her head and she squeezed him even harder. “Thank you…” he started, but his reply was cut off by a mechanical droning in the distance.
They crouched, scanning the horizon. A jeep came trundling toward them. It was a fair distance, but closing fast.
“There—into the ditch!” Ben said, and they scurried into the little trough at the side of the road. The rains had been scarce and they were lucky it was dry.
“There’s a culvert!” Alice hissed. It was at least a hundred yards in the distance, in the direction of the approaching jeep.
“Hustle, hustle! Go for it!” Ben said, and they were scurrying as fast as they could over the rocky terrain. They were hunched over, but Ben felt terribly exposed all the same. He waited for the staccato bursts of automatic gunfire.
Fifty yards…forty…thirty. They fell to their knees, crawling on all fours, while the truck approached.
It kicked up dust on the road. A man was standing up in the back. He had a gun and a set of binoculars, which he used to scan the road before them.
Ben reached the culvert first. He turned, just as Alice collapsed in a heap, ten feet from cover. The jeep’s tires vibrated above them, and Ben could hear music—some angry marriage of shouting and percussion—and then the jeep slid to a halt.
Alice winced. Tears streaked her face, and he could see where her ankle was stuck in the ground at a terrible angle. He scuttled forward, took hold of her leg and pulled. Alice grunted just as the suspension of the jeep was yawning on the road above them. Her leg came free and they scurried into the darkness.
Their backs to the concrete wall, they sat as deep in the shadows as they could manage.
Someone switched off the music and they heard mumbled discussion. It was a disagreement, but a good-natured one.
“It ain’t what you think it is, Cap,” a deep voice called.
“Bullshit,” a gravelly voice shot back. “Pinnock, get yer skinny ass down there and collect it. Bring it here. Might belong to our lovebirds, and if they’re coming this way.”
“Aw, Cap, why do I always have to…?”
“Move your ass, Pinnock!”
There was a grunt and the sound of boots crunching over stone. Then a thin man with acne and an oddly shaped head—bullet-shaped, like a tapered canning jar—scrambled into the ditch. Ben kept his arm across Alice’s chest, willing them both deeper into the concrete wall. His left arm was poised to level the shotgun, his finger on the trigger.
Neither breathed. Neither dared take a breath.
"I don’t want to touch it, Cap! It could be…I don’t know, it could be a trap of some kind!”
“It’s a fucking apple, Pinnock! Just because you’ve never seen one before doesn’t mean it’s a trap. Jesus, boy! Stop grousing and pick that goddamned thing up or you’ll be walking back to Bickley. You can explain to Mr. Talmidge why you were afraid to touch a piece of fruit, for the love of Pete!”
Pinnock stooped to pick it up. One of them—likely Alice when she’d fallen—had lost it in the ditch. Pinnock wore green camouflage pants, heavy black boots and a filthy white t-shirt. A tiny tuft of blond hair sat atop that oddly shaped head. He held the apple at arm’s length, like it was a venomous snake or something, and peered up at his boss.
“Now poke yer head inside that culvert, Pinnock. Make damn sure they’re gone, long as you’re down there.”
“Aw, Cap, I don’t want to…”
The sound of boots jingling on the road echoed from above. It had the desired effect.
“Okay, okay!” Pinnock said. His arm went up reflexively—he was probably used to taking a swat or two. He crept over to the lip of the culvert, where he cupped a hand over his eyes and peered into the darkness.
“Hal-lo?” he called softly. His voice bounced around on the concrete walls. “Any-body-in-there?”
Ben closed his eyes. He could feel Alice’s heartbeat. There was terror between them—pure, unbridled fear. It was all he could do to keep himself from cutting the man down, from plunging into daylight and blasting at the men in the jeep with the shotgun.
It certainly beat getting slaughtered in the darkness, like carp in a barrel.
“Come on, Pinnock!” the deep voice called down. “You really need to grow a pair, boy!”
“I got a pair, Quade!” the thin man shot back. “You just…you just shut up!”
He turned back to the culvert and took a few tentative steps inside. Fifteen feet of darkness—that was all that separated them now. “Anybody in HERE!” he shouted. His voice boomed in echo and there was an explosion that blew him flat on his ass.
Ben could barely hear Pinnock’s shrill screams as the thin man scrambled out of the ditch and back up to the road. From just inches above their heads a maelstrom of wing-beating fury—a boiling mass of bats—exploded toward the culvert’s opening. Ben covered Alice as the tiny animals’ wings whipped the air all about them, tangling in her hair and getting stuck in his coat. Thirty seconds later the colony was gone, and Ben could hear Cap and the one Pinnock had called Quade taking their shots at Pinnock.
“You…you should have seen yourself, Pinnock! My God, but you scream like my sister!” Quade said. “It was priceless!”
“Here!” Pinnock said, when the laughter abated. “Here’s your damned apple! I hope you choke on it.” He threw it toward the jeep and scrambled out of the ditch.
“Oh, it ain’t for me,” Cap replied, “and you should watch your tongue, you fucking grunt. This is going straight to Mr. Talmidge. Might find himself an interest in tracking down our lovebirds if there’s more where this came from.”
The jeep roared back to life and crunched off down the road and Ben and Alice were finally alone with the darkness and their pounding hearts.
“Alice?” Ben finally whispered.
“Oh god!” she hissed. Her hand were shaking. “Oh my god, Ben, that was too close!”
“Can you walk?”
“I think so. I think I just turned it a little. Let’s get out of here.”
He helped her to the mouth of the culvert. The woods were maybe a mile in the distance, but they hobbled straight for them, thankful to be off the road.
They found Putt’s Hardware forty minutes later. It was a busted up, two-story feed and seed with gaping holes in its shaker-shingled roof. The gasoline pumps out front had been vandalized and the front windows were missing. Some charming soul had scrawled PUD’S PLEASURE PALAC
E in red spray paint on the sign above the front door.
A buzzard sat there, scanning the road like a prison bull.
“Dang,” Alice said. “That place gives me the willies. Maybe we should just head home, Ben. We’ve had our close call for the day, I think.”
“Yeah, I feel it too. I definitely don’t like the idea of poking around in there. But we came all this way for a reason, Alice. If we find some seeds,” he sighed, “well, it could be a game changer. We’ve got to give it a shot. It might be the difference between making that farm work, and then we wouldn’t have to leave again.”
They pondered it in silence for a time. “Okay, you’re right. What’s the plan?” she finally asked.
Putt’s stood at the far margin of a wide clearing. There was a marsh behind it, the husks of reeds and thistles trembling slightly in the breeze. There were no trees to speak of, and only a little ramshackle shed in the process of falling over out behind the main building. A chain-link nursery center was connected to the main building, its gate banging in the breeze.
Ben studied it through the binoculars. They were maybe a half mile away, tucked under a blackberry bramble that had overtaken a long stretch of pasture fencing.
“Wait here,” he finally said. “You keep that handgun ready and keep an eye on me through the binoculars. I’ll hustle in and take what I can. Give me fifteen minutes from the time I hit the front door. If I’m not back, Alice, you have to leave. You have to promise me that. Go straight back to Buck’s. I’ll meet you there if I can. If I’m not there by nightfall, you beat a trail for the miracle farm. Follow the path we marked and don’t stop until you’re home, okay?”
She nodded. “I can do that. Take care, Ben. I don’t want to make that hike by myself.”
He grinned and kissed her. Now she had ash in her hair and smeared across her cheeks, and he brushed it away and unloaded his pack. When he was finished, he chambered a round in the shotgun.
The Reset Page 9
