by Peter Clines
“There is no entry wound?”
“They think the bullet bounced off my rib cage.”
She mulled over the idea.
“Did you say you investigated at my apartment?”
“It was important to examine the scene before the police contaminated it,” Karen said. “While their methods are fine for standard crimes, I thought your shooting might require a more open interpretation of the facts.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Where are the rest of your clothes?”
He shrugged. “This is all I’ve got. I wasn’t wearing shoes when they picked me up, and they cut my shirt up in the ambulance.”
Her eyes ran down his body and back. “Wait here,” she said.
“What? Why?”
She turned on her heel and stalked out the door.
George settled into a plastic chair and crossed his arms over his chest. It was odd, sitting around with no shirt on, but with the random homeless people scattered through the waiting room he didn’t stand out too much. One bulky man was barefoot. Another one looked like he hadn’t bathed in months. They both drew more stares than him.
He turned around and looked into the face of a little girl with pale eyes. She was standing on the chair behind him. Her teeth banged against each other as she chomped on her gum.
He was pretty sure she had gum.
She leaned toward him. George got up and the little girl tumbled over the seats to land where he’d been sitting. She didn’t cry. She kept gnashing her teeth as she slid off the chair and onto the floor. He took a few more steps away, around one of the homeless people—a tangle-headed woman—and settled himself against one of the windows.
Shouldn’t there be police waiting to do an interview? George thought. Take a statement or something like that? He looked around, but didn’t see any uniforms or anyone who looked like they might be a detective.
It didn’t feel chilly, but he could hear lots of teeth chattering in the waiting room. The little girl’s father turned around to stare at George. The man’s neck popped twice as he moved. The homeless woman had twin cataracts that made her eyes white. The nurse behind the counter let her jaw hang open as she stared. Her dark red lipstick contrasted with her ivory teeth.
He blinked and they looked away. The little girl whined. On the television, George Costanza tried to explain the difference between coffee and coffee.
The automatic door whisked open behind him. Karen reappeared with a large bag and handed it to him. “Everything should fit,” she said.
He checked the inhabitants of the waiting room one more time, then looked in the bag. It held a new dress shirt, some generic-looking sneakers, and a pullover fleece with the hospital logo on it. He unwrapped the shirt and pulled out the first few pins. “Where did you get all this?”
“The hospital gift shop.”
He saw the tag on the shirt wrapper and tried not to flinch at the gift shop prices. “How much do I owe you?”
She shook her head and brushed the question away with a wave of her hand.
He pulled the cardboard out from under the collar and unbuttoned the shirt. It was stiff and had sharp creases in the fabric, but it fit fine. He rolled his shoulders. “How’d you know my size?”
“I have been a runway model for twelve years,” she said. “I can size someone on sight.” She glanced at him as he buttoned up the shirt. “It is even simpler when they are not wearing clothes.”
“I’ve got pants on,” he said. He leaned against the door frame and pulled one of the shoes on. The sneaker had thick Velcro straps instead of laces. It was a perfect fit. He tugged the other one on.
“We should go,” said Karen. “Now.”
He looked up. The waiting room inhabitants were all staring again. A half dozen of them had climbed to their feet. The sound of chattering teeth echoed in the large room. They staggered toward George and Karen. The little girl was at the front of the small crowd.
Karen led him out the door and across the parking lot. He paused to stuff the bag and packing material in a trash can and then took a few quick steps to catch up with her. “It would be best if we did not separate,” she said. She held up her keys and a sports car a few yards away chirped. “Whatever these hallucinations are, it is clear they are more difficult for you to process alone.”
“Why do you say that?”
She looked at him. “Did you not say you had a meeting with the President?”
He tugged the fleece over his head. “Yeah, but that really happened.” A spike pushed its way into his head as he spoke.
Her mouth flattened again. It wasn’t much more than a line at this point.
“It did,” he insisted. The spike in his head grew long barbs that pushed in every direction. He could feel them against the back of his eyes, his sinuses, scratching the inside of his skull. He ignored them.
Then he paused. “How did my car get here?”
Karen stood by a Tesla Roadster. It was a convertible, low to the ground and glossy black. It looked fast. “I beg your pardon?”
George pointed at the Hyundai. It was a few spaces down from the Tesla. “That’s my car,” he said. “Did you get someone to bring it here or something?”
She shook her head.
He walked over to it. He glanced at the back and recognized his license plate and the parking sticker from work. His battered Payless sneakers sat in the space behind the passenger seat.
The door was unlocked. He lowered himself into the seat. The ignition was empty. He glanced at the dish under the gear shift and saw the small collection of coins. He looked in the glove compartment and checked the CD holder strapped onto the sunscreen. “What do you think the chances are someone stole my car, didn’t take anything, and ended up at the same hospital?”
