Page 29 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

After all, the tranquilizers had been designed to bring down a full rougarou. No one knew what they would do to a real, non-supernatural human.

He buried the thought that there was no way in hell that that should be any measure of comfort.

***

S peeding almost a hundred miles an hour down a deserted Alabama highway, Jake found his eyes blurring, crushing the mile markers and the sharp bright stars into intermittent flashes of light that sketched out his world.

Or maybe it was the blood loss.

But probably not. The whatever-the-fuck warthog monster had barely touched him, and he had tied the injury off right away.

More likely it was the concentration required to keep the Eldorado steady on the road with one hand, keep pressure on Dad’s gut wound with the other, and, above all, to not panic.

Panicking never helped. He just had to get to the nearest hospital before his hand went numb or Dad’s guts started oozing through his fingers.

The clock in the dash of the Eldorado clicked over to 12:02 a.m., and Jake realized that it was January 5th, and he was sixteen.

The laughter that bubbled up through his lips tasted a bit like blood and shook him until the road vibrated in his vision. The sound was semi-hysterical enough to bring Dad out of his half-shock, half-drug-induced slump between the bench seat and his son’s hand.

“Jake?”

“It’s okay, Dad.”

“Did we—”

“Yeah, we got it.”

Dad frowned. “You were . . . crying, or—”

Jake glanced over at him, wondering if he could hold his own wound closed, or at least help Jake wrap it better.

But would he really want to put his right hand, covered in Leon’s blood, back on the wheel?

It wasn’t like Hawthorne blood hadn’t soaked into the Eldorado before, but this was the first time that Jake could watch it dripping and do nothing to stop it—nothing to make it better—but drive.

“I just realized,” he said, when he saw Dad’s eyes sliding out of focus again, “that I’m sixteen today.” He took his one hand off the wheel. “Look, Dad! I can drive!”

Dad tried to smile, but it didn’t look good.

What would Jake do if Dad died right there?

His mind reached for the next step and then stopped, pulled back.

Jake couldn’t, refused , to imagine a world without his dad.

Without his mom, the world had shattered, and Dad had reassembled something that worked, that held them together.

Without Dad, Jake couldn’t imagine building his own world.

There wouldn’t be enough pieces to sew together.

Fuck, he didn’t even know that he would be able to stop the Eldorado when he found a destination.

With the signs moving past too fast, with his foot weighing on the gas, he could have already passed the exit.

Jake started talking. He tried to catch the edge of his father’s attention, tried to keep him from slipping away.

Dad’s head slumped down again, but Jake kept talking.

He told Dad how sick he was of going to school, what he’d seen on TV last week, the latest weird sound he’d noticed in the Eldorado’s engine, and somehow he landed on talking about Tobias.

Toby talking to him, Toby smiling at him, Jake reading books just so that he could share them with Toby and actually know what he was talking about the next time he walked into Freak Camp.

He talked until his throat went dry, then kept talking. He stopped forming sentences and moved into impressions, moments, dark corners, pretty boys and girls, but everything always spun back to Toby.

“Sure, he’s a monster, I know that,” he said to the darkness and his father.

“But I don’t get what he could have done.

I mean, he’s younger than me and I’ve never seen him hurt fucking anything, won’t even bite M&M’s really hard, you know?

But he’s there and everyone says he must deserve it, but I can’t fucking see it.

I mean, what could make a kid like Tobias a monster? He’s just . . . Toby.”

Jake had no idea how much his father heard, and after a while he didn’t want to know.

The words weren’t important, and maybe he shouldn’t have said any of them.

But he had to talk, because with each hand gripping one of the two things he loved most in the world, he needed to hear a voice to convince himself that the Eldorado and Dad and Toby weren’t just an illusion, something that he had made up in the dark to hold his sanity together.

The Eldorado purred under his feet, and Leon Hawthorne bled through Jake’s fingers, and Jake kept driving, kept talking about Toby, who was so far away.

––––––––

L ate spring in Freak Camp was almost tolerable, especially when compared to the imminent scorching summer, but it was still hot enough to burn the skin off a vampire and leave everyone else heat sick and sunburned.

