Michael Bunker - WICK

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.

People arent 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. Dont touch that, it will burn you becomes because I said so, thats why. Guidance piles into 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. Its 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 freelyor 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 hed had enough of that.

Tuesday

People arent 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 hed tossed and turned on the night before as the storm raged outside his window? Upon waking, hed 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 yearssince the day that hed received the call from Cheryl that had changed his life foreverhe 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, theyd 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 theyd 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 Mayberryhow hed 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 wont 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 Hudsona 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.