Ex-Purgatory

by Peter Clines

  Dead bodies that walked. That fought. That tried to kill him.

  Something moved on the edge of his vision and the electric eye chirped. He looked up. So did Harrison and Adams.

  An older man stood at the door. Not old, by any means, but older than the usual people who came into the recruiting office. Freedom guessed he was in his mid thirties and in decent shape for a civilian. He had brown-blond hair that needed to be cut and an old bomber jacket covered with stitches, as if it had been patched and repaired dozens of times.

  He shook his head. The man’s jacket wasn’t leather and it wasn’t patched. It was just a trick of the light.

  “Can we help you with something, sir?” Freedom asked.

  “Hi,” said the man. “Sorry to bother you, but my car just died out front. I don’t suppose any of you have jumper cables or something like that?”

  Freedom glanced at Adams, already back to his paperwork. The pen clicked three times to emphasize it. He looked over at Harrison, already watching the television again. “Harrison,” he said. “Help the gentleman out.”

  Harrison glanced from the television to the man and back to Freedom. “Yes, sir, Lieutenant,” he said. His eyes jumped back to the screen.

  “Thanks,” said the man.

  Freedom gave a polite nod.

  The man took a few steps and craned his head around to look at the television. “You see that?” said Harrison. “That, my friend, is the future of armed combat. Nine feet tall, fully armored, and it can throw cars like softballs. Its hands are Tasers. Those are fifty-caliber machine guns on the arms. This thing’s a walking tank.”

  On-screen the patriotic-colored machine tore apart a concrete bunker, then the film cut to a shot of it throwing what looked like the wrecking ball from a crane. The footage played for another minute before the loop started over. “It’s some kind of robot?” asked the man.

  Harrison shook his head. “It’s battle armor, man. Full-on Japanese sci-fi stuff.” He gestured at the screen and grabbed a set of car keys from his desk. “That’s just the engineering team testing it out. Another few years, you’re going to see dozens of those on every battlefield. They want to start cranking ’em out by 2017.”

  On the screen, the battlesuit was blasting away targets at a firing range. Someone with a sense of humor had set up pictures of monsters instead of the usual black silhouettes. The shots punched softball-sized holes in each target.

  “Wow,” the man said. “That’s pretty impressive.”

  “It’s going to be out here next week if you want to see it in person,” said Harrison.

  “Yeah?”

  The sergeant nodded. “Yeah. Kind of a pain in the ass, to be honest. The project head got some bug up her butt, insisted they had to bring it out here to Los Angeles for a demonstration. Put her foot down and wouldn’t budge until they agre—”

  “Sergeant,” Freedom said without looking up. He put a certain emphasis behind the word and Harrison shut up. No need to discuss such things in front of civilians.

  Across the room, Adams worked the button of his pen again and again and again while he went through his paperwork. Freedom closed his eyes for another moment. When he opened them, he saw the man giving the pen an annoyed look.

  Thank the Lord, thought Freedom. It’s not just me.

  The man looked back at Harrison. “Does she ever miss?”

  “Who?”

  He tipped his head at the television. “The woman in the armor. It looks like she always hits.”

  “What?” Harrison looked at the screen again. “That’s not a woman.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Pretty sure,” said Harrison. “Why would you think it’s a woman?”

  Freedom looked at the screen. The battlesuit was androgynous, but he couldn’t shake the sense the civilian was right. He tried to put his finger on what it was about the hulking exoskeleton that made him so sure the person inside was female.

  Then he shook it off. Like it or not, the suit would be here in a week. He could find out then. “Sergeant Harrison,” he said, “would you please get a move on and help the gentleman with his car?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thanks again,” said the man.

  “Not a problem, sir,” Freedom told him.

  “If you get by your car, sir,” said Harrison with a wave, “I’ll drive around.”

  The man headed out and Freedom realized why he’d looked somewhat familiar. He looked like the man from his dreams. The man who helped him fight the walking dead.

  Outside, George popped the hood and glanced at his phone. If they could get the car started in the next five minutes, he could still make it to work on time.

  Two minutes later Harrison pulled around the corner in a hatchback. The car whipped past George, then backed up into the space before him. The sound equipment in the back bounced as the rear of the car bumped up onto the sidewalk. The hood popped open. Harrison climbed out and dragged a long set of jumper cables out from behind the driver’s seat. “Sorry about the lieutenant,” Harrison said as he connected the cables. “He’s kind of had a stick up his ass since he got this job.”

  “He didn’t seem that bad,” said George.

  Harrison shrugged and walked the other end of the cables over to the Hyundai. He stepped past George and clamped them onto the car’s battery. “I get that he’s pissed about being busted down and stuck here,” the soldier continued. “I mean, I was supposed to be in the Army band and they gave me this. Adams isn’t supposed to be here, either, but you don’t hear him taking it out on everyone else. Ready to give this a try?” He gestured at George’s car.

  George slid into the driver’s seat and Harrison dropped behind the wheel of his car. Their eyes met and the soldier gave him a thumbs-up. The hatchback’s engine rumbled. George twisted the key. The starter clicked, the engine coughed once, and his car heaved itself back to life. The radio popped on and a string of Spanish came out of it. He was pretty sure the deejay was swearing. Then the voice faded away and a Beyoncé song rolled out of the speakers.

