“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.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“I suppose they’re all gone,” Arthur said. They sipped tea in the front room, the drapes allowing a few slivers of daylight into the space. Gwen, while still exhausted and fighting the effects of her dehydration, had survived the night. She was improving. Lucy rallied quickly. The arrival of food and company and her liberation from the dank crawlspace filled her with hope, and her smile was bright. Ben replenished their water supplies and stashed a store of food in the kitchen. “We’ve been down there in the crawlspace since Roan’s envoys came crashing into town. They keep coming back, in fact—every couple of days we hear footsteps above our heads. They must know that not everybody got out of Bickley.”
Ben had risen before sunrise and ventured to the outskirts of what remained of the little hamlet. It was gone—burned to the ground—and there were few landmarks remaining from the nightmarish place they’d fled back in May.
A skull with a few ragged clumps of hair and dried flesh still attached had been speared on a pike near the swooping curve where Ben had rescued Alice. The hair that remained was long and black and it fluttered in the breeze.
Ben had offered a quick prayer for the innocents of the town, for surely there were others like Gwen and Arthur and Lucy, and beaten a hasty retreat back to Bankers Bluff.
“They could return any time,” Gwen said. They had apples and watermelon and the tea was strong and hit the spot. “We’re not safe anymore in our home, and we can’t go back down into the crawlspace. It’s just…Lucy and I can’t live down there. Nobody can.”
“You can come with us,” Alice replied. There was no hesitation in her voice. Ben’s eyes flashed across the room. What are you doing? She gave a tiny nod, reached out and covered the woman’s wrinkled hand. “We have plenty of food to share, and our home is safe. It’s—well, it’s as safe as one could expect in these trying times.”
Arthur smiled. “Your place is here in Georgia, isn’t it? You didn’t push that load all the way from Arkansas—that’s impossible. Let me ask you a question: what gives you the impression that you’re safe? Roan’s reach is long. If your home falls inside his shadow, no matter how safe it seems, he’ll kill you if he finds you.”
A pall fell over the room. What would it take for them just to be left alone—to live in peace?
“When did Roan’s men come back?” Ben finally asked.
“Hard to say, after all that time in the dark. Time…it works differently without the light. But I’d reckon they sacked the town at least a month ago. Could be longer than that, though. But it’s like I said—they keep coming back. We heard boots on the floorboards not two days ago.”
Gwen nodded and Lucy said, “Bad men. They want to hurt us.”
“We won’t let that happen, sweetie,” Alice said. She touched the girl’s shoulder; Lucy stood and hugged her, then settled down to finish her apple in Alice’s lap.
Gwen smiled. “It’s nice to see you smiling, Lucille.”
“Thanks, Grandma,” she replied. “I like it when you’re happy too. Can we go with Ben and Alice? Please? I’m so tired of the crawlspace. It’s too dirty—too many creepy crawlies down there.”
Ben and Alice shared a glance. Although he had serious misgivings about bringing them back with them, something Alice had said stuck firmly in the back of his mind.
She’d called me her husband, he thought, and a smile lit his features. Here was a family.
“Can you walk, Gwen?” Ben said.
“I believe I can. I’m worlds better already, just having some food in my stomach.”
“Yay!” Lucy said, her little fists in the air.
Their laughter lightened the mood, but Ben remained wary of the prospect of caring for them. He swallowed hard. What choice did they have? Leaving them behind was the same as killing them.
“Let’s get the rest of the guns, Arthur” he finally said. “We’ll need to go as soon as we’re able. The sooner we get home, the sooner we can analyze our situation. Come up with a plan.”
Arthur stood, tears shimmering in his eyes, and pulled the younger man into an embrace. Ben was stunned by his frailty. Could they really bring these people into their home?
Your home? he chided himself. Now it’s your home? You need to remember how you got there in the first place, Benjamin Stone…
“Let’s do it,” Arthur said. There was optimism in his tone. “Gwen, I want you to put together some bags. Get Lucy dressed for a long day of walking. We’ll be back in a jiffy.”
They began their clumsy trek at midmorning. They were an odd collection of souls: two frail senior citizens, a sightless little girl, a widowed academic and a man whose sole existence had been one engineered to inflict pain and suffering on the human race.
Ben watched Gwen and Arthur intently as they left. Neither spared their home, or indeed what had once been Bickley, as much as a sideways glance. They were making a clean break and trusting blindly that Alice and Ben were taking them someplace safe.
They had left some of the food behind, taking only enough to see them through the trip home. There was plenty at the miracle farm, and in place of the food they pushed a cart filled with heavy artillery, a few bags of clothes, and a couple of toys. With Arthur pitching in on the pushing, they made decent time.
