****
They picked up their trek to the southwest, and Natasha walked along near Elsie, asking her questions as they passed through the snow. Elsie stayed behind Natasha, and the men were on each flank, stationed ten yards to each side of the women. When the way narrowed, Peter would go first, Lang would bring up the rear, and they had learned to be more diligent and aware, as they were a larger group now and it was more likely that someone might spot them from a distance. Twice they properly spied out other travelers and were able to hunker down and wait in cover until the walkers passed by. On one of those occasions, five men carrying guns walked through in single file and at close ranks, oblivious to their surroundings, within yards of our four travelers who silently hid in the brush—Peter and Lang with their own guns at the ready.
Back on the march, they occasionally talked to one another, but only barely above a whisper, while their eyes still scanned the surroundings.
“We were married for 24 years,” Elsie told Natasha. “I can’t say it was perfect, but what marriage is? It was better than anyone else’s that we knew, for most of those years, anyway. I loved Glenn, and I know that he loved me and our children.” Her voice trailed off as she thought about her children. They walked on in silence a few steps, then she continued.
“Two girls and a boy… two women and a man now… they’ve all moved away. We were all raised to believe that children leaving and going out into the world is the way it’s supposed to be, you know? I don’t believe that anymore, but that’s the way it was and we didn’t know any better. Anyway, they went to college first, and then to distant jobs. The two girls are in New York City, and our boy, Glenn, Jr., he’s in Idaho. Boise, we think.” Natasha looked at her, as if to ask the question, and Elsie answered before she could. “We don’t get to talk to him much. He was different.”
“What do you mean ‘different’?” Natasha asked.
“He talked about all this… stuff,” Elsie said, indicating all around them with her hand. “You know, the stuff that’s going on right now. He was a survival nut. I guess you’d call him that. We called him that anyway. You know, in trying to reason with him. But he wouldn’t be reasoned with. He was always going on about something. Anti-government is what I thought, though he always denied it. He was always predicting the end of the world, even though he denied that too. I guess, thinking back on it now, I heard what I wanted to hear – anything that would allow me to reject the things he actually said. What he did say was that some bad things were going to happen, and that we should change our lifestyles and be more preparedness minded. I didn’t understand it all, but… well…” She let the implications of that hang in the air, still unwilling, entirely, to believe it.
“I’m sorry that you didn’t get along,” Natasha said.
“We just took everything he said as a rejection of us personally, as people, as parents, as Americans, whatever. When someone tells you that your way of living is unsustainable or foolish, it makes you mad as hell, you know? Not in a way that is measurable though, it’s more like a burning in you that really gets to you. It makes you want to lash out and defend yourself, your worldview… your… I don’t know how to say it. Anyway, I know now. I figured this out when I watched your men here bury Glenn. All that anger I felt was not at anything Glenn Jr. ever said. I was angry that what he said made my conscience burn.”
Elsie was quiet awhile, thinking as she walked along, and Natasha did not interrupt her thoughts.
“The things I said about my own son, the things I did behind his back, well, they were shameful. I wanted to have a relationship with him, but it was like having this accuser around, looking me in the eye all the time. Even when Junior wasn’t around, I felt him accusing me.”
Natasha walked, and listened. She reached her hand out to steady Elsie as she became aware that the older woman was breathing hard.
“I mean, he wouldn’t do it directly... not directly. He just said these things. And he believed them. I mean, he’d let other people take them or leave them, but he was so damned sure of himself. He never said, ‘you are a bad person’ or ‘you shouldn’t do this or that,’ or anything like that. But when he talked about the world and the problems in it, then I felt like he was talking about me. I took that personally, wouldn’t you? I felt it was a personal attack.
“Of course I know that it was not meant to be personal. I mean, I know that now. I’m his mother, for goodness sake. But it hurt our relationship. Things were always tense. Truth be told, I guess I got somewhat personal myself on occasion. I would have preferred that he had fallen into line, tossed out his beliefs and just embraced what all the rest of us believed. That was wrong of me. I see that. And it would have been wrong even if it had turned out that he was wrong and everyone else was right.” Elsie’s voice trailed off and her thoughts went elsewhere for a moment.
“I would give anything to have him here with us while we are going through all of this.”
“Did you say he was in Boise?”
“Yes. He moved up there a few years ago. I hear that there are many survivalist-minded types up there. I called them worse things before all this happened, but I won’t do that now. He tried to get us to come and check out his place, but we wouldn’t do it. We thought he was crazy.”
“Well, just because he was right about the world, doesn’t mean he wasn’t crazy!” Natasha said, trying to lighten Elsie’s mood.
“He wasn’t crazy,” Elsie replied flatly.
****
“We left Binghamton the day after the power went out. They told me it was an ‘EMP’, but I still don’t really know what that means. The stores were soon out of food. It only took four hours and they were stripped bare. My son used to rail on about that. I remember it now because I hated hearing it.
