Wick - The Omnibus Edition

by Bunker, Michael

Red Beard was talking to Calvin while Clive, who had been napping in the corner, awoke and began shaking off the sleep. None of them had any idea what time of day it was at that instant. Time was irregularly kept by events, and not by machines making declarative statements about subjective concepts. In the morning, or thereabouts, they had breakfast. Then there was the time period known as “after breakfast.” There were other periods of the day known by names such as “dinner,” and “after dinner,” and “reading time.” People cleaned up behind a sheet hung in the corner.

  Red Beard was talking and Clive was yawning and stretching when they all heard a knock at the door upstairs. Even from where they were in the bunker, they heard the vibrations of sound from the knocking coming from above them. Then there was a bloodcurdling scream. Someone had entered the farmhouse. The person up there had found their way to the trapdoor and now he was pleading for his life. They heard the banging of fists onto the outside shell of the steel door until the thud of the fists made them sound meaty in their return. There was no threat of violence in the pounding, only the sound of pleading. After a while, they made out the reason why.

  The person pounding on the door had the voice of one who had come to know the bomb intimately—someone who had survived its blast close up. The person pounding on the door was a temporarysurvivor, one of those stumbling this way from the east, irradiated by a bomb that, Red Beard was convinced, the people had decided to love.

  There was no love in the sound of the pounding.

  ****

  Days later…

  “Here is what happened in the city at that moment.” Now Clive was talking to Calvin. Calvin had been cleaning his tools, and he’d asked the older man about a nuclear blast.

  “At the point of detonation—well, imagine that there was a dot on the map about the size of a dime. That dime marks the area where a large hole, three quarters of a mile across, opened up. The devastation within that circle would have been total. Zero survivability. Imagine 9-11, but instead of planes, they had nuclear bombs. Lower Manhattan? All of it vaporized.

  “Out beyond that, compare it now with a circle about the size of a nickel—this circle is the blast radius. Anyone and anything in its path would have turned to flames. If there were any survivors, they would soon have had acute radiation poisoning. The person out there a while ago? The man knocking on the door trying to get in here? He would likely have poisoned us with toxic radiation if we’d opened the door. How he got here so fast has me concerned, but…” he let his thoughts trail off.

  Calvin was starting to get the picture. They weren’t in the bunker to escape radioactive fallout. They’d pretty much determined that the fallout cloud had been pushed out to sea. Clive had them in the bunker to escape those who hadn’t avoided radioactive fallout. He was waiting for those who were irredeemably poisoned, to die off.

  In other places, people didn’t need a bunker, or didn’t have one. Maybe they didn’t run into irradiated refugees, or maybe they had fallout suits and just shot strangers… or maybe they didn’t know any better, and got poisoned, and would die ten or twenty years hence from cancer.

  “Okay, for the next radius, think of a circle about the size of a quarter or a one ounce gold coin. If you placed that coin on a map and looked at the concentric circles and the diagrams of all the blast patterns—that circle is the radius wherein the air is going to be highly toxic, and the soil is going to be spoiled. We’re outside that circle, or at least we hope we are. None of us really knows the megatonnage of the weapons that were used, so all of this is speculation, you know? And, we should be happy about that—that we’re outside the worst of the problems. Anyway, the fact that we were able to stand and see what we saw, and still get down here to safety in time… Well… We did okay.”

  Clive flashed his best Sam Elliott smile. “The point is that if you were close enough to survive and you did, you had to keep going. You had to do what was necessary to do.”

  “Yeah,” Calvin said. “It’s hard to imagine. I think I’ve always just thought of it as something that either happens or it doesn’t. A bomb going off, I mean. I either survive or I don’t.”

  “Yes, Calvin, but in Dante’s deepest pit of hell, it is coldest winter,” Clive said. “It’s hard to imagine that, too, until you take a look around. Once the money has been accounted for, the imagination of man is the root of most evil.” He pointed at everyone in turn, and then tapped on his own chest. “They call that the ‘heart.’ Desperately wicked. Who can know it?” He nodded his head as if he knew it.

