Coraline pressed a towel over the seeping wounds. They filled with blood quickly, and Ben noticed a pile of rags on the floor.
“Johnny?” he said. He reached for his hand. It was cool to the touch.
The man’s eyes fluttered open. He gave a little nod. “Go west…Great Falls,” he said, wincing a little. “West.”
Ben nodded, and the injured man seemed to take it as a promise. His eyes clouded, and then he was gone.
Ann closed his eyes and squeezed his hand and then something shifted in her demeanor and she was all business. She wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Let’s get out on the road,” she said. “Our people have left the city. We need to do the same.”
“What about Lucy?” Alice said. “We can’t go without her.”
Ann frowned. “Roan’s got her. It’s too dangerous.”
Alice shook her head. “We can’t go with you. I’m sorry, but we just can’t do it.”
Ann set her jaw. Her eyes darted from Coraline to Ben to Alice and back to Coraline. “Do we have time?”
Coraline nodded.
“Come on,” Ann said. “We’ll pay Roan a quick visit. If he doesn’t have the girl, then I’m leaving you two behind. Our mission here is complete.”
“Not without Lucy it’s not,” Alice said. “Not without her.”
Ann shrugged. She took a blanket from her pack and covered Johnny’s body, then leaned forward and planted a kiss on the man’s forehead. “Better days, old friend,” she said. She covered his face and strode out to the truck.
FORTY-SIX
Atlanta was burning. Fires had sprung up throughout the city, and Ben watched in wonder as droves of people pushed carts stacked with their meager possessions toward the barriers Roan had erected.
It was a massive exodus, as if the people had somehow intuited that the end of Atlanta was rapidly approaching.
Ann pushed the truck into quad four, where things were calmer. She pointed to a smoking hole in the ground. “That was Dunbar’s place. He won’t be bothering anybody ever again, the evil bastard. Did you know that asshole had sired more than one hundred children in the last two years?” She shook her head, disgusted. “Roan’s not too bright, is he Coraline? The gene pool he was working so hard to create was never much more than a wading pool, if you see my point. It would have made for one hell of a genetic disaster.”
Coraline smirked. “Angry and violent? Sure. Impulsive and vindictive? Check. But intelligent? Nope—that one doesn’t fit.”
“How do you know he has her?” Alice asked.
“Our contacts on the inside,” Ann replied. “Ever since he learned how important she was to you, he’s kept her at his house. He’s got a man looking after her.”
The further they pressed into quad four, the more cars they saw on the roads. It seemed these folks had sensed the turn in the tide as well, only they actually had the means to flee the city.
When they turned into Brookhaven, Ann’s demeanor shifted yet again; she was all business. “Weapons in the back, Ben. Take whatever you can carry that won’t slow you down. Roan might have an army in there with him. He also might be alone. Hard to say.”
She parked behind a copse of pine trees, and they stole through the snow toward the back of the house. There was nobody outside. No vehicles, no troops.
The place looked deserted.
Ann pushed to the back of the house. The door was locked, but she stepped back and blasted the lock with her automatic. “So much for surprise, eh?” she said. She kicked the door open and they followed her inside.
Her instincts had been correct. The place wasn’t empty, and the scenes of carnage they encountered were horrible as they made their way deeper into Roan’s home. The massacre was total, and mutilated bodies littered the galley, the library, the dining room, the hallways and the foyer.
“Roan!” Ann shouted. Her cry bounced off the walls of the great room. A door opened on the second floor; a child’s forlorn weeping wafted down from above them.
“Who’s there? Coraline? Is that you?”
“I’m here!” she said. “Robert, it’s me!”
“Coraline!” he said. “Jesus, Coraline, we’ve lost it! We’ve lost it all!” His face appeared at the railing, his hair mussed and his cheeks flushed red.
Ann had been waiting for the chance, and she fired a shot that just missed. He ducked, and Lucy’s cries jagged with fear.
“Don’t!” Alice said, pushing Ann’s wrist down. “You could hit Lucy!”
The woman frowned, but she lowered her weapon.
“What are you doing with them, Coral? Are you…are you part of this?”
“I’m with you, honey! Please…I’ll come be with you if you’ll just let the girl go. Just let her go, and these people will leave us alone. We can rebuild, Robert! We can start over! Just let the girl go and I’ll come up and be with you, honey.”
There was a pause as Roan considered his options. “You want the mutie?” he yelled. “You want her? Here she is!”
Suddenly, Lucy was dangling over the edge of the bannister. Roan clutched her around the chest, a pistol held to her temple. The poor girl’s face was frozen in an expression of terror, and her dangling feet scrambled to find solidity in the air.
“No!” Alice called. “No, please!”
