Ex-Isle

by Peter Clines

  “Never mind,” sighed Barry.

  “Past that, we got a bunch of clothes. Some extra cookware. And a bunch of gardening tools.”

  St. George nodded. “Lucky.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No offense,” said Barry, “but, uh, why aren’t you wearing any of the clothes?”

  “We are,” said Peel. He tugged at his shirt. “Almost six hundred people, almost five years. Clothes don’t last forever. We’ve gone through all five containers worth, plus everything we could find here on the Queen.”

  Little Devon took the girl’s empty bowl, stacked it in his own, and held them out between the cage bars for the guard. The boy leaned in, grabbed the two bowls by Barry, and pushed those out, too. “I’ll leave you the canteen,” the guard said. “It’s gonna get pretty hot out here around noon.”

  St. George wiggled one of his fingers to point up at the cage’s top. “Can you talk to someone about throwing a blanket or a sheet over this?”

  Peel’s mouth twisted into another sad smile. “Don’t think they’ll go for giving you privacy.”

  “Not privacy,” said St. George, “just some shade for the kids so they’re not out in the sun all day.”

  The guard looked over at the girl and Little Devon, and his face shifted.

  “If it helps, you can even put it all on that side so I don’t get any shade. That’ll score you points, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It will. Sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  The sunburned guard stood up with the bowls and swung his tray under one arm. He looked at the two prisoners. “Are you really him? The Mighty Dragon?”

  St. George nodded. “I am.”

  “He is,” agreed Barry.

  The guard glanced over at Mitchel again, then crouched back down. “How’d you survive the bomb? Where were you?”

  “There was no bomb,” said St. George.

  “So what destroyed LA then?”

  “Nothing. Los Angeles is there, in one piece. It’s got a ton of exes, but there’s over twenty thousand survivors, too.”

  “Twenty thousand,” echoed Peel. He whistled.

  “Ryan,” yelled Mitchel. “Give ’em their food and then leave ’em the fuck alone!”

  “I’m getting the bowls,” the peeling guard—Ryan—shouted over his shoulder.

  “How long’s it take you to pick up a fucking bowl? Get out of there.” The cowboy marched across the deck and used his shotgun to wave sunburned Ryan away from the cage.

  The guard gave St. George a thoughtful look, then walked away.

  Barry twisted his head around. “You know what?”

  “What?” St. George stretched his fingers again, brushing them against the handcuff chains.

  “I think this is the longest I’ve been human in about four years.”

  Little Devon’s eyes got wide.

  “What?”

  Barry shrugged, and the chain hopped away from St. George’s fingertips. “Well, I mean, I’m in the electric chair so much of the time, doing the power thing. I’m out for eight or nine hours at the most, and I usually spend that asleep.”

  “Is it everything you remember?”

  “Being human? Not really, no.”

  “You’re not human?” asked Little Devon.

  Barry smiled. “No, I’m human. I can change, though. Kind of like Nautilus does.”

  “You turn into fire.” This from the little girl. St. George realized he still didn’t know her name.

  “Yeah, sort of,” said Barry.

  Little Devon looked at him. “Does it hurt?”

  “A little bit. The change stings for a second or two. But once it happens…it’s great.”

  A guard walked up. The Asian man with the tattoos. He looked to the kids and fired off a few quick syllables. Little Devon answered back in the same language.

  The guard set his shotgun down away from the cage and pulled some folded blue fabric out from under his arm. He shook it out, and St. George realized it was a tablecloth. The guard flicked it across the cage, like he was making a bed, and shade fell across Barry and the kids.

  “Thank you,” said St. George.

  Little Devon said something else. The guard glanced at St. George and grunted. He picked up his shotgun and walked away.

  “Dude,” Barry smiled at the boy, “what was all that?”

  “What?”

  “What were you speaking?”

  “Oh,” said Little Devon, “it’s Chinese. A bunch of people are from Chinese boats, so a lot of us learned it.”

