C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

As Holly got out of the car, I saw she was wearing her open-toed, sandal-like things with the mini-platforms. What was she thinking? Ever since she saw that miniseries about Patti Hearst getting kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army—which I had to admit was a very cool name—Holly got more serious about being an animal activist. She did not, however, leave fashion behind.As soon as she hit the muddy hill with those shoes, she wobbled as if she were on stilts. She fell backward, right on the little Goth cape she insisted on wearing.”Oh-my-god,” she shouted, as if we should all laugh.”Get up and shut up,” I said, sounding tougher than the usual me.I wasn’t the leader. Nobody was supposed to be. But firm, serious, Megan remained our spiritual leader if for no other reason than she was the only one who had read all the important magazines from our mentors: Animal Liberation Front (ALF), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and EarthFirst!

According to our plan, the mud should have been too cold and stiff to hold footprints, but we trudged up the slope leaving evidence of shoe sizes if not name-brands. I stopped and stared down at my Nikes, Ryan’s Doc Martens, Holly’s platform jokes, and Megan’s sensible Timberlands.

“What’s keeping you, man?” Ryan whispered over his shoulder.

“We’re leaving tracks!” I said as I scrambled up the slope after the others.

“No looking back,” Ryan said, which sounded good at the time.

We were in the process of liberating the inmates of the University’s Experimental Station #47. The Station was a one-story brown building on top of a small hill. A fence surrounded the complex just as you would expect at a concentration camp. The prisoners, of course, were deer.

As I reached the top of the hill, I saw our group in full silhouette. With a sinking sensation, I realized that it was more than the mud or Holly’s shoes that we had failed to anticipate. Although we had waited for the darkness of a new
moon and even watched the Weather Channel giddy with thoughts of crime, we had forgotten about the lights. Hundreds of them had been put up the previous spring in an effort to prevent a national rape epidemic from settling on the campus, and now they bathed us in a science-fictional glow. Anyone looking up the hill could have spotted us easily.

“There’s the hole,” Holly said, pointing to a crude pile of boards at the base of the otherwise impressive-looking fence.

Holly’s sister, the one who delivered deer pellets to the station, had told Holly about the hole. A coyote, she’d thought, had tried to dig into the deer compound, and graduate student slave laborers had done a crude repair job.

I walked up to the boards and kicked one off easily.

“Classic carpentry,” Ryan said.

Another kick and the whole thing collapsed. We stood there looking at the hole like a bunch of idiots. Probably we were all afraid to enter.

A gaggle of deer, mostly does, but at least one buck with an impressive rack, stood there looking at us through the fence. They snorted and sniffed as if they had allergies. I wondered if they were angry that we had roused them from their cud-chewing sleep. How would they know it was for their own good?

I imagined asking Jeff someday if deer even chewed cud, then banished the thought. Jeff was the last person I wanted to think about.

“They want food,” Ryan said.

Of course, I thought. These are tame deer, used to people. That thought led to another less helpful thought: Why were we freeing tame deer?

“Move, everyone,” Megan said like a female action figure mysteriously born to Unitarian parents. “Remember our rehearsals?” she said. “Let’s get this job done and get out of here.”

With her black ski cap pulled low over her frowning face, she didn’t look anything like the female action figures I’d grown up loving. Where was the tight-fitting lycra jumpsuit of the Planeteers or the huge mane of Xena when she was ready to kill?

Ryan dived through the hole first. This awakened me from my longing for Xena, and I ducked down and crawled. The jagged metal fence tore my light windbreaker and dug into my back. DNA traces, I thought.

The deer stepped back a few feet but not far enough for my comfort. Their scent was half-sweet, half-foul, like sweet-and-sour pork left overnight.

Three of us got through and faced the quiet herd. As Holly wriggled halfway through, the big buck stomped his feet and snorted. We froze.

“Nice deer,” Holly said, looking up at him from ground level. Her videocam bag, the one I’d told her not to bring, was stuck in the fence’s wire.

“He’s not a freaking dog,” Ryan whispered, in a tone used in wildlife documentaries. “He’s protecting his harem.”

