Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(47)

Miriam says, “My brother’s principal stance, which I’m sure you’ve heard ten thousand times before, is that lycans are their own category of person. It is not a disease. It is an identity and way of life.” She explains that it was difficult to talk about this scientifically until the discovery of prions in the early eighties. The way the pathogen inhabits the body results in a symbiotic organism that is fundamentally part man and part wolf. “He was arguing for a new categorization of race, which most people aren’t willing to consider.”

Then, Miriam says, then came the Days of Rage.



*



Neither Patrick nor his father is much of a talker, and ever since his unit was activated, on the two occasions they have Skyped, fidgety silence has defined their conversations. When they do speak, because of the slow connection, their words garble together so that they constantly say, “What? What was that?” On the computer, his father’s face appears pixilated and run through with lines of static. His mouth does not align with his words when he says, “Makes me sick thinking about what happened to you on that plane.”

Email is better. They come every day, or every other, usually something small, like “What did u do today?” or “Love ya, bud.” His father tells him he should go for a drive, should go visit Neal, and Patrick wants to say he has enough strangers in his life, but he doesn’t. His father complains about the snow that won’t quit, the wind that blackens skin, the MREs that taste like glue. The temperature dropped below zero the other night and a pipe burst on base and the water pressure coughed out for two days. Occasionally he writes about the war, telling Patrick about the rocket blast that woke him or how his platoon fought their way through an ambush as they humped five miles over steep, rugged terrain, sometimes thigh-deep in snow, only one man injured after getting blown off his feet by a land mine. Telling Patrick, too, that not everyone there is opposed to their presence. That most, in fact, seem pretty happy to see them patrolling the streets, guarding the mines. They work with local police. They meet with villagers, shake hands, share coffee and some godforsaken dish called lutefisk made from stockfish soaked in lye.

Today Patrick’s handheld buzzes and he glances at the screen to find an email from his father, [email protected]. The message reads, “Mountains. Forests. Lakes. This would be a beautiful place if not for all the f*ckers who want to kill me.”

Patrick nudges Max with his elbow, says take a look at this. They’re raking leaves and planting bulbs—tulips, irises, daffodils—outside the local women’s shelter. Max pulls off his dirt-smeared gloves and takes the phone and smiles and asks Patrick if he knows how lucky he is, having a father like that. “First thing I do when I hit eighteen,” Max says and flips his trowel in the air and catches it, a flash of sunlight on the metal. “I’m heading to that recruitment station, signing on to fight. I assume you feel the same?”

In truth Patrick has been off and on researching colleges but can’t help but feel a twinge for Max’s approval. “Sure,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about it.”



*



Claire has learned not to ask too many questions at once or Miriam will grow short or cagey or stop talking altogether. She has learned, in small doses, over the past few weeks, that since the 1960s her parents have been on a government watch list, that they have been jailed more times than Miriam can recall, that they eventually lost faith in violence as a strategy for anything but trouble and began, in the eighties, to put their energy into pacifism buttressed by action, organizing nonviolent campaigns that called attention to social injustice. “And then they gave up altogether.”

“What happened?”

“They had you.”



Miriam says she can smell snow. “Any day now.” They are outside the cabin, in the scrub meadow that surrounds it, the sky as gray as concrete, the weeds browned and snapping underfoot. Miriam unrolls a Pendleton blanket and reveals a Glock, a .357, and a shotgun. Claire sets clips and bricks of ammo next to them.

Miriam gives her a quick lesson on the Glock 17. Austrian-made semiautomatic pistol. Self-loading. Polymer frame. Checkered grip. Used by virtually every law enforcement agency. Outperforms any other handgun on the market for ease, accuracy, and durability. Seventeen-round double-stack magazines.

Miriam shows Claire how to feed the magazine, how to disengage the safety, how to aim down the line of the barrel, the ramped front sight, the notched rear sight. “It’s got good bark, good bite, so be ready. You’re going to have to correct the muzzle rise after every shot.”

Claire asks what she should aim for and Miriam points to the edge of the meadow, a pine tree, maybe ten years old, as tall as two men and as wide around as a leg.

The pistol jumps in her hand like something alive when she squeezes off round after round. The gunshots slap through the trees and thunder in her ears so forcibly her hearing feels bruised. Brass casings spit like peanut shells. The smell of sulfur sharpens the air. Most of her shots miss the tree, but a few make it dance, knock pulpy white wads from the trunk.

When she ejects the magazine and slams another into place, she thinks of her parents and the Days of Rage, the three days of demonstrations that took place at this same time of year, October 1969. “The Power Is in the Street” was the heading of the chapter Miriam showed her, apologetically calling the book leftist propaganda. The pages detailed how—during the late sixties and early seventies, at the height of the Struggle, as it came to be known—many lycans came to believe in direct action and violence as political strategy. Antigovernment graffiti appeared on buildings, statues were defaced, and leaflets were distributed at high schools and on college campuses. In Chicago, a bomb ripped apart a statue commemorating a policeman who died in the Haymarket Affair. In Milwaukee, a bomb exploded outside city hall and a passenger train was derailed by a slab of concrete set on the tracks; and in Lincoln, several mail trucks and police cars were set on fire. Thousands attended the demonstration in Chicago, where protesters turned over cars and smashed windows in homes and businesses and were beaten and fire-hosed and teargassed and dragged away by fascist police and National Guard members in full riot gear.