by R. T. Lowe
He glanced over his shoulders and lowered his voice, which really wasn’t necessary with all the shouting protesters practically drowning them out. “I’m heading back to a certain forest this afternoon to check on something.”
“By yourself?” Felix said in surprise. What was he thinking? Bill’s desperation was making him crazy. If they’d established anything yesterday, it was that Lofton’s monsters didn’t congregate—only two had attacked them—and there was no indication they spent their time anywhere other than outside, roaming free and wild in the woods. Bill wasn’t making any sense, but what was he supposed to do? He obviously couldn’t let Bill get himself eaten. “You want me to come?” he offered. “I have three classes, but I don’t think it’ll be the end of the world if I miss them.”
“I appreciate that but I’ll be all right,” Bill said, giving him a smile. “There may be an old trail just east of where we were yesterday that’s not on any official maps. I’m going to take a drive out there to see if there’s anything worth having a closer look at. If I think it could lead to something interesting we’ll—”
“Hey Felix.” A girl’s voice.
Felix turned to see Caitlin looking back and forth between him and Bill, a curious look on her face.
“I better be going,” Bill said, and then he was off, moving briskly in the direction of the Courtyard.
“Who was that?” Caitlin asked, watching Bill as he mixed in with the students crowding the path.
“The assistant groundskeeper,” Felix answered truthfully. There was much more to the story, of course, but that would have to do for now. “I was the kid who cut everyone’s lawn back home so whenever I see that guy we talk about landscaping and stuff.”
“Oh.” She shrugged, apparently uninterested in the fine art of lawn mowing.
They started off together for the buildings on the north side of The Yard.
Caitlin fussed with her scarf, staring off at the protesters. “I’m blaming them if I’m late,” she complained as Little Ben, the Gothic clock tower next to the Woodrow Library modeled after the Elizabeth Tower in London began tolling its thunderous tones from atop the tallest structure on campus. “They bused them in from all over the state. Oregon. Oregon State. Lewis and Clark. Reed. More than half the kids at Reed are in the ERA now. They even have a tattoo parlor on campus so everyone can get permanently scarred with that dumb tiger.”
The crowd was chanting. “A hundred generations. A hundred generations. A hundred generations…”
Felix had never seen an ERA rally in person. They showed them on the news all the time, and from what he could see, The Yard looked just like the TV clips he’d watched. The surging mobs always seemed to be chanting something and their passion and energy was somewhat frightening, screaming at the top of their lungs with contorted red-faced expressions that looked a lot like rage to him. It made him wonder how they could hold on to so much anger and he found himself wanting to discuss something besides the ERA. He turned to ask her about her trip to Fiji, but something in her expression gave him pause.
“So Felix,” Caitlin began, then she stopped for a moment, fidgeting again with her scarf. She raised her voice, nearly shouting to be heard over the protesters. “Allison was down in the basement this morning washing her running clothes and her mom called. She called me on my phone. I’m friendly with Mrs. Jasner and everything, but she’s never called me directly. Anyway, she wanted to know how Allison was doing. Well, I was like, ‘good I guess, I only just got here, why are you asking me?’ So she tells me she hasn’t seen Allison in a few months, and she didn’t come home for break. So I asked her where she was and you know what she said?” She stared at Felix as if she was expecting him to confess. When he didn’t, she continued. “With you. She said she spent the break with you.”
“Oh,” Felix muttered, taken aback at the revelation, which Caitlin had clearly sprung on him, though he was glad she’d done it when they were alone. They stopped in front of the Madras Building and Felix watched the students climbing the steps, looking much happier than they did before the break when they were low on sleep and stressed out over finals. “It’s not what you think,” he tried to explain, then went quiet, realizing only the truth would help her understand that Allison had stayed with him because her life was in danger. Did it matter what Caitlin thought? She’d obviously jumped to the conclusion he and Allison were together. Was that such a big deal? It definitely didn’t upset him, but would he and Allison now have to pretend like they were a couple? Or maybe they could tell their friends that Allison was having trouble at home and had stayed with him because she had nowhere else to go? That was believable but almost as complicated as faking a relationship, and he wouldn’t dare do something like that before consulting Allison.