“Robert, don’t!” Coraline said. “Please, honey! Listen to me…we can start over, Robert! But if you harm that girl, you’ll be on your own. There’s been enough destruction already. Killing an innocent child won’t change anything, but I won’t stay. I promise you that.”
Ann watched Coraline intently. She holstered her weapon and held her hands up so Roan could see the gesture. Ben and Alice did the same, and Coraline began to climb the stairs.
“You…you’re really coming?” Roan said. He sounded like a little boy—a frightened little boy. The muzzle of his weapon fell away from Lucy’s temple, and she sensed the shift. She calmed, sniffling in his clutches, her tiny hands gripping his forearm.
“I am,” Coraline said. “I am. Please, Robert—don’t hurt her. Put her down gently and let her go.”
Coraline climbed slowly, methodically. They watched her ascension.
Roan yanked Lucy back over the edge of the bannister. He set her down on the carpet, but did not relinquish his grip on her shoulder.
“Thank you,” Coraline said. She stood on the landing, just a few yards away. “Thank you for keeping your word. Come here, honey! Come toward my voice!”
“I want Alice! I want to go home!” she sobbed.
Roan’s fingers fell away from her shoulder. Wailing, Lucy ran across the carpet and sprang into Coraline’s open arms. She kissed the little girl’s face, whispering in her ear, “Go, Lucy! There’s a staircase here, and at the bottom is Ben and Alice. You go with them and you get as far away from here as you can, okay?”
Lucy nodded and, her tiny hand upstretched to the bannister, she made her way carefully down the staircase.
“Come here, honey!” Alice said. Lucy ran into her arms, sobbing, and then Alice was off and sprinting for the front door, her form bent in protection of the girl. She had the door open in a flash and they were gone.
Roan stood, disheveled and defeated, his arms at his sides. “It all fell apart, Coral. Somebody…it must have been those bastards from Jacksonville…it must have been…” His voice trailed off as Coraline went to him and pulled him into a hug.
His arms found her back, and she spun, slapping the handcuff onto his wrist. In one deft move she snapped the empty cuff onto the bannister and stepped away. Roan’s mouth fell open. “What…Coraline?”
The reality of what she’d done crashed down on him and his face stretched into an angry snarl. He raised the gun in his free hand and snapped off two rounds. They hit Coraline squarely in the chest, and Ben screamed out for her.
“Aw, shit!” Ann said. She had her gun out and was off and running, Ben following close behind.
“You snake!�
� Roan shouted. Coraline struggled for air, the blood already bubbling in her mouth. “You…you bitch!”
Ann brought her gun up, snapping off three quick shots. One caught Roan in the shoulder, spinning him around. He drew down on the petite soldier and put a bullet in her forehead. She fell to the ground, dead, her eyes wide.
Ben dropped to a knee. He fired at Roan, catching him flush in the stomach.
“Oof,” the little man said. He pitched forward onto his knees, his tethered arm hanging limply as he dropped the gun onto the carpet. Ben kicked it away. He stood over Roan, placing the still-smoking barrel to a spot just behind his right ear.
“No,” Coraline said. “Ben, don’t. Let…me.”
Ben instantly forgot about the pathetic man. Roan groaned, struggling to breath. Blood spread in thick blooms, soaking his designer clothing.
“Coraline,” he said. He knelt, and took her hand.
She smiled at him. “Get my kit.”
He pulled it from her pocket.
“It’s…inside.”
He opened it. There was a single vial inside, filled with clear liquid.
“Life is a pathway, Ben,” she whispered. He knelt to better hear her. “I’m glad ours doubled back…I’m glad…I’m glad that we found each other again.”
He nodded, placing the syringe in her hand. He wiped the tears away and reached forward, kissing her long and hard.
“I love you, Corr,” he whispered. “I love you so much.”
Her hand went to her thigh. She pushed the needle into the muscle there. “I…love…you…too, Ben.” She sighed, pushing the liquid into her body. “I’ll…meet you…at the cave,” she whispered. “In my dreams…I’ll meet you at the cave.”
Her chest hitched, and then she was gone.
Roan had been watching them. He was spitting blood and when he grinned, his mouth was a crimson half-moon. He laughed, a low-slung rattle in his chest. “Don’t have much time, Benny m’boy. Not much time at all!”
Ben stood and went to the little man, raising his fist to strike him. Roan flinched.
“You ruined her,” Ben said. He lowered his fist. Hitting this man would give him no solace. “You spoiled her, you filthy animal!”
He searched Ann’s pockets for the keys to the truck, but she must have left them in the vehicle. He planted a final kiss on Coraline’s cheek and took the stairs three at a time.
The last thing he heard before fleeing Roan’s mansion was the little tyrant’s wet laughter.
