Page 9 of Freedom
She’d seen Hawthorne visit over the years, always taking Tobias somewhere private. Monsters got tortured in private sessions with hunters. They came back with new injuries, their eyes blank, often unresponsive, or lashing out unexpectedly in a way that got them put down immediately in the yard. Tobias never looked that way after Hawthorne visited. He didn’t talk about those sessions, but he hadn’t been tortured. She would know.
Hawthorne had given him some kind of protection. The guards would push down and take any freak they liked—her included—but they never fucked Tobias because everyone knew he belonged to Jake Hawthorne.
Hawthorne had been a kid himself most of those years, usually visiting with his infamous hunter of a father, Leon Hawthorne. Only later had Jake started visiting Tobias alone. But Hawthorne had stopped coming around the time that the Director of Freak Camp had taken an interest in Tobias, which included weekly private sessions that returned Tobias with the well-known hallmarks of torture, some of the worst Kayla had ever seen. She had been sure Hawthorne had finally lost interest and it was stupid of Tobias to keep hoping he’d come back, but she was the one wrong in the end.
She understood better now that irrational hope he’d warned her against but had kept him alive anyway. She didn’t have any way of knowing that Tobias was still alive, but she felt sure. Hawthorne had been so strange and persistent in his interest in Tobias over the years, long before she’d arrived in Freak Camp. Something told her he hadn’t gotten Tobias out just for a quick stake-and-kill.
Whatever he was doing with Tobias, whatever purpose he’d taken him for probably wouldn’t be quick at all. In Freak Camp, quick could be the best form of luck you could get. She didn’t think that Hawthorne would be quick, but if anyone could endure what a hunter had in mind, Tobias could. Hopefully it was worth it to him in the end.
At last the day guards arrived, conferred with the night shift, and took out the clipboards with the day’s assignments. Victor Todd apparently drew the short straw that morning, judging by his scowl as the clipboard was handed to him.
“98WW5925,” he called, and the werewolf mumbled, “Present.”
Victor had the most seniority among the guards, aside from members of the Dixon family. He wasn’t the worst of the guards, but he saw everything, and he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you for anything you did or didn’t do.
The roll call went on until he reached “94SS7223,” and Kayla nodded. Victor accepted this, jotting on the clipboard.
She was the only one who got away without speaking because everyone knew she couldn’t. They hadn’t heard her utter a word in years. Not since the first time Crusher had dragged her into the break room. The truth was she could speak just fine, but she had nothing to say to anyone, not anymore. She had only spoken a few words to Tobias on occasion, but now he was gone.
Crusher walked past, swinging his baton with its sharp silver spikes, and a shudder went through the monsters nearest him. Most of the guards liked hurting the freaks, but no one liked it more than Crusher. He had the most creativity, and he loved being the first to go after the youngest freaks like Kayla.
Tobias had taught her how to go away in her mind when Crusher found her. It still hurt, of course, but she didn’t fight or try to get away or react much at all. So Crusher had gotten bored with her and moved on to fresher prey who didn’t know screaming only made it worse.
She knew Crusher still pined for Tobias, his Pretty Freak, the one who’d gotten away. He’d been obsessed with him for years, furious that Hawthorne had a claim on him and that he’d never gotten to bend him over a table the way he wanted to. He’d been even more vicious to them all in the weeks after Tobias had vanished.
When the roll call was complete, the monsters slowly broke out of their lines, shuffling toward the mess hall where they would each pick up a piece of moldy bread that was one of their two daily meals. Out of long habit, Kayla kept a wary eye out for any monster getting too close and who might try to swipe her bread, but they nearly all knew better by now. When she bit, she always drew blood.
She ate her roll in three quick bites, cramming it into her mouth until it was safely gone, and made her way back outside. Most of the monsters turned toward the Workhouse for their daily assignments—stuffing silver-and-salt bullets or creating protective gear for hunters, too bad for them if they were allergic to it—but she headed instead for Reception and Administration at the front of the camp.
It was a long, two-story building, and freaks were only allowed with permission to enter one door on the far end unless a hunter was taking them inside to one of the interrogation rooms. Lonny Fitzpatrick stood before the door, shotgun in hand, but he let her pass without a second look.
