“And what variable is that, Mr. Trent?” Roan said. He regarded the botanist like he was dog shit, scraped straight from the soles of the Italian loafers his men had looted from the Barney’s on Peachtree. “What’s the missing variable?”
“The soil, sir. It doesn’t matter if we have the water and the light. The climate and the…the…the,” he sighed, “the technology. Agriculture is, and always will be, a matter of receptive soil.”
“Did you hear that?” Roan boomed theatrically. He crossed the room to stand before them. “Soil! We need it. You have it. Let’s make a deal!
“I’m so glad we kept you alive, by the way. I was almost certain that we wouldn’t need you, but it looks like you’re still necessary after all. So here it is, kids. This is your only chance. Here’s your one shot at freedom. Where did you grow these vegetables? Tell us, Alice,” he reached out and stroked her cheek. She flinched at his touch. “Please…tell us, where did you make your garden grow?”
Alice raised her eyes. Her lips pulled back in a devilish grin. “Fuck you, Roan! Fuck you. We’ll never tell you. And when this rotten little experiment of yours runs its course, you’ll be dead—just like everybody else. When you’ve lost all of the people you claim to govern and there’s nothing left but an empty city filled with ash and dust, you’ll die like the rest of them, you stupid, pathetic little man.”
Roan’s cheeks flushed crimson. He lurched forward and slapped her. Her head cracked to the side, but the blow didn’t have the desired effect.
Blood seeped down from her nostril. She licked most of it away, but some dripped onto her teeth, which she once again bared in that savage grin. “It doesn’t matter, Roan. You can hit me all you want, but it won’t make any difference. You can’t make things grow. We can.”
Roan sneered at her. Something had changed in the man. Ben thought he looked—damn, the little fellow looked nervous.
Nervous and frustrated and maybe even a little scared.
Ben stared at Alice, then back at Roan, who showed them his back as he returned to his seat, rubbing his hand where he had hit her. “Take them back to their cells. Mr. Marks, I want you to schedule this pathetic fuck for his first trip to the butcher. Tomorrow afternoon.
“Then, I want you to feed that mouthy bitch her husband’s calf muscle. We’ll see if her information improves when poor hubby’s hopping around like the rest of these fucking cripples.”
“No!” Alice shouted. “No! You touch him, Roan, and I’ll do it! I swear that I will and you know that I can! I’ll kill myself before your men so much as lay a hand on me, or on Ben or Lucy. You want the food? We’ll give it to you, but you have to let us go! Set us free, Roan. You need to do it right now!”
She kept screaming, even as Roan’s guards were dragging her away.
“Alice!” Ben called. “Alice!”
Somehow, his voice penetrated the chaos. Her ranting stopped instantly, and she finally saw him. “Ben! Oh Jesus Been, I didn’t do it! Ben!”
Then she was gone. They pushed her through one door, and then he was herded quickly through another—the boy with the nervous eyes holding the wand to his back.
They marched him back to his cell and the boy hit Ben with such a dose of electricity that he fell to the concrete like he’d been shot out of a cannon, stiff as a board. His chin met stone and split wide, and a pool of thin blood slowly spread around his head.
The guards drug him into the cell and slammed the door shut, just as a cry rose from the far end of the cell block.
“WHOO!” the prisoners replied in unison, slapping the concrete. “WHOO! WHOO! WHOO!”
Ben remained still and silent, oblivious to the din erupting all around him—to the discord of a revolution stirring deep in the bowels of hell.
FORTY-TWO
Coraline slipped through the shadows. She wore an insulated jacket, snow pants and heavy boots, and she had another winter jacket beneath her arm.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she found the guard station outside Ben’s cell unattended. It looked like her plan had worked, and she thought she might have as much as an hour alone with him.
She hustled to his cell, wary of waking the other prisoners, and stole inside. He faced the wall, his back to her on the soiled mattress, and she watched him shivering beneath what remained of a tiny square of molding blanket. “Jesus,” she whispered. He coughed in his sleep, and his labored breath rattled around in his chest.
