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

duster protects him. It gnaws away at the material. He shakes it loose and drives the heel of his palm into its forehead. It stumbles back and tips over. It makes no attempt to slow its fall and its skull hits the ground with a crack. The noise is loud enough that I realize—on that higher dream-level—that it’s going to wake me up. The last shreds of memory fall away, but Gorgon says one last thing before they do.

“Why are you still dreaming about me, George?”

“AS OF RIGHT now, our first priority is to check for survivors,” said St. George. “I’m guessing that’s going to come down to me. I’ll start as soon as the sun’s up. I can try to grab some more clothes for everyone and maybe find a wheelchair for Barry.”

“I need my wheels, man,” said Barry with a nod.

St. George had shaken out his shirt and knocked some of the dried matter off, but it still smelled like death. Stealth, on the other hand, had found a tight black turtleneck that looked like a cross between spandex and body armor. She looked a lot more comfortable in it.

They stood around the far end of the conference table. Madelyn was still sleeping, but there was enough space for all of them to gather around the rough sketch of the Mount Danielle had made.

St. George glanced at Christian. She hovered on the edge of the little group. She still hadn’t said much, but she’d been fine with eating their food. “Christian?” he asked. “Any information you’ve got would be great.”

She shook her head, then looked at the map. “There were two families over on Stage 29,” she said. “The Dvorskis and the Randolphs. We all talked with walkies for a while, but the batteries ran out. I haven’t heard from them in a month, I think. Someone said Father Andy took people into his church when the walls fell, but I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

“I’ll check them all out.”

Her lip twisted into a sneer. “Some of the scavengers struck out on their own about a month ago. No idea what happened to them.”

St. George thought of Billie Carter in the truck with the pistol in her lap. “Second goal is setting up a safe zone,” he said, pushing the image from his mind.

Stealth tapped the different gates into the studio on the map. “The Mount is still defendable for the same reasons it was originally chosen. St. George can check the gates with relative safety. Once the perimeter is secure, we can terminate all exes within the studio grounds and better assess our resources.”

St. George looked at Barry. “This would be a lot easier if you could power up.”

“Don’t I know it.” Barry shook his head. “I’ve got nothing. I’m pretty sure the switch is still there in my head somewhere, but it’s like I’m feeling around in the dark and can’t find it.”

“I know what you mean.” St. George looked at the map and tapped Danielle’s workshop. “Third goal. Cerberus.”

Danielle set her jaw.

“If we get everything cleaned out, how long do you think it’ll take to get up and running again?”

She tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “Hard to say. From what I saw, I know I’ll have to rebuild the lenses and screens from scratch, most of the inter-component connections, too.” She glanced at Barry. “Assuming we can get power back up, that’s a solid three weeks of work right there.”

He coughed into his hand. “A real three weeks,” he said, “or are you trying to sound like a miracle worker?”

Danielle snorted, but her lips almost twitched into a smile. “It’s a month of work,” she said. “If I get really lucky with a couple of things and there’s some decent replacement parts kicking around, maybe three weeks. It’ll all depend on what I find when I do a full diagnostic. As long as most of the computer systems are still intact and I can find all the missing components, I should be able to get the rest of it running again. Eventually.”

“That brings us back to the big, overall question,” said St. George. “What happened here?”

They all glanced at Christian, but she stared past them and out the dark window.

St. George took in a breath to speak, but she cut him off.

“You’re all so full of shit.”

Stealth raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

“All this acting so concerned,” said Christian. “Acting innocent. It won’t work. Are you trying to get me to buy into it so I’ll be on your side? Everyone knows what you did.” She stared back out the window. “Everyone who’s left, anyway.”

“I know you’re not our biggest fan,” St. George began with a sigh. Then something in her tone, her inflection, gnawed at him. “Wait, are you saying,” he started again. “Do you actually think we had something to do with this? With whatever attacked the Mount?”

“There wasn’t any attack,” she spat at him. “It was just you.”

Freedom stood up straight and looked at St. George. So did Barry and Danielle.

St. George blinked twice. “What?”

She pointed an accusing finger at him. The nail was chipped. “You were out with the scavengers a few months ago. They said you just abandoned them and walked away, talking about dumpsters or something. No one knew what to do, so they just let you go.”

He exchanged a glance with Stealth and shifted on his feet.

She glared at him. “A week later you came back and started pounding on the Big Wall. Just punching the cars. You stopped before it fell over, and then wandered off again. A few days later you came back and knocked a hole in the West Wall. We had guards there for three days straight while we tried to figure out how to make it safe.”

“No.” He shook his head. “There’s no way I would’ve done that. I was—”

“Then you did it again,” she yelled. “Just lording it over us that they couldn’t hurt you.