FORTY-SEVEN
Lucy covered his face with kisses while Alice worked her way through the gears. “Where’s grandma and grandpa?” she asked after they’d buckled their safety belts. Alice had the big truck up to seventy on the freeway, sliding over the frozen roads while passing the occasional car as if it were parked on the road.
Time—the fact was that they were out of it. There was no telling when the reaction might run its course. It could happen any time.
“We’ll find them, Lucy,” Ben said. “We just need to get out of the city. If we get out of Atlanta, we’ll be fine.”
“Big ‘if,’” Alice grimly replied. Her mouth became a thin line as she jammed on the breaks and spun the wheel, nosing the truck off the expressway and back onto surface streets. “There’s a map on the seat there, Ben. Help me out here.”
He called out rights and lefts—they were headed for the unfinished portion of the wall near Piedmont Park—but the roads grew congested with the hordes of migrants fleeing the city. Finally, she was forced up onto the sidewalks. People hammered on the truck as they passed by, and Alice goosed the gas to discourage people from climbing into the bed.
There were thousands here, herded like cattle through a chute. Alice growled, punching the truck up onto the grass. She skirted the throng of walkers, the four-wheel-drive handling the snow and the terrain with ease.
She found a fissure in the crowds; pedestrians stepped out of the way.
Ben felt a tremendous anxiety in his chest. It was as if the thing that was about to happen to Coraline had touched off a spark inside him. He fought the urge to be sick, his fingers absently tracing the scar on his sternum.
“We’re almost there—” Alice started when the ground trembled beneath them. It pitched upward, buckling at least ten inches before settling back down as a brilliant light obliterated the gray, replacing it with orange. It filled the rearview mirror, and Alice floored it.
“Hold on,” she said.
The blast had knocked every living thing flat to the ground. People, trees, shrubs…all of it had been chopped down. Ben watched, fascinated, as people struggled to their feet, their hands cupped to their eyes, as the mushroom cloud spread over Atlanta.
“Go, Alice! Please, just go!” Lucy screamed.
Alice went.
She slammed the gas pedal down, flying over the frozen ground, darting around people and over vegetation. It was easier, now that the pedestrians had turned their attention to what was happening in Brookhaven.
She had the truck up to fifty miles an hour when she finally cleared the southern border of the park.
Piedmont Avenue was just about deserted, and she picked up even more speed there.
“I’m sorry, Ben,” Alice said. “I’m so sorry.”
Ben felt the loss—he felt it squarely in the center of his heart—but he didn’t feel sadness. Instead, he felt pride. Pride and gratitude, that he’d finally gone to Atlanta and reunited with the girl he’d known back on the ranch in Oregon.
He squeezed Alice’s hand, overcome with love for her and for Lucy.
Even as the mushroom cloud behind them spread, its furious devastation rushing through Atlanta, scouring the world of its features as it reset the balance of life, he felt love for Alice and Lucy.
Alice squeezed his hand in response and then replaced it on the wheel, a triangle of tongue at the corner of her mouth as she focused on outrunning the maelstrom that chased them out of Atlanta.
~
Four hours later, a truck coated with ash and dust pulled into the parking lot of a crumbling Waffle House restaurant in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
The interior of the restaurant glowed with lantern light, and there were a half dozen other vehicles parked there.
“Grandpa?” Lucy said, her voice high and eager as they stepped across the threshold to the restaurant. At least ten or twelve strangers—men and women alike—grinned in anticipation. “Grandma, are you there? It’s me! It’s Lucy!”
“Oh, Lucy!” Gwen called. She snatched the little girl into her arms and spun around twice with delight. Arthur crushed Ben’s hand in his grip, tears welling in his eyes, before swallowing his wife and granddaughter in a wide embrace. His shoulders hitched as he sobbed with happiness.
About an hour later, after the introductions had been made and a meal had been shared, Alice nosed the truck into the convoy of vehicles. Her eyes went to the rearview mirror, and she sighed with content.
The Lawtons were chatting happily in the back seat while she and Ben held hands.
It might work. It all might work out after all.
They went west, knowing little about the world that was waiting for them, but thankful for the opportunity to start over together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel teaches a variety of writing courses at Florida State College at Jacksonville. He is pursuing a doctoral degree with a focus on the digital humanities in the Texts and Technology program at the University of Central Florida. His essays and short stories have been published in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies.
He lives near the Intracoastal Waterway with his wife and daughter, and he enjoys fishing the tidal creeks of Duval County from his kayak.
Other works include:
These Strange Worlds: Fourteen Dark Tales
The Silver Coast and Other Stories
Maximum Dark: Four Tales of Suspense
The Reaper’s Harvest
His third collection of short
fiction, In the Walls and Other Stories, will be available in 2014.
To learn more about Daniel’s upcoming projects or get in contact with him, please visit his web The Byproduct, where he reviews movies and books and writes about trends in popular culture.
The Reset Page 25
