Ex-Isle

by Peter Clines

  Zzzap applied heat and welded the block and tackle into a lump of metal. Two strands of the aircraft cable melted and curled apart. He flinched. No room for mistakes. Fast, but not rushed.

  Once he was done, a quick brush of his fingers fused the shotgun to the tanker’s deck. The heat cooked off a round, and the guard flinched away from the thunder. “I never would’ve hurt ’em,” whimpered the man. He dropped to his knees and held up his hands. “I swear, man.”

  The wraith sliced through the night sky and down to the fishing boat. This cage was on some kind of chain hoist, and an arm made from a steel pipe. Three kids, one of them a boy close to ten or eleven. No sign of a guard. He ran his hand along the links and fused about a yard of chain into a solid rod.

  Footsteps came from behind him. A sagging man with a greasy Picard hairline and a thin pelt of chest hair inside his open shirt. He saw the glowing silhouette and fumbled with his weapon.

  Zzzap rushed at the man, stopping a few feet away. QUICK, he yelled. Abandon ship before it’s too late!

  The man turned and ran for the railing. He stopped himself after a few hasty steps, but when he turned back Zzzap had his hand up, and the air was shimmering with heat. He glanced down at his shotgun.

  Just toss it overboard, said Zzzap. If I have to take care of it, there’s always a chance it could just blow up in your hands.

  The man looked at the heat rippling off the wraith, then tossed the weapon over the railing.

  Good job. Now go in after it.

  The sagging man glanced after his shotgun. “It…it’s already sunk.”

  Don’t kill the moment with details. Just jump off the boat.

  “I can’t really….I’m not a good swimmer.”

  Zzzap flitted out over the water and then back between the guard and the children. There’s a couple of ropes dragging in the water. You’ll be able to climb out or you can hold on until someone comes to rescue you. He pointed at the railing.

  The man sighed and swung a thick leg over the railing. He tottered for a second, then slipped and splashed below. “I’m okay,” he yelled up.

  Good. Don’t think about Jaws while you’re down there. Zzzap turned to the cage. Sorry about all that. Hopefully we’ll have you out of there soon, okay?

  “What’s going on?” asked the boy.

  A couple things. I’m sure your parents will explain it all to you when you’re older.

  St. George rolled his shoulders. His back was stiff as hell from sitting on the deck. He took in a deep breath and let it billow out as smoke. Ash watched with wide eyes.

  Madelyn ran up to him. “You didn’t even wait for me to get the last guy.”

  “Yeah. We were a little impatient after a day and a half in the cage.” His eyes dropped away from hers, down to her chest.

  Madelyn stared back, and her brow wrinkled up. Then she blinked and glanced down at the gash in her swimsuit. “Oh!” she said. “I’m fine. Just a flesh wound.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t even hit bone.”

  A blur of light shot past them, lighting up the deck.

  She watched Zzzap hover over the distant crane tower, and then the gleaming silhouette flitted away. “So what’s the plan, boss?”

  “Barry’s going to keep making sure the kids are okay. That nobody tries to carry out the threat after the fact. If you can keep an eye on Lily and Ash, I’m going to go get the others out of their cages.”

  “Okay.”

  Zzzap shot by again. In the flash of light, St. George saw people heading toward them across the deck. It had been too fast to see who. “Maybe I’ll stay here for another minute or two, though.”

  Madelyn raised her head. “Two men and a woman,” she said. “About a hundred feet away.”

  “Do you recognize them?”

  “C’mon, boss,” she sighed. “It’s a miracle I recognize you and Barry.”

  He managed a tight smile. “Stay with the kids.”

  Madelyn crouched down, and Lily’s wide eyes locked on the Corpse Girl. “Are you a zombie?” the little girl whispered.

  “Nooo…” Madelyn said. “I’m not an ex. I’m…I’m a ghost.”

  “Are you a friendly ghost?”

