Ex-Purgatory: A Novel

by Peter Clines

  “You are an excellent driver,” said Karen.

  “Thank you, Rain Man,” he said with a faint smirk.

  The corner of her mouth trembled. It was the closest he’d seen her get to a smile. “Have you taken defensive driving courses?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  The ever-so-faint smile vanished and he realized what he’d said.

  In truth, the Hyundai was responding like a high-end sports car, as if it knew just what he wanted to do and predicted his moves. The steering wheel almost moved by itself. The car didn’t slow down once until they pulled off the freeway in Santa Monica and waited on a red light.

  A group of pedestrians made their way across the crosswalk. It was a large group for such a late hour, even in this part of town. They walked as if they’d all had a few too many drinks. Most of their clothes were ragged and soiled. A few of them stared at the Hyundai’s windshield with chalky eyes.

  The engine growled at them.

  Karen turned her head to him. “Are you attempting to kidnap me?”

  “What?”

  “You are driving in an evasive pattern, to throw off followers. You have not told me our destination. I would be worth a considerable ransom if this was your plan.”

  He met her gaze and tried to figure out if she was joking. Then he shook his head. “The car’s stopped,” he said. “Your door’s unlocked.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “I think if you thought I was kidnapping you, I’d be unconscious in the backseat or something like that, right?”

  She turned her eyes back to the road. “Something like that,” she told him. “The light is green.”

  The gas pedal dropped away from George’s heel and the steering wheel turned left in his hands. They wove around another car and headed west.

  “Okay,” he said. “There’s a guy out in New Mexico. Barry Burke. He’s been having the same dreams as us.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. Madelyn told me about him. I know he’s in a wheelchair, and I think he’s a scientist.”

  “Have you contacted him?”

  George nodded. “I talked to him on the phone for a few minutes. He works at a lab out there. Sands? Sandy?”

  “Sandia Laboratories,” she said. “Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

  “Yeah. That’s where I got hold of him.”

  The clock on the dashboard said it was one in the morning. Karen pulled her own cell from her pocket. “Do you have a home or cell phone number for him?”

  George shook his head. “I was having … head issues.”

  She tapped three buttons and put the phone to her ear. “Albuquerque, New Mexico,” she said. “The number for Barry Burke.” There was a pause, and a distant, tinny voice. “May I have the street names for all five?” Another pause. “That one, please.”

  “You found him?”

  “I have. They are connecting me.”

  “Are you sure it’s the right one?”

  “There are three B. Burkes and two Barry Burkes listed in Albuquerque. The second Barry is on Wolf Creek Road, which is just over half a mile from the Sandia Labs complex. A man for whom traveling is complicated, such as a man in a wheelchair, would most likely choose to live as close to work as possible.”

  “They told you where the road was?”

  “I have memorized street maps of all fifty state capitals, along with several other major cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas—Good evening,” she told the phone. “I am trying to reach Barry Burke.”

  Barry knew his dreams were of the geek persuasion.

  In his dreams he always wore X-ray specs, just like on the back cover of old comic books, except these worked. People were walking skeletons surrounded by sparkling muscles and infrared auras, all wrapped in a glowing nimbus of electromagnetism. He could pick out individual wavelengths and energetic particles like a kid sifting through a bin of Legos. He could see fillings and surgical pins and pacemakers by the way they twisted and bent the magnetic waves.

  And he could fly.

  Which was good, because the other part of his dreams was sci-fi/horror geek stuff. Dead people filled every street and crowded around buildings. Hungry dead people. Their teeth clacked together again and again. The noise was like a hundred kids shaking a thousand dice in their hands at once. It was the sound of the saving throw you could never hope to pass.

  They were the undead. They were ghouls. They were …

  Frak, he thought, what the hell were they?

  His voice was always distorted in his dreams. He’d never questioned it. It was probably related to the way people couldn’t recognize recordings of their own voice. Something about cranial resonance and sound waves. In his dreams, he sounded like a bad ’50s robot. Or a kazoo.

  On a normal dream-night he fought the waves of the undead with blasts of pure energy—blasts of him—that turned them to ash. It was like aiming a BFG, and the blasts did tons of collateral damage if he wasn’t careful. Even if the dead things got close enough to touch him, his skin burned them away.

  His skin was white in his dreams. Milk white. High-watt fluorescent light white. And kind of blurry. He was sure some psychologists would have a field day with that. It didn’t bother him.

  He also fought side by side with a giant robot, which was cool. And the robot was also strangely attractive. Sometimes, despite the flying and the undead and the X-ray vision, it felt like things were tipping into a very different kind of dream. Although flying was supposed to indicate a different type of dream anyway.

  This dream had the flying and the undead and the giant robot. But then he heard a low sound, like a brass horn section warming up. The noise rose over the chattering teeth in slow pulses and grew louder by the moment. The robot didn’t seem to hear it. Barry looked around and tried to figure out where it was coming from.