  St. George turned his head. “You can speak Chinese? That’s amazing.”

  Little Devon blushed under his red cap. “A lot of people can. I’m not very good.”

  St. George leaned back and lowered his voice. “Have you noticed their guns?”

  Barry nodded. “All the shotguns? Yeah.”

  “Not just shotguns. I’m no expert, but I think they’re all the same model. I think all the people with pistols have the same make and holster, too.”

  “So, about twenty, twenty-five matching weapons. Sounds like an armory to me.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Or maybe your basic starship replicator unit.”

  “I’m going to stick with armory for now,” said St. George. He drummed his fingers on the deck. “Thing is, I didn’t think cruise ships were allowed to have armories. Nothing bigger than a basic weapons locker.”

  “They’re not?”

  “I don’t think so. I seem to remember reading it somewhere before, back when all the Somali pirate stuff was happening.”

  “Huh,” said Barry. “Could be from this ship or the tanker.”

  “Why so many, then? These ships are big, but I’m pretty sure they have small crews for their size. Just off what we’ve seen, that’s more guns than crew members.”

  “Maybe there aren’t that many. Maybe they’re just passing them off to each other so we always see people with big guns.”

  “Maybe,” St. George said. “I don’t think so, though. There were a lot when we first landed, and at that whole trial-meeting get-together.”

  “Yeah, good point.”

  “I’m hungry,” said the girl.

  “Me, too, kiddo,” Barry said. He turned his head back toward St. George. “What about one of those bigger yachts? Not too hard to believe some billionaire’d load up their boat with an arsenal to prepare for the end of the world.”

  “Yeah, for all the good it did,” said St. George. “Still seems like too many of the same thing, though. Would someone like that have an arsenal or a collection?”

  “Hmmmmm. I’d go for the collection, personally. But maybe that’s just me.”

  St. George turned to look out at the sea. The sunlight pinged and sparked off the slow waves. “Do you think there’ve been any other ships here? Like, ships they looted or got people off of, but then they got rid of the ship?”

  “I don’t know.” Barry looked at the kids. “Did you guys ever hear about anything like that? Did a boat ever just stop by for a while and not stay?”

  The girl shrugged twice. Little Devon shook his head. “Everyone stays.”

  Barry straightened up a bit. “Hey, what about…No, forget it.”

  “What?”

  “I was going to say what if it was smugglers. Gunrunners, whatever you’d call ’em. Maybe somebody on one of the ships had a side business. But shotguns seem kind of low-end for that.”

  “Yeah. You’d expect M-16s or AK-47s or something like that.”

  “Exactly. Oh, frak me.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think there are zombie Somali pirates out there somewhere? That would be so awesome.”

  Little Devon’s real name was Ash, which Barry found very entertaining but wouldn’t say why. The little girl was Lily. Ash remembered living on land and having a dog. Lily had been born on the ships.

  Leather-skinned Alice brought lunch. It was more stew, chunki
er this time. She replaced the canteen, ignored their questions while they ate, and walked away with the empty bowls.

  The gardeners continued to stare as they worked the huge beds. Their expressions ranged from fear to anger. An older man with a broad face gazed at St. George with disgust. Two or three of them looked hopeful.

  St. George studied them back. Some of them picked beans or peas. Others just seemed to be maintaining the beds themselves, pushing and adjusting the wobbly plastic liner that held the soil in place. He wondered what it had been intended for before necessity took over.

  A new figure came around the corner of one of the distant containers and walked toward them along the raised garden beds. It was the Middle Eastern man St. George had seen a few times before. Mitchel moved to intercept him. They talked, and their voices went up as they talked some more. The tall man stepped past Mitchel, and the guard yelled after him, “Nobody’s supposed to talk to them.”

  “I will talk to them, and I will do it without you hanging over my shoulder.”

  “You’re not allowed.”

  “On whose orders?” asked the Middle Eastern man without looking back. His words were tight and precise, the dialect of English as a second language

  Mitchel took a few quick steps to keep up. “You know whose.”

