Damn, he was in a bad way. Now he could taste blood in his mouth, could feel it trickling down his chin. He knew what that meant, and the realization sent a surge of adrenaline through him.
If he was going to die, he’d better make use of whatever he had left in the tank.
He regained his footing. The road curved around a swooping bend. He stumbled down it and found himself suddenly engulfed by darkness, Bickley’s tiny city center obscured by the road’s contours.
It didn’t matter if he could see them or not, because they were coming. The engine shrieked, tires squealing on asphalt.
“Over here!” a man’s voice carried through the darkness. It was a deep, familiar voice. “Hey! Hey, Ben! I’m right over here—follow my voice!”
Ben squinted. A thin blade of light, the hooded beam of a flashlight, momentarily illuminated Buck’s position. The woodsman had a shotgun, and he stood just inside the empty doorway of a burned-out gas station. “Move it, Ben! This is where we’ll have to take them!”
Ben covered that last sixty meters as quickly as he could, trusting the man instantly. “Thanks,” he gasped, sidling up to the large man.
“Nice piece,” Buck said, nodding at the automatic. “Cut out the tires with that little fucker. I’ll try to spring the women as safely as I can manage. Can you run?”
Ben shook his head. “Stabbed,” he panted. “I’ll try my best.”
“Stay out of the woods, then. Talmidge is probably going to figure it’s me that helped you, so don’t you dare go back the way you came. Those thugs of his will scour the forest. Not sure just where you came from, but the Trout River heads due north just after passing through Talmo. Might be a way to collect your bearings. If you get your friend back, then you two need to vanish, Ben. Just melt away, and put as much distance between yourselves and Bickley as you can.”
Ben nodded. “What are you going to do?”
Buck smiled. “I’ll move on, I guess. Rebuild. It’s a big ol’ world out there, Ben. It’s high time I left this place.”
The van was coming, the driver putting it through its paces.
“Thanks,” Ben said. He swallowed blood. “Thanks for helping us.”
Buck wore no smile, but his eyes shined in the dim night. “Don’t mention it. I owe this son of a bitch. Come on, buddy. Let’s go get some us some payback.”
The van rounded the bend. One hundred yards. Sixty.
Twenty.
Ben flipped the safety, stepped out of the doorway and lightly pressed the trigger. Flames licked out of the barrel and the front tires of the van disintegrated in an explosion of shredded rubber. The driver lost control and the van skidded over the far curb; it crashed into what was left of an old drive-in diner.
Buck was into the street in a flash. He sprinted up on the passenger side even as the spindly man with twigs for arms was climbing down, trying to level a hunting rifle. Buck let the shotgun bark and the kid’s head disappeared in a mist of blood and bone.
Screams echoed from the back of the van, and there was more shooting. Ben limped across the street just as Buck was throwing open the rear doors. A big man with red hair tumbled down onto the ground, the women piled on top of him.
They had the chain around his neck. Groping, terrified, furious fingers found the man’s eyes, his nose, his mouth. They pried him open, tearing at his skin—stretching and ripping and gashing all the while.
They were pulling him apart.
If he could have gathered the breath, the man likely would have screamed. But it was no use. They were on top of him, crushing him flat even as they blindly tore him to pieces.
“Alice!” he shouted. She looked up, her face twisted in a savage grimace. “Alice—Alice we have to go!”
A bullet whistled past his head. The driver was still out there, and he’d taken cover in the diner. He snapped shots at the shackled women and Ben watched in horror as a red blossom spread across a very young girl’s back. She fell to the sidewalk without a sound, her arms at her sides and her eyes a pair of glassy mirrors.
It was pitiful, these helpless women chained together while the scarred man used them for target practice.
“Delaney!” the older woman cried. “Oh, Dee!”
They left the redhead there in the street. He lay in a puddle of viscera; where his eyes had been there were now only two pulped sockets. His jaw was distended and off center, what remained of his hair clinging to his scalp in bloody patches.
