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

others T-shirts, and a few just wear sand-colored tanks. A few have belts. One or two have caps. I drop into the center of the crowd and they turn on me.

I grab a monster by its outstretched arm and swing it like a medieval flail. The corpse batters down a dozen of the dead soldiers. I swing my improvised weapon back the other way and clear a path to a large, hangar-like building. It’s a tomb. I know this in the way people know things in dreams.

My weapon twists at the end of the swing and the dead body comes apart at the shoulder with a wet sound. I’m holding an arm and most of the shoulder. A yellowed knob of bone glistens at the end of the limb.

Another monster lumbers out through the entrance into the building. I put my hand on its chest and push it back inside. It stumbles away from my hand and knocks other corpses down behind it.

I grab the huge door—it’s half the front of the building—with one hand and pull. It squeals on metal wheels and shrinks the opening. Dead things gnaw and claw at my hands, but I know they can’t hurt me.

Something hisses behind me and the shadows jump and vanish. The tinfoil man hangs in the air with his arms stretched out to push at something. Clouds of black ash in front of him hold the shape of soldiers for a moment, then drift apart. Near the edge of the clouds are three or four other charred monsters that break apart as I watch.

The man isn’t tinfoil. He’s hot. White-hot.

My knuckles punch through a dead soldier’s skull. The punch becomes a backhand that crushes another head. I grab a body with each hand and throw them like dolls.

I speak to the white-hot man and he talks back. I say something else, but the words are lost in the muddle of the dream. We have a whole conversation that I can’t hear.

No. That I can’t remember. That’s important, part of me knows. I’m not not-hearing this. I’m not-remembering it.

The monsters are all dead. I’ve thrown them all into a pile and the white-hot man has incinerated them all. It makes him get pale.

I look up at the old professor on the roof and jump up to him. Like my other dreams, I’m carried up by invisible wires that make my back itch. I hold on to the older man and we fall down to street level together.

Not fall. This is something else important. These aren’t falling dreams. They’re—

The ground shakes and disrupts my thoughts. It’s a heavy, steady thumping—the sound of construction sites and dinosaurs. Reflections tremble in the windows of nearby buildings.

A few buildings down, something smashes through the doors of another hangar. The long slats fold like cardboard. Rivets pop and scatter like bullets. Without thinking, I pull the old man back and step in front of him. Shards of metal patter against my body. I feel them, but they don’t hurt.

For just an instant, the huge robot stands in front of the hole it’s made. Then it turns and runs down the street away from us. The trembling ground goes with it and—

GEORGE WOKE UP to the click-click-click of the chain against the side of the fan. He couldn’t stop it. The sound had even made its way into his dreams.

Then he remembered he was awake.

He lunged up and the parrot chewing on his arm staggered back. It had been a woman once. Very petite. Strawberry-blond hair cut short. Small teeth that had probably made her look even younger. Back when she was alive.

The dead thing’s camisole was thin, almost sheer. If it hadn’t been caked with blood it would’ve been see-through. The corpse wore tiny shorts and had bare feet. The woman had died in her sleep. Or been killed in her sleep.

The dead thing stumbled forward again. He grabbed it by the shoulders and kept it at arm’s length. The skin felt like cold meat. It bent its head and snapped its teeth at his wrists. He slipped his hands down onto its arms and kept them pinned at its sides. Its hands pawed the air between them at elbow height.

His apartment was destroyed again. Not destroyed, he realized, as much as neglected for years. The broken windows. The peeling paint. Mildew everywhere near the windows, dust everywhere away from them. It was derelict. Abandoned.

And he was wrestling with a dead woman. In her pajamas. While he was in his pajamas.

George walked the parrot—why was it a parrot? That was from the dreams—back through the apartment and toward the door. The corpse weighed as much as he thought, but it had no balance or coordination. Each push or tug made it stumble.

Past the dead woman’s bobbing head he could see the apartment door hanging open. The lock had been smashed. The wood was cracked and splintered around the dead bolt. The hallway beyond looked as neglected as his apartment. A dark stain decorated one wall. It wasn’t mildew.

He twisted the monster’s arms and levered it back a few more steps. It tripped on its own foot and thumped off a wall. He almost shifted his grip to catch it, but then the gnashing teeth and chalk eyes reminded him it wasn’t a woman.

Another few steps and the dead thing was in the hall. It kept biting the air between them. He bent his arms a little bit and one of its fingers brushed his stomach. The painted nails almost got snagged in his T-shirt.

He shoved hard and the corpse staggered across the hall to crash into the opposite door. Its skull cracked just below the faux-iron numbers, right on the peephole lens. The dead thing slumped for a moment, then pushed itself back up against the door. Its camisole dragged down to expose more gray skin and a purple nipple.

George stepped back and slammed his apartment’s door. The broken wood around the lock