Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(118)

Austin looks at Patrick, talks to Pablo. “He can eat. He can’t have the spear.”

Pablo lets the spear hang in the air a moment more—so that Patrick could reach for it if he wanted—and then drags it back and balances it on his thigh and hovers the meat near the coals. Blood drips from it, sizzles. “You know your old man tells some crazy stories.”

“Yeah?”

“Telling us stories how he dropped acid in Yosemite once and went on a hike. Tripping balls and thought, for some reason, might be a good idea to take off his clothes. So he does. So he’s hiking along naked except for his boots. Then he comes across this woman wearing, like, some gauzy white outfit. Most beautiful woman in the world, he said. He touched her and she turned to ash when he touched her and blew away with the wind.”

“That true, Dad?”

His father does not respond. His head is bowed and he is rubbing his hands along his thighs to their rounded ends.

Patrick smiles because it seems like the right thing to do. Even if he doesn’t feel happy, he doesn’t feel sad either. He doesn’t feel much of anything except cornered. He doesn’t think he has room for anything else inside his head except escape. He studies his purplish knuckles, the blue-veined backs of his hands, as if they might hold an answer for him.

The black man, Jessie, says, “Why you telling him that?”

“Trying to make conversation.”

“You’re supposed to be telling him some heroic shit. Not about some drug trip. Nobody wants to hear that about their dad.” Then he says he needs some rack time and settles onto some bedding and rolls away from them.

The meat begins to char and smoke and Patrick eyes up the M57 leaning against the cave wall, only ten feet away but on the other side of the fire. He doesn’t know how many bullets are in it, but he guesses there are enough. His eyes jog to Austin, who remains hunched over the altar, shirtless now, his arms sleeved in blood up to the elbows. Their gazes lock. There is no negotiating with him. There is no escape either. If Patrick tries to leave, he will be dead or infected. He can see the sharpness in Austin’s stare and knows it is only a matter of time before he tells the others to hold Patrick down and gnaw on his thigh or take him up the ass.



*



After Claire ripped open the envelope and held the ziplock bag in her hand and recognized the two fingers sliced off neatly at the knuckle and dropped the mess of it to the floor and retreated until her back hit the wall, it took a long time for her to stop screaming. Matthew at first tried to comfort her, whispering that it would be all right, and then clamped a hand over her mouth and dragged her outside, where the cold snapped her into silence.

She could not be alone—and she could not face Andrea, who would have too many questions Claire could not answer—so she would go to his room. “Is that okay?” he asked and she nodded until he stopped her chin with his hand and said, “Okay.” He retrieved the envelope from the floor of the mailroom and shoved it in her bag and she felt sick with the weight of it when they set off into the twilight gloom.

In his room, a single, he apologizes for the mess and kicks a pile of dirty clothes into his closet. His shelves and desk are overflowing with textbooks and papers, coffee cups, a hacky sack, a half-eaten bag of Fritos, a troll doll with wild hair. Over his bed hang two posters, one of Star Wars, the other of Che Guevara. A minifridge hums in the corner and from it he pulls a bottle of springwater for her to guzzle, dried out as she feels from so much crying.

In the window sits an iPod dock and a globe that lights up from inside. She goes to it and snaps it on and it projects its colorful design onto the window, the walls, their faces. She twirls it and the room spins with color. “Where do you want to go?” he says and she slams down a finger, and when they see where she points, their faces fall with disappointment: the Lupine Republic.

She leans into him then and he wraps his arms around her and she studies their reflection in the window. Her eyes strain to focus on him, her mouth opening and closing, as though she is struggling to read in dim light. She can’t quite tell if he’s looking back at her or past her. They remain this way for some time and later retain much the same position in bed.



The next morning’s sunrise feels like an ignition. She has to leave. It is impossible not to leave. Not with what she knows. She slips out of bed and shoulders her backpack and clicks shut the door, and five minutes later creeps into her own room, where Andrea still sleeps.

Claire sets her suitcase on the bed and flops it open and begins to empty her drawers. She will depart on the next train to Seattle. No good-byes. No regrets. Before, she chastised herself for her preoccupation with the past, thinking of it as a weakness. Now she feels furious at herself for being so neglectful. Her past is all that matters—and Miriam is the only part of it that remains.

She checks her bureau, checks her desk, making sure she has everything she needs, and finds there a paper graded by Reprobus. The paper about her father. She received a B-plus on it, and in his end comments he wrote, “More sources next time. Interested in hearing from others besides you alone. The wolf, remember, is only as strong as the pack.”

She leaves her suitcase yawning open on top of her bed.



She has come to learn his habits. By seven o’clock every morning he has already gone for his morning stroll and picked up his coffee from the union and will now be in his office reading the paper or grading essays and readying his next lecture.