  “Of course I am.” She smiled at the little girl.

  “No you’re not,” said Ash. He reached out and poked her in the shoulder.

  “I am. Do I smell like a dead person?”

  “Your clothes do,” he said. “You’re a zombie.”

  Madelyn kept her smile up. “Not exactly.”

  “Ash,” called a voice.

  “Dad!” The boy ran toward the figures as they marched out of the gloom. Devon scooped him up and hugged him.

  “It appears our jailbreak comes a little too late,” said Hussein.

  “Still nice to see a friendly face. I wasn’t sure you were coming. You did kind of an about-face.”

  The Middle Eastern man nodded. “We have long since learned, when Nautilus talks, it’s best just to agree. And I did wink. I thought you saw it.”

  St. George nodded once and turned his attention to the woman. “I’ve got to admit, you’re one of the last ones I expected to see here.”

  “I’m not stupid,” said Eliza. She brushed her leather jacket back and set her hands on her hips above her holsters. “I owe Nautilus a lot. I’ve always trusted him. But you being here brings up a lot of…I just want the truth.”

  “Good enough.”

  “Thank you,” said Devon. He extended one hand out to St. George while he held Ash with the other. “Thanks for watching out for my boy.”

  “She’s a zombie,” Ash stage-whispered to his father, pointing at Madelyn, “but she’s a pretty one.”

  “Awwww,” said Madelyn.

  Eliza stared at the Corpse Girl. “He ripped you in half,” she said. “Tore you in half and broke your neck.”

  Madelyn looked down at her torso. “Did he?”

  “You were dead,” said Devon. “I helped…” He glanced at his son. “I helped clean you up.”

  “The dead never stay dead,” said Madelyn with a confident smile. “Especially not when they’re dead sexy like me.”

  “Stop,” said St. George.

  The deck brightened, and Zzzap was above them. There’s some people over on the tanker. They say they’re there to free the kids. Are they with us?

  Eliza nodded. “They’re with us. Should be two or three people at every cage.”

  So now you’re with us, too? Zzzap looked to St. George and got a nod. The silhouette gave a quick salute and zoomed away.

  “How many of you are there?” asked St. George.

  “A few dozen,” said Hussein. “People are nervous about admitting their true feelings. There’s us, the people rescuing the children, a few more watching the gangplanks between ships.” He gestured behind him. “Huojin was our inside man. He was going to help us take out Mitchel and Russ before they could sound the alarm.”

  “He was a good guy?” Madelyn looked past them and frowned. “Sorry.”

  “He knew what might happen,” said Eliza.

  “So where’s Nautilus?” asked St. George. “Aren’t you worried he might hear all of this?”

  Eliza shook her head. “He’s gone fishing.”

  “What?”

  “No, seriously,” said Devon. “He’s gone off to catch a couple tunas or something. We fish off the boats all the time, but once a week or so he’ll go catch a couple huge fish and we all eat well for a night.”

  “Since we could be gone for several days,” Hussein explained, “he thought it would be best to go now, so there is extra food here while we are away.”

  “That seems…thoughtful,” said St. George.

  “If kind of odd, timing-wise,” Madelyn added. She knelt with one hand out, and Lily studied the pale flesh with all the intensity of a focused four-year-old.

  “He’s gone for now, that’s all that matters,” said Eliza. “Hussein says you’re w
illing to make sure we can all leave safely.”

  “Yeah,” said St. George.

  “We’ll need to go see the mainland and come back,” she said. People are going to want proof.”

  “Besides us?” asked Madelyn.

  “Yes,” said Hussein. “They’ll need to hear it from people they know.”

  St. George nodded. “Of course.”

  Zzzap flashed through the night sky and lit up the deck. Kids are all safe, he said. Anything cool going on here?

  “Just a little rebellion,” St. George said.

  Muah-hah-ha, said the brilliant wraith. This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi, it will soon see—Hey, y’know, all the good quotes about the Rebellion are very pro-Empire.

