Authors: Daniel Powell
“2051,” they replied at the same time.
“Then I’m thirty-one. My birthday is in
November.”
Arthur laughed. “I guess I suspected as
much.”
“What do you mean?” Ben said.
“You two aren’t really married, are you?
I reckon a couple would know how old each other was if they’d swapped vows.
There’s that, and also that neither of you has a ring.”
Ben felt his face flush. Alice was
quiet. She took a sip of her tea.
“We’ve got a strong enough bond without
all that, Arthur. We found each other, Ben and I did. That’s all we need.”
“Aye. Fair enough. But don’t forget that
I’m a preacher, now. If you want to make it official, I’d love to help you kids
out. It’d be my pleasure, after all you’ve done for us.”
Ben felt relief flood into him. The old
man had a way of setting them at ease, and he hadn’t taken their little fiction
as dishonesty. Rather, he’d probably intuited that they’d simply come to view each
other as husband and wife, and he was happy to make things official.
“You just say the word, and Gwen and
Lucy and I will throw you a hell of a fine shindig!”
They laughed at the old man’s peppery
language and changed the subject to the coming fall, and before long they grew weary
and retired to their rooms. Ben went from room to room, double checking the
doors and windows. When he was content that they were safe, he slipped into bed
beside Alice, whose nude skin was cool beneath the sheets.
“What do you—” he started, but she cut
him off with a firm kiss. She stripped him out of his tee-shirt and shorts and
they made frantic, passionate love. When they were finished, Alice fell asleep
quickly, but Ben couldn’t follow her so easily. He laid there, a smile on his
face, and he felt—
contentment
.
He felt peace.
He felt like things were so good that it
was beginning to scare him
.
TWENTY-NINE
The
seasons changed and the weather cooled. The climate shifts had eliminated
Georgia’s abundant year-round growing season, so they picked the garden and the
orchards clean and spent almost two full weeks putting the huge bounty of
produce away for the winter. They canned some of it and dried most of it. The
tubers and some of the hardier vegetable varieties kept well in the root cellar,
and they had more than they could probably use.
When they were satisfied that they’d
done a good job, they covered the garden with tarps and set about cutting as
much hay from the countryside as they could for the ponies. It was back-breaking
work, and Ben discovered muscles that he’d never knew existed.
Lucy excelled in her lessons and the
Lawtons gained weight. With all five of them pitching in, they finished the
chores earlier in the day, which left more time for leisure activities. Ben and
Arthur found baseball gloves and had a daily game of catch. They took hikes
into the countryside as a group, and they took Lucy fishing often.
She celebrated her sixth birthday in
August, and they celebrated Ben’s birthday in November. On Thanksgiving, they had
a feast of quail stuffed with cornmeal and wild mushrooms, along with a sweet
onion casserole and mashed potatoes with rabbit gravy. Arthur had distilled a
few jugs of hard apple cider and they got tipsy on the stuff and laughed around
the table like families used to in the years before the Reset.
Life was good.
On what they thought might be December
01, Alice posed her question. She and Ben were watching the snow fall at the
bay window off the dining room, sipping tea and waiting for the Lawtons to
finish their math lesson with Lucy so they could play a board game in the
kitchen. “Have you given it much thought?”
Ben had been giving it
a lot
of
thought, actually, and he knew just what she was getting at. “Of course I have.
What about you?”
Alice’s smile was so shy it was
disarming. Every day, he saw a different aspect of this woman that drew her deeper
into his heart. “I can’t help it, Ben. I know I’m robbing the cradle a little
here, but I have to admit that getting married sounds—”
He darted forward and kissed her. She
closed her eyes, kissed him back, and he pushed something into her free hand.
“Ben! Where did you get this? It’s…holy
cow, it’s so beautiful!”
“Will you marry me, Alice?” he
whispered. “Will you be my wife?”
“Of course I will. Of course I will,
Ben!”
She threw her arms around his neck,
which was good because he had time to swipe the tears from his eyes. When she released
him, he took the ring and slipped it onto her finger.
“How did you get this, Ben? I’m in shock
here!”
“It was a gift from the Lawtons. Arthur
gave it to me in private, just after my birthday.”
“But where did it come from? It
didn’t—this wasn’t Melinda’s, was it?”
