The soup plates were cleared and the main course was delivered. “You’ll have to forgive us for forgoing the salad course,” Roan quipped, “but maybe we can remedy that little oversight in the very near future. This, by the way, is just about our finest Angus beef. Coraline insisted on nothing but the best for her old school chum.”
Coraline just stared at her plate. When she looked up, there was a cool grayness in her eyes. She offered Roan a dismissive smile and looked away.
“My darling is really quite shy tonight, Benny m’boy. You certainly have had an effect on her.”
They endured another awkward moment before Dunbar clapped his hands. “Let’s eat, shall we? We can manage that, can’t we kids?”
Roan grinned, and a servant stepped forward and lifted the warmer on a steaming, thinly sliced rib roast. Carrots and potatoes and onions rested in a thin au jus, and Ben felt the saliva flowing in the back of his mouth. Another servant moved from chair to chair, depositing a dollop of white sauce on each plate.
“Sour cream,” Roan said. “Produced by our very own dairy cows. Not bad, eh?”
Alice ignored the man’s boasts. “How can we be sure?” she said. “How do we know you aren’t lying to us about dinner? I know what happened to my husband. I know what you do with the prisoners in the jail quad. Do you really expect us to believe that this is beef?”
Roan chuckled. “Avoid it altogether, if you like. Your loss.”
He nodded his head, the gesture an act of concession. “Look, I’ll admit that I’ve consumed human flesh, Alice. I had to. You do what you have to do to survive. But it’s been years. Years. I’ve dined on nothing but good old prime beef since my little organization climbed the ladder. The product might be tough, sure,” he shrugged. “Our cattle might be a little underfed, given our problems in producing decent feed—but it’s beef nonetheless. Like I said, you don’t have to eat it. I’m sure we can find a home for it if you’d prefer not to join us.”
A servant parceled out portions, and Alice reluctantly accepted hers. Roan ate like a slob. He chatted with food in his mouth, punctuating his points with little jabs of his bloody steak knife. “Look, you two, we’re trying here. Honestly, we really are. We’ve got electricity. We’ve got livestock. We’ve got schools and a hospital and restaurants and three different marketplaces. We’ve got irrigation and sewers. We’re...we’re rebuilding our population. You might just consider staying here, even with your precious Lucy back in the fold. Hell, you just might like it.
“We’re trying,” he reiterated, spearing a carrot and biting into it with relish, “and with your help, we’ll stock our green houses. You were right in what you said earlier, Alice. These people…they need fresh food. Stay and help us deliver it. You’ll enjoy being part of something like this. We’re bringing humanity back to life, little by little.”
It was a nifty speech. Ben had to concede that the little man had charm. The tension dissipated just a bit, and the conversation shifted. Roan waxed poetic about his plans for Atlanta. Marks, Merrick and Dunbar chimed in occasionally, speaking in glowing terms about the things Roan was going to do for mankind in the wake of the Reset.
Only Coraline refused to speak. Instead, her eyes always downcast, she picked at her meal. It was hard to tell if she was even listening.
Ben’s heart ached for her. What had happened to the girl with such spirit, with such love for life?
She was gone. What remained was a husk—a plaster shell that had been hardened by years of misery and desperation and fear.
When dinner had been cleared, they dined on pastries and sipped decaffeinated coffee. It was almost…well, it was almost pleasant, having a warm drink inside a lit room while the snow piled up in drifts outside.
“Why do you have such a kinship with the little girl?” Coraline finally said. She looked first at Alice, and then at Ben. “Is she your daughter?”
Alice nodded. “Not biologically, but in every other sense of the word she is. Lucy was alone, and we took her in. She’s part of our family. It’s as simple as that.”
Coraline nodded, her eyes returning to her cooling coffee.
“Please,” Alice prodded, appealing now only to Coraline. “May we speak with her? Please? We’d just like to see her.”
Roan frowned. After a long minute, he nodded at Marks, who whispered something into his earpiece.
