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

Smith has implanted in our minds. Has this happened to you?”

Madelyn shook her head.

“Have you seen any of the walking dead?”

“The walking dead?” echoed Kathy from her bed. St. George took a half step and placed himself between the girl and Stealth.

Madelyn shook her head. “I haven’t seen them. I remember them from our world.”

Stealth shook her own head. “There is no other world.”

“No, there is,” she insisted. “We’re not supposed to be here. In our world, there was a virus that—”

Stealth held up a hand. “I am aware of the timeline,” she said. “However, there is no other world. We are in our world now, but your perceptions and memories have been altered so you do not register it.”

“What? No, my memories are fine. I mean, they’re fine for me.”

Stealth looked at Madelyn. “You are familiar with the writer-director named George Romero?”

She smirked. “Yeah, of course.”

“What were the monsters called in his movies?”

“What?”

“It’s important,” St. George said. “It’s a test, sort of.”

“I … I don’t know. They’re just dead things, right?”

Stealth shook her head. “There is another name for them.”

Madelyn shrugged. “No idea.”

Kathy peeked out from behind her laptop. “They were zombies, right?”

St. George and Stealth both looked at her. “That is correct,” said Stealth.

Kathy smiled.

“Ex-humans,” said Danielle. She dragged the word off her tongue.

Madelyn scowled.

“Do you trust us?” St. George asked her.

She looked at him, then at Freedom. “Yeah, of course I do.”

“Then that’s all that matters for now. Pack anything you might need and let’s get going.”

Madelyn spun her chair around, pulled opened a drawer, and grabbed a pair of jeans. “Ummmm …” She looked up at Freedom and St. George. “Would you guys mind waiting in the hall for a few minutes?”

St. George glanced at Kathy, then at Stealth and Danielle. “Will you be okay in here?”

Stealth nodded.

“If it’s all the same,” said Danielle, “I’ll wait outside with you guys.”

They shuffled outside. The dorm hallway was empty, although the echoes of voices and footsteps came from either end. St. George could hear a shower running somewhere, too.

Freedom stood with his back to the door. Danielle pressed herself against the wall near a fire extinguisher. “A wheelchair’s going to cause problems,” she said. “If we have another shift we could be trapped somewhere.”

“Technically we’re already trapped somewhere,” Freedom said. “The shift should make it easier because we’ll actually be able to see where we are and what’s around us.”

“And if we have another shift,” added St. George, “she shouldn’t need it anymore, anyway.”

Danielle shrugged and looked down the hallway. A young man in a towel strolled out of a bathroom and across the hall to a room. The clunk of his door echoed in the hallway.

“Worst-case scenario, I can carry her,” said Freedom. “Or she could just ride piggyback.”

“This is the worst-case scenario,” Danielle muttered. “We’re running for our lives and we’re almost helpless.”

Madelyn hauled herself back onto the bed and pushed the sweatpants down her legs. She tried not to think about getting naked in front of a woman who was a thousand times more attractive than her, but it was kind of tough when she was forced to wrestle with her jeans. It reminded her that her thighs were kind of fat for her height and Karen Quilt’s were perfect.

“If you want it,” she said, “there’s a black hoodie in the closet. It’s a little too big for me. You can have it.”

Karen—no, Madelyn thought, Stealth. We always call her Stealth—arched an eyebrow. “I am warm enough, thank you.”

“No, I didn’t think you were cold. I just meant, if you wanted it because—”

“I am aware of what you meant. Thank you, but no. Do you require assistance?”

“It’s okay. I’ve gotten pretty good at it.” Her fingers hooked into the belt loops and pulled the jeans up. She dropped onto her back and the jeans slid over her hips. “Everyone tells me I got really sick when I was nine, that’s why I’m in the chair, but I don’t remember it. You think I’ll be able to walk again once we’re out of here?”

“It would seem once we each consciously realized Smith was affecting our perceptions, we began to find ways around the blocks he has created. As our minds create these new pathways and associations, our memories and abilities have begun to return.”

“But I’ve had my memories all along,” she said. “So why do I need the chair?”

Stealth looked at the other side of the room. “I am not sure,” she admitted. “It is reasonable to assume the unique nature of your mind has allowed you to remember certain elements of the actual world. It is unclear, then, why certain aspects of the illusionary world appear to be locked in your conscious mind.”

Madelyn twisted her lips. “So this might be permanent?” She shifted her legs over the edge of the bed and slid back down into the wheelchair. She landed hard and winced.

“Again,” said Stealth, “I am not sure. There are too many inconsistent facts.” She looked at the far side of the room again.

“What do you mean?”

Stealth said nothing. She just stared at Kathy. The other girl traded looks with Madelyn and shrunk down a little more behind her laptop.

Freedom pushed Madelyn’s wheelchair down the hall. Danielle hovered behind him. St. George and Stealth brought up the rear.

“Returning to the hotel should be our new priority,” she said.

He glanced at her. “Why?”

“Barry will be arriving there within the hour and will be unprotected. Also, my father always insists on traveling with certain items. There are weapons there which we can use.”

“Are there?” asked St. George. “I mean, it’s just going to be an empty hotel room, right? Most of the hotels and motels in the city were pretty well looted in that first year. Hell, we looted half of them.”

She took in a small breath through her nose.

He looked at her. “What?”

“There may be more to these perceptual illusions than we first believed.”

“What do you mean?”

“My initial hypothesis of our situation,