Why don’t you tell her the truth? he said to himself. Last night at the chapel, he and Allison had reaffirmed their decision to let their friends in on their secret. So then why was his instinct to hide from the truth behind a pair of lies? What was he afraid of? He looked out across the campus and recalled what his life was like when he’d first arrived for football practice in the heat of the summer. The death of his parents had sent him into a tailspin and he’d only managed to get through his days by numbing his mind, a technique he not-so-affectionately referred to as the ‘lucid fog’. Then he’d met Lucas, Harper and Caitlin, and he began to live again, to laugh without guilt, to feel happiness without thinking it was an egregious act of disloyalty to the memory of his parents. He was indebted to his friends for pulling him out of his depression, and he wondered how they would react when they found out who he really was. At first they might think it was cool he had ‘powers’, but once it sunk in this wasn’t a game and their lives were at risk because he was their friend, would they still think his powers were cool? Or would they resent him—even hate him—and wish they had never met? If they did, could he really blame them? What would he do if he was in their shoes?
Caitlin pursed her lips and looked up at him cautiously. “That’s between you and Allison. But how did she, um, stay with you? I didn’t know you had a…a place.”
“It’s my grandmother’s old beach house. I, well, I sort of inherited it.”
Caitlin nodded thoughtfully. “I’m not going to tell anyone, but it’ll get out eventually so you may want to think about how you want everyone to find out. Not that it’s any of my business, but despite what Harper may have, um, told you, she might not react very well when she learns you and Allison shacked up in a beach house for a month.”
He considered that, wondering why Harper would care who he was in a relationship with since she’d made it pretty damn clear in her rehearsed speech it would never work out for them. “It’s not like that,” Felix said, wishing he could be honest with her, but this was not the right time, or place. “I swear.”
“So then what is it?” Caitlin asked.
“I thought you said it was between me and Allison.” It came out defensive, harsher than he’d intended, and he felt bad about it.
The crowd had started up on a new chant. “Freedom from fear. Freedom from fear. Freedom from fear…”
Caitlin sighed and gave him a nod. “I have to get to class. See you at lunch.”
Felix watched her go, thinking about how much he hated lying, and hoping the truth wouldn’t cost him his friends.
Chapter 8
Leviticus
The smiling kid with the lanky frame leaned his shoulder against a tree, watching the short girl in color-coordinated coat, gloves and scarf trailing away from the tall guy with the sandy blond hair. His eyes followed the girl, drawn to her pouting, downturned lips and the soft glow of her cheeks, rosy from the morning chill. Leviticus—named by his teenage out-of-wedlock mother, a God-fearing Southern Baptist who burned holes in his back with cigarettes whenever the angels informed her he was thinking sinful thoughts—knew the girl’s name was Caitlin. The other kid, the kid she’d been talking with, was Felix. He knew their friends’
names too, and the order of their testing, which was never in doubt. It was as if God had made the decision for him, sending down one of his mother’s angels to whisper her name in his ear. Caitlin—glorious, enchanting Caitlin—would be first.
“Do you know when they’re starting the march?” a girl at his side asked.
“Soon,” he replied easily, smiling at the girl, making sure his hands stayed hidden in the pockets of his jacket. “10:15 or 10:30. I think. I can’t remember which.” He looked out at the crowd of chanting ERA protesters in The Yard and gave his head a regretful shake. “I wish I didn’t have class, I’d totally go.”
