The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (77 page)

“It’s really good to hear your voice,” Bill said, the relief in his voice thick. “Are you okay? Is Allison with you?”

“I’m here,” she said.

“Hi, Allison. I thought you guys might already be here.”

Felix glanced over at Allison, but she just looked back at him bleakly—his cue to explain why they were running late. “Yeah, we had a little…
incident
with the Protectors.” Then Felix added: “And a Sourceror.”

There was silence.

“You there?” Felix’s eyes flitted down to the phone.

“Was the Sourceror with the Order?” Bill asked hesitantly.

“No,” Felix replied.

Bill spoke in a rush: “Grab your passports and meet me at PDX. I have a safe house in—”

“Lofton doesn’t know,” Allison interrupted. “The kid was acting on his own.”

Another pause. This one longer.

“How can you be sure of that?” Bill asked.

“He told us,” Allison answered.

“But how—” Bill began.

“He was telling the truth.” Allison ran a finger over her swollen eye and grimaced in pain, her lips pulling back over her teeth.

Felix believed her. Maybe it was the unwavering certainty in her voice. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, Bill seemed to believe her too.

“Okay. Okay. So what happened? Are you guys okay? What happened to the Protectors? And the Sourceror?”

“We’re fine.” Felix’s knuckles tightened on the wheel, going white. “The kid um… um… I… the Protectors… they um… I didn’t have a choice so—”

“Felix took care of them,” Allison answered for him. Bill started to say something, and she blurted out: “We need to talk to you. Your office in forty-five.” She tapped the screen, ending the call.

Felix glanced over at her, surprised. “What’s up?”

Allison ignored him. She had her phone back out and was pecking at it with her index finger, searching for something.

The ground fog had returned. Reluctantly, Felix focused on the road, throwing sideways glances at her as she manipulated the display.

“…have you thought about exploring other challenges?” came a woman’s voice from the phone. A plucky broadcaster’s voice.

“Who’s that?” Felix asked.

“I think I know what Bill’s been lying about,” Allison said distantly, preoccupied.

“What?”

A man’s voice: “…in public places. One day we will live without fear. When the people…”

“Is that Lofton—?” Felix started.

“Yes,” Allison said, aiming a hand at him:
Be quiet.

A woman’s voice: “…all thought to be in the vicinity of Ashfield Forest at the time of their…”

“Is that—?”

“Yes,” Allison said, then she shushed him.

Lofton’s voice: “…hundreds of square miles of wilderness. Some of the most rugged and densely wooded terrain in North America. It’s also home to wild animals such as bears, mountain lions and wolves. The woods can…”

Allison tapped the phone, her jaw clenched. “Wolves. Did you hear that? He said wolves.”

“So?” Felix said. Then it hit him. “You mean—?”

“That lying motherfucker.”

The peppering began as soon as Felix and Allison entered Bill’s office: “Where did you first see the Protectors? Cove Rock? How many were there? Did the Drestianite tell you anything? Any idea how they found you? Did anyone see what happened?”

“Why don’t you tell us about Ashfield Forest?” Allison countered.

Felix went over to the window without a word and looked out. He didn’t want to get into it with Bill. But he wasn’t going to stop Allison. It was raining again, and the sky, dark and foreboding, reflected his mood. The Yard was deserted. Other than a scattering of lonely stragglers still packing up or waiting for rides, everyone had gone home; the entire campus had assumed the same general air of ghostliness as the Old Campus.

“Sorry?” Bill looked startled as he sat at his desk with his laptop open in front of him.

“Ashfield Forest,” she repeated, slowly articulating each syllable. “Why don’t you tell Felix the truth? And if you say
‘wolves’,
I’m going to slap your face off. You told us Lofton was protecting the governor because the governor had allowed the reintroduction of wolves. You said Lofton was keeping it quiet. So why would Lofton tell Connie Redgrave on national TV that there are wolves in Ashfield Forest? Does that strike you as somewhat inconsistent?”

Bill measured her for a moment, then sighed and shifted his gaze to Felix. “It’s not that simple.”

“Just tell him the truth!” Allison shouted. “Why’s that so hard?”