  “You heard this directly from Nautilus?”

  “From Eliza.”

  He stopped short, and Mitchel almost ran into him. “Eliza is a mate, just like me,” said the Middle Eastern man. “My orders carry as much weight as hers.”

  The mustached man snorted. “You wish.”

  “Are you challenging my authority? Do you want me to bring up your insubordination to Nautilus during our next meeting?”

  “You know what? You go ahead and shoot your mouth off. I’m sending a runner.”

  The Middle Eastern man waved him off and headed toward the cage. “Do that, if it makes you feel better.”

  Mitchel fumed for a moment, his fingers flexing along his shotgun. Then he bellowed, “Fuck you, towelhead,” and marched to the other end of the raised bed. One of the farmers got in his way, and Mitchel swung the shotgun at the woman.

  “Man,” said Barry, “he is such a nice guy. I really need to spend more time with him.”

  The Middle Eastern man walked up to the cage. He glanced at St. George and Barry, then crouched in a spot where they could both see him. “We do not have much time,” he said. “Ten minutes at best. He will send a runner, and there is a good chance Nautilus himself will come to see what is happening. His hearing is exceptional. He will hear us talking from a hundred yards away.”

  “Makes sense,” said Barry. “Got to have good hearing underwater. Especially if he’s got sonar or something.”

  The man looked at them through the cage bars. “My name is Hussein Haddad.”

  “Good to meet you, Hussein,” St. George said. “I’d shake your hand, but…” He shook the handcuffs binding him to Barry.

  Hussein bowed his head. “I apologize to you both for your treatment. Many of us here feel this is not right, but we are not the majority and have no say in things.”

  “You seemed to have a bit of say with our cruise director back there,” said Barry.

  Hussein glanced over his shoulder. “Mitchel is a petty man, a backstabber with no real backbone. He always has been. If he cannot have power of his own, he clings to those who do have it. Or cringes from them.”

  “Like you,” said St. George. “You’re a…mate?”

  “Like first mate,” said Hussein. “There are several of us below Nautilus. We are each in charge of an area. A ship. I am the mate of the Jonah III, the fishing vessel off the port side of the Hannah.”

  St. George turned the other way, toward the cruise ship. “That’s the oil tanker, yes?”

  He nodded.

  “Shouldn’t that be first officer?” asked Barry.

  “It was agreed we should not use the word officer,” he said. “It makes it sound like we…”

  “Like you have some authority?” said St. George.

  Hussein shuffled a bit closer to the cage. “There is only one authority here,” he said, lowering his voice, “and everything is set up so he remains the only one. Any other title is more about bearing responsibility than wielding any sort of power.”

  “Hussein,” barked a voice. The wrinkle-faced old man who’d looked at the heroes with disgust. “You heard Mitchel. Leave them be.”

  “Mind your own business, Malachi,” shouted Hussein.

  “Malachi,” repeated St. George.

  “He was the head chef on the Queen,” said Hussein with a nod at the big cruise ship. “His training made him the best choice for raising plants.”

  “Malachi working in the corn,” murmured Barry. “Nothing to worry about there.” He cleared his throat. “So, what brings you out here, Hussein? Sunset view? You’re early for dinner, but I’ve heard a rumor it’s going to be the fish stew tonight. It’s worth waiting for, believe me.”

  “I wanted to tell you not everyone here is like this,” he said.

  “And you’re telling us this because…”

  Hussein bit his lip. “Because when the fight began, you both put yourselves at risk to protect the children. The children we put in harm’s way to hinder you.”

  “Not the first time you’ve done it, from what we hear,” Barry said.

  “It is not. And it sickens many of us every time it happens.” He inched closer to the cage bars. “Are you the Mighty Dragon?”

  “Yeah. Most people go with St. George now. Or just George.”

  “Or lovable idiot,” added Barry.

  Hussein smirked.

