Page 71 of Freak Camp
He was proud of how his voice didn’t shake at all.
When his cell phone lit up an hour later, Dad’s name flashing, he didn’t pick up.
***
Roger was having aquiet hot tea moment—with a little brandy stirred in to reward himself after a long but satisfying hunt—when he heard one of his proximity alarms placed around the border of the junkyard.Tea sloshed out of the mug and over the table, and Roger grabbed a shotgun, a silver knife, and a flask of holy water and stepped out onto the porch, trying to look casual while looking everywhere at once.
He had plenty more trip wires and safeguards installed at the back of the property, including a motion sensor.Unless the thing moved too fucking fast to trigger those, he’d get another warning before anything happened.
He expected to have to wait ten, fifteen minutes—anything that could track him down in Truth or Consequences was probably smart enough to know that coming after Roger at his house was going to be a festival of pain for all concerned.But about the time he was thinking that he should have brought his tea out to the porch so that it didn’t get cold before shit went down, the last enemy he expected to see walked down the dirt driveway.
Jake Hawthorne looked rumpled and a little wild, like he’d been invited to hell and jumped out of the basket halfway there.His eyes looked a touch crazy, and his hand kept straying toward his pistol on his hip, as though the junker cars and random machinery might jump at him first.
Roger moved to set the shotgun down—this wasJake, after all—but his hand wouldn’t quite let go.Jake didn’t look like Jake at the moment, and Roger knew that the last thing the kid would want if he was out of his head or possessed would be for Roger to get gutted just because the enemy wore Jake’s face.
Jake stopped far enough away that Roger wouldn’t want to risk throwing the knife, but close enough that it would be easy work to nail him with the shotgun.He took in Roger’s gun and his mock-relaxed posture, and the crazy look in his eyes got worse.
“You gonna shoot me, Roger?”he called.It didn’t sound like he was joking.It sounded like he was angry and terrified, and that tone hit Roger hard.
“Hey, Jake.Could you throw your pistol down, kid?”
Jake glanced down, his hand moving to the gun, and then looked back up.
Roger felt like he’d been socked in the stomach.Was Jake Hawthornetearing up?
“Why?Want me to make it fucking easier?The unarmed ones are always the best, right?You can take your time lining up the sights.”Jake’s voice was mocking, but he unbuckled the gun holster and tossed it sideways.Not somewhere that he couldn’t get to with a good dive probably before Roger could shoot him, but far enough away that Roger could feel some of the tension loosen in his back.
“What the hell are you talking about, Jake?”Roger put the shotgun down against his chair and stepped forward.He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he didn’t think it would get better with an iron-loaded shotgun.Maybe a little holy water would help, but he hoped not.“Come here.”
“I figured Dad would have told you by now.”Jake didn’t look any more reassured, but he was at least coming closer, mounting the stairs like each step led to his gallows.“I just hoped ...seeing as you practically fuckingtoldme to ...”
Roger felt a lurch in his stomach, like the porch had dropped out from under him or a ghost had just tossed him down the stairs.“What did I tell you to do?”
Jake gave him a look.Roger couldn’t have said what was in the look, but it was nothing good.Nothing that a nineteen-year-old should have in his eyes.Then again, this was a nineteen-year-oldhunter.That spelled seven kinds of fucked up already.
He couldn’t quite stop his hand from twitching for his knife when Jake reached for something in his back pocket, but it was only a crumpled piece of paper.It looked like a form for a driver’s license or maybe a passport.
Jake put it on the table between them, smoothing it out absently, like he couldn’t understand how it had gotten those crease marks.“I’m getting Toby out of Freak Camp.”
Roger’s breath stopped, realization creeping up on him with the same slow horror as a broken-legged zombie.Jake had acted on his advice, and something had gone wrong.Not that Roger was that surprised, but ...he’d made that call maybe a week ago.Less than that.
He tried to think exactly when it had been but couldn’t piece it together.He’d been at Freak Camp, and then he’d gone to clean up a den of mountain trolls that had dared reenter Roger’s territory, and then he’d come home ...
And now Jake was standing on his front porch looking like something the cat dragged in.Or maybe the werewolf.Usually when shit went down, Jake would stand in the middle of it, swinging baseball bats and cursing and holding his own.Not retreating to Roger’s porch looking like one shove would knock him down.
“Jake ...”
“You gonna cut me off too, Roger?”Jake laughed.“I guess that’s what I get for being a damn freak lover, right?”
Roger swallowed.That was a horrible sound Jake had just made, and horrible words to go along with them.“Who said that, Jake?Who cut you off?”
Jake still wouldn’t look at him, his hands moving over his jeans where the gun and the paper used to be, as though he had lost something and wasn’t sure what to do with his hands now that they were gone.“You gotta tell me first, Rog.What do you think?What do you think now that you know I’m a f-freak lover and I’m getting a monster out of Freak Camp for my own perverted ends, or whatever the fuck you want to say?’Cause I’m getting Toby out.I’m fuckinggetting him outand you can’t fucking stop me.”Jake’s head snapped up, snarling the last few words into Roger’s face.
He resisted the urge to back away from the raw rage and pain on Jake’s face.“That’s going to be hard,” he said at last.“You ...you got all the paperwork?”
From the look on Jake’s face, he hadn’t expected that.Good.Roger suspected that if he had said anything that Jakehadexpected, the kid would have gone for his throat, unarmed or not.
Jake took a shuddering breath and collapsed into a chair, the one farthest away from Roger’s shotgun.He put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.The paper crackled under his elbow.