Kayla took the stairs up to Administration. A long hallway with offices on either side led toward the Director’s office at the end, and she always averted her eyes from it, moving quickly to the library door on the right and slipping inside as noiselessly as possible. The Director had never taken an interest in her, which was the one form of mercy she savored in her life in Freak Camp.
Tobias had worked in the library before her. He’d taught her to read and write so she could assist him with hunters’ research, paging through dusty old tomes to collect all data, mythological or factual, on various types of monsters and supernatural phenomena. Someone whose name she didn’t know came by once a week to check her work. They knew she couldn’t talk, but when they asked questions, she pointed at where she’d found each detail, and that satisfied them.
The Director had come by to watch her once. Nothing really scared Kayla anymore, but her heartbeat had been very fast, and she’d concentrated on every motion she made, moving just as slowly and woodenly as she always did when being watched. She hadn’t raised her head from her work, hadn’t done anything to acknowledge him, and eventually he’d gone away.
She didn’t know precisely what the Director had done with Tobias in those weekly sessions before Hawthorne had taken him away, but it hadn’t been good. Everyone knew the Director didn’t fuck monsters; you could get whipped or lose a finger or more if you suggested otherwise. But there were plenty of other ways to hurt a monster, and there were whispers that the Director did things even Crusher couldn’t think of.
Every Wednesday night, Tobias had staggered back late and crashed onto his bunk, and sometimes he didn’t get up at all on Thursday. Kayla had never asked him what happened with the Director. She didn’t want to know. She’d hated him for refusing to give up, refusing to accept the death she knew he was routinely offered, and she’d hated Hawthorne for giving him that hope that had to just be another hunter’s lie.
But Hawthorne had come to get him. Maybe surviving everything had been worth it to Tobias. She didn’t dare hope for much—it never got you anything but disappointment in Freak Camp—but she thought it might be okay to hope if she never spoke it aloud.
~*~
Tobias loved nightswhen, after dinner, they just kept driving. Sometimes Jake had a reason (a place he wanted Tobias to see in the morning, or maybe he didn’t feel likesettling in like a damn civilian), but other nights Jake offered no explanation, and Tobias asked for none. There was something utterly comforting about him and Jake in the Eldorado, riding beneath the endless stars. Jake stopped for naps when he needed them, often as not pulling over at some truck stop or just off a ragged country road, and Tobias slept on and off. Sometimes he could even believe that Jake wouldn’t mind him watching Jake’s profile against the moonlight. If they were both lucky, Jake would never know how much the ugly monster beside him longed for him.
It didn’t really matter what lay at the destination. Tobias was more than happy with what he had right now: Jake, the Eldorado, and the soaring, heartbreaking notes of classical music from the radio.
“This station comes in best,” Jake had said the first time he stopped on a clarinet concerto. “Sound okay to you, Toby?”
The question momentarily took his breath away. He knew this wasn’t Jake’s kind of music. Jake had never listened to it, after all, until he found out Tobias liked it. And though Jake was so kind as to get books for him, to insist that Tobias get a salad or whatever he had liked previously in restaurants, Tobias had still never dreamed Jake would choose to listen toTobias’smusic over his own. The Eldorado was made for Jake’s music, for Led Zeppelin and rock and roll, the bass thrumming under Tobias’s seat. And yet the fact that Jake would offer to switch to Tobias’s music, to give him that privilege like he was any other real—it filled Tobias with the best kind of indescribable light and joy, just as Jake had done so many times before.
That night, they chose a motel that Jake said clearly showed some self-respect, and he was an expert judge. Sure enough, once they got inside their room, the carpets were clean, the bathroom spotless, and the blankets and sheets didn’t smell of anything but detergent.
They had fallen into a nightly routine within the first few days. Jake dumped his bags—one for clothes, one for weapons Tobias had never yet seen used—on the bed closest to the door and then sprawled on the second bed, grabbing the TV remote while Tobias carefully laid his one bag with the others. As Tobias unpacked their toiletries bag in the bathroom, he’d hear voices, explosions, sales pitches for high-quality vegetable choppers, but by the time he left the bathroom, Jake would have the TV switched off or muted on the Weather Channel. Tobias took his time brushing his teeth and showering, but it was always a balance between letting Jake enjoy his TV time and being out before he came to the door to check on him.
And then when Tobias left the bathroom, Jake would grin at him and make space on the bed. Tonight, Jake had stripped to his T-shirt and boxers and was flipping between the weather and nature channels, looking intent.
