The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (58 page)

The Faceman glowered down at Felix, his eyes full of hate and fury, and charged him like an enraged bull, his chin dangling by strands of dripping flesh. He took one stride that covered half the distance between them before Felix knocked him sideways with the sofa. The Faceman stumbled, fighting to regain his balance, swiping at it wildly, batting it away. Blood poured from his arm, showering the dingy hovel of a room.

Like a pendulum, Felix drew the sofa back and slammed it into the Faceman, pinning him against the sliding glass door, bludgeoning him with his makeshift battering ram. Stuffing spilled onto the floor from wide rips in the fabric. The glass shattered. The Faceman tried to stay on his feet, but the sofa pounded into him with the force of a speeding car and he plunged through the door. The rotting plywood detached from the house and collapsed under his weight, sending him sprawling out into the back yard, the jagged glass encircling the frame slicing deep into his flesh. He struggled to his feet and headed south, limping to the back of the property, a heavy trail of blood following after him.

He was trying to get away.

Felix waved his hand and the outer wall crumbled and burst into the yard like a wrecking ball had swept through, clearing a path for him. He stepped through the opening, glancing at the brick on the kitchen floor.

The Faceman looked over his shoulder at Felix and quickened his pace. There was no longer any cruelty or hubris in his eyes. There was only fear. The hunter, the apex predator, had now become the hunted. He turned his head and started to run. He didn’t make it very far. Felix’s aim was pure. The brick entered the back of the Faceman’s head and exited through his face. The Faceman took one more stumbling step before collapsing in the bramble. He landed sideways lying on one shoulder, his chest turned up to the sky.

Felix ran over to the body. Was he dead? He nudged him with his foot. He didn’t move. Felix would have checked to see if he was breathing but there was nothing to check—he didn’t have a face. He was allowing himself one brief but very firm sigh of relief when it occurred to him that he’d never seen a dead person before. The Faceman was dead. Very dead. No question about that. His face looked like a neighbor’s Halloween pumpkin he and his friends had smashed with baseball bats in junior high. Blood (and other stuff) was puddling around his head. It was disgusting. But it didn’t bother Felix. Not in the slightest. Being in the presence of a dead man—a man dead because of him—gave him no pause. And it wasn’t that he lacked the capacity to feel; he wasn’t blank or numb or bereft of emotion like a stunned survivor of a plane crash. Felix was saturated with feeling, dripping with it. But the only emotion he felt was rage. Bloodlust. He wanted to kill the Faceman. Again. If it was possible, he’d resurrect him so he could smash in his face and watch him die. One death wasn’t enough. He felt so much anger that—
Lucas!

Leaving the body in the thorny weeds, he turned and rushed back to the living room through an opening that would have been no less immense if falling space debris had struck the house. After a quick, frantic search, he found a door in the kitchen that led down to a basement. He fumbled for the light switch and flipped it on. He jumped down the stairs. There weren’t many. The ceiling was low, with exposed two-by-fours and hanging sixty-watt bulbs. The cold damp space was empty except for a foldaway cot and a worn duffel bag with a camouflage print. There was a workbench on one side that ran the length of the wall. Tools were on it: two saws and a long serrated hunting knife.
I used a saw—two saws actually—and a knife to make your friend more portable.
The wood all along the surface of the bench was stained a deep purplish color like it had been soaking in the wine Lucas’s agent had sent. Felix went over to the bench, picked up a saw, and examined the blade. Crusty red stuff—blood?—coated the metal, and even the wooden handle. It gave off a terrible odor, the odor of death. Then he saw the hairs stuck between the ridges of the teeth. Human hair. Brown hair.

Felix’s heart sank. But he didn’t scream. He just whispered, “No.” He said it only once. What more was there to say? He sat on the floor and buried his head in his hands, staring at the concrete. It didn’t feel real. Maybe it made no sense—especially with so much evidence inundating his senses—but he didn’t feel like Lucas was dead. Lucas couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. Felix took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and pushed himself up to his feet. A sickly sweet slightly metallic smell permeated the air. Was it blood? It had to be. Then a thought began to chisel its way through his calcifying sadness and misery, breaking it up, allowing an alternate possibility to emerge: What if the Faceman was lying? Maybe the blood on the saw was someone else’s? Maybe it wasn’t Lucas’s?