Ten minutes later, the door opened and Lucy walked tentatively into the room. She wore the same tattered pajamas she’d had on the night she was taken.
“Lucy!” Ben shouted. He almost knocked his chair over he was up so fast. He snatched her up and into his arms and hugged her to his chest.
“Lucy, honey, it’s us!” Alice said. She rubbed the kid’s back and Lucy squealed with happiness.
“Ben! Alice! You came! You’re here!”
They covered her face with kisses. She was so thin. Ben cradled her tiny body to his chest. He could feel her heartbeat racing—the muscle fluttering like a hummingbird. “Are you hurt?” he hissed in her ear. “Are you okay?”
“I miss them,” she whispered back. “I want to go home, Ben.”
Marks was listening intently. “Where’s home, honey?” he said. His voice was cool and mechanical, ever the tactician. “Just tell us where home is and we’ll let you leave with Ben and Alice.”
“No, Lucy,” Alice said sharply. “Listen, honey, we’ll get you home safely. I promise. But don’t say anything, okay? Not one word! Did you tell them anything?”
Lucy shook her head, her lower lip quivering. Her eyelids had become fused shut beneath those mounds of scar tissue, but a few tears leaked out all the same. “I…I didn’t say anything, Alice,” she sobbed. “They asked me all kinds of questions, but I didn’t say anything. I don’t want to be here anymore, Alice! I just want to go home! I want to go with you!”
“That’s enough,” Roan said. “You’ve had your proof. Guards, take her back to her cell. Warden Merrick, I want these two placed in the general population.”
Just like that, the room filled with guards. Uniformed men swarmed Ben and Alice. A big man in military fatigues pulled the little girl from Ben’s arms, and her sorrowful wailing filled the room. “Ben!” she shrieked. “Ben, come get me! Come get me out of here! Come get me, Ben! Ben!”
They whisked her away and then Ben and Alice were being shoved toward the door. Ben shot a look over his shoulder. Roan and Dunbar just grinned at him.
Coraline raised her head. It was just a singular moment, a mere instant in which their eyes met across the room, but it was enough for him to see.
She was crying. Her blue eyes were wet and, although the vicious pink scar was long and wide, it was neither long enough nor wide enough to prevent the tears from tracking down her cheeks.
FORTY
They were taken in separate vehicles back to the jail. Ben never saw his wife again that night, although he sensed that she was near.
“Alice?” he called out at one point. It was cold in his cell; when he spoke, there was steam on the air. “Alice, are you there?”
Silence.
“Oh, Alllll-iiiiccccceeee!” somebody finally jeered, mocking him. Soon there were dozens of similar catcalls.
“Alice!”
“Oh, Aaaal-issss! Daa-dee’s home!”
The calls gave way to rattling laughter and then the silence returned.
“You don’t get it, do you? It’s just you down here, boy,” a gruff voice finally called out. “You think they’d keep a woman down here with the rest of the fucking scourge?
“Roan’s got different plans for women, wonder boy. He always has, from day one. Most every man in this jail that had a woman when things went to shit can talk to you about that. Your old lady’s in for a long night, I’m afraid. A damned long night indeed.”
Ben was sick. He curled up on the mattress and pulled the blanket up over his head and said a long, feverish prayer for his wife. He prayed for the Lawtons, not knowing if Gwen had survive
d her injuries, or if Arthur could even persevere in a world without his wife and his granddaughter, his affirmation that there was still a God in the heavens.
He prayed for Lucy.
After a time he covered his ears with his hands, hoping to erase the sorrowful cries and the incessant whispers, and he said a prayer that sleep would come and, at least for a few hours, take him away from this terrible place of misery and madness.
~
They tried to feed him in the morning, but Ben refused the food. The tiny mound of gray meat on the tray looked—well, it resembled the stew the old man had been simmering on the stove on the night he’d been shot at the miracle farm.
There was a crust of stale bread and a tiny plastic cup filled with dirty water. These he consumed before resigning himself to the indignity of using the “toilet” in the corner. When the previous night’s meal had run through him in a stinging, watery torrent, he discovered that he had no way to clean himself. He tore a shred from the blanket and did what he could.