They spoke very little, leaving Ben alone with his thoughts. Near dusk, when it became clear they would have to stop and make a camp, he had a moment of simple clarity. He looked at the old man. Arthur’s head was bent like a burro as he strained to push their meager possessions across the uneven ground. Ben watched Gwen, all ninety pounds of her, stumbling here and there as she willed herself forward.
And he watched Alice and Lucy, holding hands, as they marched into the future together.
He understood what he had to do to protect them. He had long ago given up the search for Coraline, but that didn’t change what needed doing.
If they were going to be safe, he would have to go to Atlanta to have a word with Roan.
As near as he could tell, there was just no way around it.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Arthur and Gwendolyn Lawton were simply astounded by what Ben and Alice had achieved with the miracle farm.
“I just…well shit, I didn’t think any of this was still possible,” Arthur stammered. From where they stood they had a good vie
w of the orchard and the ponies and the furthest edge of the sprawling garden. Ben grinned at their disbelief; he clapped a hand on the old man’s shoulder, glad they’d made the decision to bring these folks north with them from Bickley.
Gwen and Lucy followed Alice inside to wash up while Ben and Arthur locked the weaponry away and toured the property. They went in for a glass of water before venturing out into the fields. Summer thunderstorms had swollen Georgia’s creeks and the power station hummed along nicely.
That night, they gathered around the dinner table for a meal of venison and roasted vegetables. Before they tucked into the food, Arthur asked everyone at the table to join hands. Gwen and Lucy knew the drill, but the gesture caught Alice and Ben off guard. Human contact had been so scarce…and yet, it seemed so natural to the Lawtons.
They joined hands and the Lawtons bowed their heads. Ben and Alice followed suit and Arthur said a short prayer.
When dinner had been parceled out, Alice came out with her question. “That was a beautiful blessing, Arthur. May I ask where you learned it?”
He smiled. “In seminary. I’m a preacher, Alice.”
“A preacher,” Ben said. “Is that like—what, like a pastor?”
“Just different words for it, Ben. I’m a man of God. Had a congregation of my own before the Reset.”
“Well,” Alice said, “then we’re blessed to have you with us, Father.”
Arthur waved a hand to dismiss it. “Let’s just stick to ‘Arthur’ if you don’t mind, Alice. I’d prefer it. Been strong in my walk with the Lord, despite everything else, but I’m not a preacher anymore. Not really. I’m just…just Arthur now, and that’s a good thing.”
They left it at that, content to fill each other in on what their lives had been like before the Reset. Gwen had been retired almost two years from her job teaching at the elementary school in the winter of ’38. The Lawtons’ daughter and son-in-law had lived with them long enough to give birth to Lucy, and then they’d been on their own and Gwen had found herself once again leading a classroom—this time with just one very important pupil.
Ben didn’t want to push them on the story of what had happened to the girl’s parents—not with Lucy sitting right there at the table—and they changed the subject. Alice talked about her time at Georgia Tech and Ben spoke in vague terms about life in Oregon and his early employment in the premier economy.
“Goodness gracious, it must have been a relief to know that you’d made it, son.” Arthur said. “That’s a rare opportunity indeed, to have that kind of money.”
“Arthur’s congregation was…very modest,” Gwen added. “We never had much, but we also never went without, I suppose.”
Arthur smiled, nodding. He patted his wife’s hand.
“You know, I really didn’t get much of a chance to enjoy it,” Ben replied. He told them about his living arrangements, about how he’d only begun the corporate fealty testing when everything fell apart. “Knowing everything I do now,” he shrugged, “I doubt it would have been all that great. It’s the family that I lived with that I miss the most—not the money.”
Arthur wore a knowing smile. “Maybe—maybe not. Who is to say? But I do believe that those were among the darkest days in American history. Things are bad now, of course, but at least they’re honest—at least they’re fair. I’m an old man, son. When I was a boy, the world was all so very different.” He put his fork down and hunched forward over the table.
“Life wasn’t…back when I was a kid, life wasn’t preordained. Almost anybody that wanted to could go to college, and the economy wasn’t so fragmented. There wasn’t such a clearly defined caste system. I went to divinity school after finishing an economics degree at Emory, if you can believe that. Little ol’ Arthur Lawton, whose daddy toiled for forty years as a saw filer at the local lumberyard, earned two college degrees.” He held up two fingers to underscore the point.
This time, it was Gwen’s turn to smile. The love and admiration they had for each other was palpable. “Arthur and I met at Emory. I earned my degree in education there. I had seven years under my belt before the Human Accord mucked up the school system in this country and began restricting public enrollments.
“Before they stepped in, though? My, those were good times, weren’t they Arthur?”
“Aye. Before the Human Accord started the designation system, Gwen’s classes reflected what a great place America had become. Kids from all walks of life—all kinds of ethnic and religious backgrounds—attended class together. Then they yanked the D6s first. What was the rationale behind that, Gwen?”
“’Ethnic consistency,’ was the phrase they used, I think.”