Buoyed by the smallest shred of hope, Felix flew up the stairs, ran out the front door and sprinted toward campus. At 12
th
Street, he fished his cell phone from his pocket and tapped the screen.

Allison answered. “Hey, Felix. What’s up? We’re studying at the Caffeine Hut if you wanna—”

“He killed Lucas!” Felix shouted into the phone, panting.

“What?”

“Have you seen him? Have you seen Lucas?”

She didn’t repond.

“Have you seen Lucas?” Felix screamed.

“No,” Allison said tentatively.

“Are Harper and Caitlin there?”

“Yeah.”

“Ask them! Ask them!”

Felix heard Allison ask the question and Harper and Caitlin say “No” in the background. He tore past a flatbed truck idling at a stop sign and crossed 10
th
Street without looking in either direction. Tires squealed on pavement. Horns sounded, long, irate.

“They said they haven’t—”

“I heard! Go to Woodrow’s Room and see if he’s there!”

“He’s not,” Allison told him. “We were just there. Harper got spooked so we left.”

“Meet me at the dorm!” He slipped the phone back in his pocket. The parking lots next to Stubbins Stadium were already behind him. The main part of the campus came rushing up. He stayed off the paths to avoid barreling into anyone, bombing along the fringes of The Yard, passing one building after another—Cutler, Stamford, Siegler, Jacobs—eliciting lots of shocked looks and a few startled screams. On the eastern edge of The Yard, he saw Allison. She was standing on the grass looking in his direction, waiting. When she spotted him, she came running toward him.

“Your face?” she shouted, sliding to a halt, arms out like a surfer riding a wave. Her face went pale. Their paths crossed for an instant and then Felix blew by her.

“Hey! Your face?” Allison shouted after him. She sounded like she was twenty or thirty yards back. Felix didn’t answer. He didn’t understand what she was saying. He just kept running.

Allison chased after him. “Wait! Wait! What happened?”

Felix slowed, letting her catch up. “I think he killed him!”

“What?”

There was no time to talk. No time to explain.

Allison matched him pace for pace. They raced past the Freshman Yard and cut through Downey’s lobby, dodging a group of students waiting for the elevators, then up the four flights to Felix’s room. He turned the knob. It was locked. He took the key from his pocket with fumbling fingers, stabbing futilely at the keyhole before finally finding it. The lock sprung back. Felix held his breath. He turned the knob and pushed the door open.

Lucas was lounging on his bed, listening to music on his earphones, looking down at an issue of
Maxim
spread across his lap. His head was bobbing up and down, his lips moving, mouthing the words to some song.

“Thank God!” Felix dove on top of Lucas like he was recreating his Bradline College touchdown leap and gripped him in a ferocious hug. Overwhelmed by an avalanche of elation and relief, he closed his eyes and squeezed Lucas’s shoulders.
He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive.

“What the?”
Lucas yelped in a startled half squeal, like a boy in the throes of puberty, scared at first, and then quickly transitioning to complete bewilderment when he realized it was Felix who was mauling him. He pushed him away, then gasped audibly at the sight of Felix’s face. “Whoa! What the hell happened to you, dude?” Then he looked down at his shirt. “You bled on me! What the hell? I like this shirt.”

Felix sat next to Lucas, breathing heavily, staring at him, relieved, surprised and overjoyed that he was alive. Lucas stared back at him with an expression of poorly concealed revulsion.

“Thank God,” Felix panted. “I thought you were dead. Thank God. Thank God.”

“Dead?
What are you talking about? Dude, your face is a mess.”

“Felix,” Allison said, warning him with a firm shake of her head.

“There he is,” Caitlin said, as she stepped into the room with Harper. “Hey Lucas. These guys”—she pointed at Allison—“were starting to worry us.”

“Oh my God!” Harper exclaimed when she saw Felix. “What happened to you?”

Caitlin looked over at him and promptly let loose an operatic shriek.

Felix stood up, absently running a hand over his face. There were layers of scabrous caked-on blood, like a thick veneer of char on a piece of bread left in the toaster too long. He’d forgotten all about his nose. He knew that he must look like a disaster. He glanced down at himself. The disaster wasn’t just confined to his face. The front of his jacket, his jeans, even his sneakers, were streaked and spotted with bloodstains.
Shit.
Harper was staring at him, waiting for a response. He mumbled a few incoherent words, gibberish, trying to come up with something.

