Michael Bunker - WICK

“One more argument,” Mike said. He cleared his throat. “One more threat. One more unauthorized stomping. One more unauthorized anything from you Vladimir, and I’ll kill you myself. Do you understand me, Comrade?”

The man who now called himself Val dropped his eyes and took a step back. “I understand, Comrade Mikail Mikailivitch.”

Mike looked over to Kent and pointed to the fallen backpack.

“Pick it up.”

Kent did.

The four men fell back into line, and as they hiked in a southwesterly direction, they saw the valley open up below them, and Kent was glad that at least for a little while they’d be walking downhill.

He took up the rear, right behind Val, and as the group marched forward through the snow, Kent whispered so that just Val could hear him.

“I called you a sadistic bastard because you are literally a sadist and the fatherless son of a whore. So there’s that, Vladimir. And, also this. Before this is over, I am going to kill you.”

Death and violence have a tendency to multiply when the shackles of civility are thrown off. Men who are violent and rapacious killers can be identified more readily, and men who might otherwise be peaceful and passive are sometimes not able to resist the desire to rid the world of soulless predators. There are such men even among the poets.

Elsie sprinted towards the trees and bullets zipped around her. Snow popped up into the air where the shots plowed into the ground. She could hear that gunfire was being returned from the cabin, and she could see the impacts popping at her feet. Then the shots that were loosely aimed in her direction stopped, but she did not.

Rounding the edge of the hill, she was surprised to meet up with Peter who was on his way down toward the rear of the cabin. He had the AK-47 at the ready, and he grabbed Elsie by the arm and pulled her over to a stand of trees, and they crawled into the brush near the base of the stand.

“How’d you get out of there?” Peter asked.

“Natasha and Lang covered me,” Elsie answered, breathlessly.

“Why didn’t they escape with you?”

“Lang is better, but he is in no condition to travel. Natasha would never leave him. I would have stayed too, but I thought… I ought to find out what happened to you. We—” she indicated to the cabin with her hand. She tried to brush a wisp of hair away. She tried to do it with the gentleness of her fingertips, but they were clammy with dried blood, so instead she raised the sweaty backside of her arm to her forehead and wiped away the strand. “We… we thought you might be dead,” Elsie said, her eyes dropped to look at her knees in the snow.

“I’m not dead, but I almost was. I was captured on the ridge up there by the Missouri Guard. They were going to execute me.”

Elsie sucked in her breath. “I’m sorry.” Peter shook it off as if to say no need. “How’d you get off that ridge, Peter?” Elsie asked.

Peter looked at her and shrugged. The knowledge that he would certainly have been dead by now was fully upon him as he stared at Elsie. He smiled a crooked smile and said one word…

“Ace.”

The sounds of gunfire from the battle grew louder as Mike, Steve, Val, and Kent moved to the southwest. They came to a ridge, approaching from the northeast, and they crawled up to the top of it to see if they could make out what the fuss was all about.

What they saw shocked them. At the top of the ridge were a number of dead bodies. All of the corpses were in uniform, and Mike, crawling to one of the men who had been shot in the back of the head, saw the insignia for the Missouri National Guard on the uniform.

Looking down from the ridge, they could see that a gunfight had erupted around a small cabin. Forces in the woods opposite the front door of the cabin were pouring fire into the structure, while every once in a while random and impotent shots would ring out, fired from the windows of the cabin itself.

Staying as low as possible, Mike, Steve, and Val moved quickly, checking the bodies of the dead soldiers for weapons, ammunition, or other valuables. Even on the ridge above the valley of death, there is salvage to be had. Kent, meanwhile, had come across another body—this one looked to be the corpse of an officer—and he discreetly secured a pistol he found on the ground near the body. He was an intellectual and not a fighter, and prior to the end of the world, he’d have never considered hurting anyone. Sometimes, however, a gun can come in handy, and Kent figured that such a time had now presented itself.

Mike never saw Kent take the gun. He was now busy spying out the battle taking place below him. He heard a sharp crack from the distance ring out. He could not make out from where the shot was coming, but he saw one of the soldiers from among the contingent assailing the cabin fall dead.

Another crack from the distance, and another soldier fell. Mike’s eyes began to scan the hills in the distance to the east. He knew from his training what was happening…

Sniper.

Veronica said, “Okay, now this is what we’re going to do, boys.” They looked at her expectantly. “My dad was a resourceful guy. Back when he was doing work on the faraway settlements in Trinidad, he saw these Indian guys packing straw into their tires, because there was no compressed air to be had.”

“Yes!” Calvin said, excitedly. Veronica and Stephen looked at him with startled looks on their faces. It was something in the way he said thatYes! He made it sound like he had more important things to say on the manner. So they let him speak.

“My dad, he was a pharmaceutical engineer back in China. Back before the crackdown. During it, really.” He paused and looked at them.

It should have been strange. Just last night he’d rescued these two strangers from a gun battle, and now he was telling them things… things about his dad. It should have been strange, but it wasn’t.

He continued. “Yeah, so my dad, he told me this story about how the Chinese government sent him to the outback, you know, down in Australia. They wanted him to find this one plant or something, to make an assessment of its chemical potential on the spot.” He paused. “They were testing him.” Calvin felt a little flush rise in his cheeks, just a hint of anger. He looked at the two of them, and then remembered where he was, and what he was doing. He blushed in full.

“But anyway, he told me some natives did just that. They simply rolled the car over on its top and filled all four tires with straw, all at once. My dad said those guys were like a Daytona pit crew, just all wild and crazy. Detailed and quick and efficient. They packed the grass and straw together, wetting it down. If they had water handy, they’d mix it with thick mud, like cob. They’d bend it into the curves of the tire and then pound it in with rocks.” He rubbed his face with his hand. “If they didn’t have water, they just packed the grass and straw really tight… just pound it as tight as they could get it with the stones.

Veronica and Stephen smiled at the image.

“Strong at the broken places…” Veronica whispered, under her breath.

“Ma’am?” Calvin stuttered.

“Oh, ‘strong at the broken places.’ It’s something Hemingway wrote. I was thinking how the straw in a way becomes strong, inside the tire, by bending, by bonding with the others, by utilizing both its tensile and flexile strength.” Her voice trailed off at the end of the sentence. She’d seen the hurt in Calvin’s eyes when he talked about his father. She’d also heard the anger in his voice, although she did not know where that anger came from. Veronica knew, without his having to say it, that Calvin had lost his father. She wanted to say something to help him, but she realized that, in this time, there was not much room for such niceties. Still, she wanted to him know. She wanted to say the words… We know. We’ve lost someone, too…