Michael Bunker - WICK

Cole looked over at Robert, then at his tray, and scraped some dried material of indeterminate origin from it. He shrugged at Robert, then shuffled his feet as he waited. Supper would undoubtedly be some disgusting and watered-down stew comprised of grains and other floating unknowables . Still, if you didn’t eat, you didn’t live very long. Cole and Robert waited patiently, feeling the gnawing in their bellies and wondering what their evening’s allotment of calories would consist of.

Robert leaned over to Cole and whispered into his ear, “My friend, you told me to find out whatever I can about your sister Natasha, right?”

“Yes. Yes I did.”

“Well, I have some bad news for you, Cole. My brother told me something about that power hungry sleazebag named Mike Baker, the guy you verbally grappled with in the yard today, you know him… kind of personally, right?”

Mikail . Cole winced. “I know him very well. Why? What’s going on?”

“I thought it seemed like maybe you two had a past,” Robert said. “Anyway, the word is that Mike has been protecting your sister since she’s been in the camp. No one’s allowed to touch her or do her any harm.”

“Yes,” Cole said, biting his lip and nodding almost imperceptibly. “I figured as much. Mike’s a complete reprobate, but he does seem to have a kind of nostalgia for his home town people. Weird, I suppose.” Cole pulled off his glasses with one hand and blew on the lenses one at a time before returning them to his face. “It’s a mystery to me why he’s protecting her, because he’s forced her to work as a dragger. It seems like cutting off one’s nose—or simply waiting till it falls off on its own accord—just to spite one’s face. Everyone says that being a dragger is a death sentence, but, so far, thank God, her sentence seems to remain an open question.”

“I don’t know,” Robert said, wiping his face with his sleeve. “I can’t say what he’s doing or why.” He looked around and then spoke again in a whisper. “I just know that my brother heard that Mike was going to have your sister brought to his office tonight . Apparently, he plans on having her for himself.”

Cole turned and stared into Robert’s eyes. He did not blink, and his countenance did not change. He refused to allow his face to betray the anger and fear that flared up inside of him. His throat constricted, forcing him to swallow hard before pushing out his words.

“You heard this from your brother?”

“Yeah. Not half an hour ago.”

“And who is your brother?” Cole asked.

“He’s a picker. He’s gotten in with some of the guards. That’s how he found out. They were talking about how beautiful your sister is, and one of the guards wondered aloud why someone hadn’t already claimed her. Most of the women have been claimed by someone or another—by a guard, or by a prisoner with power in the camp. Another guard told my brother the scoop. The word is that she belongs to Mike, and no one better touch her but him.”

Cole shook his head. His heart pounded and he was enraged, but he kept his emotions in check. Time to think and act, not react. He flexed his shoulders, trying his best not to show too much emotion. His thoughts, though, were rampaging. What is this world where humans are traded like fish and treated like dogs? He could not abide such a world. He thought of the world of his youth. What would Volkhov say of this practice, this trading of people like animals? Cole already knew the answer. Volkhov had sounded the alarms. Old Lev knew what men, deprived of their artificial world of laws and social structures, would turn into, and here was the evidence.

“This is supposed to happen tonight?”

“Tonight.”

“What time?”

“What does time mean here, Cole? I don’t know. My brother just said tonight , and it’s already late.”

Cole quietly placed his tray back in the stack, nodded at Robert, and then walked out of the dining tent and into the cold and dark of the Carbondale evening. Anyone who had met him on the way and tried to stop him or impede his progress would have received a beating so severe that it would have made that person wish he were dead rather than in Carbondale on that night.

Sergei Dimitrivich Tupolev stood in the dark and waited for the soldier to arrive. He kicked a small clump of snow, and, as he did, he thought of the time he’d spent in the camp. He thought of the events that had brought him here, and the adjustments he’d made to just keep going. Steve . He hated that name. He spit it out with contempt under his breath. A man does some things during times of crisis or emergency, which he normally would not do. Things not altogether honorable. Sergei had been tallying up the column of his crimes—sins he’d committed under the name of Steve. Since escaping from Warwick, he’d rationalized that Steve would do things that Sergei never would. But now, even Steve had found his limits. He’d always been a follower. He’d always let Mikail push him around. He’d done wrong things for what he thought at the time were right reasons. But now he’d had a belly full of it.

No more.

A few seconds later, he handed a roll consisting of all of his pay chits to the man in uniform. The two were in the dark shadow of the infirmary, not far from the dining tent. Their transaction was relatively safe here. No one went to the infirmary, and if they did, they didn’t live very long. The smell of death and disease in the air suggested that it was a place to go to die rather than a place to heal and get better. This provided an advantage, as there was little likelihood of this illegal transaction being interrupted by curious persons from within the medical tent.

“It’s not enough,” the man in uniform said.

“That’s what I figured,” Steve said. He reached into his coat and withdrew a napkin. He handed the man the folded napkin, then put his hands back in his pockets. Wrapped up in the napkin were four wedding rings and two gold necklaces.

“You stole these from the bodies!” The soldier said, emphasizing his point while still trying not to be heard.

“What?” Steve replied. “Are we obeying the law now? I got these in another, similar transaction to this one, and just as illegal. Are you really surprised at how this black market system works?”

“No,” the soldier said with a sly grin, “but… I could take these from you and walk away and there’d be nothing you could do about it. You couldn’t report it now, could you?”

“Well, that would make things problematic for you. I’m sure your commanding officers would be upset if they found out that you were selling weapons and other hardware out of the armory. They might ask what I was trying to buy with these misappropriated items.”

“Nobody would believe you,” the guard said. The look on his face told Steve that the guard wasn’t sure if he believed that. Steve decided that he didn’t.

“Mike Baker and I come from the same town in New York. Warwick, New York. You ever heard of it? You want to check that out?” Steve laughed. “I bet he’d vouch for me against you!”

The soldier stared at Steve awhile before finally handing over the package that he’d held at his side throughout their conversation. Steve opened the package and looked at what he’d just purchased.

“These better be good, buddy. If not, I’ll be in really bad shape, but I’ll make sure that you are in even worse shape…if they’re not good.”

“They’re good,” the soldier said. “Took them out of the crate not ten minutes ago and brought them directly here to you.”

“Alright then,” Steve said with a nod. He looked in the bag and counted the items.