Ben shook his head. “I wouldn’t have
accepted it if it was. This was Arthur’s mother’s ring, Alice! It’s been in
their family for generations. I told him I couldn’t take it—that I didn’t feel
right about it—but he insisted. What do you think?”
Alice was crying now. She wiped away the
tears while she studied the ring shining on her dainty finger. “I think it’s
perfect. I’ve always loved the idea of a Christmas wedding.”
Ben kissed her again, and then the
Lawtons were finished in the other room. Lucy sang a song about putting away
her things and then ducked her head into the dining room.
“Monopoly time!” she shouted, grinning
happily. “I get to be the horsey!”
They sat down to play, and they hadn’t
made it around the board once before the Lawtons noticed Alice’s ring. They
beamed their approval from across the table.
“Well,” Arthur said, “
Merry
Christmas!”
They erupted in laughter and Lucy
launched into a soliloquy on all the things she expected Santa to bring her in
a few weeks.
Outside, the snow grew high in ashy drifts
and the wind howled while dangerous men in shabby winter clothes stomped
through the countryside, praying beneath their steaming breaths that they might
find somewhere, anywhere, to rest their exhausted bodies
.
THIRTY
Arthur
crunched the numbers, and he was just about certain that it was Christmas.
They’d put up a tree, fashioning ornaments from an old felt blanket that Alice
had cut into patterns. She and Lucy had decorated them with sequins and glitter
that they’d found in an old sewing kit. It lent a festive air to the house, and
after much deliberation they had decided to run the generators and have a
proper wedding ceremony that afternoon.
They ate a huge Christmas breakfast, basking
in the luxury of the periodic heat blasts slipping through the baseboard vents.
They took long, extended turns in the bath. For the Lawtons, it was the
cleanest they’d felt since the power grid had fallen a few months after the
Reset.
“My God, I feel like a man again!”
Arthur said after he’d dressed in his best suit. “It’s like—it’s like I’m back
in the pulpit again. I’d forgotten what it felt like, honest to God.”
They wore their finest clothes. Ben
found a suit in the closet and he took his time cleaning it. It was a little short,
but it would do. Gwen cut his hair and he shaved and soaked for a long time before
scrubbing himself pink.
Alice sequestered herself in the back of
the house, and Gwen and Lucy flitted about her, helping her with the
preparations. The house was filled with excitement.
Arthur cleared out the furniture in the
living room. He hung a sprig of mistletoe from the ceiling and set up chairs
for Lucy and Gwen. They swept the hardwoods and Gwen and Lucy tacked a long
white sheet to the floor, creating a path through the center of the room.
At 2:00 p.m. sharp, Arthur surprised
them all by playing Pachelbel’s “Canon” on the stereo. He kept the volume low,
but the sheer beauty of the composition—of the possibility it represented for
man’s potential to create important things—brought tears to their eyes. Gwen
wept freely, and Lucy merely listened, mouth agape, to something she’d never
experienced before.
Arthur wore his full vestments over his
suit.
“What do you think?” Ben said. He
stepped into the room, grinning, and Gwen put a hand to her chest.
“My word, Benjamin Stone! You look so
handsome!”
Lucy put her arms up and Ben picked her
up. She traced the tips of her fingers across his shaved cheeks, through his
hair, down the lapels of his suit. “
Very
handsome, Ben!”
“Stand here, Ben,” Arthur said,
directing Ben to his right. When everything was in place, he touched a button
on the remote and Mahler’s tenth poured into the room. “We’re ready,
Gwendolyn,” he said, and his wife beamed. She stood and left the room; when she
returned, she had Alice with her.
Ben swallowed, but there was no more air
in the room. He cleared his throat and forced himself to take a breath.
“We’re ready for the bride. Please join
us, Alice.”
She’d been hard at work with the sewing
kit, and she’d done an amazing job. She wore a summer dress the color of
peaches, with white sandals and a rose veil that she’d crafted from scratch.
Gwen had washed and styled her hair, and her red tresses hung in fancy curls
over her shoulders. She clutched a bouquet of dried roses in her hands.
Her smile was radiant, even behind the
veil, and she walked with confidence and pride down the path. There was a gleam
in her green eyes.
“Let’s begin,” Arthur said, falling
easily into his element. He read from his Bible and worked through a ceremony
he’d delivered hundreds of times before—the ceremony he’d been pretty sure he’d
never deliver again.