And yet he breathed. Ben watched his chest as it rose and fell—rose and fell.
Screw it. He had to help them. He scurried over to the ladies and put his back to the van, even as Scarface loosed another volley of bullets. There was a shriek as one of them took one in the thigh. Ben yanked hard on the chain, straining to pull them out of the line of fire.
“Come on, now! Take cover!”
He tugged again and the women finally responded. They dragged the dead girl with them behind the van, its rear doors providing scant cover.
“Come out!” Quade called from the diner. “You’ll all be killed when Mr. Talmidge finds ye’! You’ll be hunted down and butchered, but if you give yourselves up willingly, you might still have a chance!”
The shotgun roared and Alice shot him a quizzical expression. “The deer man,” Ben said.
“Buck?” the old woman gasped. Her hands were covered in blood—blood from her leg wound, and from the girl’s back. Alice pressed on the woman’s thigh, but it looked like a glancing shot. She would manage. “You can’t trust him, mister!” she hissed. “He works with Talmidge.”
The shotgun roared again. “He’s already killed one of them,” Ben said. “I trust him just fine.”
“Dee! Oh, God…wake up, honey! Can you hear me? Dee!” a woman about their own age said. She blew air into the dead girl’s mouth.
“Keys,” Alice said. She eyed the redhead. “He has them. I think I can get to them.”
Ben shook his head, but Alice was insistent. “We have to get out of these handcuffs.”
She darted into the street, the women paying out slack in the chain. A bullet bounced off the asphalt at her feet and the shotgun roared for a third time—Buck providing cover. She dug through the redhead’s pockets until locating the keys, just as his hand clamped down over her wrist. His sightless, bleeding face shot forward and he sunk his teeth into her arm—his jaw apparently working just fine, thanks very much.
Alice shrieked, and there was a horrible noise as the man spat a chunk of her flesh into the street. He fell back, cackling hysterically—Alice’s blood glistening on his teeth.
She scrambled back to the van. She was hunting through the keys when they were suddenly awash in light.
A pair of dirt bikes rounded the corner and Ben stood and opened up with the automatic, spending the clip. Both riders dumped their bikes, and Ben watched in dismay as the man in black fled into the darkness.
The other rider crawled toward them. Glistening bone protruded from the back of his useless left arm. He’d left most of his face on the road, and Ben was horrified as he drew near.
He recognized him from the culvert—the one they called Pinnock.
“Get out of here,” the injured man gasped. He tossed his handgun toward the clustered women and crumpled to the ground. He took a few final rasping breaths before growing still.
Alice snatched the gun. She walked over and calmly put a bullet in the redhead’s temple before running back to the van, blood pouring from her arm in thick gobbets. She handed the gun to one of the women and hunted through the mass of keys.
“Small keys,” she muttered. The blood slicked her fingers, making it hard going. “Small keys, small keys, small keys….”
She found one, plunged it into the handcuffs and sprung the mechanism. She slipped the cuffs off and worked on the others. She freed each of them, save the poor girl. Delaney was gone.
“Ye cunts!” the scarred man called. Was that fear in his voice? “Ye’ll damn us all, ye cun
ts! Roan won’t care that we tried to hold up our end of the deal—he’ll butcher every soul in Bickley, you mark my words!”
“Quade!” It was Talmidge, shouting from down the street. “Hold your position, Quade! I think we’ve got ‘em pinned down!”
Ben heard Buck reloading. “The hell you do!” he yelled.
“Hey there, Buck!” Talmidge called after a long pause. “Nice of you to make it into town. Finally ready for that reunion with your kin, are you?”
There was a guttural snarl and then Buck was sprinting down the center of the street, running straight into the darkness that had swallowed Talmidge. A half dozen pistols shots cut the man’s legs out from under him. Buck struggled to his knees and leveled the shotgun, firing twice in Talmidge’s direction.
“Now!” Buck growled. “Run, Ben! Do it now!”
