He swallowed. Damn, he was thirsty and his head throbbed! It was still dark out, but he sensed dawn just around the corner.
“I had to see it,” he replied. “I just…I had to, Alice.”
She nodded and took his hand. “I’m so sorry, Ben. You were…you were calling out for her.”
He wiped his eyes and leaned forward, his forehead nearly touching hers. “I was saying goodbye. I was letting go, as best I could.”
Alice nodded. She pulled him into an embrace. “Let’s turn this off and get you to bed. You’ve still got a few hours of sleep left.”
He hugged her back and followed her across the room, where she briefly paused to stoop down and unplug the television on their way to the bedroom.
PART II
THE STOCKADES OF HELL
THIRTY-ONE
It felt like they’d been walking for ages, but it hadn’t been much more than a few months. Roan had sent the trio out on recon in the final weeks of summer; on the day they stumbled across the old farmhouse, it had to be February—maybe even later than that.
They’d kept the house under surveillance for the better part of a week, taking turns watching the curious little clan that kept it going from a distance. It was still damned cold out, but the days were warming and these people had been spending a bit more time each day in the barn and out on the grounds.
The men sat around a campfire deep in the woods, roasting a squirrel they’d snared. They were coated with ash and radiation scarring—three dim, emaciated remnants of humanity.
“That little mutie’s been coming out a bit more lately. She played on the swings for at least an hour this morning,” Jones said. Roan had put him in charge, and he liked the responsibility. What he’d like even more would be a decent place to lay his head when they got back to Atlanta. He was disgusted with the cold. It had gotten into his bones, and he wasn’t so sure he’d ever be warm again.
These people were making it work. Why couldn’t he have a place?
“Aye. She has,” Petey rasped in agreement. If he took offense to the term “mutie,” he didn’t let it show. He had a medium build, and what was left of his hair grew in scrabbly patches on his scarred scalp. The burns had claimed his right eye and he looked like an extra in an old sci-fi film. He’d lost his right arm at the shoulder (the Reset diet—better than Weight Watchers!), and he shuffled about with a limp. “She’s got spirit, that’s for sure.”
Crank just leveled a vacant stare at the fire. The big man might speak two dozen words in a given day, with very few of those of the polysyllabic variety. 250 pounds of muscle, he scared Jones a little. Roan liked his soldiers mean and desperate, so he had an abiding love for Crank. The berserker seemed to be named for his drug of choice. How he stayed in a decent supply of the stuff was beyond Jones, but Crank seemed wired most of the time.
“So what’s the play, Jonesy?” Petey said.
Jones pulled a strip of meet from the squirrel’s thigh. He handed it to crank, who stuffed it into his mouth without blinking. “I want a closer look. The woman’s prime stock. There’s no denying that. I know we’ve been out here on mission for a long time, boys, but it might not be worth it to test them. That fellow’s fit, and I’ve seen him out hunting. I imagine they’ve got plenty of guns. I’m inclined to live and let live, unless there’s something…I don’t know, unless there’s something really special about that group. A fine building like that is a tad peculiar, but we’ve seen ‘em before. It’s not like it’s that out of the ordinary.
“I’ll creep in close tonight. You two stick tight. I’ll see what I can, and if they’re just scarping by as much as the rest of us, then we’ll keep moving. No sense in getting shot over it.”
“I want her,” Crank grunted. He locked eyes with Jones, his pupils almost nonexistent.
“Let me take a look first,” Jones replied. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Crank spat in the fire. He held Jones’s eyes another instant, clearly angry, then sauntered off into the woods to piss on a tree.
“Charming,” Petey said. He wore a cheerless smile.
Jones handed him what was left of the impaled squirrel, nodding his agreement. “Who knows, Petey? Maybe they’re no different than the rest of us and there’s nothing to salvage here. I don’t want to pick a fight if we don’t have to.”
“Live and let live, eh boss? Roan wouldn’t like that.”
“Roan’s not here, is he Petey? We’re scouts, so that’s what we’ll do. I’ll take a good look tonight, and we’ll just go from there.” He stood and went to his tent. “In the meantime, I’m taking a nap. Wake me if I’m still out at sundown.”
“Sure enough,” the scarred man replied. He tore a hunk of charred squirrel from the stick and chewed thoughtfully, turning his gaze to the blighted forest.