“I was hoping to do this at a later date,” Bill said with dismay in his voice. He looked over Allison’s shoulder toward the window for a moment, then half-snorted and shook his head as though the irony of some private joke was amusing him. He reached down with one hand and pulled open a desk drawer, and after a bit of shuffling, he came away with a sheet of paper, yellowed and rolled up like architectural plans. He got up from his chair and carried it across the office, then spread it out on the table beneath the window where Felix was standing.

Felix could see right away that it was a map of some kind. At the top, and centered, was the word WILDERNESS. Diagonal green lines filled up most of the map. But there were other colors. A fair amount of blue: a teardrop shape with the words CLEAR LAKE next to it stood out near one corner, with two smaller teardrops (unnamed) opposite it, and squiggly lines (some long, some short) that could only be rivers. There were portions shaded-in with browns (both light and dark), and heavy green lines that framed in large tracts of land within their boundaries. There were two prominent black lines too long and too straight to be anything other than roads, and several smaller lines (black but fading to gray) that wound their way here and there without any obvious start or end points. Most of the smaller lines had been highlighted with an orange marker. There were a few big numbers, which made Felix think they were elevations. And ten Roman numerals: I through X. I, II, III, IV and V were stamped, and evenly spaced, across the bottom, and VI, VII, VIII, IX and X were imprinted at the top directly above I through V.

Allison joined Felix and Bill at the table, squeezing herself between them. “Where is this? What’s that?” She pointed at four red circles (one with an X through it) that Felix had just noticed. Bill didn’t react when he saw her knuckles: pink, puffy and capped with bloody open wounds that hadn’t had time to scab over.

“What you’re looking at,” Bill explained, using his cell phone to anchor down one side that kept curling up, “is a map of Ashfield Forest. It’s actually an old forest service map I’ve been updating for a very long time. The forest is divided into ten quadrants, which is an old state bureau of land management designation. Anyway, each quadrant is forty square miles. What you’re pointing at”—he nodded at Allison—“are facilities where something I’ve been searching for may be… hiding. I recently crossed out one site—the one with the X—because I concluded they’re not there. But these three circles here, here and here”—he drummed on the map with his forefinger—“are all possibilities.”

“What’s that have to do with the people getting ki—” Allison started to say.

“I’m getting to that.” Bill shifted the map a quarter turn clockwise. “Now these blue dots”—there were two—“represent the location of the bodies found last summer. And these dots”—there were seven, also blue—“represent the last known locations of the people still missing.”

“They’re all grouped together,” Felix noted, examining the dots as he tried to make sense of their relationship to everything else on the map. In some ways, it was easier to read than a standard roadmap, but the scale was confusing, and there was no legend to use for guidance.

“Except for these two,” Bill pointed out, using the knuckle of his little finger to rap on the blue dots a few map inches removed from the others. “This is Dobbs Highway.” With a quick vertical stroke of his finger, he traced the path of one of the bold black lines—this one tracked all the way across the map’s length from west to east. “It separates Ashfield Forest from this land over here”—he flipped a thumb sideways to indicate north—“which is still owned by the state. This is where Mia Vujicic told her friends she was taking her boyfriend Ethan Powers for some sort of birthday surprise hike in the woods. Mia and Ethan haven’t been seen since.”

“They’ve been on the news a lot.” Allison leaned forward over the map, practically obscuring Felix’s view of it with the back of her head. “I’ve seen missing person posters all over town with their pictures.”

Bill nodded. “So aside from them, there’s an obvious cluster in the seventh and eighth quadrants which I think is still significant despite the one anomalous event.”

Allison shook her head sharply, then turned to look up at Bill. “All these dots and circles are really pretty, but why don’t you tell Felix—”

“Do you need some ice for your face?” Bill interrupted. “I have some Advil if you need it. You have a lot of swelling. You should take something.”

“No,” she said, annoyed. “I’m fine.” She wasn’t fine. Her eye had swollen completely shut, and besides the pain (she’d told Felix in the car that her whole face was throbbing and aching badly), she was having problems with her depth perception and it was making her dizzy. When they’d come up the stairs to Bill’s office, they had to stop at the second-floor landing because she felt like she was going to throw up.

Bill sniffed the air. “What’s that smell? Do you guys smell something?”

