Michael Bunker - WICK

The walk from Elizabethtown to Mount Joy passed uneventfully, and the three travelers spent most of the time in silence, as if they expected a mental onslaught to come upon them at any moment. Perhaps it was the weariness of the journey, or the expectation of still more walking that lay ahead that made them dull. Or, perhaps it was the fact that, as they walked, they were simultaneously scanning the horizon looking for armed bandits. Either way, all work and no play had done its work. The walk through the rural areas was drab and depressing.

By contrast, passing into Mount Joy on a major highway was a traumatic sensory experience when compared to their long practice of walking primarily through the countryside. The destruction of war was everywhere. Off the road to the north, as if they’d been dragged there to rot, piles of bodies laid decomposing in the sun. The decaying fleshy mess was covered with lime or sand, ostensibly to keep down the odor. The whitened bodies looked surreal, and therefore fake, as if they’d been crudely fabricated from picture books of someone else’s war.

The remains of fires from the night before, and the debris left behind by disorder and panic, were everywhere. Burned-out buildings lined the streets, and brick edifices were pockmarked with the telltale damage of bullets and bombs. In the streets, blackened cars with shattered windscreens and doors perforated by bullets lay helter-skelter. The shell casings of bullets were swept to the curb where they rested in tiny cylindrical ridges, remnants of stories that may never be told. The scene looked, well, imaginary. No one had collected the shell casings yet, but Peter knew that soon enough, someone would. The bodies could be left to rot, but the brass would be gathered because it had value.

There is a strange contradiction in the signatures of urban warfare that can be hard to describe. Since the area had actually been a city besieged in battle, it had the texture of a scene put together by moviemakers to resemble an urban battlefield. This made it harder to see the damage and blood and evidences of death as real. And it is precisely necessary to see these things rightly, because they are both real, and immediate. The revolution will not be televised, because the mechanical infrastructure of mass communication will lie in heaps on the ground when the revolution comes. So, when it happens, it is confusing and counter-intuitive. Most people will not have imagined it as it is. They haven’t had to, because some set designer has always done it for them. Camera angles and lighting choices have conspired to show them a part, and to present it as the whole. In reality, there was the stench of death coming from bodies covered by lime and sand. There was the weight of the guns in the backpack pulling heavily on exhausted shoulders. A million tiny and violent details assailed the senses. This was not a movie set. This was what Peter and Elsie and Ace were seeing and feeling.

Twice within just the first few blocks, our travelers saw men hanging by their necks from light poles. One hanged man, having reached the end of his rope, twisted slowly in the cool breeze, a look of surprise on his face. He never thought he’d end up like this. Pinned to his worn and soiled coat was a piece of cardboard with the wordLOOTER written on it.

Here and there, FMA soldiers stood in small groupings, smoking valuable cigarettes, huddled around trashcans burning with fires for warmth. Peter noticed that here, in contrast to the few other urban areas he’d seen during the journey, people looked him in the eye instead of at their own shoes. It seemed the Identify: Friend or Foe mechanism was at work among most of the survivors now. Indefinable factors and subtle indicators were tabulated quickly as eyes met in brief interludes that were unadorned with movie music or poetry.

When passing groups of men, Peter saw that the males usually looked first at Elsie. This had become a pattern, and he understood it completely. There was nothing nefarious or creepy in it, though he wondered what Elsie thought about the phenomenon. Peter understood it perfectly. He did the same thing whenever his group would pass men traveling with women. Peter would look at the women and children to see if they’d been abused or showed signs of duress. “It’s amazing what you can tell of a group’s story by seeing if the women are in bad condition,” he told Ace.

Ace thought of the fellow he had met once while on furlough. He thought of the blackened eye he saw on the guy’s girlfriend once and wondered if he would let that go today. “If women are traveling against their will,” Peter continued, “then there is something wrong.” He’d said the last word with finality, and then he’d looked at Elsie. She was healthy, bright-eyed, and strong. Peter and Ace were usually given a pass by the men who were sensitive to such things.

In Mount Joy, despite the frightening atmosphere and the collateral damage of war, a few businesses here and there were operating. Here, as elsewhere, organization was already beginning to bubble up in little corners as sharp-eyed opportunists, or strong men, or fast talkers, or, more likely, the best scroungers, were setting up shop. Passing by homes or storefronts, the travelers saw signs advertising goods or services to be had inside. Remarkable. Honest to goodness commerce. A city coming together.

Invariably, armed guards stood by doorways, and the suspicious eyes of entrepreneurs tried simultaneously to woo potential customers and threaten harm and death if they came too close too fast. One merchant had simply posted a sign out front that read Caveat Emptor.

There were other signs of business, hand-written on cardboard or pieces of wood, or spray-painted on blankets, or spelled out with charcoal upon the door. The signs advertised things as various as winter root vegetables (mostly turnips, carrots, and potatoes), home-brewed alcohol, AA batteries, and milled flour. Later, Peter would learn that Mount Joy was one of the areas on the periphery of Amish territory where businessmen were getting rich trading in produce, goods, and crafts made by the Amish, or salvaged from a world gone awry. But passing through Mount Joy, Peter didn’t know any of that. He’d just walked through the remnants of a nuclear war that made the stores in Mount Joy look like a walk along Park Avenue. He was from Warwick, after all, so he had to admit that what he was seeing right now was remarkable.

Winding their way through town, around abandoned busses and the charred remains of vehicles and men, Elsie noted that the very first signs of some kind of life were returning, like when the first blades of grass or crops poke through the melting snow in spring. They saw children playing in a yard fenced by wrought iron and reinforced by sandbags. A street peddler strolled by with a cart loaded with broccoli, chard, and cauliflower for sale. A guard with an MP-5 machine pistol strolling along behind the cart was the only clue that the peddler was concerned about bandits.

Peter stopped and pointed in amazement at a restaurant that seemed to be open and operating, and he looked at Ace and Elsie in turn to see what they thought of such a thing. The restaurant was in an enormous brick building at the end of a small side block. They could hear it before they could see it because it buzzed with activity. When they did see it, they noticed that it had the faintest remnants of hand-painted signs on the brick edifice indicating that the building had once housed a brewery. It was hard to say for certain, because the sign was flaking off. Little bullet pockmarks punctuated the side of the building, hinting at another story that might never be told.

Ace smiled and nodded his head. Elsie’s eyes brightened at the thought of a real meal seated at a real table using real utensils. Peter wept. It was only a brief tear that never crested or ran down his face. He covered it quickly by catching the thought in his throat and choking it down, but the thought had most certainly been there. It was something in the light that glowed along the edges of the building’s lines, or the sound of what seemed to be music and dining inside. Whatever the case, he felt the tear rise up in him. He used to take his lovely wife to a place just such as this, back in that old life in Warwick. This place reminded him so much of that. Then he thought of Vasily, his friend. How much he’d love to be walking here with Vasily!