Page 45 of Freak Camp
“I ain’t got a beard, gray or any other color.All right, give me ...”He did a quick calculation in his head.“Two hours?”
“Yeah, good.We’ll wait for you.You can reach me at this number.Ready?”The Dixon rattled off a number, and Roger took it down.
When he arrived at Silver City, it was the early afternoon.He pulled into the bar with a crowded parking lot, too many for a usual crowd of noon-drinkers.
Walking in, he nearly got shot by some hot-headed young hunter—a sandy-haired kid, not a Dixon himself, but a trainee from ASC Hunter Academy, judging by how he had both jumped in surprise and responded automatically with the shotgun.The kid was new.If Rogerhadbeen a monster, he would have been able to rip the kid’s throat out before he got to the weapon.
Lucas Dixon snaked out a hand and jerked the kid’s elbow before he could send a shot into Roger’s chest, but the kid still pulled the trigger.Two other hunters dove for cover behind the pool table.The gun clicked empty—the idiot had gone for a gun that wasn’t evenloaded?—but Roger still had to work to stop his heart from beating out of his chest.If the gunhadbeen loaded, it would have blown a rock-salt hole through the bottles on the back of the bar, if not the gaping bartender’s head.
Lucas just sighed and pushed the mortified kid away while the two older hunters—both clearly Dixons from their similar facial structure and the easy way they stood with their weapons—looked disgusted.
“That’s Harper,” Lucas said.“Better not shoot him.”Recognizing his voice from the call, Roger felt old.Lucas had been a snot-nosed brat the first time they’d met in 1985, when the Dixons had gone around to all the other known hunters, asking them to join up.Roger had told them he wasn’t the club-joining sort, but a year later he had to cave and apply for his own ASC license.He might be stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid enough to pass up a sizable paycheck for what he used to do for free, not to mention a shit ton of resources and excellent healthcare.
The bartender cleared his throat.“Hey, fellas—I support the troops as much as anyone, and I can give you a free beer if you come back tonight, but while you’re handling firearms—”
“Yeah, yeah.”Lucas straightened up off the bar and waved them toward the door.“We’ll take it outside.”
“How’d he find us?”asked one of the other trainees, a girl with two long brown braids.Roger decided he wasn’t going to ask their names.Probably they’d be dead in a couple of years once they came off the Dixon training leash, if not before.That question just hadn’t been that bright.
“He’s a hunter,” one of the Dixons laughed.“What do you think?”He had crooked teeth that glinted in the dim light.
“Voodoo,” the other, taller Dixon suggested in a mock-spooky voice, but he just sounded like a brainless moron and not like he was making a threat Roger would have to challenge him on.
Lucas was playing Good Leader and keeping his mouth shut—usually a smart-ass, Roger remembered—but he was smiling.
“There’s a lot of cars in the lot for this time of day,” Roger pointed out.“And hunters tend to meet at bars and not, say, beauty parlors.”
“Not me, Harper,” Lucas said.“I was all for Chic Cuts but got outvoted.”
Roger ignored him.“This is an awful lot of people for one rougarou.”
Crooked-Teeth grinned again.“You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for the squirts, old man.”
Lucas shrugged.“Don’t worry, Harper, you’ll get your share of the bounty.”Roger started to say that wasn’t what he’d been concerned about, but Lucas went on.“I called you in because we think it has help.No reported deaths yet, which is weird given how this freak’s bloodwork came back from the lab.Bastard thought he had some kind of stomach infection, got it checked out, and we got the intel.But since then, there’s beennothing.We don’t know if this freak’s been eating homeless guys or if he’s still looking human, and we don’t know why there isn’t more info coming in.”
“I’ve never heard of a rougarou running in packs or communities,” Roger said.
“Yeah, but doesn’t hearing start to go around your age?”Lucas asked with mock concern.Roger gave him anI can still kick your asslook, and he raised his hands jokingly.“So if you’re up for it, Gramps, we could use the backup.Serious, professional backup.”He grinned.“After all, you may not be family, Harper, but you’re damn good.”
Roger rolled his eyes.“I was throwing trolls down mountains when you needed your diapers changed.Now tell me what you got.”
Lucas laid out the information and the plan with typical Dixon efficiency and professionalism.Four hunters in through the back, three through the front, spreading out as they went until they got the monster.
“We think the wife may be involved,” Lucas added.“Helping the freak.”
“Like a Renfield, just for a rougarou and not a vamp,” said Crooked-Teeth.“Christ, what a thought.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to believe it either, but there’s freak lovers out there.”Lucas’s lip curled.“Remember, if something attacks, you shoot it on sight.If it keeps coming, torch it.I want the freak alive for the bounty, preferably—rougarous are rare, and we could use any new info—but I don’t want anybody doing something stupid to get a live capture.It’s just money, info, and glory, folks.Not worth losing hunters.”
Everyone nodded—the Dixons with boredom, the newbies with eagerness.If one of them didn’t do something stupid to get the bounty, Roger would buy himself a drink.
At first the attack went down without a hitch.The kids followed the Dixons’ lead quietly, efficiently, and the all-too-human-looking rougarou barely had a chance to take one swing at its attackers—Lucas, who dodged the blow easily—before the other hunters filled it with tranquilizer darts.
Rougarou research was minimal, so Lucas had them use a combination of twine, iron, silk, copper, silver, catgut and little plastic zip ties.They were just tying the last knots when the wife came home with groceries.
She stepped through her front door, saw what they were doing to her husband, and dropped the bag full of neat packages of freshly butchered meat.
Roger was in the kitchen, discovering stacks of raw steaks wrapped in the refrigerator and freezer, when he heard the screaming and two shotgun blasts.He ran, expecting to hear the flamethrower at any second, but in the living room, the monster was still safely down with the tranquilizers.Instead one of the newbie hunters was splayed across the couch, gasping in agony at a hole in his chest big enough to fit a cantaloupe.The wife, wispy brown hair flying around her enraged face, had a smoking shotgun.
