Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(37)
She flexed the fingers of her left hand. The tendons felt tight, the muscles tender and unfamiliar, but otherwise fine. She spent the next few minutes clumsily snipping through her homemade cast, and when it finally fell away, the skin beneath was as damp and pale as something drawn from a shell.
She blows into her hand now, trying to warm it, her breath puffing between her fingers in short-lived clouds. The moon glows and casts a sickly light. Claire tries not to look at it. She hates it. She knows how ridiculous it is to hate a spinning ball of rock, but she does, she hates it, as someone can hate a flag tacked to a wall or a corporate logo emblazoned on a smokestack. It reminds her, like a grinning skull, of what she is.
She has never taken Volpexx, has never had to, her doctor a sympathizer, a family friend who falsely reports their monthly blood tests. But she saw the drug’s effects in her friend Stacey, who sometimes seemed deadened, especially when the moon fattened, when the dosage was most potent. Her words slurred. Her posture hunched. Her skin appeared yellow except for the purplish half-moons beneath her eyes. She fell asleep in class, forgot her homework.
Even unmedicated, Claire feels no desire to transform. And that’s what it’s about, desire. Letting go, they call it. Letting go, allowing the animal to take over, like an unleashed id. Most can control the change, as you might anger or desire—choosing not to swing a fist, cop a feel—but when stressed or exhausted, when pushed too hard, overwhelmed by the weight of the world, not everyone can hold back, the animal rising unbidden, invading the body and mind. The moon makes it worse. The lunar effect, they call it, for the spike in robberies, suicides, murders, births, car accidents, transformations.
The road is walled by pine trees. Her footsteps, following the white line that edges the asphalt, are the only sound. At the edge of town she passes a Burger King, its sign glowing, its windows dark. In observance of the full-moon Sabbath, restaurants close; only vital services remain open. Hotels, hospitals, police. Gas stations. The red star of a Texaco blazes up ahead, and a few minutes later, when she walks past the pumps, the fluorescent lights buzz above her like sick cicadas.
The store is empty save for the man behind the counter. Thirties. Hollow eyed. Mossy goatee hanging as low as the crucifix flashing around his neck. She asks if he knows where to find Battle Creek Road. He says he’s never heard of it. She asks if he has a smart phone she could borrow and he says if he could afford a smart phone he wouldn’t be working the late shift at the Texaco.
Outside, a semi idles at the diesel island. She can barely make out the shape of the driver, a shadow darker than the rest inside the cab, but she knows he is watching her. She can feel it. Her skin tightens. The red tip of a cigarette glows in the cab and the semi seems to expel its smoke in the exhaust rising from the bullhorn pipes. The steel trailer behind the cab is pocked with air vents. Sheep on their way to slaughter. She can hear their panicked bleating, can see here and there a bulging eye, a damp black snout.
Another quarter mile and a sidewalk and streetlamps appear. She hurries between their cones of light. Three cars are parked at the AmericInn and she guesses the purple Datsun belongs to the night clerk, a woman with dream-catcher earrings and a coal-black dye job that doesn’t match her wrinkled face. Claire tries to keep her voice calm, even when the woman looks around as if for another customer and asks if Claire plans to get a room or what, then sighs heavily when the answer is no. But Claire doesn’t move and the woman at last gives in and taps the address into Google Maps and says, “Battle Creek?”
“Yes.”
“Not Battle River?”
“The note says Battle Creek.”
“Got nothing for Battle Creek, but I got Battle River. Ten-twenty Battle River.” Her throat is corroded, her breath smelling like the ghosts of a thousand dead cigarettes. “South of town a ways. Then west. You got a ways to go. Five miles at least.” She clicks the mouse and the printer hums and spits out a piece of paper bearing a map in gray scale. “Hope you find what you’re looking for.”
She follows Highway 97 south of town. Streetlights vanish. Houses appear less and less frequently, islands of light set back in the woods. Now and then the trees break and she can make out the white glowing jawline of the Cascade Mountains. Every time she passes a road, many of them gravel, she consults the sheet of paper with her flashlight, as if the map might have shifted when she wasn’t looking.
Her feet can’t move fast enough, not out of excitement but from worry. Her father made a mistake. Maybe the street is wrong—or maybe the town is wrong—or maybe they’re both wrong. Maybe it’s all wrong, even the house number. He was hurried and nervous, after all, penning a note he knew might be his last. She can’t help but curse him. Just as she can’t help but push forward.
Her mind is so busy, she does not notice the semi until it is nearly upon her. Its headlights brighten the night to the color of an old bruise. It blasts past her, and in the air it displaces, she smells the sheep in the trailer, the shit-soaked heat of them. Another hundred yards and its taillights flash red. The semi rolls to a stop, braking with the sound of a big animal clearing its throat.
She slows her pace. She remembers the truck driver in Minneapolis, how worried she was and how kind he turned out to be. Her hand fumbles with the zipper of his coat, now hers, and draws it snug to her neck. She glances behind her—at the empty stretch of road, like a long black snake banded with black and yellow stripes—and tries to remember the last time she saw a car.