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

now a large chalkboard. Half of it was a colorful menu of pastries and coffee drinks. The other half had been blurred into pale streaks and replaced with messy letters made of thick pink strokes of chalk.

END OF WORLD

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Something dripped on his lips. He reached up and his hand came away red. His nose was bleeding, just like Dr. Morris’s was. He didn’t remember George punching or head-butting him. His mind flitted down a list of airborne toxins and the location of the pro-masks in the back room even as he registered that George and the women were fine.

Adams’s pen clicked away. And then Freedom realized Adams hadn’t come in yet. In fact, it was his day off.

He turned toward the sound.

Adams’s desk was gone. A table large enough to sit five or six people was there. It had been pushed back against the wall, pinning the one occupant in its seat.

It had been a man. It was wearing a threadbare, old-pattern camo jacket from the eighties that had faded well past cook whites. It had the same color hair as Adams, but much longer. A larger nose and wider jaw, too. Its eyes were dead white and its skin was gray. Settler gray, just like Freedom’s dreams.

The dead man reached for them across the tabletop, its dry fingertips drawing lines in the dust. Its mouth snapped open and closed again and again. The clicking teeth echoed in the room.

Dr. Morris made a low noise, something between a growl and a squeal. Her arms had wrapped tight around herself again. “What’s going on?” she hissed. “What the fuck is going on?”

Another half-dozen dead people crowded the door, and Freedom could see more in the street wandering toward the office. Or coffee shop. Whatever the place was. Some of the dead people were missing eyes or teeth. One looked like it had been scalped. A woman near the front of the group wore a shirt that said NAVY in large letters. It was splattered with blood. So was her mouth.

“Where in God’s name are we?” asked Freedom.

“We’ve switched back,” said George. “We’re seeing the real world now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Dr. Morris.

“Look, you just have to trust us,” said George. “Someone’s been messing with our minds, making us see the world the way he wants to get us out of the way.” He walked over to the dead thing at the table and placed his hand on top of its head. Its neck flexed for a moment as it tried to stretch its mouth up to his fingers. Then George turned his palm and twisted the corpse’s head around like a man opening a bottle. The dead thing’s spine popped twice, like a log in a fire, and it slumped on the tabletop. Its jaws still hinged back and forth.

It struck Freedom he’d made no move to stop George, and had no reaction to the snapped neck. He knew on some level it hadn’t been a murder. It had been weeding.

“You both need to come with us,” said George. “We’re heading onto campus to pick up someone else, and then over into Hollywood.”

“Do you have a car or a truck or something?” asked Dr. Morris.

“We do not,” said the supermodel. “We are on foot.”

The redhead blinked. “On foot? With those things out there?”

The dead men and women pawed at the glass and banged their teeth against each other.

“We’ll be okay,” said George. “We can hold them off until we get to the Mount.”

The name resonated in Freedom’s head. “The Mount?”

“Our base of operations,” said the dark-skinned woman. “Your memories have been clouded so you do not remember. An epidemic has decimated the world. The survivors here in Los Angeles have formed a safe compound in Hollywood.”

“We need to find the armor,” said Danielle, wiping her nose again. Her hand was covered with blood. “I can’t go out there without the armor.”

“It’s probably at the Mount,” said George. “Waiting in your workshop.”

Danielle shook her head. “It better be,” she muttered. “If I find out Cesar went joyriding, I’ll … Who the hell is Cesar?”

“Good,” said George. “It’s starting to come back to you.”

Freedom closed his eyes and tried to will away the pain in his skull. “I need more than this, sir,” he said.

George glanced at the door and the figures pressed against the glass. “More than that?”

“You’re asking me to abandon everything I believe in,” said Freedom.

The dark woman’s gaze dropped to his chest, and her brow furrowed. “It would appear” she said, “that we are not.”

Freedom looked down. His ACU was old and worn. He could see two seams where it had been repaired, and recognized the careful stitchwork his mother had taught him as a boy. On his chest was a Velcro patch with two black bars on it, faded to charcoal.

His captain’s rank.

ST. GEORGE STARED at the exes outside the door. Another seven or eight of them had wandered over to the little coffee shop while he and Stealth convinced Danielle and Freedom. He counted fifteen out on the sidewalk now. Another twenty or so out in the street hadn’t figured out there was food in the café, but they would soon enough.

He looked back at the others. Stealth had found a broomstick somewhere in the back. It was one of the longer ones from the oversized, industrial push brooms, and there were a few swaths of duct tape on it. He wasn’t sure if she was planning on using it as a spear or some kind of fighting staff.

Danielle still had her arms wrapped around herself, but she didn’t seem quite as panicked as she had a while ago. She kept looking around the room. He was pretty sure she was hoping the armor cases would reappear.

Freedom walked up to him. The huge officer had pulled a thick pair of gloves from one of the pockets of his uniform and was working them tight around his fingers. “What’s the plan, sir?”

“Well,” said St. George,