“Oh God, Ben,” she whispered, kneeling next to him. She climbed onto the mattress, worked her arms around him and hugged him, her cheek to his shoulder.
“Ben,” she whispered into his ear. “Ben, you have to get up now. We’ve got to go.”
He stirred a little, then started violently at her touch. He scuttled away from her, a strangled cry in his throat. “Who are you? Corr? Is that…is that you?”
She nodded. She held the coat out to him. “Hurry. We don’t have much time.”
He pulled it on. “Where are we going? Is it…is it my time?”
“No, Ben. Listen, I want to help you, but we have to leave right now. Roan’s men will be back soon. They might already be on the way back here.”
Ben moved closer. He searched her eyes, and when he was finished he smiled at her. “I kept your picture in my pocket every day, Corr. Every day.”
She frowned. “Come on, Ben. Roan’s men are out on a disturbance call, but they won’t be gone for long.”
She took his hand and darted back into the dim light of the cellblock. She didn’t notice the man staring at her from the edge of his cell, but Ben saw him. Donald Finney—he of the family and the two jobs and the honest-to-goodness house—gave him a knowing little nod.
Ben returned it, feeling a stronger kinship in that moment to these unfortunate souls than he had ever thought possible. They were the same, all of them—victims of cruelty and circumstance.
His heart raced as they jogged through the innards of the jail. Coraline paused just long enough to study a wall of black-and-white television monitors in an empty kiosk.
“It’s wide open. Come on.”
She took a key from her pocket and opened a pair of locks on a heavy metal door. Frigid air buffeted his face and he pulled his collar tight around his neck. They were in a service area, the cement floor angling slightly upward to a loading dock, and then she used the key again and pushed open one final door.
A howling wind blew gusts of snow sideways, and Coraline took a pair of wool caps from her coat pocket. She handed one to Ben, pulled the other on, and then they were off and running as best they could through the knee-high drifts.
“Corr, stop! Please, we have to talk!” Ben called.
“There’s no time! Come on, we have to hurry!”
They’d exited behind what looked like an old industrial park. It reminded Ben of the processing plant that had been both his refuge and his prison after the Reset. The streets in this part of town were deserted and poorly lit and, after they’d cleared a meager string of dim sodium lights, they ran through darkness for what felt to Ben like an eternity.
Finally, Coraline stopped in the driveway of a two-story house. It was one of only a few that still stood in this hardscrabble part of Atlanta. It looked like heavy artillery had torn the rest of the block to shreds, but Coraline walked down the driveway with certainty before disappearing through a gate in a dilapidated fence. “Come on!” she called, agitated.
Ben followed her up the stairs and she pushed the door open. It was warm inside. They passed through a kitchen and then she was leading him down a flight of stairs.
Orange light cast a warm glow on the unfinished basement walls. There was a little card table in the corner of the room, and a man and a woman were seated there. They were drinking something warm. “It’s okay,” Coraline said to Ben, her eyes imploring him to trust her. “These are good people. You’re safe here.”
“Corr, I’m confused. Are you…are you with Roan, or not? Where’s Alice and�
�and where’s Lucy?”
“My God—he’s nothing but skin and bones,” the man interrupted. “Roan’s a fool if he means to get a steak out of that poor fellow.”
Ben turned his attention to the couple. They were an odd pair.
The man was probably in his fifties. He was a thickly built black man with a gray stubble of goatee and thin, wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a soiled baseball cap and his eyes were kind. He tipped Ben a nod, and Ben warily returned it.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” the girl said. She was petite and pale, her bleached hair touched with a shock of bright green in the bangs. Her nose and lips and ears glinted metal studs, and she grinned at him as she motioned to the stainless steel coffee urn in the corner. “It’s not fresh, but it won’t kill you either.”
“Please,” Ben said. He sat in a folded chair at the table while Coraline poured the coffee. There was a folder in the center of the table.