~
Jones stole through the night. He moved quickly on legs that had once carried him through dozens of marathons. The thought made him grin. Jesus Christ—he’d once run insane distances for fun!
He’d been a corporate executive before the Reset. He’d had a family he loved dearly—a nice home and a good life. He shook his head, banishing the memories. Distractions were bad; often, they were deadly.
The farmhouse looked deserted at night. These people did a good job of locking up tight. He darted around the barn and into the courtyard, exposed for an instant in the moonlight. If they were watching, he’d be dead.
He sprinted for the nearest cover and collapsed against the side of the house, hidden behind the padlocked entrance to the root cellar.
It took a minute for him to catch his breath. In that time, he heard a curious thing.
They were singing.
He recognized the song. God, how many years since he’d last heard it?
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…
They were all singing, but he heard the girl’s voice above the others’ and the sound made his heart ache. How he missed his little ones! He’d been on a business trip in Japan when things fell apart, and when he’d finally made it back to the United States, Charlotte (and most of the rest of North Carolina, for that matter) was gone. So was Denise, and so were the girls—Amy and little Karen. He’d left on a Thursday morning to tour the company’s foreign processing plants, and that was it.
He had never seen his family again.
His daughters used to sing to him. They had voices just like the little mutie.
He crept around to the front porch and approached the front window as quiet as a sigh. A heavy shade blocked most of his view, but there were a few centimeters of bright light peeking beneath it, and he squinted into the room. At least a dozen candles blazed there.
They had gathered together. If there were more folks inside the home, they’d never stepped outside in the week they’d been watching the house. Jones felt safe in assuming it was just the five of them.
God, they looked like a family.
The older couple held hands on the couch, the little girl on the woman’s lap. The younger couple occupied a pair of chairs. They started a different song, another children’s tune, and Jones swallowed thickly.
There was no reason to bother these people.
He was about to leave when they finished the song. “Time for my special treat!” the little girl shouted, arms raised in jubilation. This coaxed laughs from the adults, and then the old man did a very peculiar thing.
He plucked an apple from the pocket of his vest, shined it on his sleeve and handed it to the little girl.
“Holy shit!” Jones whispered. This changed everything. These people had food. Finding food, especially renewable food, was the -primary reason they were out on recon in the first place.
He touched the pistol in the holster on his hip and turned his attention back to the interior of the house.
The little girl polished off the apple quickly, and Jones felt a jab of hunger deep in his gut. How many years since he’d had fresh fruit? Jesus
, it seemed like forever.
They sang another song and then they all stood. Hugs were exchanged, and it looked like they were turning in for the night.
That was good. Maybe he could go back to the root cellar and jimmy the lock. If he could find a couple of apples, he’d bring them straight back to Roan. It would surely get him his own place and, when the time was right, they could come back and pay these folks a visit. Find out the secret behind their good fortune.
Maybe there wouldn’t have to be any bloodshed at all.
He almost ran smack into Crank on his way around the side of the house. The big man’s face was twisted into a scowl. Even in the scant moonlight, Jones understood he was amped.
“What are you doing, Crank? You disobeyed a direct order!”
“I’m here for her,” he replied. Jones heard the man’s jaw muscles creaking as he fumed there. He had a knife, his serrated hunting blade, in his right hand.
A hundred yards distant, Petey limped as quickly as he could around the side of the barn.
“Shit,” Jones said. “Come on, you two! We had a plan!”
“Fuck the plan,” Crank said. He shoved Jones out of the way and strode around the side of the house.
Jones heard his heavy steps on the porch, heard the concussion of his size fourteen boots as he kicked the front door off its hinges.
“Boss!” Petey panted. “Boss, Crank’s snapped! He’s been all worked up, ever since you left!”
Shouts from inside. Cries and shrieks of surprise and pain.
God, the little girl was screaming.
“What do we do?” Petey said.
Jones wiped his eyes. “We gotta go in, Pete. Come hell or high water, this is going down right now.” He pulled the pistol from his holster and Petey followed suit.
“But who are we shooting, Boss? Crank doesn’t seem like he’s in his right mind anymore.”
Jones nodded. “I agree, but let’s see how this is playing out. Stick close and watch my back. We’ll do what needs doing when we sort it out.”
There was a tremendous shattering of glass and then they were around the side of the house and up the stairs, and into a hell of their own
creation.
