Ex-Purgatory: A Novel Part 24

"This is our world. I suspected as much for some time, but knowing Smith is involved confirms it. He altered our perceptions so we did not see reality. This is why the exes were erased from our minds, so we would not realize what was around us."

He shook his head. "That's not possible."

She pointed past him to the decapitated ex on the floor. "Its teeth were broken."

"Yeah, so?"

"They were recently broken," she said. "There was little discoloration on the inside edges and there were still shards in its mouth."

"Okay, and ...?"

She gave him the look that told him he'd missed something obvious. "There is only one thing in the bar it could've broken its teeth on, George."

It took him another moment. "Me?"

"When we entered the bar you scratched your left arm. The arm closest to the doorman."

"The shirt's kind of itchy. It's still got those right-out-of-the-package folds that are pretty much starched into it."

"The doorman was an ex. It was biting you."

"No it wasn't."

"It was."

St. George shook his head. "He sat on his stool the whole time. I would've noticed if he was chewing on me."

Her eyebrow went up again and she looked at her arm. "Much in the same way Captain Freedom thought he would have noticed if ninety-three percent of the people at Project Krypton had died?"

When they'd first met the captain, his entire base had been under Smith's influence. They believed they were a thriving military base with over fifteen hundred soldiers and support staff. Then the heroes had arrived and revealed that barely a hundred people were there.

St. George shook his head. "This isn't convincing us things are a bit better than we thought they were, though. This is him telling us things are completely different. It just seems way beyond what we saw him do before." He tugged at the sleeve of his fleece. "And if we aren't hopping between worlds, where did this come from? It's not mine."

Stealth didn't respond. She was studying her arms. She pushed the sleeve up on one and ran a finger across the skin.

"Wait," he said, "are you okay? Did you get bitten?"

"I did not," she told him. "I have no injuries at all."

He sighed in relief.

"I am, however, also wondering where these clothes came from."

He looked at her outfit. "They're not yours?"

She shook her head. "I have only three civilian outfits at the Mount. All of them were chosen to be inconspicuous. Each of these items has been tailored to me."

"Are you sure?"

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"So if we're not jumping between worlds, where did you get a tailored outfit?"

"I am not sure. It is possible Smith had them constructed to add to the illusion of another world." She pushed the sleeve back down. "Our first priority is to locate the others. You know where Madelyn is?"

"Yeah. And Freedom, Gorgon, and ..."

He stopped. He closed his eyes for a moment. He took a breath and opened them again.

She was looking at him. Her eyes had the faint wrinkle at the corner that let him know she was concerned. "Gorgon?"

"Yeah," he said. "I forgot. I forgot he was dead. I've been dreaming about a lot of dead people."

She reached out and squeezed his hand. "Madelyn and Freedom, then."

He nodded. "They're over in Westwood, but they're both alone. We get them, we figure out where the h.e.l.l Barry and Danielle are, and then we get back to the Mount."

Her eyebrow twitched again and an expression that looked like confusion flitted across her face. Then she bowed her head. "I concur."

He walked to the door. It was a solid piece of wood at least an inch thick with no windows or peepholes. He rapped his knuckles against it four times and waited.

The other side of the door was silent.

They exchanged looks. He pushed the door open and slipped outside. Stealth was a beat behind him.

The street was deserted. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. They moved past the sidewalk and into the street, keeping their backs to each other.

"East is clear as far as I can see," said St. George.

"As is west." She held up her hand when he went to speak again. She turned her head to the north, then to the south. "I hear nothing," she said.

"Neither do I."

"I hear nothing," she repeated. "There is no sound of teeth."

St. George closed his eyes and listened. He turned and looked around. "What are the odds there isn't a single ex within four or five blocks?"

"Low," said Stealth. "The street is clean. No leaves, no trash, no debris of any kind. However, all nine streetlights I can see from this position are unlit."

"My car's gone," said St. George. He looked up and down the street. "Actually, weren't there at least four or five parked on the street when we went in?"