“It’s huge!” Caitlin squawked. “It’s gotta be broken. You should go to the emergency room.”

“I’m fine,” Felix said and tried to give them an embarrassed
I’m-sorry-for-making-you-worry
smile. “It’s nothing.”

Lucas got up from his bed and came over to him. “That’s definitely broken. Let’s get you to the hospital. C’mon.”

“I’m fine,” Felix protested. “Seriously. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“What happened?” Harper asked, worried.

“Yeah,” Lucas said. “Why’d you think I was dead?”

“Dead?”
Caitlin echoed, bulging her eyes at Lucas. “Who’s dead?”

“I went for a walk and this homeless guy attacked me.” Felix was thinking quickly. “He was pretty big and I didn’t see him coming. He um… he hit me with a tennis racket. And then he said something about Lucas. He said something about having your phone. I don’t know.” He thought that wasn’t such a horrendous lie. “Maybe I was just all woozy after the guy hit me.”

“My phone’s right there.” Lucas pointed at his bed, eyeing Felix cautiously. The phone was on his pillow.

“Your poor nose!” Harper looked deeply sympathetic. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

“Yeah,” Felix said. “I’m good. I just need to clean up a little bit.”

“Good idea.” Allison urged him toward the door with her eyes. “I’ll give you a hand.”

Felix grabbed a towel from his closet and stepped out into the hallway with Allison. She shut the door behind them and they started down the hall, keeping their voices pitched low. “What the hell happened?” she asked him.

“I… I killed the Faceman.”

“You what?”

“Yeah. He was a tester. He tested kids to see if they were Sourcerors. I think he was building an army for Lofton. You know, the Drestianites.”

“
The Drestianites?
” She stopped, too stunned to walk. “Seriously? Like from the journal?”

Felix nodded, taking her by the elbow to help her along. “The Faceman said if I passed the test I could serve
him
.”

“That’s insane. So does that mean…?” Allison’s eyes grew wide. “Do you think Lofton knows? Does he know who you are?”

“I don’t know.” Felix hadn’t had time to think about any of that. “I um… I killed him pretty quick.” It felt so strange to say that, to say that he’d killed someone. “And he didn’t know I’m… you know… different. That’s why he was testing me to begin with. I didn’t like give him any time to tell Lofton I passed his test or anything.”

“Are you sure he’s dead?” Allison asked.

“Yeah.” He felt his nose. It hurt, but the pain wasn’t as bad as before. “I should tell Bill.”

“No!” she snapped suddenly. “I don’t trust him.”

Her reaction surprised him, but he was too tired to argue with her. He was totally drained. “Okay.” They’d arrived at the men’s room. “Can you tell the guys I’m fine and I’ll be back in a minute? And can you ask Lucas to bring me some clothes?”

“Sure.”

He turned to go into the bathroom.

“Felix,” she whispered after him.

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

He paused, unsure of the right answer. “I think so.”

“Um… hey… good job. I mean, that guy was a total psychopath. He deserved to die.”

They stood there for a moment in silence.

“He killed eighty-five kids,” Felix said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “He told me that.”

“Jesus,”
she said softly. “That fucking monster. At least there won’t be an eighty-six.”

Felix looked down at the floor and said wearily, “There are others. He wasn’t the only one.”

Lucas sat in a chair across from Allison with his tray piled high with carnivore-appropriate food. Allison had been playing with her dinner, waiting to see if Felix was going to show. She’d wanted to stop by his room, or call him, to see how he was holding up, but he was throwing off a vibe like he wanted to be alone. Killing the Faceman had rattled him to the bone, and instead of talking to her about it, he’d gone back to his old habit of retreating into his gloom and suffering alone like a penitent monk.

Harper looked up when she saw Lucas. “Felix coming?”

“No. He’s in our room resting his nose. Says he’s not hungry.”

That answers that question,
Allison thought, disappointed.

“Is he okay?” Harper asked anxiously.

“His face is wrecked, but he still won’t let anyone look at it.” Lucas glanced around the cafeteria. Most of the tables were empty. “Where is everyone?”