Michael Bunker - WICK

“Oh, honey! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sure he’s okay.”

“I don’t know.”

“You probably all should have stuck together, you know. But he’ll catch up with you, I’m sure of it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Natasha said, but she didn’t believe for a moment that Elsie was right. After the experiences of the last few days, Natasha rejected the kind of Pollyanna thinking that was common to so many modern Americans. Peter had warned them to beware of it. This one thing was a tiny microcosm of what had caused the dependency, lethargy, and deception in the first place: the tendency to believe that everything would somehow work out okay.

Elsie smiled at her, trying to be comforting. “The sun will come out tomorrow, and he’ll be here. You can bet your bottom dollar on that. He’s probably just a day behind us. That’s all,” Elsie said.

This woman, Natasha thought, however good her motives might be, didn’t have a single fact on which to base her assessment. She didn’t know what had happened to Cole, and an honest judgment, based on the facts on the ground as they had all seen them, did not offer much hope for Cole at all. But discourse in America was about emotions and feelings, and never truth and facts. Natasha had to get used to this reality, because it was a tricky one that could trap you if you weren’t careful.

People had the idea that if they were justpositive minded then nothing bad could happen to them. Or, they thought that if they lied to themselves and one another, then the truth would be easier to swallow later on. Natasha was not going to fall for that, but she appreciated the heart behind the deception.

Herein she could see the clash of worldviews that had multiplied and expanded to bring about this catastrophe, and would continue to cause dissolution if it continued going forward. Beyond the wars and fighting and destruction, there would need to be a reassertion of the age-old desire for truth and honesty. The mind of reason would need to triumph over the long reign of emotionalism and lies. What was it that Lang was always saying? It was a Solzhenitsyn quote that he’d repeated several times since they’d fled Warwick…

“One word of truth shall outweigh the world.”

Natasha hoped that somehow, from among the rubble, the truth, and a love of it, would one day rise, stand back up on its feet, and stare the world down again.

Life can turn on a dime. Sometimes, things are going along as expected and then a vicious pirouette occurs. It’s as if we are chasing a beast through the forest and we think we have it right where we want it, and then it turns. It pivots and bares its fangs. In a flash, tables are turned, momentum is lost, victors become vanquished, and lives are lost. In those moments, all we can do is hold on and watch the thing happen.

Sunday

The day was crisp and clean, and except for the snow that was still thick on the ground, it might have been spring. It was that bright and airy. The snow crunched under boots, and the reflection off the snow made the eyes of the four cautious hikers squint into the brightness. After a few hours of good, hard walking, Lang called to Peter and told him that he needed to take a pause. Nature, he explained, was calling. He needed to urinate.

Peter smiled, and in that smile, he let down his guard. He also let down his pack, and so did Natasha. The hikers came to rest on the side of a low mountain.

Moments like these can be critical. They can define ultimate success or failure. Perhaps this is unfair, but it is undeniable. These moments represent that one small turn of the screw, or that one nail left undone, that can bring the whole structure down. They are the gaps in eternal vigilance, when people are in moments of peril, and when they ought to remain in a heightened state of awareness — but instead, there is a beat of relaxing just a little too much, or a tendency to make false assumptions about the situation, or to discount the proximity of danger. It is in such moments that mistakes are made. It happens in war and in peace, and it often costs lives.

And it is easy for others to judge, when they’ve not lived through the same circumstances in real life. Often, those who have lived through them, will later harshly judge themselves. How many times have we read a book or watched a movie and we’ve said, ‘I wouldn’t have done thus and such,’ as if perfection is something that is easily maintained when the entire world is plummeting into hell. Armchair quarterbacks always survive when they have the benefit of distance and, maybe temporary, safety.

Peter had already made a few mistakes, but he was not immune to making them again. Nobody is perfect; but imperfection, depending on the situation, can bring about a wide range of consequences — from the inconsiderable to the severe. Peter had only taken a moment, just a small little window, to relax and talk with his travel companions, utilizing Lang’s break for a break of his own, but that was all that was required.

Lang walked into a nearby thicket to do his business. He looked into the sky and watched a hawk swoop by, and he felt the relief ease from his bladder. Done, he was beginning to zip his hiking pants when he heard the shouts. It was a loud, unfriendly commotion.

Spinning around, Lang left his pack in the bushes and cocked his body forward slightly, pulling his head down between his shoulders as he edged back toward the group. He stayed low along the tip of the thicket to remain out of sight for as long as possible. From a distance, he could see that three men—obviously hostile—were confronting his friends, and one of them had what looked to Lang like an AK-47 rifle pointed at Peter. The other men held long knives in front of them, pointing them at the women in a threatening manner.

The three hostiles were dressed like accountants, or maybe like frozen accountants who’d been lost in the woods for a good while. That detail was shocking to see. Almost unbelievable. Except for a lack of ties (one of which was tied around an arm of one of the men holding a knife, as if it were a tourniquet), the men looked as though they might have been executives out to lunch at an Applebee’s who had together decided to hike into the forest and rob someone at gunpoint. They weren’t dressed for the elements at all, but they had weapons. The incongruity was alarming. They were using the weapons to threaten, waving them like spreadsheets in a boardroom melee.

Lang approached from behind the men, and Peter saw him, and Lang saw that he saw, but the older man gave him no sign that he could interpret as an instruction, so the young man crept just a little bit closer. Almost imperceptibly, Peter indicated with a slight motion of the hand that he wanted Lang to stop just as the man with the AK-47, shivering with cold and fear, began shouting that he wanted Peter and Natasha to throw over their backpacks.

Lang stood still, unsure whether Peter wanted him to just stand quietly, or move to cover. In such moments, you have to decide one way or another. So Lang decided on the latter, and, as he moved toward a nearby tree, his foot snapped a fallen branch that lay buried under the snow. The crack of the wood alerted the three bandits to his presence, and instantly bodies moved into motion and events seemed to slow down for everyone involved.

The man with the AK-47 wheeled around to see who was behind him, and Peter, reacting with shocking speed and agility, crashed into the man and they tumbled over into the snow. Peter snapped the weapon from the man’s hands with little trouble at all as Lang rushed to help. In that moment, the two knife-wielding bandits took advantage of the scuffle to snap up the two backpacks, and, before anyone could shout or protest, they had bounded awkwardly into the forest. They left without looking back for their colleague, sprinting into the woods, slipping and sliding on their flat leather dress shoes, winding in and out of the trees… and they made their escape.