When it came time to exchange vows, Ben
went first. “Alice, when I found you that day in the orchards, I was so scared.
I’d been by myself for so long, and I wasn’t sure how I could even…even trust
another person. I was frightened back then, and I’m frightened a little right
now, because the only thing I want in this life is to be the kind of man that
you can love and rely on. I want to be the kind of husband and partner that you
can always trust will love you unconditionally.
“I won’t promise you that our life
together will be easy. I can’t promise you that we’ll be safe, or even that
we’ll be able to stay here. But I can promise you that I’ll fight for you with
everything I have. I’ll…I’ll always love you, and I’ll always be thankful to
you for saving me. Thank you for coming into my life, Alice.”
She smiled, blinking back tears, and
reached out and took his hand.
“I never knew I could be this happy,
Ben. I’d given up, and then I met you and I feel like a brand new person. I
love you, Ben Stone. I’ll stand with you, and I promise to share everything—the
good and the bad—with you for the rest of my life.
“I promise to love you.”
Arthur was so taken by their exchange
that he missed his cue. He recovered, stammering, and asked them to seal their
bond with a kiss. Ben leaned forward and felt the same jolt that had shot
through him the first time their lips met on the way to Bickley. They held the
kiss for a moment and then turned and grinned at Gwen and Lucy.
“And now, it’s with great admiration and
pride that I present to you, Benjamin and Alice Stone! May your connection be a
source of strength to you both through all the rest of your days!”
Alice knelt and gave the bouquet to
Lucy. The little girl beamed, and Alice pulled her up and into a tight embrace.
Gwen stood and she and Arthur wrapped their arms around the newlyweds. They
passed out jars of hard cider (and apple juice for Lucy) and toasted the
marriage, and that night they dined on rosemary venison steaks with roasted
potatoes and the last of the year’s salad greens.
They watched an animated movie on the
television, Lucy chuckling all the way through the film while she snacked on
trail mix, and when everyone finally turned in for the evening, the miracle
farm was filled with an air of contentment. Everyone felt…satisfied and happy.
It was as though they’d cleared another hurdle together, and the ceremony had
brought them even closer together.
Who knew what tomorrow would bring? Who
could guess which new indignities loomed on the horizon? None of it mattered on
that night.
Ben and Alice made love, and this time
it was different. They’d always been careful in the past, right from the start.
It had been like walking a tightrope, and neither harbored much serious confidence
that they might become pregnant, but they’d been cautious nevertheless.
Their relationship had changed, though,
and on their wedding night things were much different. When they were finished,
Alice put her head against Ben’s chest and let go with a satisfied sigh.
“That was so good, Ben,” she whispered.
“My gosh, that was good.”
He kissed the top of her head, stroking
her red hair in the candlelight. “I love you so much, Alice. It’s so nice to be
closer to you in that way.”
“I love you, too,” she yawned. She
kissed his chest and, an instant later, she was snoring softly.
Sheesh, how could she do that? Ben
listened to her sleeping for a time, hoping he could join her, but his mind was
restless.
That damned television. The entire time
they were watching the movie, he’d been thinking about the DVR.
Alice’s snores grew deeper. Ben
carefully extricated himself from her embrace and quickly dressed. He
extinguished the candle and made his way down the hallway in the dark. The heat
kicked in and he smiled a little as the warmth billowed down the corridor.
He poured himself a large jar of hard
cider and turned on the television. Static filled the screen, of course, but he
flipped through the channels anyway. They’d done it a few times, never
registering so much as a blip of broadcasting.
He got the same result and navigated to
the list of recorded programs. There were maybe two dozen movies—most geared
toward the Winstons’ children. But they’d also recorded the Super Bowl, and
there seemed to be dozens of hours of recorded news stories that probably depicted
life after the Reset.
He found the Super Bowl footage, took a
long pull on his drink and pressed ‘PLAY.’ He was stunned to see the chaos
erupting there on the screen. Whoever had watched it last had switched it off right
smack in the middle of the maelstrom.
He backed the footage up and took a deep
breath before starting it up again. Watching football was simply surreal. The
holographic simulcast had been indecipherable from the game down in Miami, and
there were thousands of spectators there watching
a game
, an athletic
contest littered with silly digital advertisements pitching products from a
life that was so foreign from his own that he could barely remember it.