  Clive motioned around them. Red Beard was talking with Veronica and Stephen was moaning in pain. The sound coming from Stephen sounded like the noise you’d make when mocking a pain, actually. Stephen was not really giving into it, or, not yet acknowledging it. In fact, it seemed that Stephen was indeed, mocking the pain. As if he could fight it back by mere force of will power.

  “How’s he doing?” Clive asked Calvin.

  “Veronica thinks he has tetanus,” Calvin said.

  Clive winced. It was just a small movement, behind his eyes, but you could see it if you knew where to look.

  ****

  It should be said here that most of the world has long operated under a misconception about tetanus. This misconception has, in many ways, been a purposeful deception, perpetrated by a few generations of salesmen who have grown very rich by convincing the world to have faith in vaccinations as an answer to every ancient bogeyman. As part of this deception, almost everyone in the world was propagandized into believing that the medical condition of tetanus comes from rusty metal. It does not. Tetanus comes from the production of a highly dangerous toxin produced by the introduction of the tetanus bacterium into the body.

  The widespread belief that tetanus comes from rust was encouraged by people in the medical and pharmaceutical professions who wanted to sell tetanus vaccines to everyone in the world. The idea that tetanus is always resident on rusty nails and other rusty items is based loosely on the fact that most rusty items are found outside. Most tetanus cases, especially in earlier generations, happened on farms where animals defecated, and where the tetanus bacteria would often thrive in anaerobic environments (like the pits and deposits on a rusty nail) and in the dirt in areas frequented by animals. The rusty surface of a nail just happens to be a great place for the tetanus bacteria to hide, and when a puncture is made in the surface of the skin, the nail is a handy delivery device that can push the tetanus endospores deep into the wound. It should also be noted that the fatality rate of those who contract tetanus in a full-blown way, and who do not receive treatment, is about 50%. It’s a coin toss, if such a thing can be said without it seeming to be too callous.

  Everyone doesn’t always have all of the information they need to properly treat a medical condition, especially in a situation where there has been a great—even worldwide—calamity, and when the only recourse is found in the colonized minds of technologically crippled people who have relied for too long on chemical drugs and high-tech treatments to maintain a semblance of health through brute force application of money and industry. In short, there are ways to treat someone being afflicted by the toxins produced by the tetanus bacteria. Keeping the wound extra clean; flushing it with clean and sterilized water or saline solution; soaking out the toxin with a drawing solution and with Epsom salts; flooding the body with natural substances that have anti-bacterial qualities; all of these treatments can help, and sometimes even cure, a patient afflicted with tetanus. Whether or not the people in a given radius have that knowledge is what makes the issue problematic.

  ****

  Veronica stood at Stephen’s bed and looked down at him. A few hours ago (or was it yesterday?), he’d begun to complain of tightening in his jaw. Not long after that, the jaw had wrenched into uncontrolled spasms. That’s why they used to call it lockjaw. He almost bit his tongue off because the spasms were so violent and unexpected. Now the convulsions had begun in his feet and arms. She looked down and took
his hands into her own. He’d been rubbing them frantically in his sleep. She thought of how, when he was just a boy, she’d held his hands in her own as she taught him to clean the paint from a paintbrush. Those hands were now writhing in grotesque shapes, held there as if frozen in ice, his back arching up and then out, waves of uncontrolled musculature rolling up into his shoulders.

  Stephen’s face was frozen in pain. Veronica wanted to take the weight from him, but she could not. She felt the helplessness of a mother whose whole world is passing before her eyes. She felt her art slip away into the distance. She hung there over the precipice, over her child.

  CHAPTER 42

  Just south of Elizabethtown, Peter, Elsie, and Ace joined the few other travelers on the state highway heading southeast towards Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. Peter’s contact in the FMA had informed him that they would come upon a large militia checkpoint there, just below Mount Joy.