Holly managed joined us, breathing heavily. I heard the crinkle of a candy wrapper, and she threw something at the buck, and it hit him in the chest—and he snorted.

“What the hell are you doing?” I said.

Instead of charging us, the buck lowered his head and nuzzled something on the ground. Then he licked it.

“Granola bar,” Holly said. “They’re full of oats, you know.”

“Move,” Megan said.

Ryan ran toward the door of the building. In less than a minute, I heard glass smashing.

“I’m in,” he said.

The sound of the glass had stunned me. I looked for Megan as if to check with her. How far had we agreed to go? Instead I called up a slideshow of animal atrocities that Megan had shown us: scientists spraying stinging poison in bunnies’ eyes, scientists poking hot electrodes in exposed monkeys’ brains. The images convinced me that we were the good guys. We were defending the earth.

When I caught up to Megan, she was spray-painting a Day-Glo “W” on the station’s brown walls. We had talked about slogans and logos. Our symbol had to be mysterious but at the same time something any idiot could figure out. We
settled on a “W” in a circle as our sign. It stood for Wirth, of course—the place where the DNR would slaughter deer in six months unless we could stop them.

Holly picked up a rake and began smashing windows. “How does that feel?” she asked one of them. “Do you want more of that?”

I ran toward the dark doorway that had swallowed up Ryan. More smashing sounds came from inside. I flicked on my flashlight and saw Ryan running around the room knocking things over like a lunatic. Destruction can be exciting if it’s for a good cause. When would I ever get to do something like this in normal life? I felt camaraderie with freedom fighters all over the world. I jumped into our music video with full permission to destroy.

I kicked over computers and pushed piles of papers off desks. I poured out any liquid I could find—from old coffee from styrofoam cups to Frankenstein beakers of goo that, for my Nikes’ sake, I hoped wasn’t acid. I knocked books out
of bookcases, using the sweeping arm gestures bad guys use in movies when they’re searching for microchips.

Megan and Holly joined us. In minutes the main room was trashed and as we moved into the inner offices, a weird thought hit me. Ellisa was always saying we kids should have more fun. I thought she should see us now.

Megan whispered, “Over here.”

I followed her voice and saw a virtual prison of furry victims just like in Megan’s photos. Rats, mice, guinea pigs and rabbits stared at us from death row.

“Free the animals!” Holly screamed.

We began opening cages and trying to shoo out the captives, but they were too far gone. Like little Patti Hearsts in little closets, they didn’t want to move. We had to start dumping them. It felt mean, but I figured one day they would feel
some rudimentary form of gratitude.

Ryan and I got developed a system. I knocked over anything on top of the cages, then threw open the doors; he forcibly liberated the creatures. I saw him grab rabbits by the ears, two in each hand and toss them onto the floor.

Then we were smashing things again. Smashing was hard work. My arms felt as if we’d been smashing for hours.

“What about the deer?” Holly asked.

I hit the side of my head. “There’s gotta be a gate,” I said.

I ran out and found a sliding gate big enough to let vehicles in. It was mounted with a black box that looked computer-operated. I rushed back inside to be the hero and figure out the code.

I saw a strange light flickering over the cages. Holly’s voice said, “And so the brave warriors freed the prisoners…” She was talking to her videocam.

Megan had overruled my objection to the documentation idea. Holly convinced her that we might need the footage for a documentary on our origins. As the light flickered over my face, I tried to look swarthy and just.

“Hel-lo?” Megan said. “The gate’s control mechanism?”

“I found it,” Ryan said.

I flashed my light at him. He stood in front of a complex console full of buttons holding a socket wrench as if it were a tomahawk. Obviously, he was not the right guy for the job. Before I could reach him, his non-techie paws pushed random buttons, then began beating the console with his wrench.

“Goddammit, Ryan,” I said. “Move aside.”

Then I saw something happening in the deeryard. Lights were flashing. In panic I saw the campus police, backed up by the St. Paul police, backed up by a shoot-first anti-terrorist SWAT unit of the National Guard, then realized that the strobing lights were perched along the top of the large gate, which was rolling open.

“I did it,” I said. Ryan, off smashing something, didn’t notice I was hogging credit.