Ben took Alice’s hand. They sprang around the side of the van, hustling for the edge of town. For the safety of trees and darkness and the palmetto grove outside of Arthur’s staid colonial on the hill.
Bullets whistled past them—twanging hornets in the night. He heard cries and realized the women were following them. It sounded like another had been hit. Still, he gripped Alice’s hand and they shambled for cover—putting distance between themselves and the horrible little town of Bickley. They scurried through the night until the shooting slowed, and until the only sounds were the frantic snap of brush at their legs and their ragged breathing.
Behind them, Buck and Quade and Talmidge traded gunfire in the street.
They had made it.
“We have to go back,” Alice panted. The women had fallen behind, and now they were alone. “We have to go back for them, Ben. We’re the only hope they have.”
“We can’t,” Ben hissed. His torso was on fire. He was dizzy—so close to fainting. “Alice, I’m hurt bad. We can’t…can’t go back….”
More shots. They weren’t close, but whoever was out there wasn’t giving up. Someone was hoping to get lucky.
They knelt. “We have to help them!” Alice hissed. “I can’t let them be taken to Atlanta, Ben. I just can’t….”
“You don’t understand. I can’t make it, Alice,” Ben said. “I’ll die if we go back.” He groped in the darkness, reaching for her hand. He found it, lifted his shirt and gently pressed her hand to his side.
“Oh God, Ben!” she said. “Oh my God! Who did this to you? What happened back there?”
“We have to…it’s time to go,” he croaked, darkness closing in on all sides. “We got what we came for, Alice. I found them.”
She was silent, even as the women’s anguished screams now carried on the night air. They’d caught up to them.
“Okay. Let’s move,” she said. She helped him up and they limped away.
They’d covered most of a mile, angling back toward the house where Ben had left his pack, before she asked her question. “You said you found them,” she said. “What did you mean by that, Ben?”
“The seeds,” he wheezed. “I found the seeds.”
TWENTY-THREE
Everything was just where he had left it. Alice dressed their wounds as best she could, and Ben leaned against her for support as they trudged toward home. She wore his pack, filled now with seeds and canned food. She carried the guns—all four of them, counting the one Pinnock had surrendered.
It was a huge burden for such a small woman, but she bore up under it and kept pushing forward.
On and on they walked. The clouds thinned from time to time and the moon shone down, lighting a dim path through open meadows and decaying woodlands.
They walked and they searched, and before long they found a place to sleep.
The house had burnt to the ground, but a little lean-to out back had survived. A small supply of firewood had been stacked optimistically in the corner, as if the Reset had just been a short interruption in the grand scheme of things and that, when Christmas rolled around and it was time for lazy evenings by a roaring hearth, there would still be enough to have a fire.
They ducked behind the firewood, concealing themselves. It would be a fine place to pass the few hours remaining before dawn.
Alice helped Ben shrug out of his clothes. His tee-shirt was soaked with blood. She could feel him leaking—the blood welling and seeping down his side. How much time did he have left?
“Thirsty,” Ben croaked; he was fading. Alice helped him to the ground. She re-bandaged his wounds as best she could. Aside from the major laceration, which needed sutures, there were three smaller puncture wounds. These had already clotted.
Ben was dying; she was sure of it. He was dehydrated and pale. His tongue snaked out over cracked lips. “Thirsty,” he repeated.
“I’ll be back. Rest easy, Ben. I’m going for water.” She kissed him hard, lingering there while she choked back the tears. “Rest easy. I’ll be right back.”
She grabbed their empty water bottles and stole back into the night, struggling with their dilemma. Would he be alive when she returned? Had they spoken their last to each other?
She ran most of a mile before stumbling across the stream. It gurgled through the Georgia countryside and she knelt at a wide, still place where the water calmed in a pool. She bent and drank deeply. It was cold and sweet, and when her belly was full, she filled the bottles and took just a single moment to gather herself for the trip back to Ben.
