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

George recognized two of them. One had been a scavenger named Danny Foe. He tried not to think about it as he twisted the dead man’s head around.

The sun vanished behind the corner of the Big Wall just as they reached Larchmont. Stealth announced the wide street was their best route north to the Mount. They saw more bodies on the sidewalk and lawns. No one complained too much when the light faded.

St. George crushed a few more exes. He tried not to look at their faces, but more of them looked familiar. People from the Mount. People from the Seventeens’ camp who’d joined them. Even a few from Project Krypton. He tried to hurl those away before Freedom could see them.

“No chance of lighting a torch?” Danielle asked. “We could tie up my socks in a tree branch or something.”

St. George shook his head. “Sorry. Still don’t have any fire.” He coughed for emphasis.

“Are you out of gas,” asked Barry, “or just forgot how to throw up?”

“I’m not sure. Both, maybe?”

“We are less than four blocks from the Melrose gate,” said Stealth. “We will be fine.” She swung her baton and cracked an ex’s skull for emphasis.

St. George heard Freedom say something, but the words were lost as he cracked an ex’s skull with his knuckles. He kicked the body away. “What was that?”

“I said there still aren’t many, sir,” the captain repeated. “If the Mount’s the fallback position, the exes should be denser here.” He shook his head. “This still isn’t much heavier than the standard numbers we’ve seen everywhere else. Fifteen or twenty per block.”

They reached the intersection. There was just enough light for St. George to make out the huge globe of the Earth perched on the walls of the Mount, two blocks away. He could also see a few dozen exes between them and the gate. The sound of clicking teeth filled the air. “Cheer up,” he said. “There’s a lot more here.”

In the dim light he saw Danielle shudder. Freedom reached out, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her in close. “I’ve got her, sir,” he said.

“And I’ve got all of us,” said Madelyn. “Keep an eye on Stealth. We’re good.”

St. George turned in time to see Stealth’s baton strike a dead woman’s skull three times in a blur of motion. It might’ve been four times. The last one made the whole head jiggle. The ex wobbled for a moment, its arms went limp, and it fell over.

He marched into the horde and they bit at his arms and face. His shirt was covered with rips and snags. He swept his arms together and slammed four of the dead things against each other. Before they could untangle their limbs, he shoved the mass off to the side. They knocked over two more exes before sprawling over a curb.

Stealth spun through the crowd. Her baton whirled and sliced through the air. At times it lunged out for a precision strike. Once it thrust back to shatter a forehead. Exes slumped and dropped around her. She stepped over their bodies and brought her heels down on the necks of ones that still moved.

They reached the corner of the Mount. The pale walls were bright in the moonlight. George slammed his fists out and felt undead skulls and jaws collapse under his knuckles.

Another hundred yards and they’d be back inside.

“There’s no one on the Wall,” Barry called out.

St. George glanced back. The exes still seemed to be ignoring Freedom and his passengers. They brushed past or bumped into him, but their chattering teeth never came close. Danielle was curled up almost in a ball. Madelyn looked like she was concentrating. Barry and Freedom were both looking up.

“He’s right, sir,” said the captain. “No sentries.”

St. George looked up. There was no one up near the oversized globe of the Earth that sat on the corner of the Wall. His eyes ran along toward the gate. He didn’t see a single guard.

He caught an ex by the arm as it tried to grab him. “We’re almost there,” he said. “Just a few more minutes.”

They pushed ahead. St. George and Stealth cleared the path. Freedom followed before the exes could fill it back up.

They pushed past the last corner and saw the Melrose gate at the end of its short driveway, half-hidden in shadows. On the other side of an overgrown shrub, the guards held the wide gateway open. One gestured them in with slow waves while others held off the exes.

St. George made the last push through the exes. More of them were going after him and Stealth than the guards at the gate. He smashed the dead things aside. She battered them down. He made a last lunge with his arms wide, pushed half a dozen of them into the small garden with a squat palm tree, and left a clear path. Stealth rammed her baton into the side of an ex’s head and ran for the opening with Freedom and the others right behind her. The guard waved them in. The wave was an unsteady, somehow mechanical gesture, as if the man wasn’t quite aware he was doing it.

Stealth brought her baton up, shattering the guard’s jaw, then smashed it down on the top of his skull. The man swayed. She slipped through the gate, smacked aside another guard’s hands, and continued the swing into the back of the waving guard’s head. His face slammed into the bars and the impact rang through the gate.

Four long strides carried St. George to the gate. Up close he could see the waving man had been Derek, one of the Melrose guards almost from the day the Mount had been founded. He was dead. His skull was cracked and sagging.

From the color of his skin, he’d been dead for a while. One of his ears was gone, and most of the flesh around it. The arm that had been stuck in the bars, waving, was missing two fingers.

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