“He would say, ‘People are crazy if they really believe that the food in the system will last three days after a big enough collapse!’ I just wanted him to shut up about it. But he was right. We went into some stores and there were fistfights over the stupidest things. On one aisle, the only things hanging on the wall were some of those gel soles things… you know… the gel-filled pads you cut and put into your shoes to make them more comfortable? Anyway, people were actually fighting over those. Actually fist-fighting over them. Violence! Over some stupid gel soles.” Elsie shook her head and Natasha smiled, hearing the incredulity in the woman’s humor.
“We just got out of there. All you were going to get in the stores was killed.”
“That’s almost unbelievable. I mean, if we hadn’t already seen the things we’ve seen, I’d call you a liar.” Natasha said.
“There’s no lying about it. We had almost no food in the house. Not anything to speak of. We usually ate out before this happened.” Elsie shook her head. “We made it a few days, but things were getting really thin, and we heard about gangs and looters going door to door. A couple down the street got shot to death right on their doorstep. That’s when we decided we needed to get out.”
“Where were you planning to go?”
“There was no real plan. Some of the neighbors got everyone on our block together—whoever would come—and we had a meeting and just decided to get out of the city. That’s all we could think of at the time. Just get out. You know? Get a tent and get out into the country and just forage. It sounded easy. It wasn’t. But I suppose you all have gone through the same things?”
“I guess you could say it was something like that,” Natasha answered.
“One of the men on our street had a bunch of survival food, and a little hand-pump water purifier, so we figured we’d just walk into the woods until we found some place better than where we were. Isn’t that the story of all refugees for all time?”
“I suppose it is.”
“So tell me about you all. Who’s who?”
Natasha thought for a moment, not knowing what she should say. “Our story is not unlike yours. We’re from a town called Warwick.”
“Oh, Warwick… I�
��ve heard of it,” Elsie replied.
“My brother was with me,” Natasha said quickly, hoping to cut off any questions in case Elsie knew someone in the other Warwick, or in case she might ask details that would not match up if cross-checked. “He left his glasses at one of our camps and went back for them. We haven’t seen him since. I’m very worried.”
“Oh, honey! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sure he’s okay.”
“I don’t know.”
“You probably all should have stuck together, you know. But he’ll catch up with you, I’m sure of it.”
“I hope you’re right,” Natasha said, but she didn’t believe for a moment that Elsie was right. After the experiences of the last few days, Natasha rejected the kind of Pollyanna thinking that was common to so many modern Americans. Peter had warned them to beware of it. This one thing was a tiny microcosm of what had caused the dependency, lethargy, and deception in the first place: the tendency to believe that everything would somehow work out okay.
Elsie smiled at her, trying to be comforting. “The sun will come out tomorrow, and he’ll be here. You can bet your bottom dollar on that. He’s probably just a day behind us. That’s all,” Elsie said.
This woman, Natasha thought, however good her motives might be, didn’t have a single fact on which to base her assessment. She didn’t know what had happened to Cole, and an honest judgment, based on the facts on the ground as they had all seen them, did not offer much hope for Cole at all. But discourse in America was about emotions and feelings, and never truth and facts. Natasha had to get used to this reality, because it was a tricky one that could trap you if you weren’t careful.
People had the idea that if they were justpositive minded then nothing bad could happen to them. Or, they thought that if they lied to themselves and one another, then the truth would be easier to swallow later on. Natasha was not going to fall for that, but she appreciated the heart behind the deception.
Herein she could see the clash of worldviews that had multiplied and expanded to bring about this catastrophe, and would continue to cause dissolution if it continued going forward. Beyond the wars and fighting and destruction, there would need to be a reassertion of the age-old desire for truth and honesty. The mind of reason would need to triumph over the long reign of emotionalism and lies. What was it that Lang was always saying? It was a Solzhenitsyn quote that he’d repeated several times since they’d fled Warwick…
“One word of truth shall outweigh the world.”
Natasha hoped that somehow, from among the rubble, the truth, and a love of it, would one day rise, stand back up on its feet, and stare the world down again.
CHAPTER 24
Life can turn on a dime. Sometimes, things are going along as expected and then a vicious pirouette occurs. It’s as if we are chasing a beast through the forest and we think we have it right where we want it, and then it turns. It pivots and bares its fangs. In a flash, tables are turned, momentum is lost, victors become vanquished, and lives are lost. In those moments, all we can do is hold on and watch the thing happen.
Sunday
The day was crisp and clean, and except for the snow that was still thick on the ground, it might have been spring. It was that bright and airy. The snow crunched under boots, and the reflection off the snow made the eyes of the four cautious hikers squint into the brightness. After a few hours of good, hard walking, Lang called to Peter and told him that he needed to take a pause. Nature, he explained, was calling. He needed to urinate.
Peter smiled, and in that smile, he let down his guard. He also let down his pack, and so did Natasha. The hikers came to rest on the side of a low mountain.
