Wick - The Omnibus Edition

by Bunker, Michael

  The world would never be the same. There was no going back. The decision was final. She looked into the assembling clouds and saw the sky open up and the wind rush out, and she ran toward the nothingness.

  ****

  The odd-shaped RV was barreling down a road emptied of military style vehicles for the first time in many days. In the cab, the cowboy was spitting and cursing, and the leprechaun was listening. “Damn it all, damn it all.” Clive spat again, angrily. “Those bastards did it!”

  This was the bomb that took out Philadelphia.

  Across the adjacent field, they could see the woman who they’d brought into their home, and she was running towards the boys. The RV had been a hundred yards up the road when the flash split the morning sky. Now, Clive and Red Beard pulled up to the farmhouse and stopped. “Damn it all.”

  Veronica reached the two young boys, and she knew that there wasn’t time for explanations. A storm was coming. A new kind of storm. She put her arm around Stephen and threw his left arm over her shoulder. With two of them taking the weight off of Stephen’s foot, the three of them picked up the pace.

  All five of them got to the house at about the same time. Clive and Red Beard told them to follow, and they all spilled into the farmhouse’s drawing room. They pulled back the table, and then rolled back the rug. Clive bent down and picked up a slatted door made as a cutout in the floor. “I was hoping not to have to do this,” he said, “but we don’t have much choice now.”

  He pointed to the stairs leading down to a dark steel door.

  “In you go.”

  Calvin went first, and he helped Stephen limp his way down the steep stairs. Clive and Red Beard stood and waited for Veronica to go, both of them looking unsure as to whether she would actually go or not. She did. She didn’t even think to ask why.

  CHAPTER 41

  The Farm. After the Bombs.

  Taking a bigger look at things, from space, the planet rolled on. It was now dimpled along its surface by a number of pockmarks, and in its atmosphere was a cloud of dust so thick that, in many places, it might occlude much of the sun for years. Still, the earth rolled along, pushing through the roiling violence of space as if the dimples hardly mattered. It swung its wide arc around the solar system as if the dust was only a hiccup in its calendar. In many places on earth, someone gazing into the nighttime sky would have looked in vain for stars, but still the stars were there. For those seemingly trapped under the darkened blanket, the stars would be seen another night, after the winds would blow in and sweep the skies clean. In some regions, the dust effect would linger, causing drastic temperature drops over the next year, killing crops that weren’t already lost to disease and the poisoning of the soil. Other locations would see wild and unnatural temperature swings and difficult growing conditions. Still other places in North America and around the world—areas where the jet stream protected the earth from dust and fallout—would actually benefit from the cooler temperatures that would bring more rains than normal.

  From above the eastern portion of North America, the ethereal clouds that hung between earth and space, the clouds that were even now diminishing, were made up of ash and smoke—remnants of The City. Not just a portion of the city, like what had happened at Ground Zero when the twin towers fell in New York – this cloud consisted of the entirety of a cultural and social construct we call The City.

  Mirroring the reality of the intermittent pyres of global thermonuclear war, from a nearer view, on earth, the phenomenon of fire as a tool and hub of society had returned to the world, spreading outward in webbed fingers into the night. These were the fires of humanity—of humanness. Gathering around campfires, people huddled ever closer together. Shell-shocked. The fires stretched across the landscape in waves. Nearer the old population centers, they increased in number slightly and then spread out toward the horizon where they diminished, and disappeared into the unpredictability of the wilderness.

  There were many hunks of metal hanging in the pull of earth’s orbit. These metal objects once served as communication satellites, but now their only purpose was to bide their time in gravity’s tug until they all, in the coming years, and in their turn, would become streaking stars across the earth’s skies. Looking at the earth from one of these satellites, we would have seen through the haze of the clouds and dust that, as time passed, the number of fires on the surface of the earth was dwindling. Immediately after the blasts, though, the pockmarks on the earth—those that we mentioned earlier—shimmered like trinkets in the light of heaven, or mirrors reflecting back, flashing a signal code. It was strange, this reflected light. Then, studying it closer, we might have read the code and understood. The blinking was coming from the center of each of the blasts. The superheated gas had turned the surface of the earth in those pockmarks to glass.

  ****

  As the sunlight expanded across the valley, had one been standing along the ridge overlooking Clive’s farm, one might have wondered whether the smoke blocking out some of that sun was also made of pulverized human bones. One might consider the possibility of cancer-causing chemicals and radiation in the smoke. One might pause, watch the sunrise, and ask, “Was all of this necessary?”

  It is, in the end, a matter of perspective. Some would surmise, not without ample evidence, that humanity’s crimes were immense, and that the inevitable justice for such crimes was only now being meted out by some unseen hand. Or perhaps one would have thought that even then, in that moment of most terrible devastation, the earth was bigger than humankind. “Look what I can do,” says the child, bending the rules of nature, spreading his havoc. The Earth stands with her hands on her hips, threatening with age and experience. She yawns at the antics, as she yawned at the dinosaurs. She will outlast these tantrums. Earth, in this scenario, simply keeps rolling toward the light in the horizon, as inevitable as the tide. Perhaps one might have considered that both realities were simultaneously true.

