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

The leaves muffled the sound, but not much. Just enough to make it hard to guess how far away it was.

St. George moved to the front to walk alongside Stealth. Danielle stayed behind them. Captain Freedom brought up the rear with Madelyn and Barry.

They’d gone a hundred feet in when the first pair of exes staggered out at them. Two dead men. One wore a blue shirt with a plumber’s logo on it. The other was bare chested and missing an arm. Its shoulder was a ragged, half-burned mess.

St. George grabbed the plumber’s outstretched arm and yanked the ex close. Its teeth snapped at his face. He grabbed the dead man by the seat of the pants, tried to ignore the soft mass beneath the denim, and hurled the zombie up and over the wall of green.

Stealth dodged the one-armed ex, tripped it, and pushed down hard on its head as it fell. The dead thing’s forehead took the full impact of the fall. She kicked it in the back of the skull, just to be sure it stayed down.

Danielle shook her head. “This has been right outside the Mount all this time?” he asked. “How?”

“Nature runs wild,” said Madelyn. “I saw a really cool special about it once on the History Channel.”

“Well, what I meant was why didn’t we do something about it?”

“We didn’t have any lawn mowers?” said Barry.

“I don’t even remember seeing all this,” said St. George.

“It is unlikely you would,” said Stealth. “For the most part, neither you nor Barry leaves the Mount on foot. You are more used to an aerial view.”

“That’s true,” said Barry.

Another ex, a woman, stumbled toward them from down the street. St. George could see two more past her heading their way, and another four past that. “They’re picking up,” he said. “At least half a dozen.”

“Half a dozen’s not many,” said Freedom.

“We haven’t even gone one block yet,” said Danielle.

“Let none of them past us,” Stealth warned St. George. “If a significant number get behind us, we will not be able to defend ourselves on two fronts.”

St. George took a few steps, swung his hand like an axe, and crushed the side of the dead woman’s skull. The ex slumped to the ground. The next two banged their teeth together as they closed in on him. He let them get close enough to grab at his outstretched hands. They gnawed at his fingers and he slammed their heads together.

An ex pulled itself free of the vines that had hidden it and staggered at Danielle. She stumbled back and Freedom stepped forward, his free hand curled into a fist the size of a football. Before he could strike, Stealth grabbed the ex by its collar and yanked it back. As it fell over she grabbed its skull and twisted. The body thumped to the ground. Its teeth scraped on the pavement as its jaw continued to work back and forth.

Four of the walking dead blocked the road. George grabbed one by its heavy coat and swung it into the air. He slammed it against the other three, battering them to the ground, and then hurled it as far as he could. Three blocks away the ex bounced off the wall of greenery and crashed onto a truck.

One of the others tried to crawl to its feet as they walked past. Freedom brought his boot down hard between the dead man’s shoulder blades. The zombie’s spine cracked and it slumped back down on the pavement.

They fought through another three blocks. St. George took the brunt of it while Stealth caught the rest. Freedom dealt with the two or three that stumbled up from behind.

St. George chopped through an ex’s neck and watched its skull bounce away. He glanced over in time to see Stealth flip a dead man over her shoulder and spin to kick the corpse in the head while it was still in midair. “Now you’re just showing off,” he said.

“I am testing my muscle memory,” she said. “Their numbers are not increasing as much as I expected.”

“They’re still going up, though,” said St. George. He nodded down the road. “It looks like there’s another thirty or forty to make our way through.”

She looked grim. “As Barry said, this corner of the Big Wall has an average of fourteen hundred exes, drawn here by either sounds or the sight of guards patrolling along the Wall. Even with their random movements, this section of road should contain at least one hundred of them.”

St. George walked forward with his arms spread and gathered up half a dozen exes. He looked back at Stealth. “Maybe things are going our way for once.” He shoved the exes forward and they stumbled and fell. Their bodies tripped four others staggering at the heroes. He stepped up to the pile and twisted their heads one after another.

When he glanced back, she was still grim.

He looked past her. Since entering the overgrown length of road, Danielle had pulled her arms tight against herself. She’d backed up so close to Freedom he had to push her along. Barry looked annoyed at being carried, but kept one hand on Danielle’s shoulder. Madelyn was trying to watch everything. Her perception filter, as she liked to call it.

Up ahead the road curved off to the left. Another dozen or so exes staggered toward them. Three of them wore military helmets with their civilian clothes, while one dead man had on what looked like a batting helmet. Leftovers from one of Legion’s many attempts to storm their home.

“Not much farther,” St. George called back to the others. “The Big Wall should be right around that bend.”

“Want us to go ahead?” asked Madelyn. “We could scout around and make sure they’re ready to open the gates or pull us over the Wall.”

“The exes may not see you,” said Stealth, “but if we have all been gone for any amount of time, the guards may not react well to your appearance.”

“We’ll all go together,”