  “They’re stopping most everybody from entering the heaviest Amish areas,” the man said. The way he said it made it sound as if that answered all that needed to be answered. “If you’re lucky, you’ll meet up with some other refugees heading into the same country; maybe get in with some party that has a legitimate claim to be allowed in.”

  Peter liked the way the man didn’t stress the word legitimate. The tone of the statement suggested that there was social order enough there that one might find someone reasonable in charge to talk to. He didn’t know if luck had anything to do with it, but he was silently hoping that just such a scenario might avail itself.

  The walk from Elizabethtown to Mount Joy passed uneventfully, and the three travelers spent most of the time in silence, as if they expected a mental onslaught to come upon them at any moment. Perhaps it was the weariness of the journey, or the expectation of still more walking that lay ahead that made them dull. Or, perhaps it was the fact that, as they walked, they were simultaneously scanning the horizon looking for armed bandits. Either way, all work and no play had done its work. The walk through the rural areas was drab and depressing.

  By contrast, passing into Mount Joy on a major highway was a traumatic sensory experience when compared to their long practice of walking primarily through the countryside. The destruction of war was everywhere. Off the road to the north, as if they’d been dragged there to rot, piles of bodies laid decomposing in the sun. The decaying fleshy mess was covered with lime or sand, ostensibly to keep down the odor. The whitened bodies looked surreal, and therefore fake, as if they’d been crudely fabricated from picture books of someone else’s war.

  The remains of fires from the night before, and the debris left behind by disorder and panic, were everywhere. Burned-out buildings lined the streets, and brick edifices were pockmarked with the telltale damage of bullets and bombs. In the streets, blackened cars with shattered windscreens and doors perforated by bullets lay helter-skelter. The shell casings of bullets were swept to the curb where they rested in tiny cylindrical ridges, remnants of stories that may never be told. The scene looked, well, imaginary. No one had collected the shell casings yet, but Peter knew that soon enough, someone would. The bodies could be left to rot, but the brass would be gathered because it had value.

  There is a strange contradiction in the signatures of urban warfare that can be hard to describe. Since the area had actually been a city besieged in battle, it had the texture of a scene put together by moviemakers to resemble an urban battlefield. This made it harder to see the damage and blood and evidences of death as real. And it is precisely necessary to see these things rightly, because they are both real, and immediate. The revolution will not be televised, because the mechanical infrastructure of mass communication will lie in heaps on the ground when the revolution comes. So, when it happens, it is confusing and counter-intuitive. Most people will not have imagined it as it is. They haven’t had to, because some set designer has always done it for them. Camera angles and lighting choices have conspired to show them a part, and to present it as the whole. In reality, there was the stench of death coming from bodies covered by lime and sand. There was the weight of the guns in the backpack pulling heavily on exhausted shoulders. A million tiny and violent details assailed the senses. This was not a movie set. This was what Peter and Elsie and Ace were seeing and feeling.

  ****

  Twice within just the first few blocks, our travelers saw men hanging by their necks from light poles. One hanged man, having reached the end of his rope, twisted slowly in the cool breeze, a look of surprise on his face. He never thought he’d end up like this. Pinned to his worn and soiled coat was a piece of cardboard with the wordLOOTER written on it.

  Here and there, FMA soldiers stood in small groupings, smoking valuable cigarettes, huddled around trashcans burning with fires for warmth. Peter noticed that here, in contrast to the few other urban areas he’d seen during the journey, people looked him in the eye instead of at their own shoes. It seemed the Identify: Friend or Foe mechanism was at work among most of the survivors now. Indefinable factors and subtle indicators were tabulated quickly as eyes met in brief interludes that were unadorned with movie music or poetry.