After about twenty minutes, a hush fell
over the stadium and the broadcasters cut to the footage of the Space Needle
disintegrating in a cauldron of smoke and fire. From there, it played out just
as Alice said it had.
There were shots from Denver and
Charlotte and Pittsburg, and then Miami was gone. Seconds later, Manhattan had
been vaporized and the feed bounced around the country like a hot potato as the
largest markets fell, one after the next. Dallas and San Francisco and Phoenix
each had a brief turn on the air. So did Philadelphia and Cincinnati. Ultimately,
the feed was picked up and maintained by a powerful broadcasting station
located in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“The America you woke up in this morning
is gone,” a harried young man with a southern twang in his voice said. He stood
so close to the camera lens that you could see the crimson veins in his eyes
and the beads of sweat on his upper lip. “This is all that we know. At
approximately 4:19 Pacific Standard Time, Seattle was decimated by a nuclear
explosion. This was the first in a series of what has been confirmed now as
seventeen similar detonations in cities across the country. I repeat—seventeen
major U.S. cities have been attacked in a coordinated act of terrorism. While
it’s impossible to confirm at this time, it is believed that the President was
killed in the attack on Miami. The Vice President and Speaker of the House lost
their lives in the attack on Washington, D.C., and this station has been unable
to contact a single acting member of the Human Accord’s board of trustees.
“It is widely believed that the United
States Government, in some form or fashion, is now operating from a secure
location. The National Guard has been dispatched to keep the peace, and
citizens have been ordered to remain indoors under provisions of martial law.
HA security forces have…what’s that?” The anchor put a hand to his earpiece,
his eyes drifting away while he digested the new intelligence. “Okay, so now we’re
receiving reports of rioting and civilian skirmishes in cities not directly
impacted by these coordinated explosions. We have reports of fires, some
burning on a large scale, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Little Rock, Arkansas,
Providence, Rhode Island and Fargo, North Dakota. It appears that HA security
forces believe these attacks are potentially domestic in origin. IT
professionals are combing personal profiles in hopes of finding a common thread
in these…”
The words ran together as the images on
the screen unfolded. There were clips of U.S. soldiers opening fire on
protestors in College Park, on the outskirts of Atlanta. There were shots of
the HA’s army of private contractors doing the same on protestors on the Vegas
strip and large groups of seemingly nonviolent citizens, many of them families,
simply walking north out of Albuquerque.
All the while, the poor young man kept
up a running dialogue on the reports and video feeds that poured into the
station from websites and foreign news agencies and social networking
applications. Somebody almost immediately detonated a dirty bomb in Belfast,
Ireland. A group of radicals protesting solar energy in Saudi Arabia laid siege
to an energy farm on the outskirts of the ad-Dahna Desert. There had been similar
political attacks in London, Hong Kong, Sydney and Buenos Aires.
Ben paused the footage to refill his
glass and settled back in front of the carnage, his heart racing. He watched
until the time expired on the Super Bowl broadcast and then found the next bit
of news coverage—a program recorded some twelve hours later.
Ben wondered about the lapse in time,
but he figured the Winstons had put it to good use, fortifying the place and preparing
for whatever would come next.
This program featured Anna Lee Brigham, a
journalist who had once anchored the nightly news for one of the big networks
in the years before the Human Accord took over the airwaves. She’d been given a
desk at a station broadcasting out of Bozeman, Montana.
“…infrastructure has been destroyed. A
refugee zone has been established here in the Pacific Northwest. A militarized
border has been established, with the town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, at the
furthest western edge. The zone stretches as far south as Pocatello, and then
as far east as Miles City, Montana. The border to the north terminates on the
northern border of Medicine Hat, in Alberta, Canada. Canadian and American
refugees with minimal levels of cesium exposure are welcome to enter the
refugee zone to seek medical attention, protection and life-sustaining rations.
“And now, in returning to our top story,
Patrice Clover has been detained for questioning in the attacks that are now
colloquially being referred to as the ‘Reset.’ Clover worked on a ranch in
Central Oregon where it’s believed that internationally renowned bioengineer
Dr. Alex Calvin created the weapons that were unleashed on America in the last
twenty-four hours.”