Page 9 of Freak Camp
This September evening wasn’t so bad as Roger sat on his porch and kept a cold can for company, sorting through his basket of black-market amulets, until he looked up at the rumble of a black Eldorado turning into his drive.
The Hawthornes never did call in advance.
Roger stood and stepped to the top of the porch steps as the Eldorado came to a stop and the driver’s door swung open, followed a moment later by the passenger door.Leon’s tread was slow and deliberate, but Jake raced ahead of him, backpack bouncing, taking the porch steps two at a time.
“Hey, Rog!”
“Hey, kid.”Roger ruffled his hair, even as Jake tried to duck.
The screen door slapped shut behind Jake as Leon reached the first step, brow furrowed as he looked up at Roger.“Harper.”
“Hawthorne.To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Leon shrugged one shoulder and made his way up the steps, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.“Intel swap.Like always.”
Roger rolled his eyes as Leon moved past him, then turned to follow him into the house.“Right.”
Jake had grabbed a Mexican Coke from the fridge and was already settled before the TV, lounging on the floor with his back against the couch as he flipped through the channels.Leon and Roger moved into the kitchen, where Roger withdrew two beers and passed one over.
“Just got back from Nevada,” Leon said.
Roger’s eyebrows quirked.“How’d Vegas treat you?”
Leon shook his head, then swigged his beer.“Winnemucca.”
Roger paused.“You mean Freak Camp?You?”
“Yeah, me.”Leon set his beer on the kitchen table and crossed his arms, still staring into the living room.“Knew I had to sooner or later.”
Roger took that in.“So you got a lead?”
Leon didn’t answer.
Roger checked his pantry, scanning for snacks fitting for a ten-year-old.He pulled out a half-empty box of Fruit Gushers that Jake had left behind on his last visit.“Who’d you find to babysit Jake?Tell me you didn’t leave him in the car.”He tried to sound offhand, not suspicious.
“Nah.Took him in with me.”
Roger didn’t think he could still be surprised by Leon, but goddamn.“Jesus, Hawthorne, you took the kid inside?”
Leon looked hard at him.“You got something to say, Harper?”
Roger scowled, eyeing Jake, who looked to be in one piece.“Well.Did you get anything?”
After a pause, Leon said, “Maybe.”Roger figured that was all he was going to get.
Ever since Leon’s wife, Sally, died in the Liberty Wolf Massacre in 1984, he had had a single obsession: hunting the monsters behind the werewolves’ assassination attempt of the president.Those werewolves took down a dozen Secret Service agents, bit the First Lady, and killed Sally Hawthorne as she threw herself before the president.She had been there with her father, Elijah Dixon, who survived the attack.He used the national shock and spotlight to expose the existence of supernatural creatures in the shadows throughout the country.He told the world how he was one of a few dozen professional hunters in America who risked their lives to stop these inhuman creatures bent on slaughter.
Roger had been one of those hunters operating before the Liberty Wolf Massacre.He’d known Elijah Dixon, though not on a personal level.The Dixons were unique in how they passed down monster hunting like a family heirloom, allegedly all the way back to the American colonies before the Revolutionary War.They certainly had the most power and money of all the ragtag hunters who usually operated solo.
Roger learned later that Elijah had already been using his government contacts to lobby for federal funding to create an official, though secret, monster-hunting agency.Something like CIA: Supernatural Division.But the tragedy of the Liberty Wolf Massacre gifted Elijah the opportunity to go public with national support on a level he’d never dreamed of.
It was a perfect storm for achieving his lifelong ambition.The national shock and horror gave him the stage to face the cameras and tell the country that he knew exactly what “unknown” menace had tried to kill their president, and he knew how to wipe them out.
Congress handed him a blank check within a month, and Elijah Dixon used it to create the Agency of Supernatural Control and to build the first facility to hold supernaturals: Freak Camp.The facility opened January 2nd, 1985, and First Lady Dorothy Peterson became inmate 85WW0001.She was never seen in public or on camera again.
Elijah’s son-in-law Leon Hawthorne did not join his mission.Before all the funerals had finished, he took his four-year-old son, Jake, and disappeared onto the back roads of America, far away from the national spotlight and cameras focused on the tragedy and its heroes, including the slain young mother.
Roger had met Leon a couple of years later at a hunter’s bar.Leon was traveling under an alias, as he always did, and Roger joined him to take out a couple of mountain trolls before learning who Leon and his son actually were.
