Ex-Purgatory: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

her head. “Nope.”
    He tried to look apologetic. “I don’t know you.”
    “I’m Madelyn Sorensen,” she said. “The Corpse Girl.”
    “The what?”
    “And you’re George Bailey,” she continued. “St. George? Formerly the Mighty Dragon?” She said the last two names—or maybe they were titles—in a hopeful way.
    The use of his full name shook him until he realized that someone with good eyesight could read his name off his badge. And if she’d been in the wheelchair for a while, she was probably used to reading things from a distance. He glanced down at the gloves hanging off his belt, his name written on each one in big letters.
    Madelyn watched his face. “Nothing?” she asked. “You don’t remember me?”
    He shook his head.
    “You
have
to remember,” she said. “What about Barry?”
    “Who?”
    “Stealth? You have to remember Stealth.”
    “Is that a person?”
    She smacked the arm of her wheelchair. “What about dreams? Are you having dreams?”
    George paused. He remembered waking up in the middle of the night, still exhausted in the morning. “What do you mean?”
    “They probably seem more like nightmares if you don’t remember anything,” she said. “Are they—”
    “Maddy,” called a voice. “Everything okay, hon?”
    She glanced back over her shoulder. “Yeah, Dad,” she answered. “Just getting directions to the dining commons.”
    A man with a silvery-gray beard nodded to her and waved at George. George waved back automatically. The man looked like faculty. If not here, then somewhere.
    Madelyn turned back to him. “Okay, listen,” she said, “this is important.”
    George looked at her.
    “This is all wrong,” said Madelyn. “The world isn’t supposed to be like this. None of these people should be here.”
    He looked at the crowds. “They won’t be,” he said. “It’s just like this while everyone’s moving in. In a day or two—”
    “No,” Madelyn said. “They shouldn’t be here in the bigger sense.”
    “How so?”
    “There was a plague,” she said. “It broke out in the spring of 2009 and wiped out most of the world—”
    “Spring of 2009?” interrupted George. “Four years ago?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is this a game?” he asked her. “One of those LARP-things?”
    “No.” She shook her head.
    “Is it the assassin one, where you’re supposed to tag another student, because the university has some pretty solid rules about—”
    “This is real,” she said. “It happened. Everyone died. Even me.”
    “You’re dead?”
    “Yeah. For about four years now.”
    He looked at himself. “Am I supposed to be dead, too?”
    She scowled. “Don’t be stupid. If you were dead, how could I be talking to you?”
    He smiled and tried to make it look sincere. “Right, of course.”
    “You have to believe me,” she said. “Billions of people died. You gathered all the survivors into a film studio here in Los Angeles—”
    “I did?”
    “Yes.”
    “Me, personally?”
    “Yeah. Well, I mean, I don’t know how much you did by yourself, but you did a lot of it. Everyone trusted you to keep them safe.”
    George wondered if the young woman was a student. Maybe she was just a visiting relative, here to see her brother or sister or cousin off to school before going back to … therapy? Heavy medications? “Okay,” he said. “And everybody trusted me because …?”
    “Because you’re a superhero,” she said.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “You’re
the
superhero. The Mighty Dragon. I had a poster of you in my bedroom before everything fell apart.”
    Any student mentioning their bedroom set off warning bells in George’s state-employed mind. He looked past her and tried to catch the eye of the bearded man. There was a quick contact and her father understood something was wrong.
    Madelyn watched him for some kind of reaction. “None of this means anything to you?”
    “Probably not the meaning you’re hoping for.”
    “Everything okay here?”