Wayne Berg is a hunter of the Hermit Creed.
Overview[]
Wayne is a down-to-earth, grumpy type with little time or energy for the broader philosophical questions of the world. He's got his head down and is trying to get by without screwing up or looking like a clown.
Wayne grew up in Montana. His dad took off when he was 10, and his mom struggled pretty hard after that. Wayne spent a couple of good summers with his loner uncle, hunting and fishing along the Canadian border, but when he was old enough to get a job he started helping support the family. He did okay in high school, and when his mom died and his little sisters moved away, he went to trade school and learned to repair cars. Eventually, he moved to Denver to be near his sisters and there met Beverly Modine. They got married and moved to Beverly's hometown of El Paso, where Wayne opened a garage. Things were okay for a couple years, until Beverly left him and moved back to Denver. By that time, Wayne was settled.
Wayne is pretty skeptical about everything, but where your standard urban-hipster-cynic things he's smarter than everyone else, Wayne is just as skeptical and resigned about his own intelligence. He believes he'll never figure anything out, and letting himself think he has is just pure dumb.
Wayne figures that most people are, by and large, worth about the same (not much). He'd like to make things fair and safe and generally peaceful because, hey, what else is there? To achieve his utilitarian goals, he'll do whatever he deems prudent. He doesn't have big plans. He wants to make things perceptibly better in the short term, and to do that he's just as willing to align himself with the "forces of darkness" as with the imbued.
See, Wayne's hookup with the Messengers has shown him sone pretty nasty, big-time badness, and he's got the feeling it's all coming down soon. If he's right about the hard rain that's about to fall, all the plans of critters and things are going to add up to shit. Maybe making things good now is the last chance anyone will have for a long time. If he's wrong, well, that's nothing new.
Currently, that means riding shotgun over a group of yahoos in Texas. Together, they're pretty efficient. He's been careful to insulate himself, but the "Texas Ten" - whose real number is always changing - have a fair amount of confidence in their "mysterious benefactor." They might be less sanguine if they knew he was partnering with a parasite's parasite - a bruise named Maria who's hundreds of years old. She takes full advantage of the Ten's activities to capture and "protect" vampires so that she can continue to exist.
Wayne has no illusions about Maria, but she's useful. He's sure she has no illusions about him, but finds him useful, too. He figures he'll string her along as long as he can, then have his buddies whack her. If she gets jumpy and does him first, well, shit happens.
References[]
- HTR: Hunter Book: Hermit, p. 102