  And then Barry recognized the sound. It was the sound of a blue police box, a kind that hadn’t been used in over fifty years, materializing out of the time vortex. His heart raced for a moment, and then he realized his phone was ringing.

  Then he realized he was awake.

  “Damn it,” he grumbled.

  He rolled himself over. The phone’s brightness made him wince. He closed his eyes and felt around on the nightstand until the phone was in his hand. He glanced at the screen and saw Blocked as he answered. The voice on the other end was naming cities. “You better be very pretty or offering me a lot of money,” he said.

  “Good evening,” said the woman. “I am trying to reach Barry Burke.”

  “This is he,” said Barry with a yawn. “So is it pretty or money?”

  “I am calling about your dreams.”

  He was much more awake, just like that. “Who is this?”

  “I believe we have a mutual friend. I am with George Bailey.”

  He chuckled. “George Bailey, the loveable martyr of Bedford Falls? The guy who runs the Building and Lo—wait! George?” He sat up in bed. “You’re with George?”

  “I am.”

  “Hey,” called another voice beyond the phone. Barry remembered it from a few days ago, and from countless nights. He’d been kicking himself for not getting the other man’s number before they lost their connection.

  “You have been having dreams of another life,” said the woman.

  “Yes,” said Barry.

  “A life where the world is overrun with animated corpses and you possess some form of superhuman abilities or powers.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes I have. Are you one of the final five Cylons, too?”

  “I believe the answer to that would be yes.”

  “Wow.” Barry shifted himself back so he could lean against the bed’s headboard. “Okay, question for you. Do you know who George Romero is?”

  “Our mutual friend has already shared this question with me. I also do not know the proper name of Romero’s creations.”

  “Damn it.”

 
“A few moments ago you made a popular culture reference to the television series Battlestar Galactica, correct?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You sound very pretty, so please don’t tell me you’re one of those freaks who think the original series was better.”

  “You are a follower of such genre material.”

  “A follower?” he echoed with a chuckle. “Yeah, I am. Do you know me?”

  “Please name another science-fiction series which is currently being aired.”

  “What?”

  “Battlestar Galactica aired almost five years ago. Can you name a network series since then? One on the air or even one which was canceled?”

  Barry racked his brain. He’d been watching reruns of the second season of Chuck with a bit of Deep Space Nine, the later stuff where the Dominion War really took off. He tried to think of anything new that stood out. He’d been meaning to check out the new season of Doctor Who, but realized he wasn’t sure which season that was. Had the BBC taken another weird on-again, off-again hiatus, like they did with Tennant’s last year in the lead role? For that matter, what season was Chuck in? And how had LOST ended? He was pretty sure it wasn’t on the air anymore, but couldn’t remember a final episode.

  “Mr. Burke?”

  “Give me a minute.”

  He couldn’t even think of any new cartoons. Every morning with breakfast he’d been watching an episode of Battle of the Planets. He knew it was soft-core by some standards, but he’d grown up on this version before he’d ever heard of the original Gatchaman. And off that thought another memory shoved its way forward.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “You’re the ninja.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “In my dreams,” said Barry. “I recognize your voice. You’re the ninja. You’ve got guns. And a cape.”

  There was a pause. “Shall I take this to mean you cannot name a current television show?”

  “I just told you you’re a ninja with guns and you still want to talk about television?”

  “It is more important,” said the woman on the phone. “Have any elements of your dreams appeared in the real world?”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Have you seen any elements from your dreams while you were awake?”

  “Like a guy in a red and green sweater with a glove made of knife blades?”

  “The walking dead.”

  “Ahhh. No, not that I can …”

  There’d been a staff meeting a few days ago, right after George’s call, when his coworkers had gotten quiet and looked very pale under the office lights. They’d all stared at him without blinking for a moment, then the meeting continued as if nothing had happened. And there was a smell in his office he couldn’t track down, a sort of under-scent of mildew and rot. It clung to everything. Sometimes he even brought it home with him.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I think maybe I have, yeah.”

  There was a pause on the other end. Then the woman spoke again. “I believe it is in our best interests to be together,” she told him. “Can you travel to Los Angeles?”

  A handful of thoughts flashed through Barry’s head. The casual meeting he was supposed to have with Mike from maintenance about the smell. Jerry and Vanessa talking about component testing schedules. Keith asking for reports. His weekly Warhammer game with the guys down at the store.

  He thought about his dreams and how right they felt. Not just in a geek-fulfillment sense. In a simple, basic sense. Speaking to the woman on the phone, speaking to George, he knew his dreams were true.

  “Yes,” said Barry. “Yes I can. I can be on the first flight out of the Sunport and be in LA before ten o’clock.”

  “I will arrange for a car to pick you up at LAX.”