In that instant, the clouds parted and the moon shone through. Its silver form glowed in the center of the pool—seemingly within arm’s reach—and it was beautiful. She leaned out over the water to catch a glimpse of herself. Blood freckled her cheeks and forehead. Her hair was a wild tangle. She closed her eyes and muttered a quick prayer.
When she opened them, she found she had a visitor.
On the opposite bank, not twenty feet away, a huge buck drank from the water. There was a rustling in the brush, and the big male was joined by a doe. The animals watched Alice with curiosity, and without a whit of fear. Their reaction startled her, but it made perfect sense: humans had become the novelty.
She splashed water over her face, washing away the blood and ash. She combed her hair with her fingers. When she was finished, the deer maintaining their quiet study all the while, she lifted her hand in a gesture of farewell. Hope welled up from somewhere deep inside her, and she watched them another instant before hurrying back to Ben.
“Ben?” she said. He was still. “Ben?”
She put her ear to his lips, relief shuddering through her like a cold breeze. He was alive, his respiration shallow. His forehead was hot. She poured a capful of water into his mouth and he sputtered and woke.
“The Reset,” he said. “I was dreaming about the Reset.”
“Don’t do that. Dream about something else. Dream about a garden, Ben. Dream about a garden filled with food and a life on the miracle farm. Here—I have water.”
He took some and lay back down. “I owe you,” he whispered. A shiver ran through him “You saved me.”
She said nothing, choosing instead simply to smooth his sweat-matted hair. Within the minute he was gone again, snoring as he slept.
“God help us,” Alice whispered. She closed her eyes, touched her forehead to his. “Please, God, give us the strength to find our way home.”
She curled up next to him and drifted into sleep.
And in that fashion, Ben Stone and Alice Kincaid procured enough seeds to attempt a summer garden.
TWENTY-FOUR
There was a moment on the third day when Alice lost hope. It was all so much to carry—the guns and the food and Ben himself, who was barely capable of stumbling much further through the woods. She’d run out of bandages and had resorted to tearing strips from her tee-shirt. And yet the wound in his side continued to bleed.
It was bad, but the thing that hurt the most was that they were lost. Alice simply could not find the path home.
“There,” Ben finally said on the afternoon of the third day. His lips were cracked, his
cheeks gaunt. He was hounded by fever. He pointed a blood-streaked index finger at a spindly jack pine. It bore a shallow notch in its bark. “There it is, Alice. Keep your…keep your eyes open.”
Sure enough, there had been another, and then another, and soon the terrain grew familiar. Perhaps they had just been running parallel to the trail the whole time. It didn’t matter—they were getting closer.
At dusk, the miracle farm appeared like an ancient monolith in the distance.
“Ben!” she cried. His head lolled against his chest. He looked up and Alice was terrified by what she saw. His vacant eyes were bloodshot. Soot and ash had rendered his skin a dingy gray. How much blood had he lost?
“Ben, we’re here! We’re home!”
They covered that last mile a little faster and, when they finally stepped into the kitchen, Ben collapsed in a heap on the floor. Alice checked his pulse. It was weak, but he was alive. She scurried about, lighting candles, prying off his boots and stripping him of his blood-soaked garments.
He’d bled through the latest round of rags. In the light of day, she’d actually found seven wounds in total. Still, only one threatened his life. It gaped open like the gill of a salmon—five inches of angry red skin. The blood loss had slowed, thankfully, but the long walk had done nothing to facilitate clotting.
She built a fire in the cast-iron stove and put water on to boil. She knew that Ben had removed a bullet in that very kitchen (it was still there on the sill) all those months before, and it made her sad to think that the place now doubled as their operating room.
She cleaned and stitched the wounds. She bathed him right there on the floor, using washcloths to swipe the blood and grime from his skin. She took her time washing his hair. He woke just once, giving her a quick smile before drifting back into the ether. When she was finished, she brewed him a cup of tea and helped him into bed.
“We’re here?” he rasped, when she had tucked him beneath a cool sheet. “We’re…safe?”
She kissed his temple. “We’re here, Ben. We’re safe.”
The Reset Page 13
