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

past him to the decapitated ex on the floor. “Its teeth were broken.”

“Yeah, so?”

“They were recently broken,” she said. “There was little discoloration on the inside edges and there were still shards in its mouth.”

“Okay, and …?”

She gave him the look that told him he’d missed something obvious. “There is only one thing in the bar it could’ve broken its teeth on, George.”

It took him another moment. “Me?”

“When we entered the bar you scratched your left arm. The arm closest to the doorman.”

“The shirt’s kind of itchy. It’s still got those right-out-of-the-package folds that are pretty much starched into it.”

“The doorman was an ex. It was biting you.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“It was.”

St. George shook his head. “He sat on his stool the whole time. I would’ve noticed if he was chewing on me.”

Her eyebrow went up again and she looked at her arm. “Much in the same way Captain Freedom thought he would have noticed if ninety-three percent of the people at Project Krypton had died?”

When they’d first met the captain, his entire base had been under Smith’s influence. They believed they were a thriving military base with over fifteen hundred soldiers and support staff. Then the heroes had arrived and revealed that barely a hundred people were there.

St. George shook his head. “This isn’t convincing us things are a bit better than we thought they were, though. This is him telling us things are completely different. It just seems way beyond what we saw him do before.” He tugged at the sleeve of his fleece. “And if we aren’t hopping between worlds, where did this come from? It’s not mine.”

Stealth didn’t respond. She was studying her arms. She pushed the sleeve up on one and ran a finger across the skin.

“Wait,” he said, “are you okay? Did you get bitten?”

“I did not,” she told him. “I have no injuries at all.”

He sighed in relief.

“I am, however, also wondering where these clothes came from.”

He looked at her outfit. “They’re not yours?”

She shook her head. “I have only three civilian outfits at the Mount. All of them were chosen to be inconspicuous. Each of these items has been tailored to me.”

“Are you sure?”

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“So if we’re not jumping between worlds, where did you get a tailored outfit?”

“I am not sure. It is possible Smith had them constructed to add to the illusion of another world.” She pushed the sleeve back down. “Our first priority is to locate the others. You know where Madelyn is?”

“Yeah. And Freedom, Gorgon, and …”

He stopped. He closed his eyes for a moment. He took a breath and opened them again.

She was looking at him. Her eyes had the faint wrinkle at the corner that let him know she was concerned. “Gorgon?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I forgot. I forgot he was dead. I’ve been dreaming about a lot of dead people.”

She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Madelyn and Freedom, then.”

He nodded. “They’re over in Westwood, but they’re both alone. We get them, we figure out where the hell Barry and Danielle are, and then we get back to the Mount.”

Her eyebrow twitched again and an expression that looked like confusion flitted across her face. Then she bowed her head. “I concur.”

He walked to the door. It was a solid piece of wood at least an inch thick with no windows or peepholes. He rapped his knuckles against it four times and waited.

The other side of the door was silent.

They exchanged looks. He pushed the door open and slipped outside. Stealth was a beat behind him.

The street was deserted. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. They moved past the sidewalk and into the street, keeping their backs to each other.

“East is clear as far as I can see,” said St. George.

“As is west.” She held up her hand when he went to speak again. She turned her head to the north, then to the south. “I hear nothing,” she said.

“Neither do I.”

“I hear nothing,” she repeated. “There is no sound of teeth.”

St. George closed his eyes and listened. He turned and looked around. “What are the odds there isn’t a single ex within four or five blocks?”

“Low,” said Stealth. “The street is clean. No leaves, no trash, no debris of any kind. However, all nine streetlights I can see from this position are unlit.”

“My car’s gone,” said St. George. He looked up and down the street. “Actually, weren’t there at least four or five parked on the street when we went in?”

“There were six on this block,” said Stealth, “not counting your own Hyundai. Two Fords, two Hondas, a Chrysler, and a Volkswagen.”

A low growl made them turn. St. George balled his fists. Stealth raised an eyebrow. She didn’t look worried.

The car roared around the corner and lit them up with its headlights. The vehicle shot toward them without slowing. It tore down the road with its driver’s-side tires riding on the line of yellow dashes. Stealth took two quick steps back to the sidewalk. St. George stood his ground and stared into the headlights. The car missed him by inches. It was an old Mustang, a classic muscle car. Half of its body panels were still bare primer, the other half were glossy black.

It slowed at the corner stop sign, long enough for the driver to give St. George the finger and call out a few muffled insults. Then the Mustang rumbled back up to full speed and vanished down the street. The sound of its engine echoed in the air for a few moments and then faded away.

“Son of a bitch,” said St. George. He blinked away a few spots the headlights had left in his eyes. The street stayed bright even after the spots vanished.

They looked around at the street. Now there were five cars scattered along the curb on either side of the road, gleaming in the streetlights. One of the Hondas was gone, replaced with a small drift of leaves. George’s Hyundai was still nowhere to be seen.

In the distance, he heard