“I’m Johnny,” the man said. He swallowed Ben’s hand in his grip. “This is Ann. We’d like to help you, if we can.”
Coraline pushed the drink into his hands and he leaned greedily into its steam—relishing its warmth and aroma. It took every bit of discipline he had to resist from gulping it down and scalding his throat. “Well, we’re in luck then because I’m in desperate need of help,” Ben replied after sipping the brew.
Coraline reached across the table and took his hand. “Ben, where is the farm?”
He yanked his hand free. “Jesus, Coraline! Is that what this is all about? Some kind of…some of trap to get me to talk? If you think I’m telling you, you’re crazy. You’re—”
Johnny reached out and nonchalantly flipped open the folder. A clear image of the miracle farm sat on top. “This is it, am I right, Ben?”
His eyes searched their faces. “How did you…?”
“That’s it,” Coraline said. She nodded at Johnny and he closed the folder. “Roan’s men are close. It’s just a matter of time before they find it. Those people living in the house. Who are they, Ben?”
“Are they okay?” Ben said. “Are they…alive?”
The girl nodded. “At least they were three days ago, when these pictures were taken. Ben, things are moving quickly now. Much faster than any of us had hoped. We wanted to wait until the roads were clear this spring, but that’s just not an option. Not for us anymore, and clearly not for you either,” she nodded at him, indicating his dire physical condition. “We’re going to try to get you and Alice and the girl out of there tomorrow.”
“Roan’s spread his scouts as far down as Jacksonville,” Coraline said. “He’s put almost two hundred men on the road. These are very bad people, Ben. The worst of the worst.
“The only good fortune we’ve had is that Crank never had time to give Marks your exact location before Roan had him killed. Roan is…he’s so impulsive, and it’ll be the end of him when all the rest of this has run its course.” She looked away, her fingers absently tracing the scar on her face. Johnny and Ann frowned in unison, and Ben picked up on it and reached out once again for Coraline’s hand.
“Did Roan do that to you, Corr?” he asked. “He did, didn’t he?”
She nodded, tears in her eyes. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. Everything’s going to be different very soon. I promise.”
“And that’s where we come in,” Johnny said. “Word spreads quickly when there’s talk of revolution. It spreads like a damned wildfire when people start whispering about fresh food.”
“Where did you two come from?” Ben said. His coffee had cooled some and he took a swallow and relished the sensation as it warmed his belly.
“Cascade County,” Ann replied. “It’s a pretty little oasis in the middle of the great state of Montana. You might know our town by a more familiar name. We came here to Atlanta all the way from Great Falls.”
“Jesus, Ann,” Ben replied. “That’s the entire country. How did you get here? And…are there people out there?”
Johnny nodded. “Quite a few, actually. There’s a pretty big settlement in Kansas, too. They’ve got the juice turned on. And another one near Grand Island, Nebraska. When things fell apart, the heartland didn’t take so many direct hits.
“Our people live mostly along the old Canadian border. The eastern seaboard is gone, Ben. California and Texas are gone. And there’s not much left of the Pacific Coast, I’ll admit. But things are getting better up in MT. We could use your help—and your resources. I’m not going to hide the fact that we need you. But we won’t abuse you, and we won’t exploit you.”
“Do you have starts?” Ann asked. “Have you been putting up seeds?”
Ben nodded.
She smiled. “Well, I guess the last question is, are you willing to come with us? If we can get you and your wife and little girl out, will you bring those seeds and go out west with us?”
Ben looked at Coraline. “Are you coming, Corr?”
“We’ll talk about the details later,” Johnny interjected. He leaned forward over the table, holding Ben in place with his dark eyes. “I need a commitment from you, Ben. Are you on board? We don’t have much time here, son.”
“How—how will we leave?”
“We have transportation.”
“But it’s got to be, what—two thousand miles?”
“That’s pretty good,” Johnny said, smiling. “It’s 2100 miles. We can do it in three or four days if we push hard. What do you say?”
