Michael Bunker - WICK

The assault was relentless, and Peter began to worry that—even if the cellar didn’t collapse—the damage and debris might take months to clear away, even if someone did know that the party was down in the cellar… which they did not. How are we going to get out of here? he thought.

What followed, for another twenty-four hours, was a nerve-rending mind siege. The war raged fervently in Mount Joy, and the people in the cellar thought that at any minute, the ceiling was going to come tumbling down on top of them.

The ceiling held, and after a particularly frightening barrage of mortar fire—at a moment in time that became crystalline in their consciousness—everything went eerily silent.

The silence reigned for about twenty minutes, and no one in the cellar spoke a word. Each person just sat stoically, eyes rolled upwards, staring at the ceiling, waiting for another shell to drop, or mortar to shake the earth.

Then there was a sound.

There was a rattling over near the door, and Nick jumped up and darted in that direction. He started pulling some baskets of clothing and cardboard boxes out of the way, and after he did, Elsie, Ace, and Peter could see that a copper pipe, about four inches in diameter, extended down through the ceiling. At about two feet above the ground, the pipe flared open at its bottom.

Nick looked over his shoulder and winked at the travelers. “If I were a careful man, this contraption would be the mechanism I’d use to stash the gold and silver and precious stones, you know, just in case we ever got robbed! The gold you paid me is down in this basket here. I would always drop the goods down the pipe after every transaction.”

Now, the travelers watched as a single, folded piece of paper tumbled down the pipe and into Nick’s hands. He opened the note and read it, and when he was done he squealed and shouted with delight.

“Woohoo!” Nick yelled. He hugged Charlie, who had a huge smile on his face. “Let me read it to you!” He held the letter near one of the lanterns and read aloud, with obvious glee:

Hey, you Yankee bum! It’s over. We won. Quit hiding down in your cellar and get up here, ‘cause we got stuff to do!

Mike stood in the open field next to the burn pit in the Carbondale Resettlement Camp. The corpses of the former camp commander and his closest officers lay in a tight line, face down in the snow. Mike stared at the bodies, and then slowly turned to look at the soldiers who were awaiting his next command.

His head hurt, and there was a terrible lump behind his ear. He scratched the back of his head and thought of the blow that Sergei had given him, but he did not wince. He steadfastly refused to show any weakness in front of the men.

He looked up and down the assembled line of soldiers, and he nodded his head. He could see on their faces that they fully accepted him as their leader and commander. Good , he thought.

“I want the man brought to me who was in charge of the armory! Bring him to me right now!” Mike commanded. He stood with his shoulders hunched and his jaw clenched. It was slight, but if you knew the man intimately, you would know it. Fortunately, none of the assembled crowd knew him intimately. At least, not yet.

Three soldiers dragged another soldier forward until the man was standing in front of Mike. Mike looked the man up and down with disgust.

“Did you give that prisoner two of my hand-grenades?”

The soldier looked down at his feet. In his mind, he went through a quick analysis of whether or not it would be good to lie to the new commander. He didn’t want to be given permanent kitchen duty, or get sent to the brig, but he also didn’t want to start out his time with the new commanding officer as a known liar. The soldier straightened his back. He’d made up his mind. He decided to tell the truth. He could deal with a couple of weeks of kitchen duty, or even substantial time in the brig, but he wanted the rest of the men to know him as a man who owned up to his mistakes. He looked Mike in the eye and nodded his head.

“I did.”

“You sold two of my hand-grenades to a prisoner, who then used them to kill my men and destroy my property?”

“I did, sir.” It sounded worse to him, the way Mike said it.

Mike pursed his lips, but nodded his head. He began to walk slowly around the soldier, and everyone waited—wondering what punishment the new commander would mete out on the wrongdoer.

“I appreciate you being honest,” Mike said.

He pulled out his side arm and shot the soldier through the head.

The body slumped to the ground and Mike waved for some of the men to drag the body onto the pile with the others.

He turned to the crowd gathered nearby and told them that honesty was a good policy—that it was like a good deed done to your neighbor.

The soldiers busied themselves around his feet, clearing the body and taking the time to rake the ground so that even any traces of the soldier’s blood were removed. The blood served as a reminder to the crowd that good deeds like that would not go unpunished.

Stephen was dead. Her little boy. From the time he was old enough to toddle, she’d called him “Little Man.” At the end, Veronica looked down into his face, and he looked up into hers. She was reminded that the act of looking into one another’s faces, was something that had happened every single day of his life at some point. For Veronica, there had always been a spark in the Little Man’s face unlike that in any other face she’d ever seen.

Now, as she looked into that face, she did not see any spark of life left. His body, carefully and lovingly strapped to the bed with long strips torn from Amish sheets, was finally motionless and at peace. The only remnants of the struggle that Stephen had faced in passing on were recorded in the sheets; in the wrinkled ridges where his body had convulsed involuntarily.

There was a creak in the floorboards as someone shifted their feet. The thick ancient planks in the floor rubbed in place.

Henry Stolzfus and his family stood behind Veronica, as she looked down on her boy. For a time, everyone was motionless. The Stolzfus family waited patiently for the next stage in the process. Henry flicked his fingers against the edge of his pants. It was a casual motion, but studiously so, as though he was trying to scratch an itch but didn’t want to disturb the scene with so obvious a display. He and his family knew this process well, and none of it was new to them. They would allow time for the mother to grieve and say her goodbyes, and then the Amish women would take the body into the great room to wash and prepare it. They knew the process so well because most of them had performed it many times in their lives. For the Amish, death is a part of life. While it is always sad, it is not seen as extraordinary. Death applies universally, and it must be handled in a way that reinforces this concept to everyone—especially the children. As in life, there is an order to death, and for now, they just stood quietly and waited.

At the end of the bed, looking down at Stephen, Veronica was surprised that, along with her grief, she felt such an overwhelming feeling of relief. Strange, because she’d just watched the life drain out of her greatest love. She stood there and experienced it. Truly experienced it. As she did, she also experienced the unexpected, unspeakable, and contradictory gift of release . It was a brief moment, but it was unmistakable. She stood in the room, which was objectively beautiful in its simplicity, and she noticed the palette was blue and brown and white and tan. She noticed the cloth; from the imprinted sheets, to the layers of cloth hanging from the shoulders of these beautiful girls—these strong women. They waited and watched patiently.