  “Cool,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

  She hung up and he set the phone down. He thought about what he’d just agreed to, and was pretty sure it was going to mean the end of his career at Sandia. They were always on a tight budget, and he wasn’t high enough up the chain to have any sort of protection. He was throwing it all away over a dream.

  A dream where he could fly.

  Barry reached up and grabbed the handle over his bed. Most folks called it a trapeze, but he always felt if you were going to tell people you had a trapeze over your bed it needed to live up to certain expectations. He pulled up on the handle and swung his body across the bed and out over his wheelchair. His legs dragged behind him.

  It was a little after two in the morning. He could be packed and ready to go by three-thirty and at the airport by five. Then he just needed an accommodating flight.

  “He will be here in the morning,” Karen told George. “I will have my father pick him up at the airport.”

  He glanced at her from the driver’s seat. “Is that wise?”

  “How so?”

  “I mean … well …” He tried to think of a polite way to phrase his worry and gave up. “Is it safe for your dad to go to an airport?”

  Her eyebrow went up.

  “Isn’t he kind of … wanted?”

  The corners of her mouth trembled again. The almost-smile. “My father long ago perfected the art of hiding in plain sight. If he does not want to be noticed, he will not be. How else could he be staying in a hotel surrounded by paparazzi?”

  George decided to call the matter closed. “Okay, then,” he said.

  They were still on surface streets. Somewhere deep in Santa Monica. He didn’t know exactly where, but according to the street numbers he’d hit the beach in another dozen blocks if he kept heading down the road they were on. After that …

  “Let’s stop and get a beer,” he said.

  Her eyebrow went back up.

  “We’re driving around with no plan and the car’s got a quarter tank of gas. Let’s stop and make some kind of plan.”

  She glanced at her phone. “Last call will be in the next fifteen minutes at most establishments.”

  They passed two clubs before settling on a bar. George parked across the street, went to shut off the engine, and realized he still didn’t have a key. The engine revved. It sounded like a grumble.

  “We’ll be right back,” he said to the dashboard. “Half an hour at the most.”

  The car revved again and then turned itself off.

  “You are talking to your car,” said Karen.

  “I don’t know if you noticed,” he said, “but the car’s talking back.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but decided against it.

  They walked across the wide road. An oversized man sat on a tall chair near the bar’s door. A tall table with a desk light and a beach umbrella created a small check-in station. The doorman looked up from his book when he saw them approaching and straightened up. George went to reach for his wallet and realized it was back at his apartment, but the man waved them through with a broad smile at Karen. He took a quick step to make it clear they were together. It felt awkward, and under the stark lights the folds in his shirt stood out. They scraped on his arm and he had to make an effort not to scratch and draw more attention to them. The itch moved up to his bicep and he raked his fingers across it.

  The bouncer shook his head and smirked. George scratched at the itch again and the man’s smirk broke into a wide smile. He had bad teeth. One of his incisors was missing.

  The bar could hold a hundred people, but it was almost empty. Two men sat in the booth farthest from the door, and a man and two women sat in the one closest. A woman in a dark T-shirt cleared a table that looked like it had held a fair-sized party in the recent past. A half-dozen young student types—film students, said something in George’s university-experienced mind—chattered away at the other end of the bar. George heard enough names and terms to grasp they were having a serious talk about comedy. One of them started reciting lines about Winchesters and pints with a bad British accent.

  A thick-built man with thinning hair was wiping down the bar as they walked in. He glanced over his shoulder at the cl
ock as they reached him. “Only got time for one,” he said. “What can I get you?”

  George pointed at one of the taps. Karen examined the row of bottles behind the bar and ordered a vodka martini. A few moments later the bartender presented their drinks and vanished to get final orders from the film types.

  Karen held the stem of her glass and lifted it to her lips. The liquid shifted, touched her tongue, and she set the glass down on the bar napkin. The base of the martini glass was centered on the square of paper. “And now?” she asked him.

  George sipped his beer. “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

  They sat in silence for a moment. Neither of them touched their drinks.

  “I got shot a few hours ago,” he said.

  She waited for him to continue.

  “I was shot, and the day before that I was snatched by the feds and my apartment was trashed. And I think I met—”

  A spike of pain shoved into the back of his skull. The room spun for a moment. He winced. The tip of his nose felt wet.

  “I think I met the President and the First Lady.”

  She let the martini brush against her tongue again. “Why do you think you met the President?”

  “Because I remember it.”

  “No,” said Karen. “Why did the incident occur?”

  “They thought I might be—” The spikes pushed at his eyes again. He ignored them and forced his memories forward. “He wanted to know if I knew him.”

  “The President?”

  “Yeah,” said George. “Madelyn said—” The spikes shot forward another quarter inch. They grew thorns. He could picture them making deep dimples across the back of his eyeball. “Madelyn said he can make people believe things. He’s from somewhere else, like us.”

  She slid the bar napkin out from under her drink and held it out to him. “Your nose is bleeding again.”