Moments like these can be critical. They can define ultimate success or failure. Perhaps this is unfair, but it is undeniable. These moments represent that one small turn of the screw, or that one nail left undone, that can bring the whole structure down. They are the gaps in eternal vigilance, when people are in moments of peril, and when they ought to remain in a heightened state of awareness – but instead, there is a beat of relaxing just a little too much, or a tendency to make false assumptions about the situation, or to discount the proximity of danger. It is in such moments that mistakes are made. It happens in war and in peace, and it often costs lives.
And it is easy for others to judge, when they’ve not lived through the same circumstances in real life. Often, those who have lived through them, will later harshly judge themselves. How many times have we read a book or watched a movie and we’ve said, ‘I wouldn’t have done thus and such,’ as if perfection is something that is easily maintained when the entire world is plummeting into hell. Armchair quarterbacks always survive when they have the benefit of distance and, maybe temporary, safety.
Peter had already made a few mistakes, but he was not immune to making them again. Nobody is perfect; but imperfection, depending on the situation, can bring about a wide range of consequences – from the inconsiderable to the severe. Peter had only taken a moment, just a small little window, to relax and talk with his travel companions, utilizing Lang’s break for a break of his own, but that was all that was required.
Lang walked into a nearby thicket to do his business. He looked into the sky and watched a hawk swoop by, and he felt the relief ease from his bladder. Done, he was beginning to zip his hiking pants when he heard the shouts. It was a loud, unfriendly commotion.
Spinning around, Lang left his pack in the bushes and cocked his body forward slightly, pulling his head down between his shoulders as he edged back toward the group. He stayed low along the tip of the thicket to remain out of sight for as long as possible. From a distance, he could see that three men—obviously hostile—were confronting his friends, and one of them had what looked to Lang like an AK-47 rifle pointed at Peter. The other men held long knives in front of them, pointing them at the women in a threatening manner.
The three hostiles were dressed like accountants, or maybe like frozen accountants who’d been lost in the woods for a good while. That detail was shocking to see. Almost unbelievable. Except for a lack of ties (one of which was tied around an arm of one of the men holding a knife, as if it were a tourniquet), the men looked as though they might have been executives out to lunch at an Applebee’s who had together decided to hike into the forest and rob someone at gunpoint. They weren’t dressed for the elements at all, but they had weapons. The incongruity was alarming. They were using the weapons to threaten, waving them like spreadsheets in a boardroom melee.
Lang approached from behind the men, and Peter saw him, and Lang saw that he saw, but the older man gave him no sign that he could interpret as an instruction, so the young man crept just a little bit closer. Almost imperceptibly, Peter indicated with a slight motion of the hand that he wanted Lang to stop just as the man with the AK-47, shivering with cold and fear, began shouting that he wanted Peter and Natasha to throw over their backpacks.
Lang stood still, unsure whether Peter wanted him to just stand quietly, or move to cover. In such moments, you have to decide one way or another. So Lang decided on the latter, and, as he moved toward a nearby tree, his foot snapped a fallen branch that lay buried under the snow. The crack of the wood alerted the three bandits to his presence, and instantly bodies moved into motion and events seemed to slow down for everyone involved.
The man with the AK-47 wheeled around to see who was behind him, and Peter, reacting with shocking speed and agility, crashed into the man and they tumbled over into the snow. Peter snapped the weapon from the man’s hands with little trouble at all as Lang rushed to help. In that moment, the two knife-wielding bandits took advantage of the scuffle to snap up the two backpacks, and, before anyone could shout or protest, they had bounded awkwardly into the forest. They left without looking back for their colleague, sprinting into the woods, slipping and sliding on their flat leather dress shoes, winding in and out of the trees… and they made their escape.
Lang never even thought about giving chase. The
man who had held the AK-47 jumped up to his feet. He looked at Peter with a murderous gleam in his eye and demanded that Peter give him his gun back. Demanded it. If it had happened more slowly, Peter would have stopped to laugh at him. Here was a thief that had, seconds before, been threatening to kill him over a couple of backpacks, and now he was brazenly demanding that the weapon used in his crime be returned to him, as if some cosmic injustice had occurred. The man’s sense of entitlement was both shocking and bizarre – but it represented the thinking of his type of people. In that instant, the man realized that life, indeed, could turn on a dime.
Peter didn’t have time to react with amazement. The man rushed at him, apparently in the expectation that Peter wouldn’t know how to work the gun. In this estimation, he was wrong. Peter gracefully stepped backward a half step as the man flailed toward him, causing the charging man to miss him. Peter pivoted, just a small twist on his rear leg, and swung his body around so that the direction the barrel pointed was not towards Lang, or Natasha, or Elsie, but instead the gun was pointed off in the direction the two other men had run. When the attacker recovered from his missed lunge, he spun back around and rushed at Peter, again. And, as simply and effortlessly as one might drop a dime, Peter shot him point-blank in the chest.
The bullet hit the man in the center of his mass. The sound of the blast ricocheted off the snow, climbed up into the mountain, and spun around in the cool, crisp air. The man fell backward, into the snow, and he died. His sense of entitlement died with him.
****
Wick - The Omnibus Edition Page 37
