Michael Bunker - WICK

Clive Darling thought so, too. He softly began humming those words to himself as they pulled away into the enveloping night.

At the bottom of the hill they turned west for a moment and then followed along the banks of a stream until they found a fallen tree that formed a natural bridge—large and solid enough to carry their weight as they traversed the stream’s width. With Peter in the lead, they hiked through the Forest Preserve, heading generally in a southwesterly direction, making their way by the angle of the sun in the fall sky. The walking was rough because the snow was high, but they settled into a rhythm that kept them pushing forward with firm conviction.

They did their best to stay cloaked under a cover of trees because they had no way of knowing whether they might be spotted by the swarm of drones that had, just hours before, swept in and laid waste to the town behind them. They were survivors and, from the stain left on the earth back in their village, it was clear to them that whoever had ordered the drone strike did not intend for there to beany survivors. Although manageable, the cold was persistent with its stinging rebuke, and it forced them to keep moving to stay warm.

They walked, occupying themselves with thoughts of how their lives had come to this, and what might lie before them. Everything was going to change now. These three were free human beings, perhaps for the first time in their lives, but that very thought carried a terror all its own. History is replete with examples of brave men and women who found peace in the depths of a prison. Names like John Bunyan, Mandela, Ghandi, Bobby Sands, or Vaclav Havel come to mind. However, the Israelites followed Moses out of Egypt only to turn to newer and more willful forms of enslavement. Often, once the bonds of the physical have been lifted, the spirit and the mind still remain in chains.

Unfettered now by entangling alliances, oaths, and contracts signed by strangers on their behalf before they were even born, the three traveled onward, not knowing yet how they would respond to trials they’d meet along their way. Emerson wrote that when you travel, your giant travels with you. Now Peter, Lang, and Natasha quietly pondered whether they were prepared, whether they would survive, whether they could shoulder the giants of their past while trudging through the snow toward…

What?

There was no answer to that question. At least for now.

Peter’s plan had been roughly sketched long ago through talks with Lev Volkhov, the wise old leader who’d foreseen the trouble they now faced. Generally, they intended to head toward Amish country in Pennsylvania. The reasons for this were not entirely clear to the younger Lang and Natasha, but those reasons were actually quite simple in their conceptualization. Volkhov believed that, were a systemic collapse or disaster to come, refugees from Warwick would fare better in Amish country than anywhere else. It was that simple.

The Warwickians’ small town and provincial ways, as well as their ignorance of the means and patterns of modern life among the “English” (which is the term used by the Amish for all outsiders—since we are speaking of them) would be a two-edged sword in this journey. First, simple ways and an unorthodox manner would make Peter, Lang, and Natasha more vulnerable to the conditions in the wider American landscape. Second, they would explain away any idiosyncrasies of behavior once the refugees could become enmeshed among another group that had been born and raised in an insular society. Both considerations argued for their plan. No matter which way the sword cut, it suggested they should go to Amish country, because if they could get to the Amish they would have a better chance to survive. Or at least that was the hope. Peter considered these things as he looked up and along the ridgeline in the distance and braced his chin against the cold of the coming climb.

Had the three travelers been born In Los Angeles or Des Moines, or almost anywhere else in America other than their insulated Russian hamlet, they might have wondered about the logic of the plan. Why go to the Amish during a time of war? Aren’t they pacifists? Won’t they be the first to meet their end? This seems like a reasonable objection. However, there is a supposition behind that thought that had to be addressed. History tells a story of the pacifist Amish that contradicts the implications of the argument. The bare essential of that history is that, pacifist or not, the Amish—as a people group with a government, laws, and practices—have been around for more than five hundred years. Most of those years have been lived out in the most violent places and times in the history of civilization. Napoleon and his armies had come and gone, as had the Russian Empire, the Japanese Empire, and most of the British Empire, but the Amish still abide. Whether one attributed this fact to the protections offered by their religious faith, or the fact that, as a community, they took care of their own, or to a latent human conscience that respected their passivity and way of life, the fact remains that they were survivors. Their pacifism and faith protected them like the Alps protected Swiss neutrality. Being a student of history Volkhov understood this

The old sage had not known how the war would unfold, but he did know that it would be brutal and ugly for the physically pampered and mentally weak Americans, who were notoriously unprepared for what war could be like if it occurred on their own soil. Volkhov would often point out that the total number of American deaths by war during the American Civil War was 150% of those experienced during World War II, this despite the fact that the total deaths by combat in that earlier war were only 75% of those in the latter. The same relationship was evident in a comparison of, say, the American Revolutionary War and the Korean War, with the corresponding numbers being 70% and 24%. This is not even to mention how untrained and ill-educated Americans are when it comes to the basest necessities of survival and for facing hardship if such a conflict were to break out in the homeland.

The point in war , Volkhov was fond of saying, is to stay alive , and too many Americans miss that point when war occurs in the streets of their own towns. As he climbed, Peter looked over his shoulder at his younger colleagues, who were at that moment lost in deep thoughts of their own but struggling gamely onward through the snow, and he decided that, if he had anything to do with it, they would not fail.

While packing their go-bags for the exodus, Peter had noted that, though their provisions were in good condition, he couldn’t say the same for himself. He’d leaned down a little too quickly to lift up a box, and then stood a little too awkwardly to set the box on the table, and felt a sharp pain in his back, the signs of aging that had plagued him more and more over the last several years. Throughout his life he’d participated in extensive military and espionage training, and he’d even been an instructor in the charm school’s SERE course for two years, but that was when he’d been quite a bit younger and in a lot better shape. Search, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training and experience would help, he thought, but he was out of practice and (if truth be told) out of shape. Like many people his age, he’d become soft and addicted to his creature comforts. For his younger colleagues, they had youth, but that youth was burdened with inexperience. If age but could, if youth but knew . He tightened his jaw and thought to himself that they would have to combine their wits and abilities if they were to make it out of this alive.