A man with a silvery-gray beard nodded to her and waved at George. George waved back automatically. The man looked like faculty. If not here, then somewhere.
Madelyn turned back to him. “Okay, listen,” she said, “this is important.”
George looked at her.
“This is all wrong,” said Madelyn. “The world isn’t supposed to be like this. None of these people should be here.”
He looked at the crowds. “They won’t be,” he said. “It’s just like this while everyone’s moving in. In a day or two—”
“No,” Madelyn said. “They shouldn’t be here in the bigger sense.”
“How so?”
“There was a plague,” she said. “It broke out in the spring of 2009 and wiped out most of the world—”
“Spring of 2009?” interrupted George. “Four years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Is this a game?” he asked her. “One of those LARP-things?”
“No.” She shook her head.
“Is it the assassin one, where you’re supposed to tag another student, because the university has some pretty solid rules about—”
“This is real,” she said. “It happened. Everyone died. Even me.”
“You’re dead?”
“Yeah. For about four years now.”
He looked at himself. “Am I supposed to be dead, too?”
She scowled. “Don’t be stupid. If you were dead, how could I be talking to you?”
He smiled and tried to make it look sincere. “Right, of course.”
“You have to believe me,” she said. “Billions of people died. You gathered all the survivors into a film studio here in Los Angeles—”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“Me, personally?”
“Yeah. Well, I mean, I don’t know how much you did by yourself, but you did a lot of it. Everyone trusted you to keep them safe.”
George wondered if the young woman was a student. Maybe she was just a visiting relative, here to see her brother or sister or cousin off to school before going back to … therapy? Heavy medications? “Okay,” he said. “And everybody trusted me because …?”
“Because you’re a superhero,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re the superhero. The Mighty Dragon. I had a poster of you in my bedroom before everything fell apart.”
Any student mentioning their bedroom set off warning bells in George’s state-employed mind. He looked past her and tried to catch the eye of the bearded man. There was a quick contact and her father understood something was wrong.
Madelyn watched him for some kind of reaction. “None of this means anything to you?”
“Probably not the meaning you’re hoping for.”
“Everything okay here?” asked the bearded man, setting his hands on the wheelchair’s handles. “It’s taking a while just to get directions.” He was a little older than George had first thought, and up close it was clear the beard needed a trim.
“I had a few other questions,” said Madelyn with a bitter look at George.
“I hope I answered them,” said George.
The bearded man held out his hand. “Emil Sorensen,” he said. “It seems you’ve already met my daughter.”
“Yeah,” he said. “George Bailey.” The bearded man’s polite smile trembled and George tapped his ID badge. “Honest.”
“And you’re part of the welcome staff?”
“No, sir. Just with the maintenance department. They ask us all to help out where we can on the move-in days.”
“Come on,” Sorensen said to his daughter. “Your mother wants dinner and she’ll be getting cranky soon if we don’t get some food in her.”
George took the moment to give a formal bow of his head to Madelyn and then to Sorensen. The bearded man acknowledged him and George slipped past them to continue down the path. The girl raised her voice to shout, “Wait!” and her father hushed her. George heard them argue for a moment, and then he was far enough away that their voices blended into the background noise of moving day.
He reached the next parking lot, squinted into the afternoon sun, and wished he’d remembered his sunglasses. Or his work cap. The light bounced off a hundred windshields and rear windows. At least there was shade on the far end of the parking lot.
A young woman on the other side of the lot, one of those people who felt the need to raise their voice two or three notches to talk on the phone, chattered on her cell. George could make out half her conversation from fifty feet away. She stumbled off an unseen curb, glanced back, and her laugh echoed between the buildings. She dug in her purse with her free hand, barely looking at the lot.
He hoped no one pulled out, because she’d never see it coming.
A few steps ahead of her, maybe as much as four or five yards, a man shuffled between the parked cars. He wore a suit coat over jeans and a T-shirt, and his hair was a ratty mess. He stumbled in the narrow space, and his head twisted up to look at the chattering girl. His mouth moved as if he was trying to say something, but George was too far to hear anything. Especially over the young woman.
The woman was still heading more or less in George’s direction. There were a dozen yards between them. No more than ten parking spaces. She was two spaces from the man, ten feet at the most.
The three of them continued toward each other. George’s pace quickened. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the situation felt wrong.
The man’s awkward movements weren’t just because of the tight space between the cars. For a moment, George thought it was the same man he’d seen that morning, the one with the pale skin. But this man was taller, with darker hair and different clothes. He had the same half-drunken gait, though. He lurched toward the chattering woman with a certain focus that made George think of nature documentaries.
There were a few feet left between the man and woman. She pulled a set of keys free and gestured with them. A car behind George beeped twice. She looked up and saw George striding toward her.
Then the pale man wrapped his arms around her. He clawed at her chest and grabbed a mouthful of hair as she turned her head. He
