Michael Bunker - WICK

One of the men, the one who had been too slow to escape at first, shuffled his feet in the snow and then looked up at Peter, and then at Lang. He nodded his head to the two women with them, as if by way of formal greeting.

“Well, if you are traveling into Pennsylvania, you’ll be glad to know that you’ve been there for some time. We came from Carbondale, just over that hill. You can see it from up-top there.” He pointed along a ridgeline to the southwest and squinted into the sun.

Lang nodded at the man, thanking him. “We don’t intend to go there—not into town—but if you have any news you’d be willing to share, we’d appreciate it. At some point we’re going to have to find some supplies or—at the very least—some way to find out what’s in front of us.” He left a kind of open-ended invitation hanging in the air for the men to tell them anything they found to be appropriate.

“I’ll tell you,” the man said, with a bitterness that verged on anger barely disguised in his voice. His visceral passion was surprising to the four hikers. “You don’t want to go anywherenear Carbondale. In fact, we’re still too close to it for my own comfort.” He looked sideways at his colleagues, and Peter judged that their proximity to the city had been a matter of some debate as they’d sat around their campfire. “And as for supplies, I think you’re gonna be out of luck, man.”

“What’s going on in Carbondale?”

The three men exchanged looks that betrayed a shared experience, and in their looks, Peter saw what he could only call fear. The air between them dripped with anxiety and concern.

“The town’s been taken over by the National Guard.” One of the men snorted at the mention of that name. “ Supposedly, ” the man said, making quotes around the word with his fingers, “they did it to help feed and shelter refugees pouring into the area from New York and the surrounding area. A couple of weeks ago, the town had about 9,000 people living in it. It was nice. We grew up there,” the man said, making a little waving motion with his fingers, pointing back and forth between his mates. “Industrial town, but nice. Anyway, it was a little outlying suburb of Scranton. But…” the man’s voice halted a bit, and he closed his eyes for a few seconds before he started talking again. “Scranton is gone. It’s just gone . Burned to the ground. And now there are over 100,000 people in what can only be called an internment camp. A death camp. Something like out of the war.” He didn’t say which war, but, judging by their age, Peter guessed that he probably meant the one their grandfathers had likely fought in, the Second World War. “There are thousands more arriving by day and by night. It’s a hellhole.”

“What do you mean? How so?” Lang asked. He reached up and soothed his aching shoulder as he did, feeling the heat of the wound radiate along his arm.

Another man picked up the conversation and answered. There was anger in his voice as well. “The place has turned into nothing more than a prison camp. The National Guard unit running the place was up from Missouri to help in the emergency following Hurricane Sandy and the Nor’easter. They were working in New York, I believe. When all the power went out and the authority structure broke down—whatever that was that knocked out all the lights—they just took control. Rolled through here and began knocking people around. They supply the camp by doing raids in the surrounding area. They rob farms, loot whatever stores are left, kill people in their homes.” The man relayed this information as though he himself couldn’t quite believe it, emphasizing at the end of each phrase a kind of incredulity, as though there had been something sacred in the very mention of such places.

“It’s hard to know how it all got started. People were standing around outside the main grocery in my neighborhood bumming cigarettes and sharing news, when these trucks just rolled into town. From a distance, we thought it was the power company. Hell, everybody cheered! But no one is cheering anymore.”

One of his mates kicked a rock and looked off in the distance, over the ridge, toward the city. “Ain’t that the truth,” he muttered, under his breath, to no one in particular.

“There was a group of homesteaders… whaddya call’em? Survivalists? They lived in this little community back in the woods a bit. The Guard just wiped that place out. We saw that with our own eyes as we were hiking out this way. They came in and commandeered all the supplies, fuel, goods… even the people. In the first few days, they interrogated people, treating them like prisoners . They asked and prodded and even tortured people until they found out where these end of the world types were, you know, the people who had stored up food and supplies. Then the guardsman sent out the word that people who did that were ‘hoarders.’ That’s what they called them. Then they outlawed hoarding and announced the death penalty as a punishment. I’m telling you,” the man shook his head, “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”

Peter took in what they said and didn’t ask questions. He was calculating how to adjust the trajectory of their hike in relation to this news. One of the men, the first one who’d spoken, now chimed in again, pointing to Peter’s weapon and the one Lang had slung over his good shoulder.

“Those guns. You better be careful with those. The Guard has been shooting on site anyone caught with guns and ammo. They don’t even ask questions. They simply fire and then relieve you of your burden. And they have snipers posted at outposts all around the town.” He nodded at Peter as he said this, as if to promise him that what he was saying was true. “They shoot first and ask questions later, buddy. And they rob and steal at will, and they are deadly efficient at it.”

“Lord, have mercy on us!” Elsie said, almost involuntarily. Her gloved hand covered her mouth and her eyes betrayed her fear.

“Well, you better hope that the Lord does, because the people running Carbondale will not.”

Lang scratched his chin. He, too, was considering this new information. He’d learned from Volkhov to dig deeper, and so he did. “And they all went along with it? The whole National Guard unit?”

“Oh, no,” the second man replied. “That’s just it. There was… thereis… a battle going on over that very thing. That’s one of the problems right now. It’s hard to tell who’s who. There was a large portion of the Missouri Guard unit that wouldn’t go along with the plan, and they’ve kind of formed themselves into, I don’t know… what would you call it?” He looked at his friends and they shrugged. “…A resistance unit?” His friends shrugged again. “They call themselves the FMA, the Free Missouri Army. Man,” he said, shaking his head, “you can’t make this stuff up. Only a few weeks ago I was buying milk on the way home for my wife, and now we have armies battling in our streets. A lot of former cops and ex-military — those are the ones that don’t seem to be going along with the Guard’s tyranny.” He looked at one of his friends. “Well, dang it, it is tyranny,” he said, obviously continuing some argument the two had been having. “You can call it temporary measures if you want, but it ain’t temporary for those folks lying in the ground.”

Turning his back to his friend, he continued. “Anyway… so, there is a group that has set themselves up as an alternative, and they do seem to be more reasonable. If nothing else, they have local folks involved. And this FMA is the only hope that a lot of rural people have around here of not being forced into the camps. So right now, we’re all in the middle of a little ‘civil war’, and it really just comes down to who you run into.”