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

conspiracies. Just thinking about it made his head spin like a drunken blitz.

And yet …

Underneath it all, what she was saying made sense. He’d just been talking with Nick about how he always felt like he’d forgotten something. About the dream-shaped holes in his memory.

But superheroes?

He shook his head as he marched over to staff parking. A man in a sweater vest fumbled with a briefcase next to a car. George pegged him as either an older grad student or a younger professor. It was just a sense that developed over time. The vest had a set of large diamond shapes on it, like oversized argyle socks.

George couldn’t see his car. He took a moment and tried to slow down his whirling thoughts. It wasn’t good to drive so worked up and distracted, anyways. A few deep breaths and he spotted his rear bumper poking out a dozen spaces over.

Two young brunettes were heading across the parking lot toward him. They were dressed in loose, tie-dyed shirts and pants. More freshman freedom. A brawny, crew-cut guy in a football jersey was heading to intercept them.

As the distance shrunk between them, George realized the two women weren’t that young. Their thin frames had made them seem close to their teen years, but as they got closer he could see their angular faces. Then he noticed the irregular pattern to their tie-dye. It wasn’t bands or radiant patterns. It was splatters and sprays, all in browns or reds.

He took a breath. The guy in the jersey was headed his way, too. And there was a shuffling sound behind him. The guy in the sweater vest.

In the corner of his eye, off in the distance, he could see dozens of figures scattered across campus and down toward Westwood. They moved in slow motion. Each one tilted and staggered as it walked.

George stood still and tried to stay calm. The hallucination would vanish in a few moments, just like the others.

The women were close enough for him to see their wounds. The one with almost-black hair had a gash that opened its mouth back along its cheek, showing off all the teeth on one side. The other one, the one with golden-brown hair, wasn’t wearing much of a shirt. Rags of clothing hung from its neck and shoulders, and its torso was a shredded mess of gore and pale flesh. It had been hit by a shotgun blast. Maybe two or three. Or a grenade.

They were twenty feet away now.

Behind him, the scraping sound was very close. George wasn’t going to indulge the waking dream by looking, but he guessed the vest guy was ten feet away at the most.

Jersey guy lurched toward him. A dozen yards left between them, tops. The walking corpse didn’t have a crew cut. Its hair and scalp had been torn away from its skull. The ragged tufts of gristle and blood had dried into little points across the bone.

George closed his eyes. When he opened them, there would just be normal students around him. Maybe a faculty member behind him. Nothing else.

With his eyes closed, he was more aware of the smells of dust and mildew. They were so thick he could feel the scents in his nose. And the wafting odor of meat was getting stronger. Closer.

He could hear their teeth clicking together. Click-clack-click-clack-click. It was the sound of a speed typist with a wooden typewriter.

Something leathery wrapped around his wrist. A wave of nausea boiled up in his throat. His eyes flicked open.

The women were just a few feet away. Jersey guy was a yard behind them. Another dead man, this one in a long coat, stumbled out from behind a car on the far side of the lot. George looked over his shoulder and found himself face-to-face with the sweater-vest man. His skin was the color of cobwebs. One of his eyes was gone. The other looked like frozen milk.

His teeth snapped at George’s nose and missed by an inch.

George yanked his arm away from the grasping hand and stumbled back into the women’s embrace. They wrapped their arms around him from behind. Their hands pawed at his chest. One nibbled on his ear, then sank its teeth in and tried to rip the ear off. The other chewed on his shoulder. He could feel it gnawing through the fabric of his shirt.

The sweater-vest monster staggered forward with its arms wide. George brought up his foot and lashed out. His work boot slammed into the center diamond of the vest and the dead man flew back. It hit a car ten feet back, spun over the hood, and smashed into the windshield of the next car over with an explosion of glass and dust.

He turned and the two dead women spun with him like they weighed nothing. Something pitter-pattered on the ground. The dead woman chewing on his ear was losing her teeth.

Jersey guy loomed in front of him. George drove his fist into the dead man’s gut. The force of it folded the corpse over. It landed a few yards away in a heap that showed off its gory scalp, but its limbs had barely settled when it struggled back to its feet.

He reached across his chest and grabbed a handful of golden-brown hair. It was dry and brittle in his fingers. He yanked and the dead woman flipped over his shoulder like a bag of leaves. The body hit the ground near jersey guy.

George took a deep breath. Acid burned in the back of his throat. He felt a deep need to throw up but bit it back and swallowed hard. He couldn’t risk being helpless while he got sick.

He rolled his shoulders and knocked the ear-biter away. The dark-haired monster staggered for a moment before it fell against a car and found its balance. Its jaws hinged up and down. The slash in its cheek flapped open and shut. The dead woman staggered forward and he threw a punch. The jaw crumbled like