Michael Bunker - WICK

The trees and forest ended abruptly in a straight, ruled line and there was a long clearing, and when the three travelers examined the scene they noted that the strip was actually a long beltway that ran from northwest to southeast. Down this long, cleared strip ran power lines, held aloft by enormous wooden towers. The streak of land cut through the forest like a landing strip, and the scene looked, if they hadn’t known better, as if planes had merely skimmed in low to the ground and strafed the dozens of encampments along the strip with gunfire. Obviously, the refugees had been using the stretch of clearing as a highway to move from wherever they were to wherever they were going, and, not unlike Highway 17, which was still clear in their minds, this well-traveled route of escape had become a death trap for those who had thought to take the easy way out. In fact, if anything, this strip was the worse for having had one day more for the crowds to indulge in their mayhem.

Peter made sure the trio stayed low, and they moved quickly and with purpose, and they kept their eyes peeled to their surroundings as they surveyed the remains of the battle that had taken place, seemingly just moments before, in the field.

From the destruction, debris, and corpses lying around in the snow, Peter determined that this had been a makeshift refugee camp. He deduced that maybe thirty families had been staying in the clearing until only moments ago. The battle was not long in the past—perhaps an hour or so—but not longer.

The older man knelt down, and his eyes took in the gruesome scene. He looked out into the woods to the south, and he pointed so that Lang and Natasha could follow what he was about to say.

“It looks like they came from that way, through the woods. Some kind of looter raiding party. A gang of thugs, or… maybe they were middle-class teachers, grocers, and lawyers? Who’s to know? I’d say it was ten or twelve of them. The attackers came out from the woods. It was not long ago, this very evening, because the fires were burning. We heard that noise earlier. It’s likely that the refugees had no night vision from staring into the fire. Some of the tents and supplies spilled over into the fires in the confusion. The raiding party probably staked out the place from those trees.” He pointed back to the south, along a thicket of brush.

“They waited until they felt it was the right time, and then they hit hard and fast. It looks like about two-thirds of the people in this camp didn’t even stand a chance, cut down before they could stand up and figure out what was going on. No chance at all to get to any kind of cover.” Peter turned and swiveled on his heels as if he were watching the attack in real-time as it played out before him.

“The looters took what they wanted, then they went that way.” He pointed to the northwest, following with his finger up the greenbelt.

Peter didn’t want to spend too much time in the refugee camp, but he felt it prudent to do a quick and cursory search for supplies and weapons, anything the looters had missed. They moved quickly. Wrapped up inside a fallen tent, they found a .22 Marlin squirrel rifle and about ten boxes of ammunition. Lang was the first to find it, and he silently held it up for Peter to appreciate.

Natasha protested at first, when Peter and Lang took the rifle and packed away the ammunition in Lang’s backpack, but Peter explained to her that the people who owned this stuff… they were all gone. And the gun, if left here, would be taken by someone else coming by, either by good people with benevolent intentions, or by wicked people with evil intentions. “The only way that we can ensure that it falls into the right hands,” he spread his own hands, as if the answer were obvious, “is to take it ourselves. Use it for right purposes.”

Despite the clear logic in that argument, Natasha felt conflicted. “You need to know right now,” Peter told her, in a firm way, but with concern and kindness, “that much of what we’re going to need to survive is going to be found and salvaged from this point forward. We don’t have the luxury of hunting down the next of kin, or taking found goods to the sheriff’s office or authorities. There are no stores or businesses now, not from what we’ve already experienced. From what you’ve seen with your own eyes, Natasha, there aren’t any authorities .”

Natasha nodded her head, and Peter told her he was glad she understood and that he hoped that she would have the stomach for everything that was ahead of them. “Even if you don’t, however, you have to be honest about what we’re facing. This is not a movie at the Pushkinsky-Cine, little daughter. This is our life now.”

She nodded again, and told him that she knew what was required, but that she just didn’t want to lose her humanity.

“I am helping you to save that humanity, dear girl,” Peter said. He let that sink in for a beat. “We are not in the land of the living anymore.”

Peter frowned and she grimaced. Lang bent to pick up his pack. The three of them stood in the clearing for a moment, and the ancient differences between men and women swirled around them as they weighed their thoughts. Unlike the couple from the day before, they silently agreed to let those differences help them rather than tear them apart, and eventually the three of them turned to trudge back toward the tree line, to make their way out of the clearing.

Just as they were turning to take their leave, however, Natasha told them to stop. The men almost responded in anger. Peter drew in his breath to rebuke Natasha and tell her to get past her doubts. He looked at her as if to warn her that they had to get moving and was just about to speak in his impatience.

It was only then that he heard what she was hearing. Natasha raised her hand as if to quiet him, and he held his breath and his eyes followed in the direction of her pointing.

A moan came from one of the collapsed tents. They rushed to it and lifted its canvas and dug into its crevices to find the door. Once they had found it, they gently lifted the tent away until they found her.

She was beaten and bruised, and terribly afraid, but she was alive. She was still in the land of the living.

Dostoevsky said that “the best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.”

Lang could not help feeling that this was true of himself at that instant, as he realized that the woman in the tent was alive and that her injury was minor and survivable. He did not mean to think of rushing away and abandoning her. Such an act certainly would never have occurred to his conscious mind willingly, but it occurred nonetheless. Somewhere in his unconscious mind, his reckoning of the stench of death and fire in the clearing mixed with his guilt at the thought of leaving, his conscience burned brightly like the flames of perdition. He smelled it like charred goose feathers in his nostrils, and he melted in those flames. Had he so soon forgotten his own relatively recent deliverance from bondage? From injury? Was he that ungrateful? He considered himself a man of human compassion and was he so soon to be devoid of that feeling? His face flushed.

Lang had never really read the Bible much, but he was aware of many of its teachings, and one of the ones he liked most was the notion that a man could show no greater love than to lay down his life for others. He caught himself in his quick brush with self-centeredness and reached down a hand to help the woman off the ground. Maybe only a man who is aware of his weaknesses and failings can properly love in that way.

Elsie was her name and she was barely conscious. It took some doing to carry her into the woods and into some similitude of safety. Lang had a wounded arm, and they dared not drop their packs or weapons, so the going was slow, but they eventually accomplished the task. Once they were in cover among the trees, Peter went to work again with the first aid kit. Before long, he had her forehead wound cleaned up without too much trouble. It was harder to get her to take the two aspirin that Peter gave her for her headache than it had been to carry her into the woods. She didn’t want the pills, but it helped Peter that the woman was in shock and that she didn’t put up too much of a fight.