Page 12 of Freak Camp
Jake could have sworn he heard clinking and whimpering noises from the trailer all the way to Winnemucca.
This time Jake didn’t have to walk with Dad through the front door and lobby because Leon drove the Eldorado and the trailer around through the big loading gates.
He must have made a call while I was out, Jake thought, rubbing his eyes.He’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt when they stopped for a bathroom break and gas station breakfast sandwiches, so at least he wasn’t still in his pajamas.
Five or six adults stood around the trailer, peering at the thing inside, arguing with Dad about where it should go and who had “a first shot at answers.”Jake grabbed a jacket against the chilly morning air and a deck of cards and waited impatiently for them to return to the door that led into the camp.
Walking behind the well-wrapped stretcher the group had extracted from the trailer, Dad looked back at him.“Jake, I don’t know when this will be done, or what I might be able to figure out, or even if these assholes are going to let me be present for the interrogation that I damn well let them have.”He shook his head.“Don’t offer me a fucking bounty and then say I can’t ask a few damn questions.They can keep their fucking money for all I care.”
“I can hang out, Dad.No problem.”
“I’ll be in Special Research.I’ll try not to be long.You get into trouble, you give ’em hell, understand, Jake?”
Jake wasn’t exactly sure who he was supposed to give hell to—there were a lot of possibilities, ranging from reckless monsters to fucking Dixons, and various hunters and support personnel in between—but he nodded anyway.He assumed it would be clear at the time.“Yes, sir!”
“Good boy,” Dad said, and then he was gone in the rush.He hadn’t even closed up the Eldorado properly.
Jake took the keys out of the ignition and slammed the door shut, eyed the trailer—he wondered where Dad had found it at such short notice, if he had stolen it, bought it, or if it had belonged to the monster Dad brought down—and then went in search of Tobias.
He was briefly deterred by a guard wanting to know his business, but Jake scoffed and bullshitted his way into the yard.He’d learned that from Dad too, how most of it came down to flaunting the right blend of confidence and impatience.And while they never used it anywhere else, he could throw his name around—yeah, I’m Jake Hawthorne, my dad’s already inside and he’s wondering what the holdup is, you wanna talk to him?—and the guard backed down, radioing in that he was letting in the Hawthorne kid.Open sesame.
Dawn was breaking over the edge of the distant mountains, and when Jake rounded the corner into the central yard of FREACS, he came to a sudden stop.All the monsters were out of their barracks, shivering in the early morning light.Some stood straight as rods, others hunched on themselves from various deformities.
While Jake watched, a guard standing in front of the monsters called out numbers from his clipboard.Monster after monster called, “Present.”Other heavily armed guards patrolled and occasionally struck a monster that wasn’t fast enough to respond.
Finding Tobias turned out to be easy.He was standing in the second row between a witch and a shapeshifter and stared straight ahead, stiller than any kid Jake had ever seen.
The guard holding the clipboard snapped it down.“That’s it, then.All these stupid fucks are still here.Good thing too, or we’d have to whip the skin off your monster asses again, and that would take all fucking day.There’s no assembly, so go find your assigned work station.”
The neat rows of monsters broke up, dispersing toward the barracks, mess hall, and Workhouse.Tobias stayed where he was.Jake wondered if Tobias had an “assigned work station” or if this would be a decent time to say hi.He really hadn’t planned this out.He had just assumed that he could hang out with Tobias when he came back.It never occurred to Jake that maybe Tobias would have chores to do.Though maybe it should have occurred to him.Jake shouldn’t fool himself into thinking Tobias’s world revolved around him.
Tobias looked up, face expressionless, until he saw Jake.Then his lips parted in amazement, and he rocked back on his heels before moving forward—not running, but walking with a bounce in his step and a look in his eyes like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
He looked so happy that Jake felt the little knot of worry in his stomach uncoil, replaced by a warm feeling.If Tobias was excited too, that meant it was okay for Jake to be glad to see him again.Even if he was a monster.
“Hey, Toby.”Jake leaned against a wall, fiddling with his deck of cards.“Told you I’d come back.”
Tobias beamed at him with the biggest smile in the world, like Jake had just given him a million dollars.Jake couldn’t remember anyone looking at him like that before.
“Hi—hi, Jake,” Tobias said, soft and breathlessly, almost like he’d forgotten how to say his name.
Jake smiled back and reached out to ruffle his hair the way Roger did to him.Tobias ducked his head to the side, but not like he was really trying to get away.“C’mon, let’s find somewhere out of the wind.”Again he saw that delighted flash of a smile.
They headed around the corner of a building, close to the wall, where they were out of sight of most of the guards and monsters, though Jake saw a security camera pointed in their direction.He didn’t care about that, though.It made sense that they would want to keep track of their monsters when there weren’t enough guards to keep an eye on all of them.
Tobias crouched down, arms wrapped around his knees.
Jake slid down the wall to sit next to him.It was cold against the concrete.He wondered if Tobias felt it like he did.“How’ve you been?”
Tobias blinked at him, then shrugged.“Good, I guess.H-how have you been?”He stumbled over the words.
Yeah, it was a stupid question, Jake decided.What was he going to do, tell Tobias about Albuquerque and the people he’d met there when there wasn’t any point remembering them?
“Yeah, fine.”He shuffled the cards and then thought of something.“I checked out the big library in downtown Albuquerque.It’s a whole city block, dude.”
Toby’s brow furrowed.“What’s a city block?”
“It’s—” Jake gestured and looked around.“Maybe half the size of Freak Camp.Or like, from here to the Workhouse over there.”