Jake always made sure that they at least had a piece of shade, whether because he didn’t like the heat or because he cared—Tobias wrestled sometimes with which it could be, Becca’s voice and his own instincts warring with each other.

Sometimes, being Sally Dixon’s son, he could even talk their way into one of the air-conditioned buildings.

This visit, Jake had convinced the people in Administration to let them through, and he and Tobias sat in an out-of-the-way corner under a stairwell, against the cool plaster of the wall, and shared what Tobias was sure was the biggest meal he had eaten in his entire life.

“Dad’ll be busy for hours,” Jake said. “No need to rush, Toby. We’ve got lots of time today.”

He hadn’t believed it when Jake kept pulling food out of his bag.

Two sub sandwiches, three apples, a huge bag of chips and two small, squashed cupcakes in plastic wrapping.

Tobias nearly shook from the effort not to snatch some of that food and shove it into his mouth before someone—monster or guard—took it away.

Only the fact that he was with Jake —and Jake looked happy and relaxed, which he hadn’t always the last few visits—kept Tobias from acting like a filthy, grabby monster.

Tobias knew that Jake would give him some of that bounty, because Jake had never been cruel enough to show him food and not allow him to eat it.

Jake beamed at him as he shook out the bag. “Dig in. I’m just glad they give me less shit about bringing in food these days.”

Cautiously, still not quite believing the feast before him, Tobias reached for a sandwich.

By the time Jake had finished his sandwich and opened up the bag of chips, Tobias’s anxiety had ebbed.

He still tried to eat slowly—too much food at once, good food, could come back up if he scarfed it, and Tobias didn’t want to lose any of the wonderful food that Jake had brought him—but he was smiling and able to laugh at the stories Jake told around his mouthful of chips.

He had been afraid, sometimes, on Jake’s recent visits.

Not because he was afraid that Jake would hurt him—nothing Jake did could possibly hurt—but because Jake was sometimes tense, distracted, and unhappy.

Tobias assumed it had something to do with his father, or maybe the real world, but Tobias always had a nagging fear that it was his fault and that someday Jake would stop coming because of something Tobias had done without ever knowing what it was.

But not today. Today Jake smiled and pushed chips in his face and grinned when he made jokes so that Tobias could be sure that he should laugh.

“Sub taste all right?” Jake asked. “I wasn’t sure what kind to get, so I went with everything.”

Tobias nodded. “It tastes great. B-b-but . . .” He stuttered to a halt, not sure how to ask.

“Why so much . . . I mean, I love it, this is amazing, but . . .” God, Jake’s food was so good.

He felt full for the first time in months, he was sure he wouldn’t have to eat for the next week if he had to, but he couldn’t even pretend to understand why Jake had done all this. “It’s just so much.”

Jake colored a little. Tobias blinked, not sure he could believe that Jake was blushing for him.

“Well,” Jake said. “It’s April. You know.”

Tobias stared. He had no idea what Jake was talking about, unless . . . “My . . . birthday?”

“Yeah.” Jake cleared his throat and looked away. “I mean, I know it doesn’t make much difference here. It’s not really a big deal like it is outside, but I like to do something special. Just between us, so I know I’m doing something, you know? And you only turn twelve once.”

Tobias stared as the idea sank in. Jake cared so much that he would remember something as pointless as the day Tobias had been born and make it special.

Tobias thought about last year. Usually he tried to forget the day-to-day of Freak Camp.

Why would he want to remember pain—his own and others’?

Why should he keep track of bad food, miserable hungry nights, and punishments doled out to monsters who disappeared before he could ever know their real names?

But he remembered every one of Jake’s visits.

He stored them up like some monsters hid food, because it got him through the bad times.

Like some of the rare stories he found in the library, every one of Jake’s visits was a moment when he could, at least for a little while, escape everything that could hurt him.

If he thought back, he could clearly remember this time last year when the weather had been warmer. Jake had brought a small cake in a slightly crumpled box. It had been an even better day in all the best days when Jake had visited.