"There were six on this block," said Stealth, "not counting your own Hyundai. Two Fords, two Hondas, a Chrysler, and a Volkswagen."

A low growl made them turn. St. George balled his fists. Stealth raised an eyebrow. She didn't look worried.

The car roared around the corner and lit them up with its headlights. The vehicle shot toward them without slowing. It tore down the road with its driver's-side tires riding on the line of yellow dashes. Stealth took two quick steps back to the sidewalk. St. George stood his ground and stared into the headlights. The car missed him by inches. It was an old Mustang, a cla.s.sic muscle car. Half of its body panels were still bare primer, the other half were glossy black.

It slowed at the corner stop sign, long enough for the driver to give St. George the finger and call out a few m.u.f.fled insults. Then the Mustang rumbled back up to full speed and vanished down the street. The sound of its engine echoed in the air for a few moments and then faded away.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," said St. George. He blinked away a few spots the headlights had left in his eyes. The street stayed bright even after the spots vanished.

They looked around at the street. Now there were five cars scattered along the curb on either side of the road, gleaming in the streetlights. One of the Hondas was gone, replaced with a small drift of leaves. George's Hyundai was still nowhere to be seen.

In the distance, he heard the faint rumble of more cars. The bars were closing down and people were either heading home or out to after-parties. Most of them were heading east or south toward the freeways.

"Your hands are clean."

He looked down. The smears of blood and dark tissue across his knuckles had vanished. The stains on the fleece jacket were gone, too. He looked over his shoulder at the bar. "Okay," he said, "as far as everyone in there knows, did we just run out without paying for our drinks?"

"Focus, George," she said.

"We don't want them calling the cops on us."

"There are no police to call. This is all just an illusion."

"Right." He looked west. "How long do you think it'll take us to reach Westwood on foot?"

Stealth flexed her fingers. "It depends on what we find on the way."

TWENTY-FOUR.

FREEDOM RAN PAST the packs of homeless people gathered around a few grates. People a.s.sumed Los Angeles was always sunny and wonderful, but the past few years had taught him otherwise. There wasn't any snow, but it got cold enough at night to endanger anyone's health. Even now, half an hour before sunrise, he caught wisps of his breath.

His morning run was almost done. It was a winding route from his Hanc.o.c.k Park apartment, through Beverly Hills, and then down to the recruiting office. He'd measured it out to an even eight miles. He ran it every day, rain or shine, in under forty-five minutes, depending on traffic lights. At the end of the day he ran it home.

The Army may have been done with him, but he was determined to stay worthy of his uniform.

There were more street people all along his route. They held out desperate hands as he strode past them. There seemed to be hundreds of them these days. He knew the economic crash had left many people in a bad place, but it seemed like the number of homeless had doubled or tripled in the past few months. A few of them tried to follow him every morning and night. They'd stagger toward him with their hands out, mouthing silent pleas. At his pace, they fell behind before most of them even reacted to his pa.s.sing. He tried not to think about them while he ran.

Sometimes, though, in the deserted city of predawn, there was something unnerving about them. In the shadows their poses and sluggish movements struck him as aggressive, even a bit dangerous. He wasn't sure why. Their hands seemed less pleading and more ... hungry.

There was one stretch of Wilshire Boulevard that cut through the Los Angeles Country Club, right between Beverly Hills and Westwood. Tall hedges bordered the road on either side. If he encountered other pedestrians or bicyclists here, it meant stepping off the curb and running in the road. There was nowhere else to go for two-thirds of a mile. On those dark mornings, when the homeless were gathered there, he often thought of it as Donner Pa.s.s. He wasn't sure what made him pull that particular name from history. The street wasn't high in the mountains or buried in snow. Which left one option. The hungry option.

At West Point he'd had a recurring dream after writing a paper on the Donner Party and how their situation could've been resolved aside from resorting to cannibalism. The dream had come back, as of late, and he'd had it two or three times in the past month. Maybe more.