  Just now, these considerations were just speculations. There was no one there yet, standing on the ridge, to consider them. There was only the farmhouse down in the valley, which seemed for the moment to be protected. Prevailing winds had taken the bombs’ immediate toxic cloud out to sea. The farm was peaceful, resting and quiet. The only noise of discomfort came from the barn, from animals that hadn’t been fed yet.

  The farmhouse, too, was quiet. Occasionally, an electronic blip sounded, emitted from a source in the old farm’s drawing room. In that room, in the middle of the floor, just to the side of a hidden floor panel that covered the entry door to the bunker, was a Geiger counter. Clive Darling had left it there as he’d descended the steps on the day when they’d entered the bunker. He’d herded everyone into the cellar, and then he’d placed the Geiger counter on the floor, hastily wiring it up according to his plan.

  Completing the task with the counter, he’d then pulled the flooring into place. All of this occurred in only a few moments after the bomb went off. He felt certain that they were all going to be in good shape, but he needed to get some readings before he could be confident. The Geiger counter sent active readings down into the basement.

  Now, down in the bunker, Clive sat at an antique oaken table lighted by a wind-up lamp, and fiddled with a slide rule. He made calculations, and occasionally he reached up to grab the lamp to wind the small handle and generate more power. The sound of the lamp’s whirring dynamo filled the bunker, echoing off the walls. Despite the noise, Clive sat alone. Everyone else snoozed silently, not even stirring at the sound of the small machine being cranked back to life.

  Clive stroked his mustache, leaned in, and tapped the window of the read-out dial on the counter. He waited for a moment and then flipped through a number of sheets in a small spiral notebook he kept in his front pocket. He made a mark on a page and then flipped back to a different page, where he made another kind of mark. On a whim, he thumbed back in his notebook, and his eye caught an entry. He stopped and stared at the page for a moment.

&nbs
p; The note was from the day he’d met the traveler—the man he’d called Ned Ludd. Clay was his real name. He smiled at the thought, and he wondered what had happened to old Ned Ludd. Somewhere in Upstate New York, I reckon, trying to get by.

  ****

  Now, another man stood his turn at the lonely vigil. He was wide-awake, and his mind raced through a well-worn philosophical maze. He enjoyed these nights alone. He fiddled with his red beard and pondered.

  Time will, in future days, become again what it has always been in the past—an ancient and endless thing. Eventually people will come to live by the sunrise again, and that can’t happen soon enough for me. People will once again live as ancient man lived. Earth, that changeable mistress, will simply endure. In her heart of hearts, she has always been an unemployable lay-about. Left to her own devices, given time, she always reverts to the most decadent forms of wastrelism. Entropy and atrophy. Weeds growing through pavement in a parking lot. Waves crashing against the Colossus of Rhodes until they sweep it out to the sea. Humankind has spent the last several millennia thinking that they are in control, all the while walking on soil that covers dinosaur bones. Technological man built their whole society on the ancient remains of a larger, heartier species. Hmmm. I wonder what future species will build on the remains of humankind? Perhaps humans, ever the most selfish of all earth’s creatures, will leave no remains…

  Red Beard paused his thoughts for a moment. He leaned his head against the cool of the concrete and found that he liked the sensation. Soon enough, his thoughts continued…

  And all this while they could have been loafing. Not ‘loafing,’ as in ‘doing nothing.’ Loafing, as in not worrying. Not working on a treadmill. Not slaving away to own things they don’t need, and that can never last. Not straining at a brass ring that will only leave them empty. Now, it will take years to regain knowledge that has been lost in the mists of time. They must relearn skills that will help them beat back decadent, violent nature. In some cases, humankind will literally have to reinvent the wheel. That will all be true in time. But for now, there is the waiting, and that too, is endless. The interminable waiting. The ground has been literally swept out from under the feet of the cities. Ground(s) zero! In New York and Philly, and other places stretching out beyond into the western horizon…

  Red Beard was right about one thing, even if he was wrong about others. The systems that had eradicated the importance of concepts like day and night (all except for that most persistent of human requirements… sleep,) disappeared in the blink of an eye. Once again the natural cycles of life would reassert themselves. Day. Night. Seasons. Age. Life. Death. Frailty. All of these realities were rising again to insist upon recognition by humankind. From the hustle and bustle of the 21st Century, in a crystalline moment, the brakes had been applied, and now time would be experienced more purposefully, even down in the depths of a fallout bunker.

  Red Beard leaned back in his chair and checked the dial. He made a mark in a notebook. He leaned his head against the concrete again. He thought, somehow, of prisons, of caves.

  ****

  Time passed. Inside the bunker sat a group of people brought together by whatever forces ruled the universe. God, chance, luck. Everyone in that bunker didn’t believe all the same things, and individually they conceived of different motivational powers at work in the universe. They did, however, share one commonality: Together, they waited in the bunker for the smoke to clear.