THIRTY-TWO
Ben was just a few pages into his book when he heard the door come crashing off its hinges. He sprang out of bed and had the shotgun in hand quicker than a rattlesnake could strike.
“Get Lucy and go out the window, Alice. I’ll meet you out at the power station. I’m going to kill ‘em first and then I’ll see to Arthur and Gwen.”
Alice yanked her jeans on and crammed her feet into her boots. “Okay. Be safe, Ben.”
They’d practiced for this. They’d made plans for this very night. Still, it happened so quickly and then she was gone and he heard her sprinting down the hallway even as the Lawtons were screaming below.
Ben climbed out the window and onto the little balcony outside their bedroom window. He threw the gun down and, in two lurching steps, climbed down the trellis they’d fortified with boards from the barn. He grabbed the gun and ran around to the front of the house, hoping to flank them.
He’d just made it around the corner when the one-armed mutie snapped a shot at him. It slammed into the wood ten inches from his head and he felt a volley of splinters take a bite out of his cheek. He let the shotgun roar and felt a sick sense of pleasure when the little man flew sideways on the porch.
Criminy, he’d been blown clear out of his shoes. One solitary boot remained there on the porch. Ben ran up the stairs just as another of the bastards disappeared inside. He stopped for an instant to kick the dropped handgun off the porch and saw the frail mutie bubbling blood as he struggled for a breath. He shuddered and went still, and the porch filled with the stench of his evacuated bowels.
Alice screamed and Ben ducked inside. Gwen was sprawled there, face down on the living room carpet.
She wasn’t moving, and Arthur knelt near her, mumbling to her, too scared to touch her. A crimson pool slowly spread over the back of her nightgown.
There was another tremendous cry—this time a man’s voice—in the kitchen, and Ben knelt near Gwen. He stripped his tee-shirt off and pressed it to the wound. “Help me!” he said.
Together, they rolled her over, the shirt in place over her wound. Her eyes were wide in shock. Her mouth opened and closed, a trickle of blood sliding down her cheek.
“Lucy,” she whispered. “Where’s…Lucy?”
“Gwen!” Arthur said, weeping. “Gwen, stay with me, girl! We’re going to help you!”
“Lucy,” she repeated.
The man screamed again, only this time it was cut off partway through.
“Ben!” Alice screamed. “Ben, hurry! He’s got her! He’s got Lucy!”
“Keep pressure on this, Arthur. Stop the bleeding,” he said. He doubted Gwen would make it, but his friend need hope. He squeezed her hand. “Hang on, Gwen. We’ll take care of this.”
“Lucy,” she gasped. “Get…Lucy.”
Ben ran into the kitchen, shotgun ready.
There was a dead man on the floor. He had a fork in his eye, and his throat had been slashed. There was a pistol on the floor a few feet from his outstretched hand.
Alice leaned against the counter, they heavy kitchen knife in hand. She was hysterical and bleeding from an ugly head wound.
The back door was wide open.
“He took her,” she sobbed, pointing a shaking finger at the darkness outside. “He took our little girl, Ben.”
Ben pulled her close. With a shaking hand, he tried to wipe the blood from her cheek. It was coming fast, sliding down her face and dripping from her jaw. He helped her into a seat at the table and rummaged around for a dish towel, which she clamped to the wound.
“Go,” she said. “You can still catch him.”
“Alice, I think…”
“Go!” she shrieked, pointing again at the door. “There’s no time!”
He didn’t have his shoes and he wore only a pair of threadbare sweatpants, but he went. He bounded over the three steps and across the courtyard, scanning the horizon for Lucy and her abductor.
There was something out there.
A shadowed mass sprinted for the woods. Ben felt gravel tear into the soles of his feet. He felt the cold biting at him, but he gave it everything he had. He tore into the fields, the frozen mixture of ash and soil harsh beneath his feet.
“Lucy!” he shouted. The shadow paused for a moment, and he thought he could just hear her cry for him. “Lucy, I’m coming!”
The shadow picked up the pace. Shit, he wasn’t going to make it. Ben dug deep and found another gear. He was flying though the field, with at least half a mile to make up.
Shit.
The shadow slipped into the woods and Ben lost it.
Five minutes later, a searing pain in his side, he pulled up at the edge of the woods. “Lucy!” he called. “Leeeew—seee!”
There was nothing. Save the wind in the trees, there was nothing but silence among those frozen Georgia pines
.
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.
The Reset Page 18