  When passing groups of men, Peter saw that the males usually looked first at Elsie. This had become a pattern, and he understood it completely. There was nothing nefarious or creepy in it, though he wondered what Elsie thought about the phenomenon. Peter understood it perfectly. He did the same thing whenever his group would pass men traveling with women. Peter would look at the women and children to see if they’d been abused or showed signs of duress. “It’s amazing what you can tell of a group’s story by seeing if the women are in bad condition,” he told Ace.

  Ace thought of the fellow he had met once while on furlough. He thought of the blackened eye he saw on the guy’s girlfriend once and wondered if he would let that go today. “If women are traveling against their will,” Peter continued, “then there is something wrong.” He’d said the last word with finality, and then he’d looked at Elsie. She was healthy, bright-eyed, and strong. Peter and Ace were usually given a pass by the men who were sensitive to such things.

  In Mount Joy, despite the frightening atmosphere and the collateral damage of war, a few businesses here and there were operating. Here, as elsewhere, organization was already beginning to bubble up in little corners as sharp-eyed opportunists, or strong men, or fast talkers, or, more likely, the best scroungers, were setting up shop. Passing by homes or storefronts, the travelers saw signs advertising goods or services to be had inside. Remarkable. Honest to goodness commerce. A city coming together.

  Invariably, armed guards stood by doorways, and the suspicious eyes of entrepreneurs tried simultaneously to woo potential customers and threaten harm and death if they came too close too fast. One merchant had simply posted a sign out front that read Caveat Emptor.

  There were other signs of business, hand-written on cardboard or pieces of wood, or spray-painted on blankets, or spelled out with charcoal upon the door. The signs advertised things as various as winter root vegetables (mostly turnips, carrots, and potatoes), home-brewed alcohol, AA batteries, and milled flour. Later, Peter would learn that Mount Joy was one of the areas on the periphery of Amish territory where businessmen were getting rich trading in produce, goods, and crafts made by the Amish, or salvaged from a world gone awry. But passing through Mount Joy, Peter didn’t know any of that. He’d just walked through the remnants of a nuclear war that made the stores in Mount Joy look like a walk along Park Avenue. He was from Warwick, after all, so he had to admit that what he was seeing right now was remarkable.

  Winding their way through town, around abandoned busses and the charred remains of vehicles and men, Elsie noted that the very first signs of some kind of life were returning, like when the first blades of grass or crops poke through the melting snow in spring. They saw children playing in a yard fenced by wrought iron and reinforced by sandbags. A street peddler strolled by with a cart loaded with broccoli, chard, and cauliflower for sale. A
guard with an MP-5 machine pistol strolling along behind the cart was the only clue that the peddler was concerned about bandits.

  Peter stopped and pointed in amazement at a restaurant that seemed to be open and operating, and he looked at Ace and Elsie in turn to see what they thought of such a thing. The restaurant was in an enormous brick building at the end of a small side block. They could hear it before they could see it because it buzzed with activity. When they did see it, they noticed that it had the faintest remnants of hand-painted signs on the brick edifice indicating that the building had once housed a brewery. It was hard to say for certain, because the sign was flaking off. Little bullet pockmarks punctuated the side of the building, hinting at another story that might never be told.

  Ace smiled and nodded his head. Elsie’s eyes brightened at the thought of a real meal seated at a real table using real utensils. Peter wept. It was only a brief tear that never crested or ran down his face. He covered it quickly by catching the thought in his throat and choking it down, but the thought had most certainly been there. It was something in the light that glowed along the edges of the building’s lines, or the sound of what seemed to be music and dining inside. Whatever the case, he felt the tear rise up in him. He used to take his lovely wife to a place just such as this, back in that old life in Warwick. This place reminded him so much of that. Then he thought of Vasily, his friend. How much he’d love to be walking here with Vasily!

  The guards in front of the old brew house looked them up and down but did not search them or demand that they surrender their weapons or gear. That was a good thing, because the travelers were not going to patronize any business that wanted them to be disarmed in order to trade there. The guards waved them in and went back to looking up and down the street for trouble.