They found one, a place where the road was somewhat more destitute of refugees and obstructions. They walked a mile up the highway, toward the north, and as they walked they noticed that most of the traffic had stopped for the night. The road there turned straight westward and took a short dip to the south, and they found a little bend in the highway that they determined would be the best place for them to attempt a crossing.
As darkness descended like a curtain on the area, the three halted their plodding through the trees, hid among the bushes, and surveyed the scene before them.
The refugees on the highway huddled in small groups and started large bonfires from anything they could find that would burn in order to stay warm. While there was scattered violence here and there, the people down below them seemed to be intent on hunkering down for the cold night on the highway and its easement for some reason devoid of any appreciable logic. Misery loves company, but less often is it recognized that company, especially the wrong kind, often invites misery. As the three looked down on the scene, they saw that there was less company here perhaps, and therefore less attendant misery, so they determined that it was here that they would take their shot.
Peter spotted a place where there was at least a football field’s distance between campfires, and he pointed out quietly to Lang and Natasha that there were no campfires burning in the woods in the distance across the wide expanse of roadway and greenbelt. “This is where we cross,” he said, as they looked down on the stygian scene.
The plan was to sprint the distance in irregular intervals so that they would not all get caught out in the open at the same time. Looking out across the distance, they determined the shortest route and marked a reference point to run towards, and they decided that Peter would go first. He would carry both his own bag and Natasha’s. “If something happens to me, God forbid, if I stumble or fall, I’ll throw the bags as far from my body toward the opposite side as I can, and you must try to gather them in on a sprint as you make your own way across.” Lang thought of stories that Volkhov had told him of the storming of the beaches at Normandy. The soldiers, when taking heavy fire from the enemy, had tossed their guns up the beach so that, if the worst happened, the soldiers who actually made it farther up the sand would have more firepower ahead of them in their fight.
“Don’t look back, or to the side. Just put your head down and fly,” Peter said as he touched them each on the shoulder. With that, he gathered his breath in and turned to run.
Lang and Natasha watched his burly figure push out across the snow and then gather speed when he reached the road, keeping low to the ground. In a normal circumstance, Peter’s movements would have appeared clumsy and bulky as he sprinted like a bear across the clearing with the two bags heaving on his back. Perhaps from the perspective of anyone who might have seen him, he did appear to be a bear, but in any event, he made it safely across without even raising a protest from the distance, and he disappeared into the woods beyond. Lang was shocked. Maybe this is going to be easier than we thought, he tried to encourage himself.
Once on the other side, Peter made his way into the trees and found a safe place to stow the bags, and, returning to the tree line, he stood poised to watch the others cross, to be ready in case they needed help.
Natasha crossed next, and she did well enough, though one of the parties surrounding a campfire spotted her and a shout of “Hey! Over there!” rang out through the night. Peter was on alert to see if she was going to be chased or followed, but she wasn’t, so before long, panting and out of breath, she joined Peter in the trees on the south side of the highway.
There was a stirring in one of the camps, so Lang waited several more minutes. When no one came out searching, or ventured over near the wire where the two had crossed back into the woods, he decided it was safe to make his own venture across the Rubicon. He thought of old black and white films of East Germans sprinting for freedom before a shot would ring out, and their bodies would tumble headlong into the razor wire. That ought to keep me running, he thought, and he reached down with a stick and cleared the snow from the soles of his boots.
Lang made his start, and, almost from the beginning, Peter could see that the attempt was not going to go well. Lang tripped at the starting gate and fell, sprawling into the snow on the upwards low climb to the main highway, and Peter, from his vantage point, noticed that some men to his left, who had reacted to Natasha’s dash across the roadway, were gathering and pointing toward the shadow he made on the snow. They began to approach the area at the top of the incline where Lang was struggling to regain his footing. Peter watched as Lang regrouped and began his run in earnest.
The men broke into a jog toward him as he crested the low hill, and Peter saw that they had an angle on him, so that they would almost certainly cut him off before he could make it to safety. He watched as the men converged on Lang’s path and anticipated whether he would have to run to his aid.
Feinting to the left, Lang made it past the first defender, before a second man who made it into the middle distance between Lang and the trees cut him off. Angry shouts rang out and someone yelled, “Hey, give me that bag!”
Lang picked up his speed, finding traction now as the adrenaline rush made his body surge forward. Another of the assailants was sprinting toward him trying to stop him in his tracks, but Lang swerved and pivoted in the other direction. He had spent his life fleeing bullies, and now that lifetime of training kicked in. He maneuvered across the field at an angle, determined not to let these untrained hooligans do what the professional bullies he’d faced in Warwick could not.
Sprinting now at full-speed he almost casually and effortlessly detached his backpack’s waist band, and, grabbing the padded arm strap in a single fluid motion, he swung it’s full weight at his nearing attacker, juking to his right again simultaneously. The bag caught the man flush in the side of the head, and the bully tumbled to the ground, yelping in pain. This action caused a cacophonous cry of protest from the other men who were approaching from the rear, slow and lumbering, unable to get any traction in the ice and snow. Lang bent over, scooped up his bag, and ran toward the trees.
