The Reset (15 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

She
had to be careful, and she had to start right away. If they were going to make it
work, she couldn’t afford to waste any of the seeds they’d almost traded their
lives for.

She took some old newspapers—brittle as
onion skins—and shredded them, then made a series of damp nests in some cookie tins
she’d found in the pantry. She labeled each tin and placed them in the box
window off the dining room, where they could take the greatest portion of whatever
sunlight managed to poke through.

She pushed seeds into each nest, taking
her time, speaking to them while she worked, imploring life to (improbably, if
she was honest with herself) flourish from such humble and long-dormant
beginnings.

“You’ll be the strongest, tastiest corn
that’s ever grown in Georgia!” she cooed as she spritzed the misshapen kernels
with water from an old hairspray bottle that she’d rinsed out. “We’ll use you
to make masa and tortillas and…oh jeez, sweet
cornbread
! You’ll be
so
delicious!”

When she was finished, she checked on
Ben.

“Unbelievable,” he rasped. His hair was
a sweaty tangle and he was severely dehydrated, but the color was building in
his cheeks and it filled her with happiness to hear him speak. “We…really made
it.”

Alice laughed, pulling him into a gentle
embrace. She told him about the seeds, about her plans to begin work on the
garden immediately. If they would have a summer harvest, not even an afternoon
could be wasted.

She brought him lunch and carefully
cleaned and bandaged his wounds. When he had finished eating, he smiled. It
wasn’t much—just one little smile—but it was a start.

“I’m going to sit this one out today,
‘kay hon?” His chuckle terminated in a wince as flares of pain fired through
his knitting body.

“Loafer,” she said, grinning at him. She
brought him the book he’d taken from Putt’s and refilled his water. “Enjoy it.
It was a pretty popular novel in its era.”

The sun broke through at mid-day and scattered
the clouds. The day became hot and bright. Alice checked on Ben every hour and
spent the remainder of the day getting dirty on the miracle farm, preparing the
earth for a summer garden.

~

Two
things happened in June: Ben got out of bed and a host of yellow-green shoots erupted
in the tins on the windowsill.

~

It
was the warmest summer Ben had known since leaving the shelter. Perhaps things
were
changing. Perhaps all the Earth needed was time.

Or maybe
he
had changed. Maybe
decent weather had always been there, and he’d just been too beleaguered—too
hungry and weak to notice it.

Whatever the case, summer finally came
to the miracle farm. A garden matured, tenuously at first, before flourishing. They
fetched water from the creek throughout the day for the thirsty plants; they
kept the rows of produce neat and trim and free from weeds. Late in June, they
expanded the plot to accommodate the sprawling squash vines and rows of burly lettuce;
they set basket after basket of fresh produce aside in the cool clay of the
root cellar.

The ash storms remained a nuisance, but
they were happening less frequently, slowing to a pace of only one or two big
blows per week. On those days, they covered the garden as best they could with
tarps before dusting off the plants and raking the ash out of the soil.

The sun emerged more often in the
morning; it showed itself more frequently at dusk. Its reemergence helped them get
restful sleep, and they grew strong in this new harmony with the light.

Life—
life
was happening.

They hunted, and Alice shot a deer near
the end of July. They took their care with it, putting every part of the animal
to use on the farm. Ben caught stringers of catfish from the creeks that
bisected the fields; they were much hardier than the scant few he’d managed to catch
in all of his wandering years.

As the garden bore fruit, their cuisine
became increasingly complex. They roasted fish and potatoes with Vidalia onions
over an evening fire. They made delicious cast-iron ratatouilles and learned
how to mill the first small, sweet batches of corn, which they turned into
griddlecakes.

The orchards flushed white and pink with
blossoms, and the sun and rain nourished the grasses; they shared the waste of
their farming operation with the ponies, who gained weight. It wasn’t uncommon
for Ben and Alice to now catch them frolicking in the orchard at sunrise,
little tendrils of mist tracing up from the earth as the day warmed.

They built a foundry behind the barn,
and Ben experimented with making metal casings. He recycled some of the old
iron implements in the barn and, after trial and error and the help of a book
he’d found in the Winstons’ house, he fashioned a couple of workable bullets.

