George sighed. Nick was right. He was getting morbid. Madelyn’s talk of doom and destruction mixed well with the weight of sleeplessness.
He flipped the phone in his hand and his fingers brushed the screen. It jumped to the default phone keypad and he paused. A string of numbers stretched across the screen. He didn’t recognize them, not even the area code. It took a moment for him to remember tapping them into the phone that morning. It felt like ages ago.
He knew he should just erase the number to Sandia. It was tempting fate. He didn’t want to call and ask a bunch of stupid questions that would make him sound like an idiot. An idiot if he was lucky. It was a national lab. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he felt pretty sure if they told the FBI about weird phone calls, their complaint would end up a little higher on the list than most.
And calling would just feed this whole delusion the girl had shared with him. Her fictional dreamworld where everyone was dead and he was some kind of superhero. He didn’t need to get mixed up in that sort of thing, especially with a student.
Then again, if he was a superhero, shouldn’t he be brave enough to make the call?
His thumb hovered over the keypad for a moment. Then, without any real thought from him, the thumb dropped down. The little handset icon flashed once and the screen changed under his fingertip.
Dialing.
There was still time to hang up, he told himself. Even when the call connected and he heard the first ring, he knew he could hit the red End button. It wasn’t like they’d call back on a hang-up.
The phone picked up just after the second ring. “Sandia National Labs,” recited a male voice. “How can I direct your call?”
“Ummmm …” said George. “Hi. I’m looking for, that is, I’m trying to reach …”
“Sorry?”
The name leaped to his tongue. “Barry. I think his name’s Barry … Burke.”
“Oh,” said the voice. “Sure thing. One second.”
The phone clicked and a Muzak version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere” echoed over the lines. His heart raced. He hadn’t felt this way about a phone call since he was fourteen.
A minute passed before the phone clicked again. “This is Barry,” said a new voice.
“Hi,” he said. “Barry Burke?”
“The one and only. I’ll be appearing in Las Vegas next month from the fifteenth ’til the sixteenth. And this is …?”
“I’m …”
Stupid. George suddenly felt very stupid. The girl, Madelyn, had played him. She’d looked up the Pulsed Power machine, found some names online, and convinced him to make the call. Reverse psychology or something like that. It was some sorority prank or something.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I’ve got the wrong number.”
The man on the other end laughed. He sounded like a guy who laughed a lot. “I’m the only Barry here,” he said. “If there’s another Z Machine somewhere with another Barry Burke, he’d better have a goatee and a sash.”
George chuckled. “No, it’s just … I’m sorry. I think this is just a big mistake. Sorry for wasting your time.”
“Ummm … okay. You sure?”
George looked over at the lab building. He thought about his dreams and the strange homeless people he’d been seeing. He remembered Madelyn’s story about a best friend he couldn’t remember.
“Look,” he said, “this is going to sound really stupid, I know, but can I ask you something?”
Another laugh echoed from New Mexico. “You’re keeping me from a boring staff meeting, stranger on the phone. Ask me anything.”
“Are you in a wheelchair?”
The voice on the other end went silent. George realized what a jackass he sounded like. The silence stretched out for ten seconds, and he wondered if the other man had hung up on him.
“Who is this?” Barry Burke asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the phone. “That was really insensitive of me. I didn’t mean to be so—”
“Is this George?”
The phone jumped away from his head. Or maybe his hand spasmed. He stared at it for a moment, then pulled it back to his ear.
“Are you still there?” asked the man in Albuquerque.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m still here. I just … you know me?”
“Your voice is familiar,” said Barry. “I couldn’t place it and then I realized you sound like the guy in my dreams. Which sounds very different than I intended out loud.”
George felt light-headed. He slumped against the wall next to his bucket of soapy water. “You have dreams about me?”
“I guess. You’re six feet tall, blond-brown hair … Ummm, I don’t suppose you’re super-strong, by chance?”
He thought of the dumpster. “Maybe?”
Barry whistled. “Who’s the redhead?”
“Sorry?”
“There’s a redhead in my dreams, too. Kind of cute. I think she wears …” His voice trailed off. “I think she might be a knight. Like a King Arthur–Excalibur–type knight. Or maybe a Gundam pilot.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know. I haven’t … I don’t think I’ve actually dreamed about you.”
He sensed the shift, even over the phone. “You haven’t?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So how’d you know to call me?”
“There’s a girl out here,” explained George. “A young woman. She knows … she claims to know a lot of stuff. She says I’ve forgotten things. That everyone has.”
“Is she dead?”
“What? No. She’s just—”
A set of sounds and images flashed across George’s mind. Meeting Madelyn for the first time on moving day. Meeting her again in the cafeteria.
“I’m Madelyn Sorensen,” she said. “The Corpse Girl.”
He glanced up from the magazine and saw a dead girl in a wheelchair.
His voice trailed off.
Barry cleared his throat. “Still there?”
“Yeah, sorry. This is all … this is all a little weird. And overwhelming.”
“Tell me about it. I’ve been thinking I was going nuts or something.”
George thought of the other thing Madelyn had mentioned. “Is there anyone else in your dreams? Any other people?”
“A bunch,” said Barry. “There’s you, the redhead, this huge Army officer—”
“I’ve met him,” George said. “He’s here in LA. Lieutenant Freedom.”
“Lieutenant? That doesn’t sound right.”
Something pulsed behind George’s left eye, the faintest hint of an oncoming headache.