“Unlikely.” Karen studied the Hyundai. She placed a hand on the hood. “Is it possible you drove yourself here?”
He shook his head. “Up until about twenty minutes ago I thought I’d been shot and was going to die. I’m pretty sure I was deep in shock.”
“People have driven vehicles under similar situations.”
He got out and walked around to look at her over the hood. “So where are my car keys?”
She looked back at the hospital. “If you were in shock, it is not hard to believe you could have dropped your keys somewhere between your car and the entrance.”
He shook his head. “I was brought in by an ambulance crew.” He got out of the car. “I’ll have to come back and get it later.”
The engine started. It revved twice, hard enough to make the chassis tremble. The headlights lit up a nearby shrub and a section of cinder-block wall as they flickered on and off.
George and Karen exchanged a glance. “Are we seeing things?” he asked.
“Perhaps. I believe your car is attempting to communicate in Morse code.”
“What?”
She gestured at the shrub. The headlights blinked in a series of long and short flashes. George watched for a moment before he saw the pattern.
“Is that an SOS?”
“The pattern it is repeating is OSO,” said Karen, “which is why I said ‘attempting.’ It is a common mistake for those who do not know Morse code.”
The engine growled and the pattern of flashes changed. The radio switched on and shouted some talk radio at them. Outside the car, with the engine running, it was just distorted squawks.
“Do you think it’s going to turn into a giant robot?”
“Doubtful,” Karen said, “but I am becoming more open to what I would normally consider foolish ideas. I believe we should contact Madelyn Sorensen. I would like to hear more of her insights into this other world we are glimpsing.”
“That could be a little difficult,” said George. “She’s probably in a jail cell right now.”
“Why?”
“She’s the one who shot me.”
Karen shook her head. “As of one hour ago no arrests had been ma
de and no suspects named. Your next-door neighbor across the hall heard gunfire and called the police. She claimed she did not see the shooter.”
“So she’s still out there somewhere?”
“I believe she did not intend to hurt you, George. She believed you would not be harmed and was attempting to prove it.”
“She could’ve just pricked me with a thumbtack or something. Next time I may not be so lucky.”
Karen gave him an odd look.
He gestured at his chest. “Like I told you, it was a million-to-one shot. The next bullet could’ve—”
“The next bullet did nothing,” said Karen.
“What?”
She stared at him over the car’s hood. “I told you I examined the scene of the shooting,” she said. “I discovered eleven bullets and shell casings. All were on the floor in the doorway of your apartment, all flattened from impact. Based on estimated range and damage to the surrounding walls, it was clear all of them struck some impenetrable object which had been removed since the shooting occurred.”
George looked down at his chest.
“At this point,” Karen said, “I believe it was taken away in an ambulance.”
His hand slipped up onto his ribs. Even through the fleece and the crisp new shirt, he could feel the sore spot fading. “You’re lying.”
“All the evidence suggests Madelyn Sorensen fired eleven rounds into your chest. Six while you stood, five more once you were on the ground.”
He rubbed his chest. His head was throbbing again. “The police would have said—”
“The police report said multiple shots fired. Their training tells them the bullets could not have hit you because that number of gunshot wounds would be fatal.”
George shook his head. He could feel moisture swelling in his nostril. Another nosebleed getting ready to go.
“Were they all lucky shots?” Karen asked. “Did each and every one of them hit a bone and bounce off?”
“There was only one bruise,” he said. It felt like a stupid excuse.
“I believe your doctor has succumbed to the same line of thinking as the police,” said Karen, “rationalizing something she cannot explain with traditional knowledge. She claims one bullet hit your sternum and was deflected. I believe only one bullet struck a bone. The rest hit soft tissue in your shoulders, abdomen, or throat which absorbed the impact.”
George remembered the huge pistol in Madelyn’s hands. The sound of it going off in the narrow hallway. The punch in his chest. Had it been dead center? He’d been looking right down the barrel, so shouldn’t the bullet have hit him …
Had she shot him in the head?
The pain behind his eyes faded a bit. He sniffed once, hard. The blood flow dried before it got severe enough to leak.
“Get in the car,” he told her.
She looked at the Hyundai and raised an eyebrow. “My vehicle is better suited for any—”
“Just get in,” said George. He got back into the car. The radio started to babble and he slapped it off. “I need to think, and it’s not going to happen here.”
UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, George would’ve been having fun. Traffic had been heavy on the 101 and at a near standstill on the 405, but his Hyundai wove in and out of the lanes, slipping between other cars without a moment of hesitation. He considered turning on the radio for some driving music, but didn’t want to risk more religious-show shouting in front of his passenger.
“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.”