Life—once again,
life
was
returning.

It seemed that there were more birds in
the air that summer. There were more earthworms. There were even more
mosquitoes in August.

Ben and Alice grew closer. Theirs was a
comfortable way of being—an intimacy founded on mutual respect and a shared
sense of purpose. Love, though neither had chanced using the word yet, was
happening.

On a warm night in early August, they made
love right there in the garden. A clumsy brushing of hands—one small gesture
that could have gone any number of ways—resulted in a frantic disrobing. They came
together there in the Georgia soil, the sun slinking off into the west in front
of a fan of pink and blue clouds, and when they were finished, a strange mood fell
over them both. They caught their breath in silence.

A strained, awkward silence.

“What is it, Ben? Is it…are you thinking
about her?” Alice said. She rested her cheek on his chest.

“Oh, no,” Ben replied. “How could you ask
me that, Alice?”

“Then what is it?” she said. “I can…I
can feel it. Something’s not quite right, just occasionally. I just assumed
that you were still thinking of Coraline.”

Ben sighed, shaking his head. “I haven’t
thought of her in that way in a long time, Alice. That’s the truth. It’s you
and only you. You’re the
only
one I think about now. You’re the only one
I care about.”

And it was true. He had put Coral’s
picture away—had not turned to it for strength in months. When he thought about
her at all, it was with the same sorrow he held for the Beamers and Mr. Brown
and the parents he’d never known. They were people in his life that were no
longer there, and nothing more.

“But…?” Alice said.

Ben laughed. “I have to admit, this…well,
it’s getting a little weird, Alice. It’s strange how well we understand each
other. I have…well, you’re right. Something’s been eating at me.”

“I knew it!” she said, slapping his ribs.
“Ben, what is it? What’s going on?”

He told her about the promise he’d made
to Arthur. His thoughts, almost daily, now drifted toward Gwen and Lucy and the
thin man who had helped him rescue Alice from a terrible fate. “I owe them. I’m
just…I’m scared to go back after all that we’ve accomplished this summer. I
guess I’m afraid to make good on my promise, and it feels terrible. Those
people need our help.”

“You’re not alone. It’s the same way for
me. I can’t stop thinking about them. I only knew those girls for a couple of
hours, but I can’t stop thinking about where they might be now. I guess…I guess
they’re probably with Roan.”

It was a warm night. They lay there,
naked and dusty and comfortable and safe, considering the plights of others.

“So what should we do?” Alice finally
asked.

He kissed the top of her head. “What if it
was us? What if
we
were out there somewhere, just…just waiting for someone
to come and help us?”

“I’d hope that promises would be kept,”
Alice immediately replied. She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “I
guess that’s our answer.”

“I guess it is.”

After a while they gathered their things
and went inside. There were things to do before returning to
Bickley.

TWENTY-SIX

Ben
whistled in appreciation. It was quite a feat of engineering, the way she’d
rigged it up. Alice had slipped the wheels off one of the kids’ Radio Flyer
wagons and replaced them with small, inflatable tires she’d yanked from old
farming machinery in the barn. It would cover most of the terrain they’d have
to cross without too much exertion. They used bailing wire to build a cage
stretching almost to Ben’s shoulders. He could push from behind while Alice pulled
on the handle.

They stuffed it with bushels of
produce—corn, lettuce and cabbage, snap beans, onions, potatoes, squash, tomatoes,
apples (both bags of dried slices and some of the still-sour batch they’d
picked early from the orchard), carrots, melons, kale, broccoli and spinach.
Ben scrubbed out an old tackle box. He labeled the compartments and filled them
with the seeds they’d meticulously collected over the course of the summer.

“They’ll be stunned when they see this,”
Ben said. “We just need to be certain that they’re the only ones
to
see
this.”

Ben took the automatic and Alice chose
the little handgun that Pinnock had given them. It was reliable and easy to
shoot, and she liked the idea of using one of their own weapons against them if
they were attacked.

