Michael Bunker - WICK

Struggling to his feet was like pressing against frigid death, and he noticed through the snow that the day had grown darker and that night was falling. How long had he lain there in the snow? Doesn’t matter now, keep walking or die , the man with the red beard on the bike had said. Dusk and then night fell like a weight, and his mind started to slip in step with his feet, and coming upon a particularly steep decline, he tumbled forward, rolling head over heels down a slope, where he came to rest against something that his brain had trouble identifying. Looking up to the sky and darkness, he saw in what may have been a single, blue shaft of moonbeam what seemed like an infinite regress of netting. Was it the bridge? No, it was lighter in texture, in weight, and it held him as he leaned against it. Not cables, but what? Chain-link. Rising into the heavens and curving out over his head in a series of barbed-wire overhangs. Chain-link, and a sign hanging on it. It took him a few seconds to realize that he had stumbled into a fence and that maybe he was saved.

Crawling to his deadened and icy feet with the help of the chain-link savior, he got himself upright and tried to read the sign but could not manage it through the snow and ice and dark. He tossed his backpack to the ground and found that he had not the dexterity to open it with his frozen hands so he managed it with his teeth and then reached in and took hold of his flashlight in his paw of a hand, and, struggling to get it to come on, he finally achieved it and shone the bright light at the sign…

He looked again and saw that the fence was topped with loops of razor wire, and looking around now with an increase in attention born of adrenaline and fear and the possibility of salvation, he noticed that there was no light in any direction. There was only the faint gray-blue light that snow gives off when there is some moon to be seen. He could not see the moon and he could barely see at all. There! Maybe he imagined it— in the distance the outline of a building maybe a hundred yards away inside the fence. Something institutional .

He started to stumble down the fence line and tried to shout but found it difficult. After fifty yards or so he came across another sign that repeated the warnings and the threats of death and worse if he did not stay five-hundred yards from the fence. Another fifty yards and he came upon a section of fence that had obviously been demolished by a succession of falling trees—damage from Sandy or maybe the Nor’easter, if that is what this was.

Disregarding the warnings, because being shot, at this point, seemed to him like a deliverance, he stumbled through the opening in the wrecked fence provided by the toppled trees, and steadying himself against one of these trees, he bowed his head, trying to gather together the strength to make it to the building he could now see in the distance.

Don’t get trapped! His father called to him through the cold. He squinted and looked into the shadows. How could he consider, even in this moment of delusion, crippled by fear and terror, a suggestion to turn back? The irony. Those who would find the body would write down in their notebooks that their investigation had shown he had eschewed the salvation of one prison while fleeing from another. He was hysterical in his panic for his life.

Adrenaline and hope and fear will only get you so far, but together these forces were enough to get him across the battlefield of blowing snow and frigid winds, and when he blinked again he was huddled up against the building and struggling to clear his brain enough to think of what to do now. His victories had come in steps. First he had made it to a fence he did not know was there. From there, he had made it to a threshold in the fence that he could not have even imagined would be there. Now he had made it to the building. Could he find an entrance? Blind luck had gotten him this far, why give up on it now?

He placed his left hand against the building, and as he struggled forward, he kept his frozen fingers in contact with the structure so that his mind wouldn’t forget where he was and would remind him that warmth and salvation were somewhere within that wall. Struggling through drifts and the swirling snow, he collapsed twice, but will and the touch of the wall kept him going as he resumed his trudging. After a few minutes, he noticed a break in the endless expanse, and hurried to the breech as best as he was able. He fell forward and flung himself into an enclosure of heavy cinder blocks and came face to face with an unmarked steel door, painted black—all but for a window placed 2/3 up its height.

He was out of the wind and snow now, and the blessed relief washed over him for a few seconds. Hope began to spark, ever so lightly in his breast, and he shouted out towards the window, not knowing what he said. The window was made of glass, thick and foreboding, crisscrossed with chicken wire and probably shatter proof. Is this a prison?

He shouted again and banged on the glass with his hands, and then screamed even louder with the pain that shot through him into his brain from the impact of his frozen hands on the glass. “HELP ME!” he screamed again and again, as tears, unbidden, began to fall down his face.

The hope that had burned brightly for a mere moment began to dim again after several minutes of banging and screaming. His head slipped down towards his chest, and he noticed for the first time, incongruently, that he now had a beard. He hadn’t shaved in a week. Had it been a week? He noticed because his tears and snow and ice had frozen into it. He closed his eyes. He was under shelter and out of the worst of the weather, but it was well below freezing, and again the specter of death seemed to darken his thoughts. He thought about praying but gave up on the idea. Why start now? He opened his eyes again and looked up, and he saw a light fixture in the ceiling of the entranceway. He looked at it, and as he did, the thoughts only murkily working their way through his brain, he knew he was going to die, but he hoped his last hope that that singular light would come on… and when he did—or as he did—inconceivably, the light blinked on.

Clay pounded on the door, screaming. With his face frozen, his shouts sounded mostly incoherent, even to himself. Somebody here? Somebody hear me! The meaty side of his fist felt dead as it landed with cold steel thuds. He gasped for air. Ceasing his struggles for a moment, he leaned on the door, catching his breath. It is so cold . My being is cold. His thoughts felt like gel in his skull.

There was a small sign next to the door that he missed before but now, with the light, he could see it. It was written in what looked like Russian. Russian? He looked again. Really? Really. There it was. It was unmistakable. There were letters that seemed to be backwards, and others that were clearly not English. Brain freeze. People suffering from hypothermia often report confusion in their thinking. That has to be it. He blinked and tried to refocus. What was he doing? Oh, yeah .

He returned to the futile pain of pounding his fists on the door. He kicked it with his boots, feeling the dead vibrations of the cold shimmer through his leg. He screamed as loud as he could and kept screaming and kicking until, from somewhere—some interminable distance away—he thought he heard a faint sound. Shussle . Click . There it was again. Shussle … Click .

The sound grew closer. It grew closer still. He could hear it through his own pounding and the kicking but the command from his brain to cease his protests had not yet reached the rest of his body. Seconds later, he saw light through the window and watched an inner door open into the small vestibule behind the window. He heard a faint, unrecognizable noise, and then a face appeared at the small, square opening, looking out at him. The face stared at him awhile, squinting its eyes and shaking its head. No voice could be heard, but he could tell from the round and exaggerated syllables the face made with its mouth that it was shouting, “Go away!”