Ex-Purgatory: A Novel (26 page)

“Thanks,” said the crazy man.

“Of course,” said Freedom. He glanced at the figures out on the sidewalk. “Is there something I can help you with?”

The woman glanced at his insignia. “Lieutenant John Carter Freedom?” She glanced back at the man. “He is not a captain?”

“No.”

Freedom bit back a growl.

The man looked at Dr. Morris across the room. A smile broke out on his face. She stared back at him. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Is your name George?”

“Yeah,” said the man. “Do you remember me?”

That was right, Freedom remembered. He’d said his name was George.

“I think so,” Dr. Morris said, “but I’m not sure from where. Are you with DARPA? Or a college?”

“Not quite.”

The other woman, the supermodel type, studied the cases. “This is the Cerberus suit?”

“Yeah,” said Dr. Morris. “How’d you know?”

Freedom wondered as well. The Cerberus Battle Armor System wasn’t a secret. The recruiting office had been showing footage of it for a few months now, and there were YouTube clips of it online. It wasn’t getting major news coverage, though, and yet here were two people who happened by his office on the day it arrived. Both of whom seemed very familiar with the battlesuit and its creator.

Maybe too familiar.

He straightened up. “Ma’am,” he said, “sir, what can I do for you this morning?”

“We’re here for you,” said George. “Both of you.”

Dr. Morris raised an eyebrow. “Sorry?”

George glanced at the supermodel, who gave a slight nod. “This is going to sound a little strange,” he said, “but you’ve both been having a lot of dreams, haven’t you? Things that should be nightmares, but aren’t?”

“Yeah,” said Dr. Morris. Her arms pulled back up and crossed over her chest. “How did you know?”

George gestured at the crates. “Do you dream about being in the battlesuit? About fighting monsters?”

Her eyes went wide. “Yes,” she said. “They’re always all around me. They’re like a swarm. A horde.”

Freedom stiffened at the word. He wasn’t sure why at first. Then he remembered the Donner Pass.

The supermodel noticed his reaction. She was sharp. “You are having similar dreams,” she said. It was more of a statement than a question.

“No,” he told her, even as an image of gray-skinned settlers flashed in his mind. It occurred to him he still didn’t know who the woman was. “No, I am not.”

“It’s okay,” said George. “Someone did something to our minds. It’s not your fault you can’t remember.”

“My fault?” said Freedom. He felt his hands clench into fists and forced them straight. “What are you implying, sir?”

“Someone did what to our minds?” asked Dr. Morris.

“We are wasting time,” said the supermodel. “Convince them the direct way, as Madelyn convinced you.”

“She didn’t really convince me, remember?”

“George,” she said, “we do not have time.”

He sighed and looked at the crates. He pointed at one the size of a desk and glanced at Dr. Morris. “That’s the back section, right? Armor plates, spinal computer, all that stuff? It’s, what, three hundred and fifty pounds, not counting the case?”

“Yeah,” she said. “How’d you know?”

“I’ve helped you get in or out of the armor a couple hundred times. That’s the only case big enough for it.”

Her face twisted up. “Who are you people?” she asked.

George grabbed the sturdy handle. The road case leaped into the air and he caught it with his free hand. Dr. Morris gasped. Freedom tensed. George balanced it for a moment, then pushed it up to the roof with one hand.

They stared for a moment, and then Freedom set his jaw. “Sir, that’s government property,” he said. “Set it down.”

“Gently!” snapped Dr. Morris. “Do you have any idea what that costs?”

George let the case drop back down so he could balance it in both hands. “You’re always so worried about it,” he said, “even though it’s built like a tank.”

Freedom took a step and placed himself between George and the rest of the boxes. “I think you and your friend need to leave, sir.”

George looked at him for a moment. “Catch,” he said as he tossed the case at Freedom.

Dr. Morris snarled. Freedom lunged forward. He grabbed the large case in his arms like a man catching a baby. He held on to it for a moment, not wanting to shift his balance until he was sure he had it.

“It would seem,” said the dark woman, “George is not the only strong one.”

Freedom set the case down. It thudded against the thin carpet. He stared at it for a moment.