When the guards came a few hours later to collect his tray, he pressed his face against the bars. “My wife,” he whispered to the jailer, a young man with burn scars on his cheeks and nervous, distrustful eyes. “What happened to my wife? Will Roan allow me to speak with her?”
The boy drew a deep breath, as if considering his answer, and spat in Ben’s face. Ben felt the phlegm dripping down his forehead. He swiped it away, furious.
“Now you stay back from the bars,” the boy drawled. “Next time, I’ll give you a dose.” He touched a button on an unfamiliar device and an electrical current snapped at the end of a long metal wand.
“Please, you don’t understand! My wife and I…we had dinner last night with Roan! He needs us to…ah, ah, ah!” Ben shrieked. The man had touched the device to the iron bars. A dull, aching jolt coursed through his fingers and up his arms and he fell hard to the ground. His bowels let go and more diarrhea soaked the seat of his pants.
“Ow!” he cried. It was all he could muster. His mouth just wouldn’t work. “Ow!”
“That’s your freebie, bud. It’ll be a lot harder next time. You’ve been warned,” the guard said, moving down the line.
Sensation returned slowly. When he was able to stand, Ben crept to the edge of his cell, the pain still alive in his joints. He could hear the guards collecting trays and tormenting the other prisoners. “Hey,” Ben hissed. He could just see the edge of a cell across the hall from his. “Hey! Anybody there?”
“Shh!” a voice shot back.
Ben nodded. He put his back to the wall, waiting for the guards to leave. At least an hour later, he heard a whisper. “Hey. Hey, wonder boy!”
Ben pressed his face into the bars. He reached a hand out into the corridor, waving at the man whose form he could just barely see.
The unfortunate fellow didn’t have any legs, and he pushed his spindly nubs through the space in the bars. Ben gasped. This man was almost thin enough to slide through, he was so withered!
“I noticed you didn’t eat!” the man called. “Next time, save it aside. You can toss it over here if it doesn’t suit you, wonder boy!”
“I will,” Ben replied. “I will, I promise. When’s dinner? I’ll save my portion tonight, I swear.”
The man laughed. “Dinner? Jesus Christ, that was it, wonder boy! Chowtime’s done for the day around here. But hey! Hey, don’t forget what I said tomorrow morning, okay kid?”
“Okay. I…I won’t. What’s your name?”
“Donald Finney. Used to be a respectable man, if you can believe that. Had kids and a wife. Worked two jobs…lived in a house. I had it all, wonder boy. Had it all!”
“What did you do? I mean, to be put in here?”
Finney was silent for a long moment. “Do? Shit, I didn’t do nothing. Roan snatched me in a round-up. Same as pert near everyone else around here.”
“Round-up?”
“Got to keep the jails full, wonder boy! Full jails means full bellies!”
“Why do you call me that?”
“What…you mean wonder boy? Guess it’s on account of you had a woman with you. But that’s all done with, ain’t it son?”
“Where did they take her, Finney?”
“Away,” the man hissed. “Don’t reckon it much matters, wonder boy. You won’t be seeing her again. That’s the bottom line.”
Ben slumped to the ground. His eyes darted around the jail cell. Misery and despair. Dank walls covered with black mold and crude pictographs—figures and marks etched in feces and blood and who could guess what else these poor souls could use to document their detention in the stockades of hell.
Ben closed his eyes and wept, and when he was finished and he’d cried all the tears that were left inside of him, he noticed that the whispering had begun again.
In that way, most of a month passed.
FORTY-ONE
Ben scratched at the beard while he worked at the shard of meat. Like the rash on his chest and the sores on his left ankle and calf, the beard itched almost constantly.
He’d given in after a few weeks, but he still had a hard time keeping the stuff down. It had made him sick the day before and he’d hacked it up into the sewers, but he had to try.
What were his options? He was dying.
