Page 3 of Freak Camp
The guard blinked at him.“Nah, it’s Victor.So, Jake, what are you interested in?”
Jake gave Victor a look that saidHow stupid are you?He tapped the knife in his belt.“I’m a hunter.What do you think I’m interested in?”
Victor gave a huff of laughter.He looked around the yard behind Jake, then crouched down toward him.“Wanna see the baby monsters in their playpen?”
Jake felt a leap of excitement.“Sure!Wait, you guys got baby monsters?I thought they were always just adults or dead things that were killing people.”
“Oh yeah, there’s baby monsters.And they’re just as fu—as messed up as the big, scary monsters.All right, this way.”
The guard led him back down the path, cutting across the yard of packed dirt, past a pair of posts jutting into the sky with manacles attached to them.Next to the Workhouse, they approached a fenced-in block of bare earth.Inside were clusters of kids, ranging from younger than Jake to some who looked like they might be in high school if they were outside Freak Camp.
Jake stopped, disappointed again.They all looked ordinary, no different from kids he saw on playgrounds, except this wasn’t a playground, and no one looked like they were playing.He looked up at Victor skeptically.“These are monsters?”
Adults had tried to jerk him around in the past, and he liked to make it clear that he wouldn’t put up with crap from anyone, even if they were older than him.The only adult he trusted implicitly was Dad, because Dad always knew best and wouldn’t lie to him.
But the guard looked sincere, though amused, like he was helping a fellow hunter correct an elementary mistake rather than messing with a stupid kid.He nodded.“Don’t be fooled if they look weak and innocent.Didn’t your dad teach you how some monsters can look just like us?”
Jake scoffed.“Course he did.He taught me everything.I just thought you’d have them better tied up or something.”He hadn’t thought that at first, though.He had thought they just looked like kids.But he wasn’t about to admit that to a man who dealt with monsters every day.
Victor grinned.“No need for that—they’re well-trained.You got nothing to worry about.You could even walk in and poke at them with that knife you’ve got in your belt, and they wouldn’t even snap back.”He mimed swinging at someone with his billy club.
“Seriously?”If someone poked Jake, he’d do his best to break their fingers.He’d have thought that monsters would try to rip his head off at least.
The guard waved him on.“Don’t believe me?Go ahead, try it.”His tone addedI dare you, but in a friendly, easy way.The guard might think Jake was just a kid, but the man wouldn’t want him in any kind of real danger.After all, if he let Jake get hurt, then he would have to answer to Leon Hawthorne, and Jake knew—like he knew the purr of the Eldorado on endless roads, the recoil of a shotgun, and the smell of burning bones—that Dad would crush anyone who ever hurt Jake.
Jake walked forward, neither slow nor fast, and the guard opened the gate for him.It was a simple chain-link fence, something that Jake could probably have kicked down if he put his mind to it, but it marked a boundary of a place containing more monsters than real humans.He walked with his head high and hands open, confident, ready to draw his knife at a moment’s notice—like Dad walked.Jake was a hunter, even if he was young, and no monster had better underestimate him.
But the monster kids didn’t seem interested.A couple glanced up at him, eyes flickering over his hands and knife before moving away from him, but most kept their focus down.Now that he was closer, Jake could recognize some as monsters.Kid vampires—some of them maybe centuries old—had unnaturally pale skin flaking from the Nevada sun, and iron muzzles like supersized braces kept them from opening their mouths wide enough even to bite a finger.Shapeshifters had telltale neon-green tags flapping from their arms, while those with some kind of mind-control powers had a T brand on their forehead to indicate the danger.Two werewolves had silver buckles on their collars.
Everywhere Jake looked, he saw the same kinds of monsters that he and Dad hunted.These looked sad and defeated, but the danger in that space still made the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up.He couldn’t see any of them looking at him, no matter how fast he turned, but he could sense their attention, the hunger some of them must have had for his flesh or blood or pain.
That awareness made Jake twitch, but it settled him too.He had seen all these monsters before and knew how to fight them.None of them would take him by surprise today, not like Mom had once been surprised.
Jake was almost ready to turn around, to leave the enclosure and wander around as much of the rest of the camp as he could, when one kid leaning alone against the building glanced at him.It was just a flicker of his eyes, but it made Jake freeze.
He couldn’t tell what kind of monster the boy was.He looked ...ordinary.
The boy was pretty small, maybe six years old, with buzzed-short hair and skin reddened by the sun.He was so thin that Jake could have picked him up over his head, and his gray camp clothes hung off him like he had gotten a set meant for a much bigger child.He didn’t have tags on his collar, or the muzzle, or the brand.Nothing to tell Jake what he was.
That wouldn’t have been so unusual—a couple of other monster kids also had no distinguishing marks—but what made Jake hesitate was that when he looked at the boy, Jake couldn’t see any kind of threat in him.No hatred, no hunger, no loathing like he felt from the other monsters, even when they tried to hide it.
Jake glanced back at the guard, wanting to ask what was different about the little kid, but he changed his mind.Victor was grinning at him and mimed poking again with the club.The look on his face was nasty.Jake felt like the guy was daring him to do something stupid.
But Jake had never been afraid of a dare.
He marched over to the kid, stopped a couple of feet away, and glanced back at the guard.Then he looked at the younger boy, who was hunching in on himself, carefully not looking at Jake.
Jake raised a finger and poked him twice on the shoulder.
The kid tensed, his shoulders rounding a little more, but when nothing else happened, when Jake just stood there and waited for his reaction, he looked up in surprise.He had bright, clear hazel eyes that looked huge in his thin face.They made him look like some kind of startled bird.
Jake and the monster stared at each other for a moment before the monster seemed to realize what he was doing and dropped his eyes.
Jake felt awkward.He was always awkward when he actually wanted to talk to someone.He was fine with a cover story—like Dad always gave him when they went to a new town, a new school, along with a new name and a new reason Mom wasn’t with them—but he had trouble just being himself.
“So,” he said, and stuck his hands on his hips.“What kind of monster are you?”
The kid looked up, then back down again quickly.“Unidentified, sir.”
