Michael Bunker - WICK

“Leave him alone, Val. Just don’t start it up again.” It was Steve. The silent one. Like his comrade Mike, he was getting tired of the constant bickering back and forth between Val and Kent, and he’d come to conclude that Val was mostly to blame. Val was like a rooster who, with nothing worthwhile at which to peck, pecked at anything near him that he deemed to be weaker than himself.

“Yes. Listen to our amigo, Esteban, here.” Kent felt himself slurring his words. When he said ‘Estaban,’ it sounded to him like ‘Esh-tra-gon.’

“Time’s out of joint…” (He was speaking so slowly!) “…no need to get your nose out of joint, too.” The words came out like molasses, awkwardly, and ran together in his ears like they did not in his head.

The brutish Val looked at him and thought that someone getting his nose pushed out of joint was exactly what was needed. They were waiting for Mike to come back from a little hike up ahead to scout out their direction, and passing the time with Val was, as usual, not turning out to be rewarding for Kent, so he excused himself to walk over to a small group of bushes to let the vodka finish its pass through him.

“Stupid idiot,” he muttered to himself as he half stumbled and half climbed up a small rise toward the bushes. “Of course, I’m trying to slow you down, you moron…,” he slurred to himself.

Walking over the rise, he stood at a small hedge line and was just about to unzip his pants when sobriety snuck up on him and a shot of adrenaline flew through his system like lightening. There, at the bottom of the hedges, in a small clump of trees, was a man dressed like an accountant. Blood, turned black and inky like impenetrable night, lay frozen in a pool around him.

The man held up his hand for his friends to shut up. They were gathered in a group at the foot of the bridge where they’d been sitting for several days — doing business. Stalled cars and buses formed a zigzag maze purposefully designed to block access to the bridge from all vehicles, and to force pedestrians to walk across the bridge — but only after paying a toll.

The friends had learned that it was easier to allow the food to come to them by standing across its mouth with knives, boards, and chains, than it was to go out in search of supplies for themselves. Looting was turning out to be dangerous business in the city. The rumor was rampant that some looters had even been cooked and eaten. Charging tolls was much safer. They’d placed a sign on the off-ramp side of the bridge that told the people who were escaping out of the city that they needed to pay to cross—a fee for the right to exit hell. The gang told the citizens that the toll was something like an indulgence, and the gatekeepers, the popes and priests of the new world disorder, administered punishments upon anyone who tried to exit purgatory without paying. The sign made it clear what forms of payment were acceptable…

Weapons. Food. Money.

It was unclear what they planned to do with the money.

“Hey. Shhh. Shhh. Shhhhhh.”

They watched as a couple of yellow suits on what appeared to be bicycles came drifting down the decline. The bikes were taking their time, weaving slowly in and out of traffic and the suits riding the bikes turning their hooded heads first to this side and then to that side. The yellow suit in the lead seeming to point out little features on the ground to the suit in the back as they crept lazily, silently, eerily, through the deadened line of vehicles.

“What the…?” A man with a two by four with a few rusty nails protruding from the end was the one who couldn’t quite find the last word he was searching for. He stood with the others, because all of them were standing now. As a group, they watched the yellow suits calmly apply the brakes on their bikes.

From a distance, maybe from the top of the bridge, one would have seen the tallest of the yellow suits dismount from the bike and calmly unstrap a pack tied to the back of the bicycle. The suit walked to the foot of the bridge, approached the circle of men, setting the bag slowly on the ground. From the height of the bridge, the yellow suit, looking something like an astronaut or a technician trying to control a viral outbreak, bent down, opened the bag, and began fishing around for something inside it. The other suit waited with the bikes. The men stood and stared with their weapons in anticipation…

In a movie, the music would have built to a crescendo, but this was not a movie. It was real life. When the yellow suit stood up with something strange in its hands, the men screamed, broke, and ran. They scattered in all directions, running for cover like men chased by bees, or devils… or death. They never looked back.

With her head down, looking at the package in her hands, Veronica had missed the sight of the armed men fleeing in panic. Now, finding herself alone, she reached up and undid the helmet of her fallout suit and removed it, feeling the cold air slip across her face. She opened the box of graham crackers she held in her hands and carefully tore open the interior packaging. Removing a cracker, she took a bite. She slipped the cardboard flap back in its slot and dropped the box back in the bag, and, throwing the bag across her shoulders, she walked back to Stephen.

“What was that about, Mom?”

“I guess they weren’t hungry,” Veronica said. “Besides, they weren’t going to stop us with a silly board with nails in it!”

She put her helmet back on and mounted her bike, and she and Stephen rode down into the highway leading into Staten Island.

The man struggled gamely, but he was stuck fast. He’d fallen through the boards of the dilapidated bridge, and the wood had given way just enough to bite into his leg but not enough to allow it to wriggle free. He didn’t have the leverage or the angle to pull his leg out. He was looking at the leg as if deep in thought, perhaps determining whether he had other choices. He ran his hand along the back of his neck and then over a few day’s growth of beard.

Hidden in the trees, Lang could see that the man’s ankle had become wedged in the supporting cross braces of the old footbridge, and that he was unable to reach down through the broken boards to free himself no matter what he tried.

Peter watched along with the others as the man struggled, and he noted aloud that the man had better find a way to get loose. “If he doesn’t manage to free himself, he’s surely going to die…” Peter paused. “…if not from the injury or starvation, then from some group of troublesome passersby looking for gear, guns, or just trouble. They’ll eventually come upon him.”

“We need to help him,” Lang told Peter, looking at the older man with a face that betrayed both fear and compassion.

“I don’t know, Lang,” Peter said. He stared, unblinking at the man on the bridge. He could not help but see both the metaphor… the bridge itself… and the danger. “Helping him could put us all at risk. We could be found ou—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Peter!” Natasha snapped, interrupting him. “What if that was you stuck there on that bridge?”

“Well,” Peter said, “sure, I would want someone to help me, but I’d also not expect it. I’d understand if they couldn’t do it without great risk to themselves. No one deserves the heroic, Natasha.”

“Still, I’d like to go and check on him, Peter,” Lang said.

“You can’t go, Lang.” The old man looked at the youth, his skin pale and beginning to look almost transparent. “You can’t even lift up your arm! How are you going to help this man get free with one arm?” Peter paused, staring at Lang. Then he looked down for a beat before adding, “No… If anyone is going, I’m going.”