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

Madelyn’s fingers were cold. He didn’t think the air conditioning was up that high in the dining hall. He wondered if being in a wheelchair was bad for circulation. It couldn’t be good, he figured.

She released his hand and gestured at the open space at the end of the table. “Can I join you?”

“I guess,” said George. “Are you going to talk about people dying?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she said. “I came across as a freak, didn’t I?”

“Just a little.” He brushed the magazine aside and gestured at the table.

The chair moved forward until it bumped the table edge. Madelyn reached over her shoulder and tugged the backpack off the handles. She pulled a bottle of eye drops from the front pouch and tossed the pack in the empty chair across from George.

“You’re not eating?” he asked.

She tapped the arm of the wheelchair as she leaned her head back. “They bring my tray out for me. I could do it myself, but it’d take twice as long to reach a table using one hand.” She blinked a few times to spread the drops around her eyes and tucked the bottle back in her pack.

One of the cafeteria workers—the same one who’d given George extra tater tots—appeared with a tray. She set it next to Madelyn and shot a quick smile at George. Madelyn peeled the bun and cheese off her first burger and attacked the patty with her fork.

“Low-carb diet?”

She shook her head. “Digestion issues.”

“Ahhh.” He watched her eat for a minute and wondered what she wanted from him. He picked up his last tater tot, rubbed it in the salt on the plate, and popped it in his mouth.

She finished the first burger and started stripping the second one. Her eyes drifted over to the magazine. She smirked and bit back a laugh. She turned the magazine around and looked at the pictorial, then turned it back to George.

“It’s not mine,” he said. “It was just here when I sat down. There wasn’t anything else to read.”

“She’s pretty.”

His mouth twitched into a smile. “That’s an understatement.”

“You know she’s your girlfriend, right?”

He blinked. “Sorry?”

“She’s one of us,” said Madelyn. “A superhero.”

He managed not to sigh out loud, but it showed on his face.

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“I’m not a superhero. I’m not dating anyone right now.” He tapped the magazine. “And I would definitely remember if I’d dated a woman like that at any point in my life.” He pushed his chair away from the table and got up. “Anyway, I’ve got to get back to—”

She dropped her fork and grabbed his arm. “Wait,” she pleaded. “I’m really sorry about the other day. I kind of lunged and hit you with everything at once, but it was such a huge relief to find you.”

He didn’t pull away. He also didn’t sit back down. She sounded desperate again, and it kind of freaked him out.

“Ten minutes,” she said. “Just let me talk for ten minutes and then I’m done. I’ll even transfer back east if you want.”

George sighed again and looked at the clock on the wall behind her. “My lunch break’s almost over,” he said. “I’ve got seven minutes.”

He sat down.

“It’ll be worth it,” she told him. “I promise.”

He crossed his arms and waited.

Madelyn took a long slow breath. “Okay,” she said, “let me ask you something kind of weird.”

“Now it’s getting weird?” He couldn’t hold back a smile.

She didn’t return it. “Do you dream at night?”

“What?”

“Dreams. Are you one of those people who don’t dream, or don’t remember them?”

Images of falling and dead people and demons flitted through his mind. He shook his head. “No, I have dreams.”

“Normal dreams?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She crossed her own arms. “I dream every night,” she said. “Know what I dream about?”

“Look,” he said, “this is going in kind of an uncomfortable direction. I’m not sure it’s appropri—”

“Monsters.”

He shut his mouth and stared at her.

Something sparked in her eyes. Her shoulders lifted. “And you do, too, don’t you?”

He didn’t say anything. He looked at the young woman and tried not to think of the image he’d seen out of the corner of his eye. The corpse in the wheelchair.

“There’s thousands of them, right? Dead people walking around. They’re kind of slow and clumsy, but there’s just so many of them.”

He set his hands on the table, then crossed them again. He studied her face. “How are you doing this? Is this some kind of magic trick?”

She shook her head. “What else do you remember?”

George thought about his dreams. “There’s a wall,” he said. “A big wall keeping them out. And a gate.”

Madelyn nodded.

“And a robot,” he said. “A battlesuit. But that’s just dream stuff.”

“No it isn’t.”

“It is. I saw it on a commercial for the Army this morning. It’s some military project. The future of combat or something.”

She smirked. “So you’re telling me the battlesuit has to be part of your dream because it’s real?”

“I’m saying I probably just saw pictures of it online. Maybe it was on the news while I was doing something else and it didn’t register. And then, you know, the subconscious grabs it and puts it in a dream.”

Madelyn reached down and tore a piece off the burger patty with her fingers. She popped it in her mouth. Her teeth were perfect. She swallowed. “The dream about monsters,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“That you have every night.”

“I don’t have it every night.”

“Okay,” she said. “When was the last time you didn’t have it?”

George tried to remember his last good night of sleep. “I’m not sure,” he admitted, “but I know I haven’t always had it.”

She tore another piece off the burger. “You haven’t.”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “So what makes you so sure your dreams are going to come true?”

“Already came true,” she corrected him. “It’s all real.”

“But what makes you say that?”

“Because it is,” said Madelyn.

“That’s not really an answer.”

She sighed and scrunched up her mouth. “Okay,” she said, “do you have a television?”

He nodded.