In his dream, however, eating other men hadn't been a last resort. The settlers had changed into soldiers under his command. He was a captain again, in charge of leading them to safety, but he kept getting conflicting orders from the President for them to stay put. Then the whole group, dozens of men and women with skin gray from frostbite, came at him like some ancient horde. Their teeth snapped at his fingers, their hungry hands grabbed at his arms and neck.

Wilshire sloped down a steep incline toward the Federal Building and 405 (he still hadn't picked up the Californian habit of addressing all freeways as "the"). Freedom pumped his arms and thrust his legs at the ground. Banks, stores, and apartment buildings flew past him. There was no traffic on the road to judge his speed by, but he was sure he was breaking the posted speed limit.

He cut down Manning Avenue and slowed to a walk when he hit Lindbrook, still three blocks from the office. There was something on the sidewalk up ahead. For a moment he thought a car might've gone up over the curb. Whatever it was had more than enough ma.s.s.

Then the shapes firmed up in the morning haze. A dozen crates and shipping containers, the super-st.u.r.dy ones edged with steel, sat in front of the recruiting office. They reminded him of the cases he'd seen at traveling USO shows, the ones designed to hold equipment.

A woman half leaned in the door frame behind one of the larger cases. Her head was turned away from Freedom, and her red hair was twisted into a messy braid. She wore jeans, but her top was an Army Combat Uniform jacket with fuzzy patches instead of insignia. Her arms were crossed in a way that seemed more defensive than casual.

He let his boots. .h.i.t the ground a little harder as he covered the last few yards between them. The slap echoed along the sidewalk and she turned. Her face was dotted with freckles. Just enough to keep her looking young, although the scowl lines around her mouth helped cancel it out. "Good morning, ma'am," he called out to her.

"Morning," she said. "You Freedom?"

He held out his hand across the crate. "Lieutenant Freedom. What can I do for you?"

She pried one of her arms away from her chest, took his hand, and shook it once. "Dr. Danielle Morris," she said. "I'm supposed to do a recruitment demonstration for your office?"

"I wasn't expecting you so early."

He released her hand and the arm folded back to her chest. "They wanted to drop everything off before breakfast. I'm guessing rush hour is pretty nasty around here?"

Freedom gestured at the eight-lane street with his chin. "This is going to be pretty close to a parking lot in another hour. Didn't mean you had to come, though, ma'am. The demonstration's not until noon."

Dr. Morris patted the crate in front of her. "Cerberus is still my baby," she said. "I go where it goes."

Freedom kept his face straight and managed not to grind his teeth. Another civilian who didn't understand schedules. He glanced at the crates. "So this is it?"

"Yep. The Cerberus Battle Armor System."

Freedom looked up and down the street. "Weren't you a little worried leaving all this on the sidewalk, ma'am?"

"I didn't leave it," she said. "I've been with it the whole time."

"I meant, weren't you worried someone might take it?"

"Again," she said, "sitting here the whole time. Plus, these are all a little too heavy for a s.n.a.t.c.h and grab." She gestured at one of the cases, a two-foot cube, with her chin. Her arms seemed glued to her chest. "That's the lightest one and it's close to a hundred pounds."

He studied her for a moment. "Are you all right, ma'am?"

"I'm fine."

"Because you seem a bit tense."

"I'm fine, I just ..." Dr. Morris took a deep, calming breath and forced her arms down to her sides. "Can we get inside? I don't ... I'd rather talk inside."

The crates were about five feet from the recruiting office doorway. He glanced between the entrance and the pile a few times. "Is it just you?"

"The rest of my team should be showing up around ten. They're still back at the hotel." She followed his gaze. "I was told there'd be a hand truck," she said.

"There may be," he said. "Do you mind waiting a few more minutes while I check the back room?"

She closed her eyes for a moment. "Sure. No problem."

After unlocking the door and deactivating the alarm, Freedom learned there was, indeed, a hand truck. He pushed two cases of flyers off it with his foot and wrestled it out through the office. She looked relieved to see him again, and even more relieved once she stepped inside.