Dr. Morris looked at the case, then her eyes darted between the two men. “How did you do that?” she asked George.

“How did I pick it up? With my arms.”

“No, seriously. How did you lift it?”

The thin man took a slow breath. “Well,” he said to Freedom, “I can tell you how you did it.”

“Adrenaline,” said Freedom. “I’ve seen men do amazing things in combat.” It was true. He’d seen soldiers kick down doors with no effort and hurl opponents across rooms. One man had bent the door of a burning Hummer when he pulled it open to rescue a squadmate. The human body was an amazing machine, powerful and durable all on its own without any help from …

Where had he heard that phrase? He’d heard it from an Army physician. A doctor.

“You were part of a special project,” said George. “They were trying to create super-soldiers. Well, not just trying. They
made
super-soldiers.”

Freedom felt his eyes start to roll and managed to keep his gaze locked on the smaller man. Dr. Morris made no such attempt. “Seriously?” she muttered. “That’s the best you’ve got?”

“You were stationed at the Yuma Proving Ground,” said the supermodel, “on a subbase designated Project Krypton. The man in charge of the program was Dr. Emil Sorensen, considered one of the world’s experts in neurology and biochemistry, among other fields.”

Krypton. Sorensen. The names sparked a headache right behind Freedom’s eyes, like nails going through his temples. He turned his head away to focus and found himself staring at the portrait of the President. John Smith stared down at Freedom and smiled. It looked like a fake smile.

“This is nonsense,” he said.

“It’s not,” said George. “It’s real.”

The pain in his head got worse. It was like someone tapping on his skull. The old Chinese water torture, obsolete now that more ruthless ways had been found to torture people with water.

“I’d like you to leave, sir,” he said. “And you, too, ma’am.”

“Sorry, Captain,” said George. “Not without you.”

He turned around. “I’m not a captain anymore.”

“You are,” George said, “someone just told you to forget.”

He looked over at Dr. Morris. She was wiping her hand across
her nose. There was blood on her lip and on her fingers. “You want to hear something funny?” she asked the room. “I kind of dated the President for a while. Back before he got married.”

“We know,” said the dark woman.

“I hadn’t thought about that in … in ages, I guess.”

Freedom took a step toward George. “Get out now,” he said. The clicking pen was playing hell with his headache. He set a hand down that covered the smaller man’s shoulder. “Please don’t make me use force.”

George shot a glance at the dark woman. She bowed her head once and he looked back up at Freedom. “If it helps,” he said, “just remember this is the rematch you always wanted.”

“Sorry, sir?”

George pushed out his hand to shove Freedom in the chest. It wasn’t a particularly fast or skilled move. It made Freedom think of Combatives training. His own arm dropped down for an easy block, and he started thinking of ways to politely throw the couple back out on the street.

George’s hand pushed past the block. It was like trying to stop a moving truck. Or a tank. Freedom had just enough time to remember how the man had held the steel-lined case up over his head and then George’s palm connected with his sternum.

The front door flew away, the office blurred, and something slammed into Freedom’s back just before he heard wood crack and splinter behind him. He found his footing and glanced over his shoulder. His desk had been crushed between his back and the far wall of the office.

George stood a dozen feet away with his hand out. Dr. Morris’s mouth hung open. The supermodel had the faintest hint of a smile on her face.

Freedom stood up and brushed himself off. Then he took three running steps forward and slammed his fist straight into George’s stomach. It was like hitting a tree trunk, but he’d already committed to his follow-through punch. His knuckles cracked against George’s jaw, but the smaller man’s head barely moved.

He hadn’t even raised his hands to defend himself.

Dr. Morris swore. Then swore again.

Freedom stepped away from George and glanced over. Dr. Morris was standing in the center of the room. She looked angry and confused. Her arms were pulling in toward her body, being forced back out, and pulling in again. “Where is it?” she snapped. “Where’d it go?”

It took him a moment to figure out what she was talking about. Nothing looked out of place. He was too used to seeing the middle of the office empty.

The cases for the Cerberus Battle Armor System had all vanished.

