Page 89 of Freak Camp
Chapter Thirteen
July 2000
Another Wednesday foundTobias kneeling against the wall of the Director’s office.He was still numb, hollow, stiff from the night that almost killed him, but he could feel that wearing off, and that terrified him more than anything else.The Director could have him beaten—he had done that last week because Tobias had hesitated too long before responding to one of the senator’s commands during another visit—but nothing could hurt more than the return to feeling.
Still, some of his survival skills were returning, and he supposed he should be grateful, even if he wasn’t—though if the Director asked, he would say so and mean it.He didn’t need to look at more of the Director than his hands, and Tobias was no longer consciously aware of watching his hands.Each long finger was buried deep into his brain, locked into his spine where all the nerve impulses radiated out, and any twitch of his finger, any snap of his wrist could make Tobias act without conscious thought.Come here, pick it up, stop, sit, kneel, crawl, and Tobias would find himself moving.
Tobias would have felt relief at that if he felt anything at all.Responses so ingrained as to be instinct were responses that wouldn’t earn him a beating, responses that would keep him alive without requiring him to feel, think, or process.
Victor stood stiffly next to the door.True to the Director’s word, Crusher had never joined their sessions again, and other guards learned quickly what the Director liked, what he wanted, what his little nods and gestures meant.Today, the Director sat at his desk scrawling his elaborate signature over a pile of pale red forms.He used a dark fountain pen that gave hisJ’s a particular swooping look and bled through the sheets onto the plain white paper he kept beneath them.
Tobias recognized the color of the papers.He had been assigned sometimes to sort piles of ASC paperwork, and execution permission requests were always that shade.He had been grateful, at the time, not to come across his or Kayla’s numbers on the papers.Now he wondered dully who was going to die in the next few days and if they had been in Special Research for very long already, or if part of what the forms authorized was their induction there.
The Director let Tobias kneel for a while, the scratch of his pen the only sound in the office, and then he glanced up and made a tiny scooping, jerky motion with his left hand.Stand and come here.
Tobias stood and walked forward.He stopped when the Director’s hand told him to stop.
The small table that usually held the Director’s interrogation tools stood in the middle of the room; a black handgun rested on top of the pristine white sheet.Tobias didn’t look at it, didn’t let his hands stray.
The Director signed the last sheet with a flourish and dotted anIwith enough force to punch a hole in the paper.Tobias flinched—he had scrubbed the Director’s desk once, trying to get those little black dots out of the hardwood—but otherwise gave no reaction.
“Good,” the Director said.“That’s done.”He turned the full force of his brown eyes on Tobias, and Tobias felt a throb of terror beneath the hollow and numbness.The Director’s eyes flickered to the gun and then back to Tobias’s face.“Pick it up.”
Eyes locked on the clawed feet of the Director’s desk, Tobias picked up the gun.His hands were shaking slightly.He willed them to stop.
“Take the safety off, put it to your head, and pull the trigger.”
It was an awkward angle, and Tobias couldn’t manage it as smoothly as he should have.The fumbling gave him time, too much fucking time, and thoughts tumbled like hail pounding on the aluminum roofs of the barracks, like broken bodies thrown out of a black van.
Was this really it, the moment of death, the moment of release?Should he angle the blast so that brain matter flew more toward the less expensive—and easier to clean—area around the conference table, or move it to be sure that Victor wouldn’t catch any of the gore?What would Kayla do when she learned?Would it hurt?Would he still be numb in hell?Oh God, would the Director really make it this easy?Would Jake know that he was dead?Would he care?Had he asked that Tobias be put down because he couldn’t come get him after all?
Did the Director wait until he signed my execution form to give the order?was Tobias’s last thought before he pulled the trigger.
The empty click of the chamber was loud in the room, and the hammer vibrated through his skull.He clenched his eyes shut—they had been open, fixed on the Director’s desk, locked onto the Director’s hands—and fought to keep any other reaction off his face, any sound coming from his mouth.
Of course the Director would never make it that easy.He would have done it in the yard or in his interrogation room, not in his office.Tobias had been a stupid freak even to guess, to wonder, to hope.
He should have known better from the start than to wish the gun was or wasn’t loaded.That was the lesson.
He forced his eyes open again, homing in on the Director’s hand.He kept the cold barrel of the gun pressed against his temple and hoped his expression gave away nothing, even though the Director knew it all.
“Clean it.Put it back.Get out,” the Director said.
Tobias quickly and silently used the plain white sheet to rub down the gun—get the filthy monster fingerprints off the shiny black—placed it back in the middle of the table, turned, and left.He didn’t change his pace as he walked out of Administration, across the yard, and into the showers.He made his movements there as methodical, impersonal, and obedient as they had been cleaning the gun.
***
In the library, Tobiashunched over the massive spell book, occasionally checking that the notes in his notebook were still legible, in spite of how his hand had been cramping the entire day.He took a moment to close his eyes and massage his right hand, ignoring how the healing flesh screamed at him.He was off computers for the week since he had failed to report a possible demon sighting.The Director didn’t want him back on the electronics until his hands healed enough to be decently fast on the keyboard.
“Why did you not report the weather changes?”the dry voice asked him once he had gotten the involuntary whimpering under control.
Tobias gasped against the thin cords that bound him to the chair, his hands palm up on the table.“There w-wasn’t enough data to conclusively prove any kind of s-supernatural activity.It was a micro-irregularity and had not been confirmed with nonweather data, or even confirmed as something other than a m-mechanical malfunction.”
“You don’t have the qualification to make that call,” the Director said.He nodded at the guard, a new one, who pushed the electric prod into Tobias’s shoulder again.
