Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(35)
Patrick notices for the first time the tracheotomy scar, like a bright red worm nesting in the cup of his neck. The air is dry and the carpet shag, so that a spark snaps between them when they bring their hands together to shake, a jolt that makes Patrick blink fast and stutter out his thanks. One by one, the boys in the room introduce themselves—this one chinless, this one rashed over with acne, this one freakishly muscled, the tendons jumping from his neck like piano wires—and their socks sizzle across the carpet and their hands emit tiny blue balls of light.
They don’t linger but return to whatever previously occupied them, darts, foosball, something on the laptop. A wood-paneled TV set squats in the corner, the image of a soldier frozen on the screen, his teeth gritted. A video-game console nests in a black tangle of wires. Two of the boys punch their controllers and the screen comes to life. Patrick recognizes Call of Duty: Lycan Wars, a shooter game set in the Lupine Republic, your level-by-level mission to kill as many lycan insurgents as possible while collecting stores of energy and weapons—a silver chainsaw, a Gatling gun that rattles out ammo with a sound like a shuffled deck of cards.
A few times a month, Max says, they make an effort to get together. Nothing formal. Just a chance to hang. Feel connected. Patrick doesn’t know what to say—doesn’t know if he should ask what exactly connects them, makes them a group—so he simply says, cool. Their talk turns to school, how Patrick is liking it, how Max believes one teacher is worthless and another is smart but clouded by his liberal agenda. His eye contact is unrelenting. He taps his middle finger into his opposing palm to punctuate his sentences.
“You want a drink, by the way?” Max says, and Patrick says sure and wonders for a second if that means a beer before noticing that everyone in the room is sucking on a pop, Coke, Squirt, Dr Pepper. The minifridge is stocked full and Patrick cracks a Coke and Max snaps his fingers and says, “Before I forget.” His voice rises to address the room. “Guys. Heads up. Listen up.” The volume of the music lowers, the video game pauses, heads swivel in their direction. “Next Wednesday, four o’clock, don’t forget, we’re stopping by Desert Flower, the old folks’ home on O.B. Riley. Groundskeeping first. Then card games. And, Dan, you’re going to play the piano at dinner.”
Everyone nods and then the foosball table rattles and shudders and the video game and conversations start back up. Max raises his eyebrows and lowers his voice and says to Patrick, “Not what you expected, right?”
He’s not sure what he expected. Yelling maybe. A swastika flag. “You guys straight edge or something?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“We call ourselves the Americans.”
They talk about immigration. They talk about guns. They talk about the viability of Chase Williams as a presidential candidate. And when they talk, Max seems to end every sentence with “right?”—in a prodding, corrective way—as if to make sure they share the same beliefs.
They talk about the attacks, and when Patrick says he doesn’t understand why now, why all of a sudden the seeming escalation in the size and strength of the Resistance, Max appears insulted. “It isn’t all of a sudden. This has been going on for years. This has been going on since our parents were our age, since the Struggle.”
He holds out a finger for the failed Times Square bombing, for the anthrax scare, for the mail bombs, for the mall shooting, for the subway gassing. “All of those were relative failures. A few headlines, a few dead bodies, and then everybody moves on to the next earthquake or tsunami news tragedy. This is just the first time the mutts have actually been able to pull something off, something big. And you, my friend, found yourself in the middle of it and somehow walked away alive. Which is pretty amazing. You’re part of history. You’re a walking emblem of their failure, our hope.” Max’s voice seems to grow louder with every sentence, and his head bobs on his shoulders like a balloon on a ribbon.
Patrick hates it when people talk about him as if he were an idea. That’s why he stopped meeting with reporters. He tries to change the subject, asking Max if he thinks the average lycan is dangerous, if it’s fair to lump them all together as part of the Resistance. “I can’t say I know that many lycans, but it seems like they’re living pretty normal lives. They don’t have much to complain about. They seem pretty happy, pretty safe.”
Max shakes his head with disappointment. He puts his arms on Patrick’s shoulders. “Listen to me. They are a public health risk and a biological abomination. Don’t ever forget that, okay?”
“Okay.”
Max releases him and Patrick drains the last of his soda and shakes it to indicate he is going to get another. Max follows him to the minifridge and says, “Now I want you to tell me about your father.”
He cracks the can, slurps the foam. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Patrick doesn’t know what to say. His father wears Levi’s, motorcycle boots, white T-shirts ripped from clear plastic packs. His fingernails always carry bruises and crescents of dirt. Every few weeks he cuts his own hair in the mirror with a pair of clippers, shearing it down to a high-and-tight. In college, he was a biochem major, a gifted slacker. That’s where he met Neal—at UC Davis—where they went by the nicknames Kirk and Spock. Keith drove motorcycles and carried a knife on his belt and found himself bored in the lab, excited more by big ideas than by carrying them out—while Neal wore khakis, sandals with socks, the detail-oriented workman who went on to make a name for himself as a researcher in animal diseases.