Michael Bunker - WICK

“He was a hero then.”

“He was.”

Watkins looked at the young lady and saw in her eyes that she really meant it. He was touched by such an old-fashioned notion. He could see these two were not ordinary.

“Where are you two from?” Watkins asked.

“I don’t suppose it matters anymore,” Natasha said, “it only matters where we’re going, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“We need to catch up with some friends who are headed to Amish country.”

Watkins lit another cigarette, took a long drag from it, then blew the smoke upwards into the chilly night air. “Well, our attack is, at the very least, delayed now because of your escape.” He jerked his head in the direction of Carbondale. “They know we’re here. We might be stuck out here for another week.”

Cole reached his hand out to Watkins who just stared at him blankly, not knowing what Cole wanted.

“Gimme a smoke, Joe.”

“It’s Jay, friend.”

“It was a joke, Jay, geez! I’m Cole, and grumpy here is Natasha, so enough of the meet-n-greet and give me a smoke.”

Watkins laughed again and popped a cigarette out of the pack, reaching it over to Cole. “Help yourself, Cole. I like you,” he said, laughing heartily.

“Do you like Shakespeare?”

“He’s alright, I suppose.”

“Then I suppose we might get along.”

“What if I had said ‘no’?”

“I’d have left you here talking to her,” Cole said, cutting his eyes towards Natasha.

Jay Watkins caught his breath. She was beautiful, he thought. He was about to say something corny like, “Well, that wouldn’t be so bad,” but he didn’t get the chance. A quick glance at Natasha showed him the impatience of a sister who’d been listening to her brother charm others with kooky bravado, along with her amazement that, even here, in the midst of catastrophe, he was still doing it.

“No,” she said. “We’re not getting along here, because we’re not staying, Cole. We’ve got to try to catch Peter and Elsie.” She looked out into the darkness. “If they’re still alive.”

They heard a quick blast of staccato gunfire from automatic weapons in the distance, probably coming from the prison camp. Natasha wondered if people were being executed because of the prison break, but there was no way for her to know. Maybe Mikail was taking over the camp. She did not speak the words, however. She didn’t say a word about the camp.

In retrospect, long after this cold, dark night, sometime in the distant future, she would regret not telling someone about Mike’s plan to take over the camp. She’d regret that she was never properly debriefed by the FMA. Those were sketchy times, and a lot of things were not as they should have been.

She tugged at Cole’s sleeve.

“Whatever you say, Sis,” Cole said. He lit his cigarette and puffed on it happily; the low, red glow of the cherry illuminating his now much slimmer face in the darkness. The glow of the cigarette caught in his glasses and flickered, and he turned to stare out into the darkness, and took the smoke into his lungs.

Cole turned back to look at the people around him, and he saw that his sister was still shaky from the escape—anxious to hit the road. He wasn’t so anxious. He felt that it was good to be alive.

A soldier walked up to Watkins and nodded a greeting to Cole and Natasha, who nodded back at him in return. The two soldiers stepped a few paces into the forest to talk, and when they finished, the underling soldier hustled back off into the darkness.

“It looks like you two may be in luck,” Watkins said.

“How’s that?” Natasha asked.

“We’ve been called off of this duty for the moment. It seems there’s a full-fledged assault going on in the Mount Joy area. We’ve got wagons and horses, but it’ll still take us a day and a half to get there. The MNG is trying to push us out of our territory.”

“Or draw you away from here,” Cole said. Natasha looked at him, as if to see if he knew anything. He didn’t.

Watkins pulled the last cigarette out of the pack, balled up the empty wrapper, and stuck it into his pocket. He pulled a new pack out of his coat, opened it with practiced precision, and then offered another cigarette to Cole.

Cole turned down the cigarette with a wave of his hand.

“I don’t smoke.”

“But…”

“That one was to keep me from soiling my pants,” Cole said, smiling. “I’m okay now.”

Watkins laughed and shook his head. “You are a piece of work, Cole.”

“That’s what they say.” Cole smiled when he said it and Natasha watched him smile, and then she looked at Jay Watkins. He motioned toward the darkness.

“Well, we better push off. We have a long trip ahead of us. You two will be safe with us until we get to Mount Joy. I can’t tell you what things will be like when we get there, but you’ll be a step closer to Amish country.”

They walked through the snow and darkness until they reached a road where the FMA unit was already packing up for the long haul south. Carts, buggies, wagons, and single mounts lined the road. A hundred soldiers on foot stood stamping in the cold, trying to defy hypothermia, anxious to get moving.

Natasha and Cole followed Watkins and climbed up into the back of an Amish buckboard wagon. When they’d each found their seats, Watkins pulled out a bottle of what looked to be Kentucky Bourbon, and passed it around to everyone in turn. When the bottle got to Cole, the young man grinned from ear to ear.

“Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.”

He took a long swig and then wiped his mouth on his coat before handing the bottle to Natasha, who passed it on without drinking.

Cole smiled to Watkins and winked, and then looked over at Natasha, who was glaring at him.

“That’s from The Merry Wives of Windsor ,” Cole said with a straight face.

“I don’t care, Cole,” Natasha replied with her brows furled in mock anger. She stared at Cole for a moment before her own face broke into a smile. She leaned conspiratorially towards the others in the wagon and said, “My brother can get a little obnoxious with the Shakespeare.”

“Okay, then,” Cole said, “if I have your permission.” Then he reached over and slapped his sister playfully on her knee. “Let us every one go home, and laugh this sport o’er by a country fire.”

“Indeed,” said Jay Watkins, and with that, he turned his horses toward the south and gave a solemn nod towards the moon in the eastern sky.

Six hours after Nick had placed his emergency call to Clive Darling, the five people in the catacombs under the restaurant in Mount Joy heard a commotion the likes of which they’d never heard before. They’d been sitting around and talking about the war, and the things they’d seen since the crash had started when what sounded like World War 3 erupted above their heads, and some of the concussions caused bits of mortar and stone to fall down into the cellar.

Nick stared at the ceiling in awe. “It would seem that the battle is joined.”

“Ain’t no party like an MNG party,” Ace said.

“What are the chances this cellar collapses on us?” Elsie asked. There was worry in her voice, and she didn’t try to hide it.

“This cellar has been here since before the Civil War,” Nick said. “It’ll shake, rattle, and roll, but I’m certain we’ll be alright.”

“I’m fine down here!” The roar of mortars increased, and little Charlie had to yell to make his point.

“We’d definitely rather be down here than up there,” Peter said, pointing upwards. The sounds from upside responded to Peter’s statement as if to emphasize his point. The violence being unleashed on Nick’s restaurant was frightening, and awe-inspiring. “I’m not sure a housefly could live through what’s going on up there!” Peter shouted over the noise.