Michael Bunker - WICK

They came upon the abandoned cabin just as darkness began to fall. Some kind of violence had occurred there, though there were no corpses evident lying around the place. They could tell there had been violence by the pockmarking of bullet holes in the walls, and the telltale signs that looters or bandits, or maybe just regular folks had ransacked the place. The door hung loosely on the hinges, and the glass from most of the windows was lying shattered on the ground instead of safely in its frames.

We know the events that we experience, and we have some knowledge of the legends that we are told, but the mind reels at the stories a place like this could tell when the world as we know it has ended. This lonely cabin in the woods had seen numerous such tales play out as individuals, groups, and bandits, and maybe even armies had crisscrossed these woods in search of someplace “safe.” The story of our four travelers was just now intersecting with this cabin, but dozens of other stories, all of them just as important to the characters living through them, had unfolded here. From the looks of the place, not all of them had ended well.

“Buildings make me nervous,” Peter said. “We don’t have enough people to secure a building, for one thing.” He paused, as if there were no reason number two. “It is shelter, sure, but it’s not much more than that.” He looked around at the place and considered the things that to him were painfully apparent, if one only cared to look. “If we stay too long, more people will be coming along.”

“Lang has to rest, Peter,” Natasha said. Elsie nodded her head in agreement and added, “And his wound needs treatment. He’s growing weaker, and the pain is obvious on his face.” Natasha touched Peter on the arm, and gave him a little smile, “We need to stop.”

They went through the building thoroughly, checking every place where someone might be hiding, but they found no one. Then they began to prepare an area to treat Lang’s wound. Peter briefed the women on what they would need to do, which didn’t take long seeing that their meds and first aid case had been stolen.

He patted Lang lightly on the back, then told Natasha, who’d been standing lookout at the door, that he needed go up front and secure the premises.

“You guide Elsie through the steps that I taught you. Do it thoroughly, and call me if you need anything.”

Elsie helped Lang remove his shirt, and it became clear, very quickly, that things were not right. The skin was pale and the area on the arm surrounding the wound was angry, red, and warm to the touch. The gunshot wound was infected, and it was much worse than they’d suspected.

The darkness was starting to invade the cabin. Natasha called to Peter who came down the hall, and, as he did, she stepped out into the hallway to meet him. Peter knew that if there were anything at all that they could do to help Lang, they’d have to do it quickly, before the cabin became shrouded in darkness. He might not survive another day if we don’t do something now, Peter thought, the world itself might become shrouded in darkness.

Something must be done. But what?

Clive Darling guided the rigged-up RV he calledBernice up a small incline until he could just see Carbondale over the bulge of the dashboard. The black, armored chase vehicles that accompanied him split up as he brought Bernice to a stop. Some moved to his left and others to his right. They moved in a line, the vehicles, until they came to a stop, like sentries out on a search, an ancient tribal ritual played out in modern sleek machinery. Doors and hatches on the vehicles opened up with precision, and soldiers poured forth from them, and in seconds the team had set up a secure perimeter, which included snipers and patrols.

Clive turned to his passenger and explained that he’d learned that the maniac running the Carbondale “resettlement” center had secured generators and a power plant. Clive explained that the officer running the prison camp was planning on electrifying the fences and illuminating the control tents where interrogations were said to be taking place around the clock.

The listener listened. He watched the man speak with confidence about how a life ought to be lived. He heard in that voice, the voice of the man named Clive, the intonations and ideas of a brother.

As Clive spoke, the listener saw a man who knew what he was about. Clive’s mannerisms showed the listener that the man with the Savannah drawl really believed the words that he said, and that he was not full of guile. This made the listener think of his own journey, his own modern ride, his own tribal ties.

“They don’t need electrical power to terrorize the public,” Clive said to the passenger, his slow drawl emphasizing the horror in the word… Terrorize .

Clive indicated with his hand the general world; first the world outside and then the world inside, over there in Carbondale. “They seem to have been doin’,” he paused. “…You know… the terrorizing… alright by themselves. But—”

Clive paused and looked at his passenger, the man so odd in his own weird skin, this man who seemed to mold himself around the world, and yet, who in the end molded the world around him. He watched his passenger listening, as they sat in the RV with their soldiers spread out in a perimeter around them. As they waited, the two men just passed time, just sharing like friends would.

The friends noticed when the power blinked on in the Carbondale camp, first with some hesitation, and then more insistently.

The lights pierced the surrounding darkness.

But not everywhere, though. The lights only burned in the tents of arbitrary power.

Clive massaged his heavy mustache with his left hand and looked over to his passenger. He indicated to the broader world again, and when he did, his passenger listened.

“There’s no way we can insure fairness in this world, and even if we could, I don’t think I’d want to. People are not equal, and no one can make them what they are not. However, the use of arbitrary power in the hands of tyranny perturbs me. We Luddites look to impair, obstinately, such terrorism wherever we find it.”

Clive looked at his passenger and his passenger looked at him.

“My friend, would you like to do the honors?”

The red-bearded passenger smiled, and his eyes lit up.

Clive lifted up the protective guard on the dashboard, exposing the lighted switch.

In the Carbondale Resettlement Camp, the technician had just finished a long day of fixing, and prepping, and wiring, and fueling up the huge generators. He pulled down the three large levers that would connect the machines to the makeshift “grid” in the camp. After running through a series of checks, the technician flipped up a plastic button guard, and then pressed in the red button with his thumb.

The generators fired up in unison, and the technician was pleased to see the lights in the maintenance tent first flicker, and then begin to burn brightly through the plastic windows.

He’d just packed up his tools and was rushing back to the tent to get out of the cold, when he heard the loud rumble accompanied with the otherworldly buzz.

It seemed that there was a split-second of silence before the entire control panel and junction box on the front of each of the generators blew up, showering pieces of metal and wire around the camp like rain.

The technician ran quickly along the packed white snow as the electrical sparks shot out in in white arcs above his head…

From a distance it might have looked like an umbrella, or a fireworks show.

On the other hand, maybe it looked like a mushroom cloud.