  “You believe us?”

  “I do not know if you are…were…the Mighty Dragon,” said Hussein, “but you are definitely not Marduk. Back before the ex-humans, I saw him twice in person when I visited family in Baghdad.”

  “I’ll take what I can get,” said St. George.

  Hussein nodded. “Everyone is so convinced you are not from California they ignore the fact you must be from somewhere. Somewhere where people are alive and well.”

  “We’re from California,” said Barry. “Honest.”

  “We have a safe zone,” said St. George. “Two now. It’s not fantastic, but people have homes and they feel safe.”

  “Safe,” said Hussein. He looked at both of them, glanced over his shoulder, then studied their faces again. “You have room for others?”

  “Others…other people?” St. George nodded. “Like I’ve been saying, that’s the whole reason we came out here. To see if any of you needed help.”

  “There are many who feel like I do. We would leave Lemuria, but we have few supplies, and many believe there is nowhere else to go.” He set a hand on the bars of the cage and nodded at the children shackled to Barry. “If we help you escape, will you help us leave?”

  St. George nodded. “If people don’t want to be here, of course. Like we keep saying, that’s why we’re—”

  “Company,” said Barry, coughing into his hand. Hussein turned his head, and St. George tried to twist his neck enough to see.

  Four figures marched down the deck along the garden beds. Hussein stood up out of his crouch and waited for them. Little Ash perked up.

  Even with his bad viewpoint, St. George could see Nautilus in the lead. His skin was sky blue and glossy. Three people followed close behind him. As they got closer, St. George recognized Mitchel, Eliza, and Devon. Barry hummed something familiar, and it took St. George a minute to realize it was the Darth Vader music from Star Wars.

  The quartet stopped almost behind Hussein. Devon took a few more steps, but stopped a few feet from the cage. A few expressions and lip-read words passed between him and Ash, confirming what St. George suspected.

  “Hussein,” rumbled the merman.

  He dipped his head. “Nautilus.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Hussein turned and waved a casual hand
at St. George. “I was trying to get them to talk. The stick had not worked. I attempted the carrot. I wanted to see if they would slip up and reveal who they were.”

  “I see,” said Nautilus. “So you’re saying…I’m the bad cop.”

  “The what?”

  The shark smile spread across his face. “I’m joking, friend.” He set a webbed hand on Hussein’s shoulder. “Did they tell you anything useful?”

  “Nothing. They still insist their story is true.”

  Nautilus stared down at the heroes with his ink-black eyes. “I see.”

  Hussein cleared his throat. “Is there…is there any chance they’re telling the truth?”

  Eliza’s eyebrows went up.

  “What?” The merman looked at him. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  “It’s just…They’re so adamant about their story. It may be a lie, but I think they believe it is the truth.”

  “You’re too trusting,” said Nautilus. “They’re not who they say they are. They can’t be.”

  “We are,” said St. George.

  The merman took another step toward the cage. Hussein stepped away and cleared a path. “I’m going to make you an offer,” Nautilus said. “Stop talking about Los Angeles, stop calling yourself the Mighty Dragon, and we’ll let you out of the cage. I can’t have you confusing people.”

  “Can I call myself the Mighty Dragon?” asked Barry. “Because, to be honest, it’d be a lot easier. He’s not using it anymore, and everybody spells Zzzap wrong.”

  Eliza scowled at him. “You still think this is a joke?”

  “Yeah,” said St. George, “I do. I’m just trying to figure out the punchline.”

  “Oh, that was good,” said Barry.

  “Thanks.”

  “The ‘punchline,’ ” Nautilus said, “is I’m willing to do anything to keep these people safe. I’m not going to give them false hope and see them get hurt.” His voice shifted tone and pitch as he talked, and he became the politician and showman who’d spoken the other day in the courtyard.

  “Except this isn’t false hope,” said St. George. A wisp of smoke slipped from his lips as he shook his head. “Seriously, what happened out here that made you all so paranoid?”