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

make any such statement,” said Karen. “You stated that we were supposed to be somewhere else. Our togetherness was a secondary factor.” She took in a slight breath to continue speaking, then walked past three more sections of sidewalk.

“And?”

“When we said good-bye … your hand felt right.”

Something fluttered in George’s chest. He felt like a teenager asking the head cheerleader to the prom. “Sorry?”

“It felt right to hold your hand,” said Karen. “It bothered me when you let go.”

They walked for another half-dozen slabs. Part of him hoped she’d reach out and take his hand again, but her fingers stayed tucked away inside the pockets of her sweatshirt. They walked past his Hyundai and continued down the street.

“Why do you believe we know each other?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I noticed posters of you before I knew your name, but probably anyone could say that. To be honest, this girl I met told me you and I are in love and … well, she’s been right about a lot of stuff.”

“I see.”

“Does that sound like me professing my love for you?”

She looked at him. “Are you, George?”

He counted another three slabs of concrete in the sidewalk. “Your hand felt right, too,” he said.

They reached the end of the block before she spoke again. “This young woman is having similar dreams?”

He glanced both ways and they crossed the street. “Yeah, but she seems to remember a lot more than me. At least, she remembers it a lot clearer than I do.”

“Does she know the answer to your George Romero question?”

“I haven’t asked her. Her name’s Madelyn Sorensen.”

Karen blinked as they stepped up over the curb. “Dr. Emil Sorensen’s daughter?”

“Maybe,” said George. “I met her dad on moving day. He came across like a professor. Do you know him?”

“I know of him,” she said. “He is a renowned biochemist and neurologist. He was expected to be awarded the Nobel Prize in 2007, and some felt he was more deserving than the team that received the honor. Why are you so averse to being called a saint?”

A muscle behind his eye twinged. “What do you mean?”

“When my father compared you to St. George, you closed your eyes and lowered your head. When I referred to you the same way, you reacted as if the words caused physical pain. And just now the muscles around your eye contracted.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Madelyn called me that, too. It just feels strange, people calling me a saint. And she keeps telling me I’m supposed to be a superhero.”

Karen’s eyebrows went up. “I beg your pardon?”

He looked ahead. “Yeah. According to her we all have superpowers. That’s how we fight the monsters. I’m supposed to be super-strong.”

It occurred to him he was spewing out a new level of madness, so her response caught him off guard.

“Are you?”

“Sorry?”

She looked at his arms. “Do you have superhuman strength? You said she has been correct about many things.”

Something twinged again. “Maybe? Why, do you?”

Karen Quilt straightened her back and looked at the sidewalk ahead of them. “From a very young age, my father trained me to be capable and independent. Circumstances required that he was absent from my life for many years, but I continued training on my own.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She turned to him. “I saw the look on your face back at the hotel, George. You know who my father is.”

His lips twisted before he could stop them. He pushed them flat again. “Yeah.”

“With that in mind, what do you think he would consider ‘capable’?”

“Jesus,” he said, “you really are a superhero.”

“If I decided to follow such a path, I could be, yes.”

George decided not to dwell on what other paths her father might have been training her for. He took in a deep breath. “I think I lifted a dumpster the other day,” he said. The words made his head flare with pain, but it felt good to say them.

Karen looked at him. He couldn’t read her expression. “You think you lifted it?”

“I was having a migraine,” he said, “and I think I may have been seeing things.”

“Things such as dead people who continue to walk?”

“Yeah.”

“How high did you lift the dumpster?”

“I … I couldn’t get under it,” he said. “Somebody saw me. I got it to here.” He held his hands out a few feet above the sidewalk and mimed lifting something.

“Was it difficult?”

He shook his head and cleared away some of the pain. “Not really. I lifted a couch the other day, too. One with a hideaway bed built into it.”

“Impressive.”

“Did you really come down the side of the building to catch me?”

“I did. It is a Parkour technique.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the tall hotel and the columns of balconies. “Wow.”

Karen tilted her head, then reached up and touched her nose. Her fingers came back spotted with red. “Pardon me,” she said. “I seem to be having a mild headache of my own which is causing a nosebleed.”

Across the street, just behind Karen, a trio of men headed for them. One wore a suit, the other two had dull jackets. The paparazzi had spotted them. Their conversation was over.

Then George saw the pale skin and chalky eyes. One of the men raised an arm that ended just past the elbow. Another wobbled on a leg that had two round, ragged holes near the knee. They stumbled off the far sidewalk and into the street.

In the blink of an eye, the world changed. Dust covered the cars on the street, and spiderwebs of cracks blossomed across several of their windshields. Leaves spread across the pavement in drifts. Weeds had forced their way up between the sidewalk slabs.

He glanced over his shoulder. Four more monsters staggered on the sidewalk behind them. The two in the rear of the quartet looked a lot like the older couple he and Karen had passed a few minutes earlier.

“We should speak more with Madelyn Sorensen,” said Karen. She dabbed at her nose again, then wiped her fingers twice against the cuff