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

wide circle, feet pointing outward, their heads toward the center. The placement seemed too deliberate to be an accident. There wasn’t anything connecting them, but all of their heads were within twenty or thirty inches of each other.

Not our heads, St. George realized. Our brains. He’s got our minds close together.

He looked around. He was pretty sure he was in one of the old studio stages on the Mount. They’d all been converted into living space when the Mount had first been set up, but most of them had been abandoned since the Big Wall went up and people had better housing options. They’d been stripped down and left empty shells, with most of the lumber going to the Big Wall.

Empty shells no one ever went to.

He gave his friends a last look and then lumbered to the door. His limbs were stiff. He forced his legs to take longer steps, made his arms swing higher.

He pushed on the door. It was stuck. He hit the bar again, hard, and dented it. He heard something scrape, a bang, and a jingle of metal. The door swung open.

The sunlight was blinding. He saw a few stick figures heading toward him, and a few blinks put blurry flesh on them. They stopped a few yards away.

“Sir,” said one of them. It was a woman’s voice. “What were you doing in there?”

One last blink turned the blur into First Sergeant Kennedy. One of Freedom’s soldiers from Project Krypton. She was still wearing her uniform, but she’d rolled the sleeves up in tight, military fashion. Makana stood next to her. Alive. A few steps behind them were some other guards St. George recognized.

He looked over his shoulder. A huge, blue 32 was painted on the wall behind him. At his feet were a few broken links of chain and a twisted padlock. “What day is it?” he asked.

Makana raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“What day? How long have we been gone?”

“We?” asked Kennedy. “Is the captain with you?”

“We thought you were all off on a mission,” said Makana. “Have you just been sitting in there all this time?”

“How long?” snapped St. George.

Makana and Kennedy glanced at each other. “Maybe two days, sir,” the sergeant said. “You all left night before last.”

“You said you didn’t want to influence the election,” said Makana. “So you all went out on some scouting mission for a couple days, to check up on Legion or something.”

“What election?”

“The election for mayor,” Kennedy told him. After watching St. George’s expression, she added, “It was yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” St. George shook his head. Dates and times were a jumble. He tried to put everything in order, to make sense of it, and had a sudden understanding of what life had to be like for Madelyn on a regular basis. He took a deep breath while his memories sorted themselves out. “Who said we went away?”

Kennedy and Makana glanced at each other. “Well … you did,” said the dreadlocked man.

“When? How?”

Kennedy nodded in agreement. “You held a big meeting at the Melrose gate with four or five hundred of us. The captain, you, Stealth, Dr. Morris. You all said you were going to step away for three or four days.”

St. George looked at Kennedy. “When did he get here?”

“Sorry, sir?”

“Agent Smith,” he said. “John Smith. When did he get here?”

The first sergeant’s brow furrowed. “Agent Smith?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, we haven’t seen him since we left Project Krypton,” she said. “Last reports had him heading for Groom Lake.”

St. George stared at her. “He’s not here?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re sure he’s not here?”

Kennedy’s brows knotted for a minute, and then she scowled. She knew what he had done to her soldiers. And how he’d done it. “To the best of my knowledge,” she said, “Agent Smith has not been seen anywhere here at the Mount, sir.”

He looked at her for a moment, and then at Makana. “Okay,” he said. “Wait here.”

He staggered back into the stage. His legs were warming up, and his blood was flowing. He looked at the ring of his friends and made a decision.

He gathered Stealth in his arms, cradled her head, and looked up. The ceiling was about forty feet up. He glanced at her masked face, back up at one of the high girders, and threw her into the air.

Her cloak whipped around her as she soared upward. She rolled once, twice, and reached the top of her climb. Her knuckles rapped on one of the china-hat lights.

Then she plunged back down.

He flew up and caught her in midair. Her cape had wrapped around her like a shroud. She was limp in his arms. He put his ear close to her mouth and felt the same slow breaths.

“Damn it.”

He landed near the others and set her back down on her blanket.

“Boss?”

St. George looked over his shoulder. Makana had followed him in. The dreadlocked man gazed at the heroes sprawled on the floor of the huge space.

“Are they all …?”

St. George shook his head. “They’re alive,” he said. “I just can’t wake them up.”

Makana looked at him, then at the empty blanket he’d been on. “How’d you wake up?”

“Stealth had Freedom throw me out a fourth-floor window.”

“What?”

“Not important. I think Smith knew she’d be the hardest to keep under his control. She probably got a double dose or whatever it is he does.”

The dreadlocked man looked at the others. “So you can’t wake ’em up?”

“I don’t know.” St. George shifted, kneeled, and patted Madelyn’s cheeks. Up close he could see her eyes were dry. He shook her shoulders and poked her in the side.

“Pinch her earlobes,” said Makana. “I heard once that’s a good way to wake people up.”

St. George tried it. Nothing. He picked her up in his arms. “Stand back,” he said. “I’m going to try this again.”

Madelyn’s body tumbled toward the ceiling. Her arms swayed and her back arched. She reached her high point, her head tipped back, and she started to plummet back toward the stage floor.

Then she blinked twice and screamed.

St. George leaped into the air