In the flickering night, he suddenly sensed a smooth air of calm as he warmed with the excitement and accomplishment of his escape. He noticed his shadow on the ground, running before him, as cast by the moon over his shoulder. He thought it beautiful and sublime, the motion of its lengthening stride, the way its feet met his own as it sprinted toward safety in front of him.
Just as suddenly as he had come to appreciate the pleasure of his own shadow—his own running—he came to question what became of it. In that expanded microsecond he heard a calamitous noise in the distance, and it sounded like an explosion over his shoulder, and he looked down at his shadow and saw the red splotches on its torso. He spun around in a jerking, involuntary motion like someone had run over him with a car, but he turned his head to watch his shadow until the last moment, and then he slammed to the ground whereupon the shadow disappeared.
Now, he was only Vasily Kashporov lying on the cold hard ground in the snow, with a bullet wound in his shoulder.
****
Lang knew that something had struck him but did not know what it was and he felt no pain. He had to get up, and as he did the thought crossed his mind that he was already free. He didn’t know at the time why that particular thought crossed his mind, but he did know that he was no longer helpless little Vasily, cowering from bullies. He was now a free man, and had tasted freedom, and he liked it. Solzhenitsyn said, “You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again.” Lang had suddenly come face to face with his death, and he determined that he would get up and run, and somehow this made him feel whole again. He liked being free, and he ran like the wind.
Almost instantaneously upon hearing the shot and seeing Lang tumble to the ground, Peter had vaulted out of the tr
ees and, operating on adrenaline of his own, he was sprinting towards Lang like an Olympian with the 9mm pistol readied in his hand. The younger man had regained his feet and was rapidly continuing his progress. Peter met him and grabbed him firmly, hurrying him along, and the two friends made it back into the trees before the men in the distance could decide just what they’d seen.
The assailants stopped, tired and out of shape, and they did not follow their victim into the woods. If they had been asked what stopped their pursuit, they would have sworn up and down that they had just seen a bear run out of the woods to save a man.
****
Most Americans, prior to the events that were now unfolding in their country, would have denied that such random acts of violence and wanton cowardice would have been possible, but that is precisely because most Americans are insulated from reality. Woefully so. They are ignorant of world history and the conditions of life experienced through most of the last millennia by much of the rest of the world. When people have lived their lives carelessly, in the lap of comforts and the bosom of excess purchased for them by the hard work and sacrifice of their ancestors; when they have counted on laws and government alone to keep them safe, they come to believe that the same kindnesses they have experienced at the hands of their neighbors heretofore will be granted them when that world collapses. They believe that humanity will not revert to its animal nature when there is a disintegration of those laws, and when the power and ability of that government to impose and keep those laws is not just diminished, but eliminated. In this, they are wrong.
Man, loosed from the bonds of all law, and religion, and conscience, even if those restraints have been false or damaged to begin with, reverts to the animal nature that animates him. It is inevitable, then, that masses of men, loosed from restraints and deprived of access to the artificial means of provision they have counted on for all their lives, will soon experience unprecedented violence and mayhem. Even if it begins in small places, a little leaven will be enough to leaven the whole lump, and eventually social feelings will collapse along with society. We don’t have to like hearing it, but the truth has a way of not caring whether we like it or not.
The world is a violent place when restraints are removed. The already vanishing traditions of human care and kindness, peacefulness, and lawful living have been systematically eradicated by dialecticians who maintain power by championing division and by pitting neighbor against neighbor, race against race, and party against party. The bloody product of this will seem barbarous and horrible to those who have yet to experience it. This is strong medicine. But in times of sickness, it is medicine that is needed.
CHAPTER 21
Peter checked to see if anyone was following them. No one was. Tracking quickly through a low gully and into the deeper woods, after a good five-minute walk, they came upon a stone fence line in the snow separating a field from the surrounding forest. He pulled Lang down into the snow and, by touch and instinct more than sight, he felt for the wound that he knew to be in Lang’s left arm or shoulder. He needed to know how serious it was before he made any decisions about what to do next. He found the wound, and it seemed to be a minor one in the larger scheme of things, with a clear entry and exit in the fat of the tissue. Lang was blessed that the bullet had not struck any bone, and the young man was working on adrenaline and seemed to be unconcerned by the fact that he’d just been shot. In fact, he was slightly delirious.
“You’ve been shot, Lang.” Peter said. “But I don’t think it is too serious. A scratch, really.”
“Wow,” Lang replied, his right hand reaching upwards to feel the wound. He drew back his hand with blood on it, and he grimaced slightly, but not from the pain. “I’ve never been shot before.”
“Well, now you’re an expert,” Peter said, cupping his hand behind the young man’s neck. “I think you’ll be okay. We’ll move on so that we can put some distance between us and that madness, and then I’ll see if we can build camp and clean and dress the wound.” He looked at Lang and gave him a smile, then a wink.