Holly, Megan and I stared at the deer. They just stood there, maybe waiting for the feed truck. Or maybe they weren’t ready for the unknown.

We walked outside. We looked at the deer, and the deer looked back at us.

“This isn’t what I’d call working,” Megan said.

“Can we let them stay if they want to?” Holly asked.

“No way,” Ryan said rushing at them. “Shoo,” he said flapping his arms.

The buck looked at us scornfully, even dangerously for a moment. Then he took off through the open gate with the half-dozen does behind him. The four of us applauded as flashes of white disappeared down the hill.

“At least their tails still work,” Holly said.

“They’re free,” Megan said. “Our first official action.” She sounded slightly
dazed.

“Yeah, but free to go where?” Holly asked.

She had a point. The area had lots of parks and trees, but they were interrupted by benches lit by anti-rape lights. The path to freedom would be no slam-dunk.

“Whose side are you on anyway?” I hissed at Holly. “Let’s get the hell outta here,” I said, and I pulled Megan’s arm gently.

The fence lights continued to flash. A horde of rodents were meandering around the yard. The rats and mice were mostly white. Rabbits were white, brown and calico, are were the guinea pigs. The brown rabbits, who probably had the least degenerate DNA, took off through the open gate. Most of them nibbled deer pellets from overturned feeding bowls. I was too tired to be mad at them.

I said, “Back to the vehicle!” with military conviction, and everyone took off.

We headed down the hill and across the field to Ryan’s brother’s truck. I tried to smear some of our tracks as I left, but it was hopeless. Then were all back in the truck, hyperventilating Ryan’s brother ancient pot fumes.

Ryan got us back to the highway in silence. Just as we began to relax and breathe normally, I saw them, the deer. Something was wrong. They had miscalculated. Instead of following the thin strip of trees that would have led to a forested suburb, that granola-eating buck had led his harem onto the freeway. And this wasn’t just any freeway; it was a big, hairy one, the main route connecting Minneapolis and St Paul.

“Oh-my-god,” Holly said.

“Jesus Christ,” Ryan said.

We watched helplessly as the deer, one by one, leapt easily over the short barrier fence and moved out onto the asphalt. Headlights lit them up from both sides.

A semi-trailer coming at us from the left, met the buck in mid-leap. He flew onto the chrome engine encasement, rolling on his back just long enough to look like a hunting trophy before he disappeared over the side. The truck jack-knifed across the highway, knocking vehicles in front of it off the road and Ryan veered with a sharp right onto the grassy shoulder. We drove along slowly at a sharp angle to the road.

“We’re going to flip over,” Megan yelled. She sounded nearly hysterical, far from her usual self.

Ryan slowed more as the previous summer’s weeds clogged his wheels.

The cars on the freeway kept moving ahead. A Land Cruiser slammed head-on into two does. They went down, one of them caught in the vehicle’s right wheelcase and dragged twenty feet, leaving a red band of blood on the asphalt. The other, stunned, ran up the embankment toward us. Her tongue hung out and her head wobbled back and forth as if her spine had turned to rubber. She practically shoved her snout into our windshield, which made the girls’ scream. White foam
flecked with blood frothed from her mouth, spotting her white chest fur with dots of red.

I felt sick.

“We have to do something!” Holly screamed. “This is our—”

“Don’t you say it!” Ryan shouted.

I looked at Megan. Her face was completely wet with tears. Her mouth opened and closed as if she wanted to talk, but nothing came out.

“We can’t help them,” I said, mainly to Ryan. “Just get us the hell out of here.”

Ryan drove, but I couldn’t stop myself looking back. I couldn’t see any deer moving, only what might have been pools of blood and carcasses.

Beyond a public relations disaster for our “W” with the circle around it, I pictured other horrible things. There was reform school, where I would learn to be a career criminal. Perhaps there would be foster care, or, worst of all, endless family therapy sessions.

I tried not to imagine humans screaming in the cars and trucks we left at the site, but I heard screaming anyway. It took me a while to realize it was coming from our car, from us. I put my hands over my ears and tried to calm myself with this thought: Just deer died, only deer. But the thought made no sense, and it certainly gave me no peace.