Wick - The Omnibus Edition Read online

  …The EMP was just a first blow, opening the door for further strikes that will finish the job throughout the rest of the country. I am speculating, of course, but from our figures and the readings we gathered back at the base, I’d say the warhead was detonated high over eastern Ohio. We’d be totally guessing if we tried to declare a yield, but I’d say that more than 95% of the electronics, computer, and technological infrastructure on the eastern seaboard – from Maine to most of Florida, and from the Atlantic to as far as Nebraska, will have been fried. There are probably fires burning out of control in every major city in that area, and the fires will get worse as time goes on because there’ll be no water to dowse them. The trucks that put out fires won’t work, and the communications that control emergency response is now gone, and probably forever. The damage done will make the work of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow look like child’s play…

  “An Epic Story of Hardship and Survival”

  Praise for W1CK

  “…WICK has rocked my world and shaken everything inside me…”

  “Michael Bunker goes way beyond writing a popular thriller: he clearly has a literary agenda, making the W1CK series so rich and so deep you could analyse each and every page and write a whole book about it. I guess you'd have to call it W1CK1P3D1A.”

  “…The writing is excellent. We need more Indie writers like this … Michael's writing changed my perception of this life quite a bit. I hope it does the same for you.”

  “ …The characters are richly constructed …. The prose is easy to read and the story develops smoothly. I can't wait to find out what happens but I don't want the story to end! “

  “…combines the best of Sinclair Lewis and James Howard Kunstler in a truly great read that will both engage you and challenge you to think- and choose wisely.”

  “...Mr. Bunker has managed to write a carefully crafted and extremely, disturbingly believable piece of fiction about the modern human condition.”

  “Exciting, riveting and compelling story… Highly recommended reading…”

  “ …So glad I took the plunge and got hooked on this thrilling series! Characters that are personable. Settings in vivid detail. Couldn't wait to move on to the second book!”

  “…I was kept guessing at every turn of this book. I love how this story becomes rich and alive in my mind without being tedious or over-written. He tells you just enough to keep you engaged, but doesn't overwhelm with detail.”

  “…It had me fully engaged from page one.”

  “…Great fiction with a lot of realistic probabilities. Not your typical end of the world doomsday thriller.”

  “I love Michael's way of writing and the subjects he writes about…. “

  “… packed with great characters, suspense, philosophy, and thought-provoking ideas.”

  “…will have you reading non-stop into the wee hours of the night and will leave you gasping for air.”

  “Ok, this book has me on the hook… I very rarely read fiction but this outing by Michael Bunker has been terrific. … Buy it for yourself and your friends.”

  “This was the most intriguing book I have ever read. It started out to be a journey and ended up with nail biting, edge of your seat conclusion. …What a rush this was.”

  “ … The writing is gorgeous, tactile, vivid, with a plot yarn that unfolds a landscape beautiful and terrifying.”

  “I was engaged in the story from the start - something I've missed from many other authors from this genre recently. Nice to see some real literary talent and wit in this genre.”

  “A compelling story that is beautifully written. Each sentence simply melts into the next. Michael Bunker has a gift for awakening the imagination. …”

  “You can't go wrong when you have fiction with excitement for the brain AND heart. Combine that with the lurking knowledge that many elements of this story could be off the fiction backburner and onto full heat reality very soon, and, well, it all adds up to one I could not put down.”

  “I found it to be a captivating use of the English language. Packed with well written, thought provoking mental imagery.”

  “…I could hardly put it down. Read in two sittings. Like eating a beautifully prepared, delicious meal when you are really hungry, eating so fast, scraping every speck and morsel from the plate…”

  “… Michael Bunker draws you in with his beautiful imagery and storytelling. I have a feeling I'll be following this author for some time!”

  “The twists and turns keep coming. This is an excellent read. And the kindle version is so inexpensive that you would be foolish not to read it.”

  “ … Entertaining and thought-provoking. Can't wait to get my hard copy because you never know if the power will go out.”

  “…I literally read it in one sitting because I could NOT PUT IT DOWN. I wish I could give it more than 5 stars.”

  WICK: The Omnibus Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events either are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  © Copyright 2013 by Michael Bunker and Chris Awalt

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, please contact the author.

  Cover Design by Jason Gurley

  For information on Michael Bunker, or to read his blog:

  http://www.michaelbunker.com

  To contact Michael Bunker, please write to:

  M. Bunker

  1251 CR 132

  Santa Anna, Texas 76878

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Our sincere thanks go out to Stewart, David, Jason, Kate, Melonie, Hanna, all the beta readers, and everyone else who has played such a huge part in getting this series out to its audience. We never could have done it without you all.

  Chris Awalt would like to thank those who provided support and encouragement during the writing of this book, particularly Dick and Dorothy, Anne, Vinnie, and Michael.

