Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(129)

So many of the rules no longer apply.

Not very far from here, the perimeter fence begins, nearly three thousand miles of hastily constructed hurricane fencing that is practically useless and encases most of Oregon and Washington, some of Idaho and Montana, the length of it staggered with checkpoints and FOBs. Beyond the perimeter, the noise of traffic roaring, televisions blaring, cell phones ringing, Muzak trembling from shopping-center sound systems, all of it has ceased, leaving behind a scary silence.

Coyotes slink through the aisles of Safeway. Elks plod along the streets of Portland. In the fields and in the streets are semis and tanks and planes, rust cratered, the grass growing around them, looking like dinosaurs, fallen and decaying.

The lycans have carved out their own country, abandoning Volpexx, denying the xenophobic laws that in their collective choke collar felt more constrictive than all the prisons in the world, or so they said.

Patrick leans against the bar and drinks, hoping the beer will warm the chill from him. The bartender seems to have no neck, his head balanced atop his rounded shoulders. He wears a moth-eaten cable-knit sweater with the sleeves pushed up to reveal his meaty forearms. He collects two empty pint glasses and wipes the counter with a filthy rag.

Patrick looks beyond the bartender to the mirror behind him. Sometimes he hardly recognizes himself. Head shaved down to skin. Skin as brown as the high desert soil. Body lean, muscles sculpted like carved rock. He looks like a man even when he feels like a kid. He uses the mirror to study the faces around him. A woman with dream-catcher earrings and a high, shrieking laugh. A weak-chinned man in civilian clothes but with the standard-issue high-and-tight buzz. A Mexican with a handlebar mustache and cheeks pitted from acne. He spots a huddle of men standing around a corner booth, laughing, speaking to whoever sits there.

Patrick asks if that is where he will find the woman named Strawhacker, and the bartender says indeed it is, and Patrick wipes the foam from his lip before taking a closer look.

The light is so dim that at first he cannot see into the shadowy booth. Then the woman leans forward. Her face is as wrinkled as an old tissue, and her nose filamented with tiny red and purple capillaries. Her gray hair is cut boyishly around her ears. But her eyes are her most striking feature—milky puddles that seem with every blink ready to stream down her cheeks. On the table before her, a whiskey tumbler and a stack of tarot cards.

She is playing some sort of game with the men who stand around her. One of them pulls five dollars from his wallet and lays it on the table. Then he draws a card from the tarot deck, the middle of the pile, and holds it up for the others to study. Strawhacker goes rigid and licks her lips and finally says, “The Magician.”

The men gasp out their laughs and shake their heads and curse good-naturedly and Strawhacker steals away the five dollars and bids them good night and they leave her.

Strawhacker then sips her whiskey and looks at Patrick. They are ten feet apart, and Strawhacker has no eyes, but nonetheless Patrick can feel her dead gaze. His skin tightens into gooseflesh and he takes a step back.

“Where are you going?” Strawhacker says. “Please. Come here. Stay awhile.”

Patrick approaches the booth with his beer held like a pistol. The door creaks open as the four men depart the tavern, and he startles at the noise, some of the beer fuzzing over the rim of his glass to chill his wrist. A blast of wind hurries inside and makes the candle flames dance before the door slams shut.

“How did you know what card that was?”

“Just luck, just luck,” Strawhacker says and shuffles them with a riffling snap, neatens them into a pile. “Or maybe something more.”

The booth, too, is built from railroad ties, every inch of wood scarred from knives, people carving out their names and the names of those they love. There is a chair at the end of the booth and Strawhacker indicates that Patrick should sit there and he does.

“Some people come to me for games and some come to me for reasons more profound. I try to give people what they want.” She sweeps the stack aside. “You’re not here for games.”

“I’m supposed to believe you can see things?”

“You’ve come here, haven’t you? Part of you must believe. Yes, part of you must.”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“It’s hard to know what to believe anymore. These are strange times. What I’ve discovered about myself is this: there’s a muscle in my brain that stretches open, like an iris maybe, yes, some diaphragm of muscle, and images soar through. It has no discernible real logic—but that’s my best explanation—it’s a spot to start from.”

“You talk like a crazy teacher.”

“You talk like an insolent boy.” She lifts her face in defiance, her chin protruding farther than her nose. Her voice is lower when she speaks again. “You want to know if I can see? I can see. I can see you colliding with another boy in center field after chasing a pop fly, can see the bone swell that made you limp for three weeks after. I can see you fingering a girl behind your middle school and then not washing your hand for a whole day to preserve that mysterious, intoxicating smell. I can see you shooting your first deer and putting your thumb into the kill wound and tasting the blood. I can see your father running out into a lightning storm to grab your teddy bear forgotten in the yard while you watched from the window. And I can see him now, a dead man in a faraway cave with bats roosting over his bones.” Flecks of spit fly from her mouth. “And if you want more from me than that, you’re going to have to pay up, like every other *.”