They left at dawn, this time with better
bearings. Because they knew the way and the light hung around until almost 9:00,
they arrived on the outskirts of Bickley at dusk. They were exhausted and
sweaty from wrangling the awkward cart over difficult terrain, but they had
made it.

“There,” Ben pointed. The house was dark.
It looked dead—an utterly deserted structure.

“Damn. You sure, Ben?”

He nodded. “It doesn’t look promising,
I’ll admit. Maybe Roan made good on his promise here. At any rate, we have to
try. Can’t come all this way without at least knocking.” He put his shoulder
against the cart and they covered the last bit of distance in silence—a slow, dark
shape toiling against the indigo backdrop of the coming night.

They squatted in that same copse of saw
palmetto, Ben putting the binoculars on the old place. “I’m going to go around
back and have a look around. Cover me, but watch your back, Alice. We’ve done
this before, hon.”

She wore a rueful smile. “I won’t be
caught out like that again, Ben. Let’s just get this over with.”

He took a chaste kiss and sprinted for
the house. No gunshots. No lights. No life.

The place was dead.

He slunk up onto the porch and peered
into the kitchen, the dim moonlight offering just enough light. The table had
been overturned, the chairs upended on the floor. He cursed and went around to
the side of the house, a shadow peeking through windows.

Empty.

He climbed the front steps and knocked
lightly. The door was unlocked and he slipped inside. The living room had also
been torn apart. Shattered porcelain littered the hardwoods. Splintered frames
and torn photographs were strewn about the room.

“Arthur?” he called softly. “Hello! Anybody
here? Gwen?”

He climbed the stairs, searching for
life and finding only disorder. The destruction was complete, and he felt his
heart sink as he returned to the kitchen. A picture—a simple pencil
illustration on construction paper—was pinned to the old refrigerator with a
magnet. It depicted a trio of stick figures. The smallest figure had no eyes.

Lucy was quite the artist, even with her
setbacks.

He tried the tap in the sink. Air
clunked through the pipes, but no water flowed. He was about to leave when he
heard the scraping. It came from the pantry.

He crept over to the pantry door.

“Somebody there?” a voice called out. It
was high and reedy, as if it hadn’t been used in ages. “That you, Ben?

“Arthur?” Ben said. “Is that you,
Arthur?”

“I’m here,” the man called back. “Is it
really you?”

“I’m here, Arthur. I told you I’d come
back.”

There was a sudden, high-pitched shriek.
He heard a little voice call out, “Ben Stone? Ben with the apples?”

“That’s right, Lucy. Ben with the
apples. I’m going to open the door, Arthur. Don’t shoot me, now.”

He slid it open and saw, tucked away in
the corner, a tiny trapdoor leading to a crawlspace. A gaunt face popped out of
the hole, barely lit by the lamp down below. Arthur, already a scarecrow of a
man, had cheekbones like straight razors and deep shadows beneath crazed eyes.
He wore his spectacles, though the left lens was missing.

“Oh, thank heavens! Hurry, Ben! It’s my
Gwendolyn! She needs help!”

Ben clamored down the ladder. The room
had surprising dimensions; he could almost stand tall, though Arthur still had
to stoop beneath the floorboards.

“Ben with the apples?” Lucy called again.
Her voice was soft and weak. She made no effort to move from Gwen’s side.

Arthur’s wife reclined on a mattress of molding
burlap sacks. She was unconscious and, Ben could tell straight away, deathly
ill. “How long has she been this way?”

“Fever started a week ago, I suppose.
Hard to tell, we’ve been down here so long. She hasn’t…she hasn’t been conscious
in at least a day’s time.”

“Dehydration?”

Arthur nodded. “We all are. I haven’t
had a drink of water in…in days. Lucy too, I think. We’ve tried to keep Gwen
going. We’ve just a tiny bit left. It’s all…”

Ben didn’t let him finish the sentence.
He tore up the ladder and out into the yard, where Alice stepped out from behind
the brush. “Are they there?”

“Water,” Ben said. “They’re down in the
crawlspace, but Gwen’s dying. She doesn’t have much time left. We need to get
them some water.”