  As we close this opening series in The Last Pilgrims story, we want to thank all of our awesome readers. Your enthusiasm and support has encouraged us, and has lifted us up during the writing of this epic tale.

  We now present to our friends the completed WICK story. It has been a wild ride, and a wonderful collaboration with all of you.

  Thank you all.

  Michael Bunker and Chris Awalt.

  June, 2013.

  CONTENTS

  KNOT ONE - W1CK

  KNOT TWO - THE CHARM SCHOOL

  KNOT THREE - EXODUS

  KNOT FOUR - ONE WORD OF TRUTH

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  OTHER BOOKS

  CHAPTER 1

  People aren’t meant to live in cages. Though their first sensate experience comes from inside the warm enclosure of the womb, that is not their natural state. Their first true experience of the world begins the moment they are pushed out of that embrace. It is in that adrenaline-fueled rush into the open air of freedom that they gasp their first breaths and begin their lives anew.

  It is odd, then, that individually they yearn for freedom, but in numbers they seek control. From the moment of their birth – that moment when they open their eyes and look up with blurry focus into the faces of their mothers – humans find a world that is hostile to their freedom. Their natural curiosity is checked as soon as they gain language. When they take their first tentative steps, they are curbed on all sides. Even when this is done for their benefit, it carries the seed of authority. “Don’t touch that, it will burn you” becomes “because I said so, that’s why.” Guidance piles in
to guidelines. Structure morphs into stricture.

  This is not a new story; there is nothing new under the sun. Though it is recreated in each generation, the formation of social sensibilities in the hearts of individuals is the well-worn path upon which societies tread, and on which Empires rise and fall. If the world does its job well, if the masses of individuals learn their places, then young children grow into youths and then become adults who not only accept artificial and arbitrary restraints but, joining the teeming crowds, are pleased to impose these shackles on themselves and others.

  Good sense and benevolent law, designed to promote peace and freedom from without and to gently nurture from within, are subtly replaced by systems of power and control, imposed for the benefit and propagation of what can only be called The Hive Mind. It’s a tale as old as time.

  Regret. Missed opportunity. Doubt and loss. Failure and limitation. In the end, people lovingly polish the silvered bars and oil the locks and chains of their own prisons. Sitting inside their cages, both those of metaphor and reality, they look out between the bars and imagine what they might have been. Everywhere men are born free, the philosopher says, and everywhere they are in chains.

  It is difficult to see this in the machinations of a city, where each individual acts freely—or believes himself to do so. It is comforting to think that there is a qualitative difference between the choices one makes regarding which fashions to follow and which products to buy, and the stampede of a herd of cattle. Yet, Tolstoy wrote that, even in those historical moments when men look back and see patriotism and sacrifice as the driving forces of history, “the majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests.” In the stream of time, as cultures and societies stampede to destruction, so few are willing to identify their prisons or recognize their chains.

  Clay Richter had decided he’d had enough of that.

  ****

  Tuesday

  People aren’t meant to live in cages, he thought, as he locked the door of his Brooklyn brownstone for the last time. He was standing at the head of a stoop, his back to the world on the morning after the worst natural disaster around here since anyone could remember. As he pushed the key in the lock and turned it to the left, the motion in his wrist and the anticipatory swivel in his hips and the turning in his shoulders felt good on the balls of his feet. His body was fluid and light. A cool, pervasive wetness hung in the stirring air and he felt, for the moment, as if he were one with the natural elements, and this feeling made him smile.

  Clay turned and paused to look around. He felt like he was making a prison break. Was anyone watching his flight? Would anyone notice the tangled sheets he’d tossed and turned on the night before as the storm raged outside his window? Upon waking, he’d simply stripped the sheets from the bed and balled them up, tossing them out the window, where they now lay on the curb among the branches and leaves that had fallen from the sky as Sandy roared her way through the tri-state area. They lay there like a rope, knotted and tangled among the debris.

  You make your bed, you lie in it, he thought. For the first time in years—since the day that he’d received the call from Cheryl that had changed his life forever—he was done with lies. When his feet touched the floor that morning, the cool grainy texture of the hardwoods pressing against the soft pink flesh of his soles, he knew that he would have the courage to tell himself the truth. He had to get out of his cage if he was going to have a life.

  He took a deep breath of the thick moist air and stepped down to the gate. The world was numbly bustling about, surveying the damage, as he lifted the latch and stepped onto the sidewalk. People were haltingly filing past in gauzy disbelief. Some whispered in hushed tones, others were nervously sharing bits of news. “Did you see the tree that fell across Bond Street? My God, have you ever seen anything like this?” Others simply walked and stared, too dumbfounded to do anything else.