Alice nodded. She stabbed the air with her fork. “That’s right. I remember all of that nonsense! HA executives called it ‘consistency,’ but they were really looking for racial homogeneity. After them, it was the D7s and D4s, am I right?”
“That sounds about right,” Gwen said. “I was still a very young teacher. So idealistic. I kept in touch with the students over the years. A great many of them died in the wars—fodder for the Human Accord’s global ambitions. I sometimes think that’s why they were picked in the first place.”
“What do you mean?” Ben said. Public education fascinated him—things had been so different back on the ranch.
“They took the poor away. They took people that didn’t adhere to the state’s religious beliefs. They took the children of immigrants. Soon, I was left with a tiny class filled with little robots—well, robots or monsters, really. Some of those kids were downright mean, and most of that came from entitlement. But I’ll be honest—in the end it was just a class filled with wealthy children that all looked alike, spoke alike, and believed the same things.”
“Progress,” Arthur said, his voice dripping with contempt. “This was the Human Accord’s idea of how things were supposed to go.”
“Then, after seven years, I was just replaced,” Gwen continued. “It’s true that my parents had been laborers, but that didn’t discount the value of my degree, for heaven’s sake! I’d earned it, just as my replacement had. But I lacked pedigree. I had come from modest people, and that made me less desirable.
“I worked at a school in the secondary economy for a number of years, and then I was shuffled on from that place, too. In the end, I kept the books for Arthur’s church and did some sewing on the side. So much for my teaching career.”
“You still teach me, Grandma,” Lucy said. “I love our lessons!”
There were tears in Gwen’s eyes—tears of regret, most likely—but her smile was sincere. She took her grandbaby’s tiny hand in her own. “It’s the best job I’ve ever had, Lucille. The best job by far!”
“And I’ll be frank,” Arthur said. “We may just be a couple of old farts, Gwendolyn and I, but we’ll do our best to help out around here. We’re so thankful that you two came into our lives. We feel—well, we feel blessed to be here with you. With God as my witness, we feel like we’re here for a reason.”
Lucy’s lips formed a shocked ‘O’. “Grandpa!” she said.
“What? What is it, Lucy?” he replied, suddenly worried.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You said ‘farts’! At the dinner table, Grandpa!”
“Aye—that I did, Lucille. That I did. I apologize, sweet girl.”
She dissolved into giggling laughter, and soon all of them were laughing. It felt so good—so natural to share a meal by candlelight with good people, and soon there were tears in each of the adults’ eyes.
They were tears of happiness and relief that had been years in coming.
~
Lucy insisted on sleeping with her grandparents, and Ben and Alice set the three of them up in the largest bedroom. Gwen and Lucy cleaned up for bed and turned in shortly after dinner; Gwen wanted to comfort Lucy in her new environment, and she needed to recharge her batteries after two long days of walking.
Before she closed the door, she clutched Ben’s han
d and kissed Alice on the cheek. “Thank you both. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for what you’ve done for us and our little one.”
“We’re happy to have you all here with us,” Ben said, and he was. For the second time that day, he felt good about having others with them on the farm. The trick would be whether or not he could keep them safe if Roan’s men stumbled down the Peach Orchard Road. That they might was a persistent source of anxiety for him, and he found his attention drawn to the road at least a few times each day.
Hell, if he’d found the place…
After they’d cleaned up, Alice poured sun tea and she and Arthur and Ben brought some chairs out on the front porch. Ben lit just a single candle, which he placed on the railing. A smattering of clouds floated in a star-filled sky, and a plump yellow moon cast a thin light over the farm and the road and the acres of ash-covered fields stretching far into the distance.
A bird called out occasionally and they were content to sip their drinks in the muggy darkness, just listening to the night settling around them. After a time, Arthur spoke up.
“Lucy’s mom—our daughter, that is—committed suicide. This was…well, it happened just a short time after she’d lost her husband.”
“Oh, Arthur,” Alice replied. “I’m so sorry!”
The tall man nodded in acknowledgement. “Our little girl’s name was Melinda. She was such a great kid who grew into such a great young woman; she became pregnant with Lucy later than most, as you can probably guess by our ages. At the time, we thought we’d been blessed with a miracle, and it turns out we were right on the money there. That little girl inside there, despite all of her setbacks, is the best thing that ever happened to Gwen and me.
“Only Melinda…I guess she didn’t see it the same way. She was so distraught when Shane was killed. I was the one that found his body up there in Macon. He’d been on his way to Atlanta, searching for a doctor and looking for medical supplies. Home births are tricky in the best of times, but after the Reset? Shoot, I reckon it was Roan’s men that probably got him, but we can’t be sure. He’d been…oh, they’d robbed him. I’ll just leave it at that. We brought his wedding ring home and buried what was left right there on the side of the road.
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