“Thank you, Peter.” Lang looked back at him with sincere appreciation in his eyes.
“No problem, son,” Peter said, his smile perhaps grimmer than he had hoped. “Now let’s move out.”
The way was dark and they moved very slowly, mostly by feel. Natasha switched bags with Lang so she could carry the heavier of the loads and take some of the weight off his shoulders as he slowly began to come back into his body. There was just enough moonlight to allow them to see from tree to tree and make their way, as if by Braille, through the low valley. The branches clung like webs to the nighttime sky, and the brush caught their clothes as they swept past.
These valleys, cut by receding glacial ice, ran primarily from northeast to southwest, which was good for the Warwickians as they made their escape. It meant that they could move steadily through the darkness without having to do a lot of climbing and descending.
Peter intended to walk for a good thirty minutes, but their pace, though steady, was so slow that it was nearly two hours before he felt that they had put enough distance between themselves and the road. They walked a little further, and then the trio came upon a low stone building, very small—maybe eight feet by eight feet. Peter identified it as an old well house.
The building had a wooden door that had mostly rotted away, and around the top of the building, where there had once been a few small windows, were now jagged slices of glass, long ago smashed and broken by who knows what or whom. It took the three of them a good fifteen minutes to drag out all of the trash that had accumulated in the building over the years, but before long, they had it cleaned out enough to use for the night. The floor of the well house was cement, and in the center of the building was only a protruding water pipe, maybe six inches in diameter, which someone had covered with a large rock.
Peter built a very small fire inside the building and explained that he would only let it burn as long as necessary. Fire is a beacon, but sometimes it is necessary, so he intended to obscure it from view as best as he could. He needed to produce coals that they could use to cook their food and heat water for cleaning Lang’s wounds, and then he would let the fire burn just long enough to heat the stones of the building itself, for heat in the night, before the fire would be extinguished.
The big man prepared and started the small fire and showed Natasha how to feed wood into it without letting the flame get too big, and then he took the gun and told Lang he would patrol the perimeter and keep watch until they had enough glowing red coals to do what they needed to do. He stepped out into the night to have a look around.
Lang and Natasha sat for a moment, and she tended the fire and watched him in silence.
“Are you holding up?” he asked, seeing her sink deeper into thought.
“Yes,” Natasha sighed. “I’m fine. I’m just worried about you… and thinking about Kolya.”
“I know,” Lang said. “I am sorry Cole didn’t make it back in time.”
She looked up in distress at the mention of that name, with a silent insistence that he call her brother by his given name.
“Natasha, I’m going to keep calling him Cole because I believe him still to be alive. I’m sure he’s okay. He’s a resourceful fellow.”
“Oh, there is no need to lie, Lang. We both know that he would not have disappeared unless something bad had happened to him. He probably fell into some criminals’ hands and now he’s—”
“Stop. Don’t think that way. He’s fine.” Lang looked at her and wished that he could be more certain of that fact, but the remembrance of the bombed-out remains of Warwick flashed through his mind. The simple truth was that nothing was fine. He shifted his back against the wall and suddenly felt a pain shoot down through his arm and realized that, even on that account, there was nothing about the situation that was fine.
“Here. Let me take a look at you,” Natasha said, and she pulled Lang’s shirt back slightly, hearing the cold sucking sound
of the coagulated blood ripping slightly from his skin as she bent over his wound.
“Ow, Ow. Ow!” Lang said, before he gritted his teeth and leaned back again into the wall, suddenly becoming aware of the warmth in her hands.
“Is it bad?”
“It’s fine. It’ll be okay.”
“Now who’s lying?” Lang replied, attempting a small grin as a kind of gallows humor. Natasha grinned back, and somehow this made the pain in his arm begin to lessen.
They sat and talked as Natasha tended to the fire, and they both tried to encourage each other for what seemed like an hour. They spoke of the strangeness of their journey and the tiredness of their hopes. They talked of how their lives had seemed somehow… shortened… having been ripped out from under them by the flash of recent events. “It seems like yesterday that Kolya and I were getting ready for the Fall Festival,” Natasha said.
“It seems like a minute ago that you were telling him to stop with his damned Shakespeare,” Lang smiled. “I wonder what he would have to say about this fine mess?”
In that vein, they went on speaking and reminiscing, echoing the same kind of conversation that was taking place around millions of campfires at that very moment, spread across the landscape of America and, beyond that, the globe.
Indeed, had one been lodged in the middle distance between heaven and earth at that moment; or maybe parachuting down from the outer reaches of space in a tumbling freefall that had not yet leveled out; had one not gained a controlling vantage point in that middle distance; if one had looked upward and then downward in that tumbling spiral in the darkness of space, it would have been difficult to tell which were the fires burning on the ground around the millions of campfires like this one, and which ones were raging in the hearts of a million stars.
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