“Yeah, me too.” The girl smiled back and thanked him as she went about her way. She thought he was a nice guy. They all did. People—all people—were stupid and superficial, determining a stranger’s character from their clothes and hygiene, entrusting their safety (and their lives) on snap judgments that amounted to nothing more than whether a person ‘looked nice’ or had clean hair. Leviticus engendered trust, his dark eyes were kind and genuine and he’d never outgrown his soft boyhood features. He located Caitlin again as she hurried past him through a crowd of backpack-toting students. His unusually large hands—“mutant lobster claws” the kids at school had teased him until he’d dropped out in the tenth grade to pursue his true calling—unconsciously brushed over the thin shirt beneath his jacket, feeling the bumps rising up like mountain ranges over his stomach. The boils had grown large of late, spreading more rapidly, beginning to throb. He needed to feed, and soon.
His phone vibrated and he fished it from his pocket. The text read: “Orders revoked. Leave area immediately. Await further instructions.”
Leviticus returned the text quickly, panicked, his skin flaring and itching, burning as though swaddled in poison ivy: “already initiated. can’t leave.”
The reply came instantly: “Stand down. There are consequences. Please acknowledge.”
Everything went silent for Leviticus. The protesters. The kids walking the paths to class. The chirping birds in the branches overhead. Not a sound. Hands shaking in frustration, he caught a glimpse of the back of Caitlin’s head as she disappeared through the doors of one of the stone buildings fronting the great lawn. He had to have her. He glanced down at the text again and felt the sores advancing across his torso like the locust swarms his mother had warned him would eat him alive if he ever tried to leave her. The pustules ached and itched. He stifled a cry, biting down on his tongue as they burst, his shirt soaking up the pus. How good it would feel, he imagined, to take a sheet of coarse sandpaper to the rash, scrubbing through the white-capped boils until his skin was raw and numb and blood ran in hot rivers down his legs. Though the rash, he knew, would return before the scabs had time to form. There was only one cure for his malady, and it was close at hand. The man on the phone didn’t understand he couldn’t ‘stand down’. It was too late for that.
He flicked his eyes about furtively to make sure no one was watching him. They weren’t. Leviticus blended in perfectly, just another student doing his thing, maybe an upper classman who lived off campus, someone whose name you didn’t know, but he looked nice, everyone thought, like someone you may have hung out with at a party a semester or two ago, someone you’d seen around the Student Center or the dorms. That was why, Leviticus knew, he’d been selected for this assignment. He looked like the students, but he wasn’t like them. He had needs, and they would be satisfied whether or not he had the approval of the man on the phone. After all, they couldn’t control him, and they didn’t know if he was following orders or not, a fact he’d established many months earlier.
On twenty-four occasions, Leviticus had stuck to the protocols, affording each kid an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities. Only one had passed. Twenty-four kids and just one Sourceror. With failure practically a mathematical certainty, Leviticus had decided it was unnecessary to even try. So he’d stopped conducting the tests. His only concern was finding relief, however temporary it might be, from his affliction. As for the man on the phone, he—and whoever he represented—was as helpful and efficient as the concierge at a luxury hotel: identifying the targets, providing locations, cleaning up his mess. For a serial killer (he disliked the term, thinking it was beneath him and his considerable talents), he couldn’t have scripted a better arrangement. The man was already in the dark, so why not turn out the lights altogether?
He worked his phone, texting a message to keep the man happy: “acknowledged. departing campus now.” Caitlin was his. She belonged to him. Closing his eyes, his mind slipped into a waking fantasy of her perfect doll’s face in his hands, his lips brushing against her rosy cheeks.
Ever so slightly, the pain began to fade.
Chapter 9
The Video
Graham Senden sat on the toilet in his cramped apartment bathroom staring down at his phone, trying to decide if the video was authentic or a hoax. It had just ended. He hit the play arrow and watched it again, then checked the sender’s information: Kelley.jones, using a gmail account. Clever—he knew a Kelly Jones, a college buddy who sometimes sent him YouTube clips, but the sender of the video spelled their name with an ‘e’. Still uncertain, he noticed a second attachment accompanying the email and opened it. A message. He started to read.