  Harrison unhooked the jumper cables. “Good deal,” he said. “You probably want to drive for at least fifteen or twenty minutes, let the battery build up some charge.”

  “I would,” said George, “but I’ve got about six minutes left to get to work.”

  “Good luck, then,” said Harrison with a grin. He gathered up the cables into a rough ball and shoved it back behind the driver’s seat. “Might want to get your alternator looked at.”

  “Thanks again.” George gave him a wave and pulled out. The car lurched once, reluctant to leave its resting spot, and then slid into the lane. The engine grumbled a few times, but he made it to work with seconds to spare.

  GEORGE SIPPED SOME more milk and wrinkled his nose. The taste was off. The smell, too. He wondered if someone behind the scenes at the dining commons had let it sit out and get warm.

  Lunch had been a dry cheeseburger. The salad bar had helped dress it up, but in the end it was still a sub-McDonald’s burger. The tater tots were good, at least. The server had given him an extra ladleful of them.

  He’d spent the morning hauling trash out of the dorms and down to the dumpsters. The first weekend was always one of the roughest. On the plus side, most of it was dry trash, though not as dry as his burger.

  Someone had left a copy of Maxim on the dining hall table. It wasn’t his usual kind of thing, but he knew if he didn’t read something he’d just nod off. There was a short piece on the President’s stylish tie collection and how his wife picked out most of them for him.

  He made it halfway through an article about a “cleansing spa” before he decided it wasn’t good lunchtime reading. He failed a fourteen-question quiz about whether his apartment would qualify as a “good loving lair.”

  One article made him fire off a quick text to Nick. It was just a sidebar piece about game shows, but it made something in his brain itch. He got an answer back a few minutes later.r />
  Unless it jst happened in the past hr then no Trebek is not dead. Why?

  He didn’t bother to respond. He knew it was a stupid question when he asked it. But it still nagged at him. If not Alex Trebek, who was he thinking of?

  Near the center of the magazine was a six-page pictorial with a short interview. It was the dark-skinned woman from the bus stop poster. Her name was Karen Quilt. She was thirty-three and had appeared in Maxim twice before, both times on the “Hot 100” list. She had doctorates in biology and biochemistry, plus a handful of master’s degrees in other fields. Her mother had been part of the NSS, which sounded like the Somali version of the KGB the way the article spun it. Her European father had been some kind of mercenary or assassin. From the age of eight she’d been raised by an aunt and lived in New York City until she started traveling as a model.

  Reading between the lines, George got the sense Karen Quilt didn’t have a lot of patience for interviews or pictorials.

  “Hi,” said a voice.

  He glanced up from the magazine and saw a dead girl in a wheelchair. Her eyes were dull and her skin was chalk-white. She wore a tattered collection of dusty clothes, and threads of black hair hung out beneath a Red Sox baseball cap.

  He blinked and his eyes adjusted to the dining hall’s fluorescent lights. They made the girl’s skin look pale. The tubes reflected in her eyes at just the right angle to white out her irises. He shivered a bit at the afterimage in his mind.

  He needed to get more sleep.

  “We met a couple days ago,” she said. “I’m Maddy. Madelyn Sorensen.” She moved her wheelchair a few feet closer and held out her hand.

  “I remember,” said George.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “All over campus.”

  “I don’t actually live here,” he said.

  “I know. I probably didn’t make the best first impression.”

  He bit his tongue.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I was just … I kind of gushed, y’know?” Her hand was still out. She managed a weak smile.

  George sighed. He reached out and took her hand. He hoped he wasn’t going to regret it.

  Madelyn’s fingers were cold. He didn’t think the air conditioning was up that high in the dining hall. He wondered if being in a wheelchair was bad for circulation. It couldn’t be good, he figured.

  She released his hand and gestured at the open space at the end of the table. “Can I join you?”

  “I guess,” said George. “Are you going to talk about people dying?”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” she said. “I came across as a freak, didn’t I?”

  “Just a little.” He brushed the magazine aside and gestured at the table.

  The chair moved forward until it bumped the table edge. Madelyn reached over her shoulder and tugged the backpack off the handles. She pulled a bottle of eye drops from the front pouch and tossed the pack in the empty chair across from George.

  “You’re not eating?” he asked.

  She tapped the arm of the wheelchair as she leaned her head back. “They bring my tray out for me. I could do it myself, but it’d take twice as long to reach a table using one hand.” She blinked a few times to spread the drops around her eyes and tucked the bottle back in her pack.

  One of the cafeteria workers—the same one who’d given George extra tater tots—appeared with a tray. She set it next to Madelyn and shot a quick smile at George. Madelyn peeled the bun and cheese off her first burger and attacked the patty with her fork.

  “Low-carb diet?”

  She shook her head. “Digestion issues.”

  “Ahhh.” He watched her eat for a minute and wondered what she wanted from him. He picked up his last tater tot, rubbed it in the salt on the plate, and popped it in his mouth.

