Red Beard saw the gun pointed towards them, and immediately reached for Clive. He seized the older man by the upper arm and, with almost super-human strength, spun him around, tossing him roughly to the ground and out of harm’s way. Three bullets thudded into Red Beard’s chest and neck, and the leprechaun fell to the ground without drama or pretense. Militia guns finished off the wounded attacker with a short burst, but it was too late.
Clive was already up and running towards his fallen friend. He screamed, “No!” at the top of his voice, but it was a useless and fruitless scream.
The shout echoed around the farmyard, bouncing off the buildings and the vehicles before disappearing into the coming night.
The light of the sunset had disappeared into the darkness, and the light of life was fading from Pat Maloney’s eyes. Looking up, he saw his friends, new and old ones, bending over him. Clive was clutching him and had pulled him up into his lap, so that his head now rested against the older man’s chest.
The world was fading into the fogginess of the surreal dream, and Pat was looking from face to face, and trying to speak, though he could not.
His eyes caught a glimpse of the backpack hanging on Veronica’s shoulder, and he reached towards it with his hand, as if there might be in it some savior, some elixir, or some potion that might pull him up from his condition.
He felt himself slipping, as if he were falling into a dungeon, or a prison, and the hand that was reaching towards the backpack was now reaching for anything—anything at all; any strand or rope onto which he might hold that might arrest his fall.
A face appeared to him as he fell, and it was the face of a friend that he’d only met once, and his hand now turned, and opened, and seemed to relax and cease its pointing.
For the others—for Red Beard’s friends gathered around him—the scene was tragic and shocking. Clive rocked his friend in his lap, and let out a sob of pain and loss that was surprising coming from a man with such limitless power. Perhaps it is impossible for a man truly to be god-like. Red Beard’s right hand reached up, and pointed, and he seemed to strain to say something, so they all leaned in at that moment.
“Clay,” was all he said.
Only a few of the team gathered around the dying man heard it, or, if they heard it, knew then what the name meant.
Then there was a release, as if the reason that all of this had happened, going back to the Hurricane that had struck New York City, was only to bring them all to this one moment—for them to be surrounding a man who had minded his own business, who had never hurt anyone, and who only wanted to pass the time with his friends.
The faces around Red Beard looked down at him with sadness. Some of the faces Pat had known for a while, and some of them had been new to him, but now he couldn’t see them, because dead men do not see.
Each person had their own thoughts at that instant, as the severity of the moment applied itself to each one of them in turn.
The end of the world is never pretty.
It was Veronica, later, who rallied the group, when it seemed that despair and hopelessness might overwhelm them all. She got them moving again, and eventually they could laugh, plan, joke, and argue.
We have work to do, she told them all, and reality never waits for us, or asks how we feel about the repercussions of our own folly.
Clive found a truck for Calvin, and the men spent some of their days fixing it up so that Calvin could eventually go home to Texas.
After many discussions, Natasha and Cole decided that, in a few more weeks, when the weather should be better, they would go to Texas with their new, young friend.
Peter and Elsie were going to be sad to see Natasha and Cole go, but they were determined to stay. This was a very tough decision. For Peter, the two young friends were the last connection he had with Warwick, and with his old life there. Peter asked his friends to keep their eyes and ears open down in Texas for news about his wife and child, and to try to get word to him one way or another.
Peter and Elsie adopted Charlie. Not officially, because there was no mechanism for that, but they took him in as if he was their own son, and hoped to help the boy grow into a good man in this new and different world.
Veronica and Ace decided to stay at the farm with Peter and Elsie, to help Clive run things, and maybe to serve as a conscience for the man who seemed to hold so much dangerous power.
The breakup of the team, however, wouldn’t be for a few more weeks. For now, they all worked, planned for the future, and lived.
At night, Veronica would read to Natasha, Cole, and Elsie from The Poems of C.L. Richter, and they’d talk about the things the poems brought to mind. Ace would listen, but he rarely talked. He liked to look off into the night, and stabilize the world with his silence.
Cole said that he didn’t know Clay, but he knew a few men who were very much like him. An old teacher named Lev Volkhov, and another friend named Vasily, reminded him very much of the man that Veronica remembered.
“A great man named Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said that ‘One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world,’” Cole said, “so maybe we’ve all known Clay in one way or another.”
Perhaps Cole is right.
From the Poems of C.L. Richter
A Note from the Author
Due in large part to all of the awesome support from WICK fans along the way, we’ve arrived here at the end of the WICK story. We hope you have loved it as much as we have loved writing it for you.
Please follow WICK on Facebook so you can keep in touch with me and receive updates about whatever comes next. Also, remember that the WICK universe and story continues in The Last Pilgrims — the first part of that saga is now available.
Based on the information that I have right now, there seems to be a lot of interest in reading more of this story. I am considering continuing the WICK storyline with a new series that would take place between WICK and The Last Pilgrims. That would put the new story roughly ten years after the events found in WICK, and ten years before those of The Last Pilgrims. I will leave it up to the readers to let me know if they would be interested in such a series. From the very beginning, this adventure has been a cooperative exercise and I have been talking with you readers all along — that experience has been one of the greatest of my life. This is one of the great things about the modern publishing landscape, readers have more input than ever before into what gets written and whether or not the work is eventually successful.
I hope that you’ve made it this far because you really have enjoyed the story, and I also hope that you’d like to see it become more popular, so more people will know that it exists. You’ve heard me say this before, but I really need your help, so I’ll say it again…
The WICK Omnibus is an independently published work. That is a fancy way to say that I don’t have a handy agent or publisher with the means to market it properly. The only way it will ever find its way into the hands of readers is if those people who read it and enjoy it will become a part of the team and help me get the word out that it exists.