Ex-Purgatory, Peter Clines [top ten books of all time .txt] 📗

old plaster. The bottom half of its face sagged. Teeth scattered on the pavement.

It didn’t seem to notice. The left side of its face twitched as dead muscles tugged at the shards that had been its jawbone. The motion shook another tooth free from the ragged hole of its mouth.

George pulled his arm back and punched again. He didn’t hold back. The dead woman’s head shattered like a piñata. A double handful of wet tissue splattered across the hood of a parked car. The body tumbled to the pavement.

Jersey guy’s arms wrapped around George. They were thick and meaty, the arms of an athlete. Even in death, they were pretty strong.

George threw himself against the dead man. They hurled back, and jersey guy’s teeth scratched between George’s shoulder blades. He had a moment of intense déjà vu and realized he was living his dream—tumbling through the air and fighting monsters.

They crashed into something solid. An SUV. Jersey guy took most of the impact. George heard glass crackle and metal squeal. The arms holding him twitched and sagged.

He stepped away from the big truck and looked at the monster. The impact had caved in its rib cage. It slid down the side of the SUV and tried to raise its arms. Without anything to push off of, its shoulder blades flopped under the football jersey.

George reached down and grabbed it by the jaw and the back of the skull. It tried to bite his fingers, but it didn’t seem to have any strength. Like a puppy trying to be savage, it couldn’t even break the skin.

He twisted the thing’s skull, just like assassins and other bad-asses did in the movies. There was a double-snap, like popping bubble wrap, and the body went limp. Its jaw kept gnawing at his fingers. He let go and the monster slumped next to the SUV.

He turned around. They’d staggered back much farther than he thought. His kick had propelled him and the monster over fifteen feet.

The corpse in the long coat had crossed the parking lot. It reached for him and he grabbed its wrists. He twisted around and sent it sailing into the trunk of a primer-colored muscle car. It hit the trunk skull-first and collapsed.

The dead woman with the golden-brown hair flailed on the pavement. On a guess, he’d broken its back when he flipped it over his shoulder. He reached down and twisted the woman’s head around. It felt right, somehow. Merciful. They were already dead, but this way they were more at rest. They weren’t walking.

George looked at the parking lot and the bodies and the dust-covered cars with smashed windows and the distant figures shambling across campus.

He waited for the hallucination to end.

His nose was bleeding again.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER George blinked and the world changed. The bodies vanished. The cars were clean and whole. The people in the distance picked up their pace and moved with smooth, even gaits.

He stood in the parking lot a few yards from his car. According to his phone, ten minutes had passed since he walked out of Madelyn’s dorm room, not the thirty-odd ones he remembered. There was no sign of the grad student with the argyle sweater vest.

There was blood on his knuckles. It was thick and grimy, more of a sludge than a liquid. His fingertips had oily grime on them. Residue from the dead woman’s crushed skull. It was under his nails. It smelled a bit like rust without the sharp tang.

He walked to the closest dorm and found a bathroom. There was no soap because it wasn’t intended to be public. He considered finding one of the supply closets and grabbing some soap and paper towels, but he didn’t want to wait to clean himself.

He cranked the hot water and washed his hands twice. The water felt hot, but not hot enough to scald him. He scrubbed his face, too, and snorted some water into his nose. It rinsed out red, then pink, and then clear.

His fingers were free of all residue. The nails were clean. The knuckles didn’t have any cuts or scrapes.

None at all.

He turned his head and pulled at his ear. The dark-haired dead woman had chewed on it for almost a minute. He twisted the lobe back and forth, but couldn’t see a scratch. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled his collar down. His shoulder wasn’t even bruised where the other monster had gnawed on him.

A young man walked in wrapped in a towel. He was carrying a bucket of shower supplies. He glanced at George, smirked, and headed into one of the shower stalls. A moment later the sound of running water echoed in the bathroom.

George buttoned up and headed back out to his car. He stood by it for a moment and looked around. A trio of students walked across the parking lot. He closed his eyes, counted to five, and looked at them again.

Still just students.

He dropped into the driver’s seat and pushed the key into the ignition. It took him a minute to gather his thoughts. Then he pulled out his phone. He tapped a few keys and closed his eyes again while it rang.

The ringing stopped. Nick’s voice echoed over the phone. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I need a favor.”

“Yeah, sure, what?”

George paused for a moment. “It’s a face-to-face favor,” he said, “but I can’t get over there, and I don’t think I can wait until next time we go out.”

“Okay.”

“I need a work favor.”

“What?”

“I need you to find out something for me.”

He could hear Nick’s brow furrowing. “Okay.”

“You said your agency represents pretty much every big name, right? Actors, directors, models.”

“Yeah, right. If you know their name, odds are pretty good they’re with us.”

“What about Karen Quilt?”

Nick made a sound like a grunt. “Pretty sure she is, yeah.” The click-click-click of a keyboard echoed over the phone’s speaker. “Yeah, we rep her. And I can tell you right now, she’s not dead.”

“It isn’t that.”

“You want an autograph