“Hey babe!” a voice called out from the other side of the door, breaking the quiet of his little sanctuary. “You in there?” A baby began shrieking angrily in the living room and something crashed to the floor, most likely shattering into innumerable and unfixable pieces.
“You know I’m in here,” he groused, annoyed his wife had violated their unwritten rule: the bathroom was a safe harbor, and while within its heavily air freshened confines, one was not to be disturbed.
“Get that thing-o-saurus out of your sister’s mouth!” his wife shouted down the hall.
Graham tried to block out the commotion, focusing on the message.
“Hey babe!” his wife called out again, rapping on the door. “You’ve been in there a while. Coming out soon? I’m gonna make a grilled cheese for Matty. He wouldn’t eat his Cheerios this morning and I think he’s acting hungry. Can you get a bottle ready for the baby?”
“For Christ’s sake!” Graham yelled at the door. “I’m trying to take a dump! Can you leave me alone for just one frickin’ second?”
“Real nice, Graham,” his wife muttered. “You want Matty telling his teachers he needs to take a dump?”
“It’s better than him shitting his pants again!” he snapped.
“Good talk honey,” she said, and he heard her footsteps retreating toward the kitchen.
He let out a deep sigh, closed his eyes for a moment and started over. After reading the message, he reread it just to make sure it said what he thought it said because he couldn’t make sense of it. How could General Shale possibly prove the authenticity of the video? The outlandish reference to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs seemed to indicate the video was a fake, but he watched it again anyway. It looked real. It sounded real, and it made him sick to his stomach in a way he’d only experienced once before when he’d viewed prison footage of an inmate killing another inmate with a shiv. He went to his contacts list and scrolled down, stopping at Connie Redgrave, Channel 8’s evening news anchor for the past thirty-seven years. He pictured her at home, her heavily sprayed bob as immovable as a plastic helmet, wearing something immaculately unwrinkled and conservative. It occurred to him he was sitting on the toilet imagining a woman as old as his grandmother. He wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry (or feel nauseous). He considered, again, whether he should call her, and came to the same decision. Since working with the ‘News Lady’ for the first time last October on the Lofton Ashfield interview—where Connie had questioned Lofton about the suspiciously large number of people who had gone missing in his forest—she’d taken an interest in him, requesting his assistance on several miscellaneous projects. She’d also gotten into the habit of soliciting his input on editorial
pieces that ran during her broadcasts. He was beginning to think of himself as the representative of one of Connie’s target demographics, the voice of overworked and unappreciated twenty-something males everywhere. He tapped her name and waited.
“Good morning Graham,” the voice answered, plucky and professional even when the camera wasn’t on.
“Hi Connie,” Graham said sheepishly, “sorry to bother you at home. I have something here.” His eyes fixed on the strange images on his screen, suddenly doubting himself. “I mean, I might have something. I’m not sure.”
“What is it?” A TV was droning softly in the background, the news no doubt.
“A video,” Graham answered, hoping to God he wasn’t about to perpetuate a hoax by forwarding it to one of the most respected journalists in the country. “It looks real enough, but I don’t know for certain. The message it came with says there’s corroboration. The final letter of General Shale, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Final letter?” The meaning of the words dawned on him with a suddenness that nearly took his voice away. “Did something”—he coughed and cleared his throat—“happen to him?”
Silence.
“Connie?”
“Apparently, he killed himself this morning,” Connie informed him.
“He what?” Graham had been in the office until just after ten. As the assistant production manager for the morning news, he arrived at four and stayed through the post-production meetings. He hadn’t heard anything about a suicide.
“One of our affiliates broke the story about twenty minutes ago,” she explained. “There are rumors circulating he left a note.” She paused. “That video you have claims a connection?”
“Yeah,” Graham said, staring down at his phone, the little hairs on his neck standing on end. “This could be big, Connie. And bad. Very, very, bad.”