The strips of flesh got stuck between teeth that hung loose in his gums and he gagged, but eventually he managed to choke down breakfast. He slid his tray into the corridor, wary of what the young bull with the nervous eyes might do if he didn’t place it precisely inside the designated collection area.
He’d suffered through four more doses during his detention, each more horrific than the last.
Life had become a series of terrible tests—a chain of long, cold seconds that spun out into forever. No wonder these poor men whispered all day and all night. He had also begun a series of conversations—sometimes with Alice, sometimes with Arthur Lawton. He spoke with his parents on occasion, people he’d only known through the musings they’d recorded decades before on the dead technology that was the Internet.
Sometimes he talked to Mr. Brown. Other times, he cursed Alex Calvin; he swore and ranted and raged against the man that had brought humanity to the edge of extinction.
One cold morning, Coraline came to his cell.
“Ben,” she said. Her voice was soft.
He peered at her through the shadows, not really certain that she was real. The cellblock had grown deathly silent, the others sensing her presence.
“Corr?” he croaked. “Is that you?”
She nodded. “Come with me, Ben. We need to talk.”
He stood and crossed the cell on unsteady legs. Jesus, he’d lost so much weight…
The boy with the nervous eyes opened his cell and Ben flinched a little at the sight of his weapon. The guard stepped aside and Ben moved out into the hallway, squinting in the intensity of the fluorescent lights.
“Alice?” he said. “What happened to Alice?”
Coraline just smiled. “This way,” she said. She took his hand. Her own was soft—so incredibly soft, and he was suddenly ashamed of himself. Ashamed of how he looked, of how his filthy hand must feel in hers.
He couldn’t hold her gaze.
“Interrogation,” she said to the jailer, and he escorted them through a maze of hallways and into a nondescript room that was filled with blinding white light.
Alice was there. Her face was hidden beneath a hood, but he knew it was her. Ringlets of red hair spilled from beneath the shroud. He saw her emaciated frame hitch as she struggled for air.
“Alice!” he called. “Alice, I’m here! It’s Ben! I’m here!”
A guard snatched the hood away and he saw Alice’s terrified eyes and gaunt features. “Ben,” she whispered, then turned away from him. “Oh God, Ben…”
She was so thin. Violent purple bruises ringed her neck. She looked worse than the day he’d found her in the orchard.
But those things didn’t break his heart. What
did was the fact that his wife wouldn’t look at him. She would not meet his eyes.
What had they done to her?
Roan and Marks entered the torture chamber together. Another man, a portly, bearded fellow with round spectacles and jowls, trailed behind them like a pet dog. At least somebody around there was getting enough to eat.
“Restraints,” Roan said.
Coraline squeezed his hand. She let go, but not before something passed between them. She looked at him, and in that instant he saw her. In that moment it was his Coraline, and not the hollow, vacant woman she’d been at dinner.
It was his Corr—his best friend and the first love he’d ever known.
She sat next to Roan as Ben was shoved hard into a metal chair. His ankles and wrists were secured with leather manacles.
Marks stood and began to flip through a bound sheaf of papers. He paced back and forth in front of the prisoners.
“No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No,” he said, using a pencil to tick the items off of a checklist. Ben looked at his wife, but she just stared vacantly at the floor.
Marks sucked his teeth. He ruffled through the pages. “Okay! Here’s one! We’ll call this one a maybe, Mr. Roan.”
He pushed the paper into Ben’s face. “Can you read that for me, please?”
“Carrots?” Ben replied.
“Little louder?” Roan said. “We can’t quite hear you!”
“Carrots,” Ben repeated.
“That’s it?” Marks said, turning to the bearded man. “You’ve been at this now for almost six weeks and that’s it? You’ve had six weeks and the only thing you’ve got to show for it is a ‘maybe’ for germinating carrots?”
“We…we…we…” the fat man stammered. He took a deep breath, composing himself. “We’ve tried everything, Mr. Marks. There’s a missing variable. The greenhouses will work just fine sir, but until we f-f-fi…until we locate that variable, we won’t be successful.”
The Reset Page 22