Ben’s mind raced. He couldn’t think straight he was so hungry. “Look, can I have something to eat? Is there anything? This is a lot of information, all at once.”
Ann bent down and rummaged in a pack until she found a canister of protein powder. “It’s all we have, I’m afraid. You can probably see why we came all this way, Ben. We heard the rumors, and we had to come. Did you guys really have fresh fruit?”
She scooped two rations into a plastic cup, filled it with water from her bottle, stirred it and set it next to Ben’s coffee cup. He gulped it down in three swallows.
“They did,” Coraline said, answering for him. Ben felt the energy coursing through him immediately. He belched and chased the chalky taste with a pull on his coffee.
He sat there for a long, quiet moment. “If we go with you, it has to be a package deal. I need my wife and Lucy, and those two people back at the miracle farm. That’s the only way.”
Johnny grinned. “That what you call it? The miracle farm? Well, the name fits—that’s for sure.”
“So, what do you say? Can we take them all?”
“Yeah, we have room,” Ann said. “But we’ll have to be quick. You think we can pick these two up and still make it out of here on time, Johnny?”
The man sighed. He fixed his eyes on Coraline. “That all depends on Ms. Coraline, here. Our little wild card in this whole crazy scheme. What do you say, Ms. Coral?”
She slipped her hand inside of her coat and came out with it. She placed it on the table and Ben’s mouth fell open in shock. “Is it…holy shit, Corr! Is that…?”
She nodded, her smile pained and wistful. She pushed it into the center of the card table.
It was her kit, and it hadn’t changed in all of these years. Same pale blue case, same collection of sunflower stickers—only they were a faded.
“Oh, God—it’s still in there, isn’t it? After all these years?”
Coraline nodded. “I can handle my end of things just fine, Johnny. You just get Ben and Alice and Lucy out of here. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Johnny took Ben’s hand. Ann placed hers on top, and Coraline completed the pact. “If we’re going to our glory,” he said, his voice low, “then let’s take as many of these ruthless fucks with us as we can.”
FORTY-THREE
“Come with us,” Ben said. He pulled her close, her scarred face pressed tight against his chest. Her thin shoulders hitched with sobs. “Please, Coraline. There has to be another way out of this.”
She looked up at him, her ey
es searching his as she asked the question that had been eating at her for years. “You really came looking for me?”
“Twice,” Ben said. “I came to Atlanta twice, Coraline. Alice wasn’t lying. Before I met her, I had designs on making another trip into the city, Corr, I swear it. I…I never gave up on finding you, Corr. Never.”
She smiled. “I know, Ben. I know you came, and I’m so sorry we couldn’t find each other.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Corr. None of this was your fault.” He gently touched the scar, and she didn’t shy from his contact. Instead, she pushed her face further into his chest, nestling her head beneath his neck while his fingertips traced the translucent pink skin. “Roan did this to you?” he whispered.
She nodded. “He takes whatever he wants. He drugged me, Ben. I tried to hide, but he took me for his own and he branded me. He told me,” she sobbed, “that I was his alone. When I told him you were looking for me, he said it was a lie. He said nobody would come, and that he’d kill anybody that tried. And when I tried to leave on my own, he cut me, Ben. He said I was too ugly, too ruined, for anybody to care about me but him.”
Ben touched her chin, tilting her face up to his. He kissed her—a simple, chaste kiss—and their eyes were shut as the world slid away all around them.
The snow fell, but neither of them felt the cold. They didn’t feel the emptiness, or the aching. Instead, they simply touched each other, rekindling the connection that had been forged so many years before.
Ben wiped away her tears. “I am so sorry that I couldn’t help you, Corr.”
She smiled, her eyes wet. “Do you remember that afternoon in the cave?”
Ben grinned. “I still dream of it sometimes, Coraline. I still dream of it.”
She nodded, looking away. “Me too. Those are about the only moments of happiness I’ve had since Roan took me.” She cleared her throat. “Did you…did you know that Mr. Brown never…he never sent us the arming doses.”
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