Freedom felt a surge of suspicion again, but he knew it was foolish. It would be impossible to move all the crates in the few seconds he’d been fighting with George, let alone to do it without anyone noticing.

“What did you do with it?” Dr. Morris glared at the supermodel.

The woman and George ignored her. They were both looking around the recruiting office. “Our perceptions have switched back again,” said the supermodel.

“Yeah.”

Then Freedom noticed the office itself. The floor wasn’t carpet, it was a dark, industrial-looking tile. It was covered with faded takeout menus and drifts of broken glass.

One of the picture windows had a pile of tables in front of it, a makeshift barricade. The other one was cracked. A huge spiderweb spread across the glass. The threads at the center were blurred with dark brown smears he recognized as dried blood. The wooden walls were just a cheap laminate. It was peeling off in places. The recruitment posters were gone. A bland painting of yellow and blue flowers sat on the floor. Its frame was cracked.

His desk had vanished. In its place were a counter and the remains of a large glass case. A cash register sat on its side on the floor. The presidential portrait was now a large chalkboard. Half of it was a colorful menu of pastries and coffee drinks. The other half had been blurred into pale streaks and replaced with messy letters made of thick pink strokes of chalk.

Something dripped on his lips. He reached up and his hand came away red. His nose was bleeding, just like Dr. Morris’s was. He didn’t remember George punching or head-butting him. His mind flitted down a list of airborne toxins and the location of the pro-masks in the back room even as he registered that George and the women were fine.

Adams’s pen clicked away. And then Freedom realized Adams hadn’t come in yet. In fact, it was his day off.

He turned toward the sound.

Adams’s desk was gone. A table large enough to sit five or six people was there. It had been pushed back against the wall, pinning the one occupant in its seat.

It had been a man. It was wearing a threadbare, old-pattern camo jacket from the eighties that had faded well past cook whites. It had the same color hair as Adams, but much longer. A larger nose and wider jaw, too. Its eyes were dead white and its skin was gray. Settler gray, just like Freedom’s dreams.

The dead man reached for them across the tabletop, its dry fingertips drawing lines in the dust. Its mouth snapped open and closed again and again. The clicking teeth echoed in the room.

Dr. Morris made a low noise, something between a growl and a squeal. Her arms had wrapped tight around herself again. “What’s going on?” she hissed. “What the
fuck
is going on?”

Another half-dozen dead people crowded the door, and Freedom could see more in the street wandering toward the office. Or coffee shop. Whatever the place was. Some of the dead people were missing eyes or teeth. One looked like it had been scalped. A woman near the front of the group wore a shirt that said
NAVY
in large letters. It was splattered with blood. So was her mouth.

“Where in God’s name are we?” asked Freedom.

“We’ve switched back,” said George. “We’re seeing the real world now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Dr. Morris.

“Look, you just have to trust us,” said George. “Someone’s been messing with our minds, making us see the world the way he wants to get us out of the way.” He walked over to the dead thing at the table and placed his hand on top of its head. Its neck flexed for a moment as it tried to stretch its mouth up to his fingers. Then George turned his palm and twisted the corpse’s head around like a man opening a bottle. The dead thing’s spine popped twice, like a log in a fire, and it slumped on the tabletop. Its jaws still hinged back and forth.

It struck Freedom he’d made no move to stop George, and had no reaction to the snapped neck. He knew on some level it hadn’t been a murder. It had been weeding.

“You both need to come with us,” said George. “We’re heading onto campus to pick up someone else, and then over into Hollywood.”

“Do you have a car or a truck or something?” asked Dr. Morris.

“We do not,” said the supermodel. “We are on foot.”

The redhead blinked. “On foot? With those things out there?”

The dead men and women pawed at the glass and banged their teeth against each other.

“We’ll be okay,” said George. “We can hold them off until we get to the Mount.”

The name resonated in Freedom’s head. “The Mount?”

“Our base of operations,” said the dark-skinned woman. “Your memories have been clouded so you do not remember. An epidemic has decimated the world. The survivors here in Los Angeles have formed a safe compound in Hollywood.”

“We need to find the armor,” said Danielle, wiping her nose again. Her hand was covered with blood. “I can’t go out there without the armor.”