  She finished the first burger and started stripping the second one. Her eyes drifted over to the magazine. She smirked and bit back a laugh. She turned the magazine around and looked at the pictorial, then turned it back to George.

  “It’s not mine,” he said. “It was just here when I sat down. There wasn’t anything else to read.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  His mouth twitched into a smile. “That’s an understatement.”

  “You know she’s your girlfriend, right?”

  He blinked. “Sorry?”

  “She’s one of us,” said Madelyn. “A superhero.”

  He managed not to sigh out loud, but it showed on his face.

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “I’m not a superhero. I’m not dating anyone right now.” He tapped the magazine. “And I would definitely remember if I’d dated a woman like that at any point in my life.” He pushed his chair away from the table and got up. “Anyway, I’ve got to get back to—”

  She dropped her fork and grabbed his arm. “Wait,” she pleaded. “I’m really sorry about the other day. I kind of lunged and hit you with everything at once, but it was such a huge relief to find you.”

  He didn’t pull away. He also didn’t sit back down. She sounded desperate again, and it kind of freaked him out.

  “Ten minutes,” she said. “Just let me talk for ten minutes and then I’m done. I’ll even transfer back east if you want.”

  George sighed again and looked at the clock on the wall behind her. “My lunch break’s almost over,” he said. “I’ve got seven minutes.”

  He sat down.

  “It’ll be worth it,” she told him. “I promise.”

  He crossed his arms and waited.

  Madelyn took a long slow breath. “Okay,” she said, “let me ask you something kind of weird.”

  “Now it’s getting weird?” He couldn’t hold back a smile.

  She didn’t return it. “Do you dream at night?”

  “What?”

  “Dreams. Are you one of those people who don’t dream, or don’t remember them?”

  Images of falling and dead people and demons flitted through his mind. He shook his head. “No, I have dreams.”

  “Normal dreams?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She crossed her own arms. “I dream every night,” she said. “Know what I dream about?”

  “Look,” he said, “this is going in kind of an uncomfortable direction. I’m not sure it’s appropri—”

  “Monsters.”

  He shut his mouth and stared at her.

  Something sparked in her eyes. Her shoulders lifted. “And you do, too, don’t you?”

  He didn’t say anything. He looked at the young woman and tried not to think of the image he’d seen out of the corner of his eye. The corpse in the wheelchair.

  “There’s thousands of them, right? Dead people walking around. They’re kind of slow and clumsy, but there’s just so many of them.”

  He set his hands on the table, then crossed them again. He studied her face. “How are you doing this? Is this some kind of magic trick?”

  She shook her head. “What else do you remember?”

  George thought about his dreams. “There’s a wall,” he said. “A big wall keeping them out. And a gate.”

  Madelyn nodded.

  “And a robot,” he said. “A battlesuit. But that’s just dream stuff.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “It is. I saw it on a commercial for the Army this morning. It’s some military project. The future of combat or something.”

  She smirked. “So you’re telling me the battlesuit has to be part of your dream because it’s real?”

  “I’m saying I probably just saw pictures of it online. Maybe it was on the news while I was doing something else and it didn’t register. And then, you know, the subconscious grabs it and puts it in a dream.”

  Madelyn reached down and tore a piece off the burger patty with her fingers. She popped it in her mouth. Her teeth were perfect. She swallowed. “The dream about monsters,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That
you have every night.”

  “I don’t have it every night.”

  “Okay,” she said. “When was the last time you didn’t have it?”

  George tried to remember his last good night of sleep. “I’m not sure,” he admitted, “but I know I haven’t always had it.”

  She tore another piece off the burger. “You haven’t.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table. “So what makes you so sure your dreams are going to come true?”

  “Already came true,” she corrected him. “It’s all real.”

  “But what makes you say that?”

  “Because it is,” said Madelyn.

  “That’s not really an answer.”

  She sighed and scrunched up her mouth. “Okay,” she said, “do you have a television?”

  He nodded. He figured he could humor her for a few more minutes.

  “Prove it.”

  “What?”

  “Prove you have a television. Right now.”

  He smiled. “I don’t carry around photos of my TV.”

  “But you’re sure you have one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know it’s in your apartment right now?”

  “Unless someone broke in and stole it, yeah.”

  She smiled. “That’s how I know your dreams are real.”

  George chuckled. “Okay, then,” he said, “if this was true—”

  “It is true.”

  “If this was true, why doesn’t anyone else know about it?”

  She poked at her tray. She’d eaten both burger patties and nothing else. All the meat was gone. “I used to have memory problems,” she said.

  The warning flares went off in George’s brain again, but were swamped by a wave of pity. “Mental problems?”

  “Memory problems,” she repeated. “I had trouble forming long-term memories. Whenever I fell asleep I’d forget most of the previous day.”

  “And that doesn’t happen anymore?”

  She shook her head. “Not since I started having the dreams. I think …” She paused for a moment. “I think I forgot that I was supposed to forget everything. Whatever happened, I fell asleep and forgot that it happened, so it didn’t affect me as much as all of you. So I’m here but I still remember there. Something like that.”