Michael Bunker - WICK

The brutish Vladimir never had any sense of the nuances or subtleties of leadership that Mikail had tirelessly attempted to show him. He’d always believed and ceaselessly relied upon the unerring superiority of physical force as a means of proving his point, and, as a result, there had been perhaps a natural split between the two and between those who were inclined to see the points that the two were each attempting to make in their own way.

Vladimir had influenced a certain contingent of the Spetznaz, even through their very brief association, to shoot first and ask questions later, while Mikail had likewise argued for a more long-term, circumspect, and perhaps more patient approach in which the influence of power could be used without actually having to resort to its display. This had resulted in the Spetznaz being divided between those who were ready to fight the townsfolk immediately in order to secure the perimeter of the battlefield, and those who were more content to simply watch and wait until the action seemed to reach its own conclusion.

The end result was that, as the townsfolk of Warwick descended into chaotic strife, and as the battles became less organized at every turn, it became less and less clear throughout the day for whom (or what) the governing authority, the group with the majority of guns, was fighting for.

Even less clear, as the townspeople grew increasingly agitated that their superior force might win the day, was the outcome that would result from the fact that the power of the government had been turned upon the people at large. To be clear, there were Spetznaz operatives who entered the battle and, as a result, there were people lying in the street bloodied and bullet-riddled. But this reality caused greater, not lesser, agitation among the people, and in those moments when the citizens forgot their differences for a moment and set their sights on conquering the soldiers, it became a question of how likely a soldier or two with a limited magazine clip could defend against an army of shovels and hammers and farm implements in the hands of people who were willing to charge into the face of danger and use them.

In short, the battle plan, if there had ever been a coherent one, was lost, as all battle plans eventually are, to the madness of conflict. The soldiers came to embrace the same survival instinct that the population did, and some simply decided that the best way to survive would be to lay down their weapons and refuse to enter a conflict that was, in the final analysis, against people not unlike themselves.

This reality, too, mirrored what was happening in many other corners of America.

The unraveling of what might loosely be called “the government” came to show, like the loosening of the bonds of civility that kept neighbor in careful compromise with neighbor in the first place, that the glue that holds society together proved itself to be thin indeed.

At some point during the day, Mikail and Vladimir and the others realized that their dreams of revolution were spiraling out of control because those dreams had not been shared in the hearts of a conclusive majority of their fellows. The fact that this is an age-old story in the history of the world made it no less true on that day in Warwick.

It was Kolya who suggested that they change to “English names.” The four had arrived successfully at the mid-point of the tunnel after having crawled into the dugout through the tunnel from the house. They’d spent a considerable amount of time covering their tracks inside the house, even going so far as to reassemble the bureau entrance and pull the drawers in after them so that the tunnel could not be easily seen from the cellar.

Then they’d prepared the dugout for comfort and settled in for a brief stay while they waited for the day’s events, and those of the following day, to unfold.

They each unpacked their packs and took out blankets and a little bit of food and lights and such. Vasily carried the backpack that belonged to the traveler named Clay, and for the first time he actually spent some time examining the contents. He found the items that he’d seen already — the fishing kit and the knife and other items — but in the thin light available to them now, he began to thumb through the books that were in the backpack, and once he did so, Kolya became very excited.

“Oh my, this is Whitman and Hemingway! I’ve been unable to get hold of these books for so long,” Kolya said, smiling broadly. “Everything good in Warwick, I was led to believe, came only through the black market, and I was told that I might be able to get things there that we couldn’t get in the stores. But, I never could figure out exactly to whom I should talk about this. I suppose that is one of the huge negatives to being considered a bookworm. People are suspicious of you if they think you might know more than they do. Believe me when I say that one of the reasons that I sought out such back alley subterfuge was that I wanted to find out who could get me more books from the outside. Ahh… these… these are two books that I dearly wanted.” Kolya’s eyes shone like diamonds as he asked Vasily if he could hold them, and when the books were passed to him he lovingly caressed them as one does a talisman. He ran his fingers across the slightly embossed lettering on the Whitman book’s covering, thumbing randomly through the Hemingway, and reading passages aloud to the others. The others sat and watched him as he turned his head away for a moment, and they noticed his faint shadow on the wall reach up and wipe a tear away from its eye.

Kolya reached inside the pack and drew out a thin volume with the title The Poems of CL Richter , and he asked what it was. Pyotr harrumphed that it was a load of self-indulgent garbage. He didn’t know who C.L. Richter was, but the words, according to Pyotr’s judgment, read like the elementary school musings of a spurned lover. Briefly looking through the volume, Kolya had come, more or less to agree, but with certain exceptions.

“Well, it is certainly not Shakespeare,” he concluded. “Still, it has its own little moments of beauty and truth. After all, those are the primary things we should seek in poetry. If it is true, then it can be beautiful.” He paused, thumbing through the book. “Like here… I like this one,” he said, and he read it aloud to them.

Kolya began to go on about how the poem generally lacked a certain central structure that was hinted at in that title, but, he said, it had never been fully developed, and he told the other three how the poem was merely a kind of list of emotions that the fellow had felt in his obvious loss, so there was truth there, and how the poem had a sad sweetness to it, and how it was like the honey in the first line. It needed, Kolya said, only to be tasted, it would not suffice for an entire meal—and it was then when Natasha had begged him please… please… to just stop. He was killing her with his endless analysis. Sisters and brothers don’t always agree on the merits of art, but the one thing they have no trouble agreeing upon is the need to silence one another.