Michael Bunker - WICK

He paused and looked at them. “Turmoil and confusion.”

“It’s already gotten pretty bad out there, grandfather. It has been bad since the first storm hit, but in the last two days everything has just gone haywire. You haven’t heard the news. We’ve been listening in on the radio pretty much whenever we have free time. The world is spiraling into chaos even now.”

The boy paused. Clay heard in the pause, as the old man did, the boy asking, “How will I escape? And where will I go?”

Volkhov offered a way out.

“Clay here says that the fence is destroyed on the south side of the facility. If you can get out that way, you could escape. I don’t know where you can go in the long-run. Go to the Amish, if you can. We’ve talked about that.”

Clay looked at him, surprised.

“Or just find someplace away from the cities to hide out. There may not be a good solution out there, but being in here would be the worst solution of all,”

Volkhov shook his head. He tried to be secretive about it, but Clay saw him wipe away a single tear that had welled up in his eyes.

“They have guards posted on all of the exits,” Vasily said. “If I leave through the north door, towards Warwick, I will not be noticed, but if I attempt to leave out of any of the other doors, they won’t open them to me and they’ll ask questions. Besides, what about you grandfather? And Clay? What should we all do?”

Clay looked at Vasily intensely. He really did hope that the boy would escape, but Vasily didn’t seem to have much hope for himself. Clay grabbed a bottle of water and took a long drink, and then he handed one to Volkhov.

The old man received it with a nod, as a way of thanks. Clay offered one to Vasily, who refused, saying that he had plenty and that he didn’t want to drink theirs.

“Where are you staying, Vasily?” Clay asked.

“Most of us who are considered ‘worthless’—we who do not have homes and families to go to—are sleeping on cots in the gymnasium.”

Clay looked at Vasily and decided that he had to trust him. “Vasily, I need to tell you that I have a backpack hidden in the Tank. They never thought to look for it, at least as far as I know. I think mostly because they killed the only man who ever saw it. Why they never searched the Tank for the camera is beyond me, but with so much going on, I think—once they realized that I was just a lost hiker—they just forgot about it.

“Anyway, the backpack is stowed under the bunk in the Tank, hidden under a blanket.”

“What should I do with it?” Vasily asked.

“Do you think you can get it out of here?”

“I can. I can walk it out the north entrance and tell the guard there, if he asks, that I am taking it to Mikail. They all think I’m stupid, so they don’t suspect me of anything. They don’t think I’m capable of trickery, lying, or subterfuge.”

“That makes you the best spy ever in a whole town of spies, Vasily,” Clay said, smiling.

“They could eventually figure it out if the guard thinks to ask Mikail about it later, but that won’t happen for some time, if it happens at all. Most of the people think of me as an ignorant automaton and I do my best not to rid them of the notion.”

He smiled at Clay. “It made my life easier in here for them to think that I was stupid and that I didn’t speak English.”

“What in the world were you locked up in here for, Vasily?” Clay asked.

“I got drunk,” Vasily replied. “I was tired of all of the abuse and I stole some vodka from the store and sat out behind the church in the cemetery drinking. Some students from school came by and started in on me, so I set into them like a windmill in a hurricane. It’s the first time I ever did such a thing, but I think it had built up in me for a long time.”

Clay smiled at Vasily and replied, “Well, I’ve been there, brother. Got locked up for it too! Ok? So listen, the backpack isn’t immediately critical, but if any one of us can escape, it has things in it that might keep us alive,” Clay said. “There is at least one clean change of clothes in there too. I think Todd stole my other clothes, thinking they were the only ones I had. But there are some other things in there that might be useful as well.”

Volkhov stood up and took a long swig from his bottle of water. He looked at the bottle intently.

“This reminds me, both of you, starting tomorrow, if we are still alive, do not drink any municipal or public water supply,” he said.

“Why?” Vasily asked.

“Just don’t.”

“Ok.”

Volkhov continued, “Vasily, when you leave here you need to find Pyotr Alexandrovitch, my nephew. He knows the whole story. There is another way out that he will show you.”

“Yes, grandfather, I’ll do it, but what about you two?”

“Well—”

Clay interjected. “All I can think of is that we can try to make a break for it. This place has never been weaker than it is right now. It has almost no security and only four guards. Mikail carries the keys. We can just jump him or something and try to make a break through the south fence.”

“It won’t work, Clay,” Vasily responded. “I have the room key, which also fits the cluster doors, but it only fits the rooms in this cluster. Vladimir is head of security now, and I think only he carries the external door master keys. I have to knock on the door to get out, so that means the guards carry a door key as well.”

Clay paused and thought. He trailed his hand along the cold concrete before slapping it in delight. “That’s it! So you have a key to this cluster, and the guards at the exits have a key to the external doors?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And if you were to try to exit the south door, which is only a brisk run from the collapsed fence, they wouldn’t let you out because you’re not authorized to go out that exit, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Beautiful! And they’d never let you through, because you only speak Russian. Right? At least that is what they think! Right?”

The boy looked at him, waiting.

“Right now there is only one man with a key and a gun between us and freedom! So you could speak in perfect English and they would assume that it was either Vladimir or Mikail! They’d open the door to either of them, would they not?”

“They would!”

Clay and Vasily smiled broadly and started to give one another a high-five, but then they looked over at Volkhov who was frowning. “We shouldn’t try to all get out the same way,” he said, “What if something goes wrong? They’d kill us all.” He looked at Clay. “You and I, we are as good as dead already to Mikail and his people. Not Vasily. He can get out cleanly.”

“What do you recommend, grandfather?” Vasily asked.

“We mustn’t underestimate Mikail. He is a brilliant young man, and I don’t mean that he is just ‘smart’. He tested off the charts in every category. He is a phenomenon.”

Volkhov looked at Clay as if to ask if he knew what they were up against. Clay nodded his head and took another drink from his bottle.

“Why wasn’t he sent to Russia to spy? He’s old enough isn’t he?” Clay asked.

“Some people are not sent because they fail the tests, or because they are not adept at being dishonest, or because they have a skill or ability that is valuable for the village here. Some people are not sent because they lack some critical mode of thinking that is required for the job they are being sent to do. Mikail was not sent because he has a gloriously beautiful mind and is a completely unpredictable sociopath.”

“You’d think that would be a plus in the spy game,” Clay said, smiling.

“They don’t mind ‘sociopath’ so much, but ‘unpredictable’ is what gets you disqualified. His whole attitude—his anger, bravado, and even his danger—comes from being rejected for service by the Americans. The Russians accepted him, because they had nothing to lose. He is expendable if he fails, and if he doesn’t…” Volkhov said, sighing.