Michael Bunker - WICK

It was hard to tell. The artificial light was so brief. And so rare.

The red-bearded man smiled when the lights went dark again in the camp.

“I sing the body electric. I celebrate the me… yet… to come!”

He looked at Clive, who smiled at him under his thick mustache. “It’s almost like bein’ the Good Lord there for a few seconds,” he said with a wink, his eyes wide, like a child’s.

He sat there, Clive did, and looked over the dash to the darkened prison camp that was Carbondale, Pennsylvania.

“Insufficient shielding,” Clive Darling said, matter-of-factly. “We tried to warn ‘em.”

Natasha did her best not to show concern on her face, and she smiled stiffly, but she was worried. They were in the middle of nowhere with no antibiotics, no herbal remedies, not even any natural antibiotics like garlic, echinacea, or even honey. She’d instructed Elsie to start a fire in the fireplace to boil some water, while she went to find Peter to determine what she might do next to prepare, aid, and support whatever treatment Lang might need.

She found Peter moving stealthily towards the tree line behind the cabin, catching up with him with a low shout. “The wound is infected, Peter,” she said, “and I don’t think just cleaning it and repacking it is going to do anything but cause him excruciating pain. You’re going to have to come and help.”

Peter grimaced. The last gray-blue of dusk was highlighting the trees, and a cold wind began to whip through them, making the shadows move across the snowy ground. He was concerned about Lang, and he saw fear and nervousness etched across Natasha’s face.

“Absolutely…”

Peter’s mind was torn. He was also concerned with security. Lang was his friend, and was like a son to him, but with the four of them all inside the house, they’d be blind, and exposed. He wasn’t happy about that. Security was really everything right now. If only the women could deal with Lang…

He didn’t know what he might do with the wound that the women could not either. He wasn’t sure there was anything to be done at all.

Still, he had to do something to help Lang or the boy wouldn’t last long. Sepsis was a concern, and there wasn’t anything he could think of at that moment that frightened him more than that. If the infection got into the blood stream… well… he’d just have to see if there was anything he could do.

Walking back into the cabin, Peter struggled in his thoughts. Absent a medical solution—and he had to admit that his own library of knowledge and experience had already been taxed to its limit—there wasn’t much left he could do.

The rudiments of an extravagant placebo plan had run through his mind when he first noticed that Lang was getting worse. Convincing someone that a medicine or a procedure is effectual—when in reality it was not—can be very powerful, not just in convincing the injured or sick person that they are getting better, but often enough the positive effects of a placebo extend to actual physiological healing. The body, convinced that something powerful or helpful is going on, will often ramp up its own defenses to match or meet the expected results. In this way, patients have had their pain alleviated during surgery and recovery, and there were even cases of people healed of cancers and other real diseases with the use of placebos alone. In his own mind, Peter called his plan ‘The Sugar Pill Plot.’

Placebos were often just sugar pills, made to look like the real thing. In tests, doctors or scientists gave sugar pills to some subjects while others received real medications. Often, those who received the sugar pills responded to the treatment as positively as those who had received the real medicine.

The mind is a powerful thing. Peter knew that, and, without any other solution, he was contemplating a very involved ruse as a last ditch way to try to help Lang.

He felt in his pocket and noticed that he still had the cell phone from the man he’d been forced to shoot. Peter knew that cell phones were loaded with trace amounts of gold and silver, and that both gold and silver have been used for millennia as antibiotics and antivirals. He also knew that he didn’t have the proper tools, chemicals, or equipment to extract the gold and silver from the phone… but , he thought to himself, and this was the thing, Lang doesn’t know that.

The first thing Peter did was to gather Natasha and Elsie together. He told them that the three of them needed to black out the windows. They were going to have fire and light in the cabin, and they wanted as little evidence of that to be evident from outside the cabin as possible. The smoke from the fireplace was bad enough. Peter thought that he should have asked them not to light a fire in the first place; however, since they’d already started the fire, he would use it to sterilize the knife and prepare his placebo ruse.

Using the flashlight for light, Peter proceeded to cut large squares of carpet from the floor of the cabin and instructed Natasha and Elsie to find nails, staples, or any other materials that might be useful for hanging the squares. He told them that they could fasten them over the windows by pounding bent and rusted nails through the carpet and into the window frames using a brick and a rock they’d found behind the cabin. It took 45 minutes for the water to boil sufficiently for Peter to get to work.

He started by taking the phone apart. He made a big show of the disassembly process. In his mind he noted that he was not only disassembling , but he was also dissembling , which meant lying. It was good that the trick was a secret, because he didn’t know how poorly his word play might be received at such a time.

He removed the chip, the processor, wires, and connector from the phone, all the while announcing loudly and confidently everything that he was doing. He convinced himself of the lie, so that his patient might more readily believe him. He gave a short dissertation on the antibiotic, antiviral, and anti-bacterial benefits of silver and gold in solution. All that part was true , he thought. He worked like a magician, using sleight of hand and showmanship to make the whole display believable. Nobody doubted him. He noted that he was manipulating the trust of his friends, but — He forced the thought to leave him. He didn’t have time for self-recrimination.

“Natasha? Elsie? Have you finished blacking out the cabin?” Peter called out from down the hallway.

“Yes, Peter. It’s all done,” Natasha replied.

“Okay, while I finish this, I want you two to do a top to bottom search of this place. Examine every cabinet, drawer, cubbyhole, shelf… everywhere … anything you find, call it out loudly, OK? You holler out what it is to me, and I’ll tell you if we can use it. There’s probably not much to be found. The place looks like it’s been stripped bare, but you never know.”

He stepped back into the room and then stuck his head into the hallway again, as an afterthought, choosing to err on the side of caution. “Stay away from any windows,” he warned. “Even brushing up against one can cause a disturbance that might be seen from outside.”

The two women called out agreement and began their search. Peter used the momentary diversion to pour out the solution he’d been concocting. He filled an empty coffee cup with water from one of his water bottles, then added a tiny pinch off of the ChapStick to the water. His plan was to heat the water in the cup by the fire so that it would melt the tiny amount of ChapStick. The oily substance would add a peculiar taste that Peter hoped would amplify the placebo effect on Lang’s mind.