Ex-Purgatory by Peter Clines (best book club books TXT) 📕

reached the time clock five minutes early and couldn’t find his card. He searched behind a couple of the others, looking for his last name in bold print. It wasn’t there. He grumbled and started a new timecard, knowing it would get him a lecture from accounting.

The clock snapped down on it like a set of hungry jaws.

Jarvis’s eyes bugged a little when George stepped into the office. “Hey,” said the supervisor. A long moment stretched out before he added, “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Why not?”

The salt-and-pepper man’s gaze darted left and right, as if he thought someone was hiding in the closet and behind his messy bookshelf. “The feds were here yesterday looking for you.”

George sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I know. It’s okay, they found me.”

“The NSA,” said Jarvis.

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “They found me. We talked. Everything’s okay, it was just a misunderstanding.”

Jarvis showed no sign of hearing him. “They took everything. All your assignments, my log book, your employment history. They even went up to accounting and got all your old timecards.” He shook his head. “They interviewed pretty much anyone who’d ever talked to you. All of us, some professors, even a couple of students.”

George pictured the blond agent’s determined glare and didn’t have trouble picturing what his coworkers had gone through. “I know this sounds crazy,” he said, “but the President wanted to talk to me.”

His boss stared at him.

“I’m serious. It was a mix-up.”

Jarvis closed his eyes. “You’re not one of those kooks, are you?”

“What do you mean?”

He waved his hand at the computer. “You don’t act all sane at work and then go home and spend all night ranting in the Yahoo! comments about impeaching the President or conspiracy theories or something stupid like that?”

“What? No, of course not.”

“You on some sort of watch list?”

“No. Well, not anymore, I think.”

“You think?”

George raised his palms. “If they thought I’d done anything wrong, would they have let me go?”

Jarvis flopped back in his chair. “People were freaking out,” he said after a minute. “They’re going to freak out more now that you’re back.”

“How so?”

“How d’you think? These days what’s everyone think when the government comes looking for your neighbor? Nobody’s getting the Nobel Peace Prize, that’s for sure. Half the people who talked to me yesterday thought you’d been arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo or something. If they see you …”

“What are you getting at, Jarvis?”

The supervisor scratched his salt-and-pepper beard. “Look,” he said, “just keep a low profile for a while, okay? Try not to … I don’t know, draw attention to yourself. Don’t do anything weird. Maybe this’ll cool down in a couple of days.”

George’s phone buzzed. It was a text message from Karen Q. He deleted it without looking. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

“I’m doing you a favor,” said Jarvis, “ ’cause you’ve been here forever and you’re a great worker. Please don’t light yourself on fire or anything.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Another text came through. He deleted it.

His first job was changing a flickering bulb in one of the lecture halls. Not a big deal, but it needed the big fifteen-foot A-frame ladder. When that was done, Jarvis sent him to deal with a backed-up toilet in one of the dorms, and then he emptied trash in some of the other science buildings. It was more mindless work. The most challenging part was mopping up after one trash can that had received a mostly full cup of coffee.

George dumped the last bin in the dumpster. Loose papers, Doritos bags, and paper cups rained down onto the other trash. There were old clothes in the dumpster, plus a few swollen bags and some parts that looked like they might’ve been the guts of a television, or maybe an old computer monitor.

He let the bin drop and rested his hand on the edge of the dumpster. He closed his eyes, rolled his neck, and pushed down. There was a knot in his shoulder he wanted to pop. He turned a bit more and levered his shoulder against the dumpster.

When he opened his eyes, Karen Quilt was staring at him.

She was dressed in black slacks and a blazer. She wore a tie but no shirt, and held the jacket more or less shut with one hand. The poster was less than ten feet away. Someone had put it up between his trips to the dumpster. He didn’t recognize the name along the bottom, and wasn’t sure if it was a brand or a store. Maybe both.

She looked disappointed in him.

This girl, Madelyn, she keeps telling me I’m supposed to be a superhero.

He looked away from the poster and his eyes fell on the dumpster. It was almost full of trash. Most of it was paper, but the whole thing probably weighed close to three or four tons. His hand tightened on the edge and he gave it a shake.

The steel container trembled.

According to her we all have superpowers. That’s how we fight the monsters.

He stepped to the side. It had the same sleeves as the one he’d lifted—that he imagined lifting—the other day, but they were lower on this model. It’d be even easier to put a hand on it and get the other one underneath. And this one was far behind the building. No one would see him.

I’m supposed to be super-strong.

He set one hand on the sleeve and his head flared. His fingers leaped back to his temple and felt the vein pulsing there. His nose started to run, and when he wiped it with the back of his glove it left a red streak.

Another one. He couldn’t believe he’d had a nosebleed while talking to the President. Six-year-olds get random nosebleeds. It was tough to think of something more embarrassing, short of wetting his pants. At least the President and the First Lady had been gracious about it. Christian had given him some of the tissues one of her assistants carried for her, and even offered to have their medic