They had about two gallons. It would
have to do. They both went down and Ben poured a measure into a tin cup. He pried
Gwen’s mouth open and tipped the contents down her throat.

Her respiration was shallow, her skin
like scorched parchment. He poured a little of the water onto her forehead.
“Gwen! Listen up, Gwen…we’ve got water here, and we need you to drink some. We’re
here with you, Gwen, and we need you to drink up! Can you hear me? Come on now,
Gwen…”

He kept talking to her, slipping water
down her throat in tiny swallows. After about ten minutes, her eyes fluttered
open. Cracked lips worked silently in confusion, her eyes darting about the
room. After a moment, the blank expression lifted and she spoke.

“Apples?” she croaked. “You brought
food?”

Ben smiled, and Arthur knelt, sobbing as
he took her hand. Lucy smiled. “They came back, Grandma! I told you they
would!”

“Drink up,” Alice said, shouldering Ben
aside and assuming the role of caregiver. “You’re severely dehydrated.” She turned
and clapped a hand to Arthur’s emaciated shoulder. “This isn’t safe, Arthur. My
name is Alice, by the way. I owe you a debt of gratitude for helping my husband
rescue me all those months ago.”

They shook hands, Arthur’s tears
glistening like quartz shale in the tangles of an old man’s beard.

“Listen—you can’t run that lantern down
here. We’ll asphyxiate. How long since you’ve been upstairs?”

“Months,” he croaked. “Haven’t really been
up there since just ya’ll left.”

“Come on,” Alice said. She scooped Lucy
into her arms. “We’re going up now. You two help Gwen. Lucy and I will go
first.”

“But…” Arthur started, but Alice was
already on the ladder, her hand on Lucy’s back. They vanished, and Arthur shot
Ben a querulous look.

“What can I say? The woman’s decisive.
Best just to do what she says.”

As they were helping Gwen up the ladder,
she made a remark that hit Ben in the gut. He had to bite his lip to keep the
laughter at bay.

“I didn’t know you two were married,”
she croaked. “So rare these days.”

“Surprises,” Ben finally responded,
letting the slip go. He wore a wry grin. “Every day is just filled with ‘em.”

Gwen nodded and they helped her
upstairs. When they had her on the couch, Ben went back for the lantern. He
moved quickly from room to room, pulling the shades and the drapes until he’d buttoned
the place up as tight as he could. He cracked a few windows in the parlor to
vent the place a bit and they extinguished the lamp, opting instead for a
couple of candles.

“They need food,” Alice said when thing
were secure. They were walking cadavers—even Lucy, who appeared withered in the
candlelight.

“Right. Absolutely. Be right back,” Ben
said. He hustled out and gathered a selection from the wagon. Before returning,
he pushed the buggy deeper into the bushes behind the house, intent to return before
dawn to find a better hiding spot.

“I’ve got, let’s see here…I’ve got apples,
carrots, tomatoes and watermelon. C’mere, Lucy. You’ve got to try this!”

He pulled a knife from his pack and
sliced into the melon. Juices pattered onto the hardwoods and he handed the
girl a hunk of the bright red fruit. “Eat up,” he said. “It’s okay—I promise.”

She tore into it and it was gone in four
bites. Arthur clapped his hands and even Gwen managed a feeble smile. Ben sliced
the melon up. Lucy ate two more slices before moving on to carrots. They gorged
themselves, finishing a large portion of the water as well. When they were finished,
the room fell silent. Ben could hear the others breathing.

Then, softly, Arthur wept.

When the emotions had run their course,
it was Gwen that finally broke the silence. “I thought—I thought that cellar
was our coffin.
At least we’ll be together
, I kept saying to myself.”

“And then you came along and helped us,”
Lucy said. “Just like you said you would. I told Gran you’d come back.”

“Just like we said we would,” Ben replied,
and Alice hugged the little girl.

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask. What
happened around here?” Ben said. “Bickley? The town? What happened after we escaped?”

The little girl still wrapped in her
arms, Alice reached out and gently touched his shoulder. She shook her head.
“We can talk about that later, Ben. For
now, let’s just get
some rest.”