  Time is experienced in both small and large increments in such confined, underground spaces. The scenes flashed by in bursts, like blips from the Geiger counter on the floor above them in the farmhouse. Long, lazy hours of conversation coupled with short bursts of emotion. Living underground can be like being in the warm enclosure of a womb, or the cold, dark grip of a dungeon, but, either way, one can only sleep so much. One can only read so many books. The body gets weary in such a prison, such a grave. Time becomes a vanity. Moments are measured by the hunger in one’s stomach, the tension in one’s legs. There is a feeling of wanting to run unfettered across a field, just as there is a need to sit and explore the inner quiet of one’s own nature. Time becomes meaningless in such moments, and it becomes everything.

  Here we find Clive and Red Beard sitting and talking. There, Veronica is doctoring her son’s foot. Time goes on like this for a while. Now, Calvin is joining Clive and Red Beard in animated conversations and arguments. He is sitting with his back against the wall, polishing some tool he fashions for purposes that only he seems to care about.

  Again, Veronica is tending to her son.

  There, Red Beard is trying to get her to eat something.

  Over here, Clive and Calvin are quietly discussing something in the corner.

  The time passed on like this, the intermixing of the people in the bunker, the boredom being embraced, the moments being measured in swirls in the coffee cup. The scenes rolled by in endless succession. Time became both meaningless and endless. The Geiger counter was registering. Its dial showed clear, as it had since they first burrowed into the ground. Still, they were waiting, seemingly forever.

  For what?

  Only Clive Darling knew exactly what they were waiting for, and as per usual, he wasn’t talking.

  ****

  Clive had purchased the piece of property in Lancaster County years before. The property suited his purposes, and it had the added benefit of being a stunningly beautiful piece of Pennsylvania. It rested along the river, which was lovely in its own right, and the river’s wide, unnavigable waters served as a kind of natural barrier to the western edge of the property boundaries. Clive had bought the property because he liked it, but he’d also bought it because it was the closest farm in the county to a man he sincerely wanted to know. That man’s name was Henry Stolzfus.

  Clive had met Stolzfus by placing himself in the right booth of the right coffee spot—one that Henry Stolzfus frequented. This act of buying land next to a man in order to meet him and create a bond with him might be considered particularly manipulative or scheming, and one would be forgiven for thinking that all hidden motivations are inherently guileful. Clive, however, looked at the reality of the situation and excused his own behavior. How else would such a partnership come to be—between a rich worldling and a religious separatist?

  The meeting of these two men took place at Smarty’s, a shiny, stainless-steel enclosed box of a diner on a shady back road in the southern center of the county. Every Monday at 8 a.m., many of the men from the local Amish community would meet at Smarty’s and exchange news. Clive spent some time scouting the area, and it didn’t take long for him to notice that the buggies were lined up deep around the diner on Monday mornings.

  Clive had goals to be sure. He wasn’t just looking for friendship with like-minded individuals. Those many years ago, he’d been looking to secure a ready and available food source at a time when the Cold War was raging and the future had looked particularly bleak. Moving forward, Clive would need a sustainable source of food supplies for his men, and for the groups that he financially supported throughout the country. Considering all the factors, and counting into the equation his own long-term geopolitical goals, it seemed to him that collaborating with the Amish seemed like the best plan for getting his needs met. But how to strike the bargain?

  On the first day of Operation Stolzfus, Clive walked into the diner to watch and learn. He noticed how the other men treated Henry, as if he was the man to know. The next Monday, he arrived early and sat down in Henry’s favorite booth. He’d learned something by watching the Amish man, and had decided the straight-forward approach was probably the best tactic. It turned out that Clive was right.

  There was a reason that, in one of the most renowned Amish counties in the country, one of the most respected Amish men lived on the edge of society. Henry Stolzfus lived as far west as one could go and not be in the river or out of the county. Clive decided he might have a friend and confidant in such a man.

  ****

/>   “You know, the problem is, people came to love the bomb.” It was Red Beard talking. Long soliloquies and spoken-word performances had become just another way to pass the time. This conversation happened not long after the nuclear blasts took out Philly and New York. Red Beard was sitting with Calvin and filling the air with words, which was something he loved to do.

  “I mean, it goes way back—even before that song about wearing your sunglasses at night. You remember that one? Probably not. Or the one that talks about the future being so bright you gotta wear shades?” He hummed the tune from the song, but it didn’t sound like much to Calvin.

  “It became cool to love the bomb. The country suddenly became that guy from the What? Me Worry? generation. I don’t have to look at the military-industrial complex to see some bomb fetishization going on. It was all over the media, too. You can go back to Dr. Strangelove at least, but when it happened, it happened. The country fell in love with the bomb, either in an actual way, by wanting more and bigger ones or, ironically, by mocking more loudly and derisively. We loved it or we hated it, but either way we thought about it (that is what love is, after all), and in time we all accepted the bomb as a reality not to be questioned. That’s how we became fallout kids, all of us. Besides, what could we do about it, anyway?”

  Calvin didn’t usually know exactly what Red Beard was saying, but the words passed the time, and sometimes the words were interesting. Not always, but sometimes. Calvin had come to think of Red Beard’s dissertations as extended poetry recitations that didn’t need to make sense to be art.