  The streets were not full now like they had been just two days earlier, when passersby talked in excited tones, daring the forecasters to be right. Then, they’d been almost celebratory as they walked by in pairs along the sidewalks, carrying their cases of bottled water and their bags of batteries and flashlights. “They always hype these things you know…” they’d said. “I remember during Irene they told us to stay indoors, and they closed down the subways, and even cancelled schools, and for what?” Now, the damage was done and they knew the answer to that question.

  Clay stood for a moment and fingered the key, rubbing its smooth, worn face, as he felt the mist form droplets on his face and liked it. He was tempted to simply hang the key on the spires of the black wrought iron fence and walk away. He thought of Otis, the town drunk from Mayberry—how he’d stumble into the jailhouse after a bender and reach for the key on the hook for a cell that he had designated as his own and let himself in and out as he pleased. Otis. I won’t be coming back but maybe some other sucker could use it, he thought. Then he changed his mind. He preferred to throw the key in the Hudson—a solemn and solitary protest against the willful confinement of urbanism. He felt the key fall heavily into his coat pocket as he stepped into the street.

  If anyone was worried that one of their fellow inmates was escaping they didn’t give a visible sign. Not even Mrs. Grantham, that inveterate snoop, was peeking through the curtains of her cell. She was probably sitting on the edge of her couch, rubbing her hands together in that way she did, watching her cats eat their breakfast. Clay had sat with her on many mornings, locked in the interminable stillness behind a door laced with chains and deadbolts. Only moments ago, passing her door he’d thought, “Should I check to see if she’s OK?” but then he’d thought better of it. No way would that conversation have gone for less than thirty minutes. Even now, with the storm, he’d have had to hear about how one of the neighbors had committed some imaginary wrong, or how her daughter hadn’t called. For years he’d watched her hobble up the steps of the brownstone they shared on Dean Street, hunched over by the weight of her cares but unwilling to do anything about them. He’d always liked her in an odd way, in that way one humors a crank, but now as he made his break for freedom, he felt nothing but a vague sense of pity. Like Otis, she was the warden of her own confinement, drunk on the wine of the world’s expectations and neglect, and unable to put down the glass. She’s a prisoner, Clay thought, everyone around here is.

  ****

  The boots on his feet felt tight and fine as he walked along Dean and turned north onto Court, which he would follow until he reached Borough Hall. He congratulated himself on his prescient cleverness, having bought the boots used (therefore already broken in) at a thrift store down the street a few weeks before anyone had ever even heard of Sandy. They were purchased on a whim along with the hiker’s backpack he now had strapped to his back, on a day when an ill-defined sense of foreboding that had haunted him for weeks had suddenly caused him to scratch an itch.

  On that day, while walking home from work, he’d stopped in front of the shop’s window, halting out of spiritual necessity as much as any real physical need. In the shop he found both items neatly shelved in separate sections and was drawn to each for reasons that he couldn’t fully explain. Probably some hipster had used them on a summer trek across Europe, only to sell them when the rent was due. Both were high-quality items, with rich, supple leather, and they were exactly what he would have bought for himself if he’d gone in search of new ones. Now, making his way uptown, Clay liked the feel of their weight as he stepped around the debris scattered along the street.

  His impromptu plan was to cut across Brooklyn Heights to the Promenade and walk along it to its end merely to see the damage from that elevated perspective. Then he’d make his way due north, over the bridge into Manhattan, into Harlem, and, if all went well, he’d just keep going. Out of the city. Away from this prison. Far from the Madding Crowd. He was ultimately headed home to the farmhouse in Ithaca. Home. The place where
he’d shared life with Cheryl and his beautiful girls before the accident.

  Despite the certainty of his goal, a feeling of foreboding still gnawed at his stomach as he weaved around the odd fallen tree or nodded to the occasional passerby. He chalked the strange feeling up to a claustrophobic sense of needing release from the city. He breathed in the morning air and kept moving.

  He thought about that word… home. Home was where there was a certain tree at the edge of the field across the road that led to the front porch. That lovely tree was the first thing he and Cheryl saw as they rounded the sweeping curve of the country road on the day they first viewed the property. She’d taken one look at it as they drove into the driveway and said she was ready to buy if he was.

  In a forest thick with trees, that single, solitary tree had always been his favorite. In it he’d hung that lazy tire swing, which had taken him much longer than it should have to accomplish. The branches reached so high that his rope would not loop over them no matter what angle—or how hard—he threw it. He’d finally succeeded by tying a bucket to the end of the rope to give it weight so that he could launch it over a branch and then lower it slowly to the ground. Then, reveling in this victory, he and Cheryl had sat on the lawn and watched the girls play in the sprinklers and push each other in wide arcs under the broad, shading limbs. Now as he made his way through Sandy’s wake, he wondered if that tree was still standing.