Michael Bunker - WICK

“What, then?” Peter asked.

“Down.” Nick started low crawling along the bar towards the door that led to the kitchen.

“Down?” Peter asked, following Nick and motioning for Elsie and Ace and the boy to stay close.

“Down to the catacombs,” Nick said without explanation.

Natasha and Cole walked quickly out of Mike’s tent heading towards the tool shed. Prisoners wandered here and there, but few people took any notice of the siblings as they moved purposefully towards their goal. A slushy brown-gray mist splashed upwards from their boots as they hustled, and when they arrived at the shed, they ducked into the shadows. They both leaned with their backs against the structure, their chests heaving from the exertion. The air was cold and brisk, and the darkness was almost complete. Here and there, the light coming from inside nearby tents cast long arrows of yellow-gold light onto the slush outside. The breeze howled through the fence in the distance and gave music to their deep and rhythmic, icy inhalations. Neither one of them thought about the possibility of there being cancerous dust or particles in the cold air that they greedily sucked into their lungs. In those moments when there are more immediate and tangible foes in the dark night, the more long-term enemies tend to disappear from the list of frights.

The immediate threat to Natasha and Cole was the guard tower on the southeast corner of the camp. Cole had just begun to wonder why Steve would have picked such a highly dangerous and heavily guarded area for their escape, when a tremendous, earth-shaking blast destroyed most of the upright supports that held up the tower. The structure collapsed in on itself as it fell, and then tumbled outward. A large section of the fence fell flat with a thud.

“Hand grenade,” Cole said, barely pushing out the words in his stunned surprise. Both he and Natasha were staring, dumbfounded at the destruction before them. Their ears rang slightly, but through the ringing, they could hear Steve’s voice from behind one of the nearest tents. It sounded muffled at first but then they could make it out.

“ RUN!! ”

There was gunfire in the distance, and Natasha pulled on his hand as she began sprinting towards the area where the fence had been destroyed by the falling tower. He felt his legs catch up, and before long, he was running with Natasha, hoping beyond hope that there were no guards with machine guns waiting for them at the fence line.

The two siblings had to slow down to climb through the wreckage of the tower, making certain not to drag a nail or sharp shard of metal across their legs from the broken fence, which had collapsed under the weight of the fallen tower. Cole arrived first, and he pulled Natasha over a particularly tricky section of debris. As she gained her footing, he looked up to assess the situation. He saw Steve standing between the two escaping Warwickians and a large unit of MNG troops, responding to the commotion, were gathering together not far from the collapsed tower. The soldiers, shocked and surprised by the sudden attack, were just beginning to check their weapons, and now they stood and gaped in foggy disbelief. Someone in charge started shouting orders, and the soldiers were in that moment—the milliseconds it takes to make a decision as to whether they should chase, or fire at the escapees.

It was the soldier on the far left who saw him first. A prisoner was standing defiantly between them and the destroyed tower with a hand grenade held up in his clenched fist. The pin had already been yanked away, and dangled pointedly from his lips.

One of the soldiers shouted, “Halt!”

Just as he did, Steve spit out the pin and ground it into the ground with the heel of his boot. He turned, locked eyes with Cole, and smiled. He made a motion with the hand that was not holding the grenade. “Run, Kolya! Run!”

Kolya Bazhanov stood and watched his high school friend grinning back at him. He watched as one soldier lost his cool and began firing, the bullets ripping into Sergei’s body. “Run!” Sergei yelled as the first shots hit him.

Cole ran.

Cole felt Natasha grabbing him by his elbow and pulling him, and he started to run again, but even as he ran, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the drama taking place behind him.

Steve, mortally wounded, dropped to his knees, and the group of Missouri National Guardsmen had started to move forward when the young man used the last of his dying strength to toss the hand grenade into the midst of them. The explosion that followed was terrifying in its intensity.

Now, Cole and Natasha were sprinting without hesitation, and they each unconsciously flinched as the deafening explosion echoed behind them. Their freedom had been bought with a price, and they did not intend to squander the benefit.

“Oh, my…” Natasha said as she ran.

Cole, for maybe the first time in his life, was speechless.

The sounds of battle intensified as Peter, Ace, and Elsie, along with the restaurant owner named Nick, and his son Charlie, low crawled deeper into the service areas of the besieged establishment.

“Follow me!” Nick shouted as he crawled. “Stay low and stick together!”

“Where exactly are we going?” Peter shouted back as bits of plaster and brick and other debris filled the air and dropped down on their heads. “The catacombs , you said?”

Nick reached a back wall and pulled himself up to his knees. The sounds of battle seemed closer now. The building shook with every impact, and the ground rumbled as Nick began struggling with a long, stainless steel shelving unit. The shelf was seven feet high and ten feet long. It was heavy, and made heavier because it was laden with canned goods and other barter-able materials. Nick, without assistance, was only barely able to move it, so he waved for Peter and Ace to come help him, and they crawled forward and began tugging on the shelf until it moved.

“This place used to be a brewery!” Nick shouted over the din of warfare and brutality going on around them.

“I know!” Peter yelled, trying to make himself heard over the constant shelling.

Nick and Peter gave the shelf one last shove, and then Nick pushed his way behind it. Reaching behind a wooden wall panel, he released a lever. The panel slid out of the way, and Peter saw that behind it was an antique door. Nick pulled the door open until there were maybe eight to ten inches of clearance, and then he jammed his ample frame through the gap, waving for Peter and the others to follow.

As everyone pushed in through the crack in the door, Nick squeezed back past them, and pulled the wooden door closed, leaving the group in darkness.

“There are huge, arched cellars under this place,” Nick said, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a Zippo lighter. He lit the lighter and held it up in front of his face. “We’d planned on making them into a restaurant called The Catacombs , but that was before the bombs dropped. They’ve been unused, except for storage, since the 60’s!”

He pushed his way back past the group again so that he could lead the way into the catacombs. “Follow me, and hold on close to the person in front of you! We’ve got about twenty steps, then a landing that doubles back, and then about twenty more steps to the door.”

Nick moved slowly towards the first step, hunched over with the Zippo in front of him so he could see. He found the stairs, and began to descend, with the rest of the group close behind him.

“So… what about the rest of your staff?” Peter asked.

“Most of ‘em took off when the shooting started,” Nick shrugged. “They were loyal, but only to a point.”