“It’s our clothes,” Felix admitted, too tired to care about the stench. They’d given up on the idea of cleaning up at a rest stop when they realized they looked like participants in a chainsaw massacre. Instead, they came across a country creek—as winding and bucolic as a Thomas Kinkade painting—not far from the highway. They cleaned up in the icy waters, washing off the battle detritus, the blood, dirt, and some spongy stuff Felix found stuck to his hair that he was forced to acknowledge had once resided inside the dark-haired man’s skull. When they finished their impromptu nature baths, they’d changed into clothes even ranker than the ones they’d put on at the Cliff Walk parking lot. Felix had ended up ditching his old clothes, unsalvageable as they were, under a mound of pine needles in a grove next to the creek.

“Why are you stalling?” Allison demanded. “We stink. We get it. Now tell us what’s happening in the forest.”

Bill pressed his fingers to his temples and let out a heaving sigh. Then he gave Allison a long, exasperated look. “It’s not wolves. And all those people”—he swept his hand over the map—“they’re not
missing
. They’re dead. And their bodies will never be found.”

“I knew it!” Allison looked at Bill as if to say
I would very much like for you to drop dead right now
. “I knew you were lying about something.”

Felix shook his head and gazed out the window. What little light remained—gray, cold and depressing—was already dimming as dusk descended on the campus. The sun would soon be setting beyond Ferguson Hall and Stubbins Stadium. He hated the short winter days. “So what is it?” he asked wearily.

“I did it for your own good, Felix,” Bill said earnestly. “I was going to tell you at a better time. Please try to understand. You’ve been through so much this year. I just didn’t think it was fair to tell you about the… things… that are… well…”

“What is it?” Felix asked sharply. “The what?”

Bill tucked his hands into his armpits and looked at them steadily, his expression hardening. “I don’t know everything we need to know, but what I do know is this: They eat what they kill. They’re vicious. They’re strong. Fast—invisibly fast. They’re smart. They’re pack hunters. They’re not animals but they’re not human either. I don’t know their numbers. I believe Lofton created them. And we need to stop them before he uses them for whatever he’s planning.”

Felix turned away from the window, his anger rising up to his throat. “You lied to me! I asked you straight up.
And you lied.”

“I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“Brilliant,” Allison said with disgust. “How the hell could you do this to him? He trusts you!”

“And what do you mean
stop them
?” Felix asked, his voice calm. His anger had no legs. He was too tapped out to sustain any emotion.

“That’s what I’ve been searching for.” Bill turned and went to his desk, the floorboards creaking under his feet. He sat down on the edge, his back brushing up against a green-shaded banker’s lamp, and pointed toward the map. “That’s what those red circles there are all about.”

Allison nearly stubbed her nose into the map, tilting her head so that her working eye was directly over Roman numerals VII and VIII. “What are you talking about? The buildings?”

“Yes. I have a theory. I believe Lofton keeps them somewhere, at least during the night. If we’re talking about significant numbers—and I think we are—then the building they would require must be significant in size. If we can locate where they shelter, we can take care of them—
all of them
—in a single surgical strike.”

“So you need to go into the forest?” Felix’s eyes shifted to the map.

“
We
need to go into the forest,” Bill corrected. “And soon. I don’t know what Lofton has in mind, but given the frequency of the attacks and the fact that the last two were killed outside Ashfield Forest, I think we need to act quickly.”

“How quickly?” Felix asked reluctantly, unsure if he was prepared for the answer.

“Spring.” Then Bill paused for a second and added: “At the latest.”

“
Spring?”
Felix choked out. He stared blankly at the window without really seeing anything beyond it as the meaning of that word settled in, working its way into his exhausted brain.

“Well this is just fantastic!” Allison snapped at Bill. “It’s not enough to send Felix into Lofton’s forest. You were planning to do it without telling him that there are monsters out there eating people.”

“You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said!” Bill snapped back, his face reddening in anger. His expression sank for a moment and his eyes dropped slowly to the floor, embarrassed. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his heather gray slacks, then took them out and crossed his arms uncomfortably. He moved a few paces toward them, his gaze directed at Allison. “I was going to tell Felix,” he said in a low voice, “but not until after the break. It wasn’t something I wanted to burden him with just yet.” Then he turned to Felix and said softly, “I really am sorry about not being completely truthful with you. But you must know I only have your best interests in mind.”