Michael Bunker - WICK

Lang never even thought about giving chase. The man who had held the AK-47 jumped up to his feet. He looked at Peter with a murderous gleam in his eye and demanded that Peter give him his gun back. Demanded it. If it had happened more slowly, Peter would have stopped to laugh at him. Here was a thief that had, seconds before, been threatening to kill him over a couple of backpacks, and now he was brazenly demanding that the weapon used in his crime be returned to him, as if some cosmic injustice had occurred. The man’s sense of entitlement was both shocking and bizarre — but it represented the thinking of his type of people. In that instant, the man realized that life, indeed, could turn on a dime.

Peter didn’t have time to react with amazement. The man rushed at him, apparently in the expectation that Peter wouldn’t know how to work the gun. In this estimation, he was wrong. Peter gracefully stepped backward a half step as the man flailed toward him, causing the charging man to miss him. Peter pivoted, just a small twist on his rear leg, and swung his body around so that the direction the barrel pointed was not towards Lang, or Natasha, or Elsie, but instead the gun was pointed off in the direction the two other men had run. When the attacker recovered from his missed lunge, he spun back around and rushed at Peter, again. And, as simply and effortlessly as one might drop a dime, Peter shot him point-blank in the chest.

The bullet hit the man in the center of his mass. The sound of the blast ricocheted off the snow, climbed up into the mountain, and spun around in the cool, crisp air. The man fell backward, into the snow, and he died. His sense of entitlement died with him.

Peter didn’t spend any time at all frozen in place, or grieving over what he’d done. He simply checked to make sure that Elsie, Natasha, and Lang were alright. He looked up for a moment, as if deciding if he should chase the other two bandits into the woods to retrieve the backpacks, but he decided against it. At his age and in his condition, he probably would not catch them, and he’d definitely leave his three friends in danger. If the bandits were working with anyone else, it would not be wise to split his group. In any event, the time lost wouldn’t benefit anyone. The two packs were simply gone. He shook his head as if to apologize.

Peter quickly made a mental rundown of the situation. They’d gained a battle rifle, but at immense cost. He was not sure that he would have made that trade. He worried about the loss of medicines and food, but what was done was done. And they still had Lang’s pack.

Lang’s pack!

“Lang! Where is your backpack, son?”

“Oh! Uh… I left it in the trees when I heard the ruckus. I’ll run back and get it.”

“No. Wait, Lang,” Peter said, firmly. “We’ll go together.”

Walking over to retrieve the pack, Peter checked the weapon, pulled out the clip and felt the heft so he could determine its capacity and estimate how many rounds were likely in it. His mind continued cataloging, prioritizing, and planning. Killing the bandit in self-defense was something he’d had to do, and this was not the time to fret over things that could not be undone.

With the pack retrieved, they walked back to the body of the dead accountant, and Peter knelt and began frisking the corpse. In his pockets, he found a cell phone (dead), car keys (useless), a pen (useful), and a tube of Chapstick (useful). Actually, he thought, the phone and the keys were useful for other things, too, so stuck them into the side pockets of his pants. As he did so, he made a mental note that the man had all of these things with him that were, for someone like him, now useless, but he did not have a lighter or a knife. What kind of man doesn’t carry the simple things that he should have with him at all times? Peter shook his head. But what kind of man lets such a man sneak up on him in broad daylight?

The dead man had no wallet, or, at least he had no wallet on him. As he finished the quick frisk, Peter looked up at Lang when he noticed the wedding ring on the man’s finger. Gold . He slipped it off with some difficulty, and, catching Elsie’s wince, he looked at her without shame on his face. “This will pay for what his friends stole.” He adopted a tone that was not angry or scolding, but was instructional and encouraging. He hoped that she was the kind of person who could take patient instruction.

“Sentimental notions like leaving gold on the ground while thieves run through the forest with our property, those have no place among us anymore. We certainly need to keep our humanity, but humanity has been accompanied with a large dosage of sentimental stupidity of late.” He waved his hand as if in accusation at the world. “All this… this collapse… it is all a part of the result of that kind of madness. We didn’t steal from this man. We didn’t provoke him, or cause him to do evil things. He made me kill him. He would have kept coming at me until I did, which amplifies his guilt.”

Peter studied her face to see how she was taking his words.

“We need to be able to replace our gear at some point, and we’ll need to buy it from someone, since we will not use our guns to steal. This is merely recompense for the trouble he has caused us.”

He looked around again at the faces of the others, scanning for understanding. All three of his friends nodded at him. He might have seen, though he probably did not, that they were even grateful. As they searched their hearts, they found a willingness to let the strongest among them carry not only the heaviest burden, but also the weightiest questions. Peter showed, by his demeanor, that he, too, was grateful. With a sideways smile he indicated that he realized that part of the reason they now found themselves in this predicament, having their food and medicine sprinting away from them in the hands of interlopers, was that he’d allowed himself a moment of all-too human frailty and had relaxed his watch. He tried to reassure them with his eyes that he felt his burden and accepted it, and that he would not let it happen again.

With that, the four turned on their heels, turned back up the mountain, and headed toward the southwest, continuing their climb.

An hour after the incident, they stopped for rest and decided to eat some food. They only had Lang’s backpack now, and Natasha carried it so that Peter could wield the rifle more easily. Lang’s arm was beginning to hurt him, and Elsie was wheezing from the long, slow climb up the mountain.

Peter hiked out a few hundred feet into the woods and picked a good place to hide himself so that he could stand guard while the others rested and ate. The other three did not sit clumped together in a group despite the fact that Peter stood guard over them. They kept themselves spread out by several yards, just far enough apart so that they could still talk and interact while minimizing the likelihood that a sniper or attacker, should there be one out there somewhere, could get to them all at once. They opened up the bag and pulled out some foil packs of tuna, and Natasha went through the process of starting a small fire to warm them and to boil and purify more water.

After a half hour, Lang went and took the rifle and replaced Peter so that Peter could eat and rest awhile. Before the two men parted, Lang stopped Peter and indicated that they should both squat down so that they could maintain cover while they spoke. Lang winced a little when he knelt down, and Peter noticed it.

“How are you doing, Lang?”

“I’m alright. Just a little sore and tired.” He wiped a sleeve across his face. “I’ll make it.”

“We’re going to have to stop at some point and take a look at that wound.”