Bewere the Night

Rachel huffed. It was the first time she tried to speak “tiger,” but she wanted to convey her understanding.

“I’ll try,” Rachel thought, and moaned aloud.

When the moon disappeared and the sun rose, perhaps Rachel would remain a tiger, imprisoned in this tiger concentration camp or shot as Cho’s second murderer.

Or, when the sun rose, Rachel might revert to human form and the killer tigress might kill her.

But if she didn’t, Rachel could appropriate the Range Rover and dump its owner’s before maneuvering her way back to Harbin and negotiating an end to this tiger concentration camp. Rachel could let the tigers in and out of their cages, thanks to the keys hanging on Cho’s belt. And if Rachel found a legitimate piece of land, somewhere the tigers could live and feed one day, in dignity …

The hunter-tigress walked away from Cho’s body, back to the pond. She sniffed the water and began to lap it up.

Rachel joined her. The water tasted like algae and dirt and something entirely different: hope.

(NOTHING BUT) FLOWERS by Nick Mamatas

Amber’s two greatest obstacles, she decided, were her journal which she still wrote in every night, though she had no light and didn’t bother checking what she had written during the day when she could actually see the pages, and the gasoline she used to keep warm when it got very cold in the tree house.

She was conflicted about using tampons instead of moss, even though the pack had all talked about it and consensed that the tampons were okay, so long as they were shoplifted. Noliked blood. And that put Amber on shopping duty, which led her back to the gas, which she actually had to buy after working the sign, and little notepads and pens. There was something sexist about all of it, she was sure—the boys got to spend more time in the woods and didn’t have to think about her period except when one of them was horny for her at the wrong time, and they used most of the gas for direct action, which she was not enthusiastic about anymore.

Then there was the whole idea of even thinking about obstacle. And sexism. More symbolic thought bullshit. Amber wrote all this down in the dark of her platform—there was a big gibbous moon tonight but the canopy of the woods blocked most of it and the light pollution from the city. Amber decided that in the dark symbolic thought didn’t count so much because she could never really be sure that the letters she wrote in her cramped hand would ever be legible to anyone, even herself.

The branches rustled and “Hey” said a voice and Amber said back, “Hey Berg.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“You still smell of soap,” Amber said. “In the dark, things are easier to smell. I’m sure you smell me.”

He laughed, nervous. “Sorry about that.” Berg, on his hands and knees awkwardly crawled over to Amber and nuzzled, finding her dreds, her neck. She wrapped her limbs, all four of them, around Berg’s skinny torso, and then bit into his shoulder. First, playfully, but she didn’t stop till after Berg yelped and tried to squirm away.

“That a no?” Berg asked.

Amber grunted.

“That a no-symbolic-thought thing?”

In the dark, Amber shrugged extensively enough that Berg could make out the gesture.

“I guess I don’t get that part of it. Didn’t you come here because of a theoretical realization? Zerzan? Jensen? Species Traitor?”

“You did,” Amber said. Neither Berg nor Amber said anything for a minute or so after that.

“Amber?”

“I’m deciding.”

Wind through the branches. Some shuffling around. You could almost hear the blood in their bodies, coursing.

“Okay.” Berg surged forward and got fingernails to his cheek from it.

“Okay I’ll tell you. Want to check out a copy of Proletarian Worker?”

“Huh?”

“It was a negative dialectic.” She giggled. Redwood went on about negative dialectics all the time. The term had become a joke amongst the pack. “I was a socialist in school. Sold the paper every Saturday, went to demos and meetings all the time. Always tabling at the student union, sending around petitions, standing up in class and denouncing marginal economics or sociobiology or old Maoist professors for not being the Trotskyists. You know, the usual.”

“Yeah, of course. PW is like blight. They were always trying to take over movements and coalitions and the paper was so awful.”

“I know, I know,” Amber said. “Anyway, one time we had this educational on black self-determination and one of the comrades during her talk mentioned that in Haiti during the slave rebellion of 1791 the battle flag of the rebelling slaves was a white baby impaled on a pike.”

“Yeah … ” Berg said.

“Yeah, so anyway, after the meeting—and you know it was all white people—everyone was all like, ‘Yes, that’s us. We can do that if we had to.’ And half the comrades couldn’t even get up on time to sell the paper on Saturdays at the park, and their dues were always late, and none of them ever did their reading and—”

“So? You sound like an MBA or a sorority sister planning a bake sale.” Something flew at Berg. He jerked his head to the side and it flew past him.

“Shut up,” Amber said. “No, it was just all the lies, all the posing. And I was doing it too. They were lying to themselves, to me, to one another. ‘Yeah, kill that white baby and wave his ass around.’ Could I do it? No, I didn’t think so, and I didn’t think any of the comrades could either. It wasn’t authentic, we didn’t really feel that kind of rage. That dead baby didn’t belong to us—it was just a symbol of how everyone was going to be a hero of the revolution one day. So I quit. The party and symbolic thought. Well, the best I could.’’

“And then?”

“And then I met Salmon and he turned me on to primitivism and consensus politics and then after we both dropped out of State we came here and made a platform. I always loved nature, wasn’t one of those boring ‘political vegans’, so it fit. We were both looking for something, Salmon and me, though he was further along of course. It wasn’t horizontal recruitment. Anyway, after the electricity got cut off in his apartment, we took it as a sign—into the woods.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“But mostly with the honesty. I like that.”

“Cool,” Berg said. “So anyway, if we’re not going to fuck, I guess I’ll go fuck some shit up now.”

“Okay,” Amber said. “See ya.”

“Coming?”

“No. I mean, yeah, go ahead. Trash that shit. I don’t want to tonight. That’s what’s freedom all’s about, right?”

Berg and Redwood and Salmon met at Berg’s little lab—Berg had a survival tent covered haphazardly in leafy branches on ground level, a camp stove, and a pair of repurposed saucepans. Other things too. He’d come with them, just the month before. Sometimes it takes a bit for the shell of civilization to slough off, but for now he was allowed his technology provided he put it toward the ends of the movement. With Amber’s gasoline and a few bars of shoplifted soap from a Dollar Tree, Berg prepared the napalm. The little pots made for an okay double boiler. Some water was heated in the lower boiler as Berg shaved the soap. Then, off the stove and onto a rock, quick quick before the water cools. The gasoline into the top boiler and then the soap—a 1:1 ratio. A drizzle of gas, a tiny tongue of soap. Stir with a thick twig. Some more gasoline, a handful of soap shavings sprinkled like mozzarella cheese through Berg’s fingers. Stirring and stirring, the liquid grew viscous and thick.