Chapter 9 #3
Tobias still found it hard to believe that civilians would have complex opinions about what hunters did in America’s backyards.
More astounding yet was the growing number of people who watched the video and saw not a group of hunters making a regrettable mistake in the pursuit of their difficult but honorable job, but something appalling and outrageous.
There were protesters. Entire families showing up on the streets, willing to go public on their stance against the ASC. All for the death of a freak and her family.
It stirred something inside him, something deep and nameless, to see how many people were coming forward now, spilling out their suffering and grief and anger toward the ASC.
A deep-seated terror still rattled his bones some days. He had nightmares about how quickly the same strangers who smiled at him would turn on him with revulsion and horror, eager to end him with anything they had at hand, if they knew the truth.
Some of them still would, certainly. But perhaps not all of them.
“It’s a tragedy,” Tobias said one day, in the middle of yet another news analysis of the political repercussions to the ASC massacre.
“Fucking tragedy,” Jake muttered. “More like a horror show. Come on, let’s watch something else.”
Tobias could have said many things to that.
Mentioned that he was talking more to himself than Jake.
That this was what still astonished him, day after day: people everywhere were treating a freak’s death as a tragedy.
But in the end, he looked at the dark circles around Jake’s eyes and the tension in his jaw, and he saw the appeal in taking a break from it all.
“I have a better idea.” Tobias shut off the TV. Moving over to the bed, he cupped Jake’s chin and kissed him. Tasting Jake’s mouth, feeling him open and relax into the kiss, felt good, sweet, and real in a way the endless media coverage had not for days.
Jake liked that idea too.
Later, wrapped in Jake’s arms, Tobias thought about Jake: the comforting weight of him. Who he was. He seemed to be taking this harder than Tobias. The public debate about ASC brutality was making him jumpy around strangers, more watchful than usual. Reaching for the bottle more often.
Maybe they needed a break. Somewhere remote, without a TV. Tobias would leave his laptop in the Eldorado, and it would just be them, Tobias and Jake, for a while.
But before Tobias could make the suggestion, a job with another vengeful spirit popped up on the outskirts of Chicago, and Tobias did not have to give up his addiction to the news coverage just yet.
They were having dinner at a pub in the Windy City when the ASC finally held a press conference to address the unrest, which had risen to yet another unprecedented height of violence that week.
Windows had been smashed at several ASC offices, and a Molotov cocktail had nearly burned down the ASC state headquarters in Florida.
The arsonists had been caught and faced life sentences for domestic terrorism, but protesters were marching around the clock outside the jail.
The ASC spokeswoman, with shadows under her eyes that even her makeup couldn’t totally conceal, took the podium. Her smile was tight.
“She’d almost be cute,” Jake muttered to Tobias. “If she wasn’t a fucking Dixon.”
Tobias grimaced. “Doesn’t that make her your cousin?”
“Like I said: if she wasn’t a Dixon.”
The news anchor interrupted them, refocusing Tobias’s attention. “Alice Dixon will be testifying in Congress this week to urge Representatives not to cut funding for the agency. We go now live to the press conference in D.C.”
Alice Dixon’s defense to reporters was nothing that Tobias hadn’t heard before. FREACS was the most essential institution for national security. It was unfathomable to consider releasing the monsters inside to wreak havoc on untold civilian lives.
But because she was a Dixon, Alice could play another card.
“I know my aunt Sally Dixon would be appalled by the current situation,” she said, voice icy with perfectly modulated outrage.
“After all she sacrificed her life for—in the hope of an America where monsters have been wholly eradicated—she would be at the forefront now, demanding that the ASC stand up for the ideals it was founded on. The incident in Cleveland was a tragedy that should not be repeated, but there are greater horrors . . . greater horrors that the ASC faces every day.”
Tobias watched her, the face of the ASC in this moment, and marveled that she had even slightly acknowledged that the hunters who had mowed down that family might be wrong.
Jake grimaced at the sound of his mother’s name and downed his beer.
Tobias laid his hand subtly on Jake’s back and called down the bar, “Hey Joe?” Just a few days in town, looking for their ghost, and they were already on a first-name basis with both the regular bartenders at the pub. “Could you put on ESPN?”
“Sure thing, Tim.”
Neither he nor Jake cared about the teams playing, but they were unlikely to bring up the ASC press conference.
* * *
In the checkout line at a grocery store for a supply run, Tobias saw the TIME cover in the magazine rack. Bold letters declared “Why FREACS Should Be Closed” before a photo of colossal iron doors set in unmarked concrete walls with coils of wire lining the top like a crown.
Tobias picked it up and added it to their pile. Jake took it in with a glance, then looked away.
After Tobias had been reading and rereading the essays in the magazine for about a week, Jake finally said something.
“Doesn’t that bother you?” he demanded, gesturing with his plastic fork at the issue where it lay on the motel table between them.
Tobias frowned at him, puzzled. “What about it?”
Jake glared down at the magazine. “Staring at the doors of that hellhole.”
Tobias looked at the cover, then up at Jake. “Is that what it is?” As Jake stared at him incredulously, Tobias began to laugh. “I only stood outside Freak Camp once, Jake, and I didn’t look back.”