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

“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.”

He was much more awake, just like that. “Who is this?”

“I believe we have a mutual friend. I am with George Bailey.”

He chuckled. “George Bailey, the loveable martyr of Bedford Falls? The guy who runs the Building and Lo—wait! George?” He sat up in bed. “You’re with George?”

“I am.”

“Hey,” called another voice beyond the phone. Barry remembered it from a few days ago, and from countless nights. He’d been kicking himself for not getting the other man’s number before they lost their connection.

“You have been having dreams of another life,” said the woman.

“Yes,” said Barry.

“A life where the world is overrun with animated corpses and you possess some form of superhuman abilities or powers.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes I have. Are you one of the final five Cylons, too?”

“I believe the answer to that would be yes.”

“Wow.” Barry shifted himself back so he could lean against the bed’s headboard. “Okay, question for you. Do you know who George Romero is?”

“Our mutual friend has already shared this question with me. I also do not know the proper name of Romero’s creations.”

“Damn it.”

“A few moments ago you made a popular culture reference to the television series Battlestar Galactica, correct?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You sound very pretty, so please don’t tell me you’re one of those freaks who think the original series was better.”

“You are a follower of such genre material.”

“A follower?” he echoed with a chuckle. “Yeah, I am. Do you know me?”

“Please name another science-fiction series which is currently being aired.”

“What?”

“Battlestar Galactica aired almost five years ago. Can you name a network series since then? One on the air or even one which was canceled?”

Barry racked his brain. He’d been watching reruns of the second season of Chuck with a bit of Deep Space Nine, the later stuff where the Dominion War really took off. He tried to think of anything new that stood out. He’d been meaning to check out the new season of Doctor Who, but realized he wasn’t sure which season that was. Had the BBC taken another weird on-again, off-again hiatus, like they