Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(43)
Miriam sets down her glass on the coffee table with a click. “That was stupid, you know, bringing that boy here. Really stupid.”
“I know.”
“He knows your face. He knows where we live.”
“I know,” Claire says and drops her gaze to the floor, but really, despite the strong poison of what Miriam has to say, all Claire can concentrate on is a single word, we. Where we live. It makes her want to cry out with relief.
*
Claire tries to keep busy. She sweeps the floor. She turns the toilet paper around so that it pulls forward. She alphabetizes the books. She washes the dishes, letting the towel linger on a plate before setting it on the rack to dry. She opens up the fridge and stares into its cold white hum. Small tasks, everyday rituals, bring her comfort after living in a free fall.
She finds flies in the sinks. Flies on the windowsills. Flies on bedcovers, flies even beneath her sheets, buzzing. The cabin hasn’t been opened in a long time and the air has a stale, rank quality. She has longed for a roof over her head, but she finds herself so used to the open sky that the boarded-up windows make her feel trapped.
She tells her aunt as much. At that moment Miriam is peering out one of the window slits, and when she glances at Claire a band of light divides her face. “You want to chop wood?”
“Anything. So long as it’s outside.”
Miriam returns her gaze to the window and uses her teeth to shred dry skin off her lower lip. “I suppose it’s safe. So long as we’re armed. And you stay close.”
“You think somebody might be out there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not right now. But somebody came for me a few weeks ago.”
“What happened to him?”
Miriam makes her hand into the shape of a gun and points it at Claire. “Bang.”
*
Chase appears in the statehouse rotunda in dress uniform—peaked cap, midnight-blue jacket with red trim and a standing collar. Behind him, when he tromps down the marble stairs, follow members of the Oregon National Guard. He approaches the podium, its front adorned with the Oregon seal, and pauses there as the soldiers perform a traditional march. Their swords slash the air and their boots thud the stone floor and make the air tremble. They come to a stop beneath a massive American flag suspended between two pillars.
Chase snaps off a salute and removes his hat to set on the podium. “Thank you,” he says, first to the guardsmen and then to the reporters who sit in folding chairs twenty rows deep. Their cameras flash and create a strobe-like effect that blinds him. For three weeks he has not made a public appearance. After appearing everywhere, he was suddenly nowhere, and the media took note. His official statement claimed he was hunkering down for a restful strategy session, but many believed he had fallen ill. The press conference is Buffalo’s idea: a show of strength and a bold declaration that will distract from the gossip of his sudden absence.
Despite his rigid posture, despite his small smile, Chase does not feel well. He doesn’t feel like himself—maybe that’s a better way to put it. He is a man divided, host to a pathogen that can overtake him at any moment. Sometimes his heart races and his breath comes in hurried pants. His muscles ache. His toothbrush pulls away from his mouth bloody. He rakes a hand through his hair and finds it wet with sweat. He can smell himself, his armpits and crotch damp musky pockets. His consciousness sometimes feels as though it has short-circuited, whirling with lights, through which dart, alternately, the silhouette of a man, and then a wolf.
Buffalo warned him about this. It will take time to get used to his condition, physically, emotionally, an alien pregnancy capable of tearing through his belly, strangling him with its umbilical cord. Symbiotic is the word Buffalo used. Cursed is how Chase thinks of it. Volpexx will make things easier. Volpexx—Buffalo promised, once they get their hands on a shipment of it—will be the equivalent of a choke chain.
Good thing. The infection has a tumorous effect on the adrenal glands, causing them to double in size. The section of the brain known as the amygdala—which controls emotion—is part of the limbic system and communicates with the hypothalamus, where hormones take effect. Rage or fear or excitement results in a hormonal cue results in an adrenal flood. The effect on the body, during transformation, is equivalent to a towering dose of PCP.
The reporters lower their cameras and the white haze of his vision solidifies. “I stand here a proud, humble Oregon boy.” He pauses and cocks his head, at first wondering what he hears, realizing it is their pens scratching across paper, like the noise of hundreds of insects chewing something fibrous. All of his senses have amplified these past few days especially. He can feel the tags on his shirts and the stitching in his socks. Nothing tastes right—even tap water carries strange flavors of fluoride and metal. He can smell a dead squirrel rotting beneath a bush three blocks away.
Beyond the crowd of reporters stands Buffalo, who makes a get-on-with-it motion with his hand. Chase clears his throat. “My family has lived in this state for three generations. My great-grandfather laid roads in Eastern Oregon. My grandfather designed the lumber mill that was for so many years the industrial heart of Old Mountain. My father ran a six-thousand-head cattle ranch. My roots go deep.” He almost never speaks from scripted material, but Buffalo says that has to change, that he can no longer leave anything to chance and risk a flash of fear or anger.