Michael Bunker - WICK

Such, on that morning, was Lancaster County.

She finished her last swig of coffee and wondered what that portentous day would hold, and if the earth even cared.

Peter and Elsie checked the bodies of their attackers to make sure the men were dead. They were. All four of the slain wore the worn and soiled uniforms of the MNG. Without a word, Peter and Elsie went through their pockets and pouches for valuable items. In this way, over the last few days, the three travelers had steadily upgraded their own equipment. Up until now, Peter, mostly through personal preference, had stayed with the Russian AK-47 that he’d taken from an accountant who had attacked them ages ago. Now, he picked up the AR-15 from the fallen point man. Maybe , he thought, it’s time to make a change. Most of the rifle ammo they were coming across was in the .223 caliber utilized by the AR-15, or a larger caliber, like the .308 used in many sniper rifles. He liked the AK, and felt a bit nostalgic for the weapon, since it was the rifle he’d been trained to use as a young man and in his years as an instructor in the Charm School. Still, wisdom dictated that he use the weapon for which he had access to the most ammunition. The AK would have plenty of value in trade, or as a gift weapon to the FMA.

Ace had taken three lives with perfect headshots from several hundred meters, and the men’s deaths had been immediate and without suffering or drama. Ace, the silent sniper who almost never talked, and rarely ate, had become… well… an Ace in the Hole, and Peter couldn’t even imagine what life would be like if they hadn’t found him.

Peter grabbed a web bag that held seven full magazines for the AR-15 from one of the corpses, and hauled the weapon and the ammo up to the camp.

Elsie gathered up handguns, magazines, and useful gear from the other fallen soldiers and added them to the increasingly heavy bag of weapons and gear the three travelers had acquired in the past few days. She also took the jewelry — the rings and necklaces and watches. Most of the gear would end up with the FMA, once their reconnaissance scouts came around. The other valuables would stay with the group.

This region of Pennsylvania had become home to a cat and mouse war between two opposing forces of former National Guardsmen. Every day or so they’d run across a military unit that was made up of friends and not foes. The Free Missouri Army, acting as a guerrilla resistance force, had patrols out searching, looking for and hoping to engage MNG units. Peter tended to like the men from this group. The FMA had shown themselves to be mostly benevolent. There had been incidents—things that will happen in the fog of war—but for the most part the FMA had proved to be good guys — better guys at least — in the battle that now raged throughout the area.

Nobody wanted to run into an MNG unit. If refugees were spotted by the MNG, the situation immediately became a choice between ‘fight’ or ‘flight.’ No one expected good treatment from the Missouri National Guard troops. The MNG soldiers usually shot first and asked questions later, but anyone they did manage to capture they sent by horse cart to Carbondale.

The word “Carbondale” had become a byword among the few refugees that still traveled through the area. When Peter, Ace, and Elsie would run across other folks moving from place to place, the object of universal scorn was the MNG. The two terms had become synonymous with death, both the place where the group was headquartered, and the army that might show up at your door to send you there. “You’d rather be dead than to end up in Carbondale,” people would say.

By contrast, whenever the travelers would come upon an FMA unit, they’d barter their excess guns and ammo for food or supplies. If the FMA group didn’t have anything to trade, Peter would just give them the guns and ammo anyway. Carrying the bag of weapons had become another burden, but Peter was firmly against leaving valuable weapons on the ground, when he knew the MNG might find them, and he knew that the FMA could use them. The FMA recruited heavily from among survivors they came across, and they were always in need of more battle tools.

Kolya Bazhanov, who had taken to himself the nameCole, was knee deep in garbage, going through it with stoic disinterest and gloved hands, separating items into different rubber bins. He and ten other prisoners stood yards apart from one another amid the piles, processing the seemingly endless supply of trash and waste. Everything was reused in the camp. Paper, depending on the shape it was in, its type and condition, could be composted, used to start fires, or bundled and hauled to the waste buckets to be used as toilet paper. Aluminum cans were washed out, and the soft aluminum would be re-used for dozens of alternative purposes.

The buckets full of human waste had been composted for a time, but now the sheer amount of the stuff had overwhelmed the garbage detail, and most of it was being burned in open pits dug for the purpose. Human urine was hauled in buckets to a location that was set up for the manufacture of saltpeter and gunpowder. The amount of waste that thousands of imprisoned humans could produce was beyond anything Cole could ever have imagined. This is saying something, since Cole was a man of vivid imagination. He was imagining it now, the sheer amount of it all. Simply mind-boggling , he thought. Most of the waste still consisted of consumer goods manufactured before the crash, but there was a lot of it. More, since the MNG was constantly on the move in the area, confiscating goods wherever they could be found. In this way, Carbondale had become like ancient Rome or Athens before those cities had collapsed. Armies were forever on the move, seizing goods out there to be used by the people in here who consumed, but didn’t produce much of anything at all.

Cole threw an aluminum can into the rubber bin marked cans, and then turned to the man next to him with a smile on his face.

“Robert! I have a question for you,” Cole said.

“It’s not going to lead to you quoting Whitman or Emerson is it?” the older man working next to Cole replied as he bundled up some cardboard and tied it with a short piece of string.

In the old world Robert had been a grade school teacher, and during the days spent among the garbage, he would usually work his way until he was somewhere near Cole, because he secretly appreciated the generally higher quality of conversation. He liked Cole a lot, but he always acted like he was frustrated with Cole’s constant and humorous banter.

“I assure you, good sir, it will not.” Cole paused as if to take a little silent bow.

“Okay, what’s the question?”

“Right now, would you rather have money, or a good and honorable name?”

Robert paused and pondered the question for a moment before completing the knot he was tying in the string. “Neither one means much to me in here.”

Cole frowned at Robert, and then broke into a smile. “You aren’t playing correctly, sir. If you had to have one or the other, which would it be? Choose! Money? Or a good name?”

“Money, I suppose.”

“Well, your first answer was right. Neither one does us much good in and amongst this trash; but, since we’re just talking, and since you have forbidden me to quote from Whitman or Emerson, let’s hear from the Bard on the subject…”

Robert rolled his eyes, but smiled. His protest was weak and amiable. “Ahh, man! No!”

Cole dropped the paper he was holding in his gloved hand, and spread his right arm out with the palm facing upward, in the manner of orators of old.