  “Hi, Barry,” said Ash.

  Hey, you found your dad.

  “Yup.”

  “Can I go home now?” Lily asked Madelyn.

  “I think so.” The Corpse Girl looked up at the others. “Do you know where her parents are?”

  “They’re in one of the staterooms on board the Queen,” Hussein said. “People whose children are chosen get the best accommodations.”

  Gosh, I’m surprised more people aren’t up for it, said Zzzap.

  The deck shifted under their feet. A low vibration echoed up through the hull, the aftershock of a gong. Every inch of the ship trembled, then settled.

  “What the hell was that?” Devon looked back and forth across the deck. His eyes settled on St. George.

  The hero put up his hands. “How should I know?”

  Madelyn stood up and kept a hand on Lily’s shoulder. “Did we hit something?”

  “We are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” said Hussein. “There is precious little for us to hit.”

  “Another ship?”

  “We’d’ve seen it coming,” said Steve.

  The deep clang echoed from below again. Madelyn looked over the railing. “We’re running into something,” she said.

  Could the ships be bumping against each other?

  “Not in calm water,” said Hussein, “and it doesn’t sound like that when they do.”

  Zzzap shot up into the air and made a quick circle around the ships. He zipped back down to them. I don’t see anything, he said. It’s got to be something underwater.

  “What?” said Devon. “Like Hussein said, we’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s too deep for reefs.”

  “Maybe something new?” Madelyn looked over the railing again. “An underwater volcano or something? Or a shipwreck?”

  “Still too deep,” Hussein said.

  The sound echoed up through the hull. This time St. George saw the cruise ship tremble, too. Either the shockwave was growing, or it had been hit, too.

  It had been hit. The words echoed in his mind. They hadn’t hit something, they’d been hit.

  “Oh, hell,” he said. “I don’t think Nautilus went fishing.”

  “WHY?” SAID DANIELLE. “What would they get out of it?”

  “They get to be in charge again,” said Cesar. He glanced out at the courtyard. The sounds of exercise went on without pause. “I always said you can’t trust the government people.”

  “Hell, yeah,” agreed Hector.

  “They’re not the government,” said Gibbs. “They’re the military.”

  “Same thing,” Cesar said.

  “Not even close,” said Danielle. “But it still leaves me asking why.”

  “Government paranoia aside, I think Cesar’s right,” said Gibbs. “Think about it. They’ve got their own enclave set up here. A safe zone, a decent supply of weapons and ammunition, two big trucks with gasoline. Almost, what, three quarters of the Valley has never been scavenged, so there’s even more supplies.”

  “And they got a whole garden,” said Hector, “and people to work it for them.”

  Danielle ran it through her head again. “I don’t know. I’d buy Taylor staging some kind of mutiny, maybe Hancock following him, but not Truman or Pierce. Definitely not Kennedy.”

  “Pierce was out there scavenging,” Hector said with a snort. “He’s the one who lied about the supplies.”

  “I just…” She closed her eyes. “If Barry was here, he’d be rattling off some stupid movie rules about the military doing crazy things during a zombie apocalypse. No offense,” she said to Gibbs.

  “None taken,” the lieutenant said. “But we’re a ways after the apocalypse now, and this isn’t a movie.”

  They all watched her, waiting for a cue.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go ask them.”

  Cesar’s eyes got wide. “Just like that?”

  “I don’t want to waste time on this,” she said, walking across the room. “It’s either something we need to deal with right now or not at all. So let’s go find out.”

  Gibbs came up behind her. “We shouldn’t…”

  “Shouldn’t what?”

  Gibbs’s gaze flitted back to the Longshot. “We shouldn’t go out there unarmed. Just in case.”

  “We won’t be,” said Danielle. She looked at Cesar. “Get in the suit.”

  “What?”

  “Now. We need muscle backing us up.”

  “It’s still charging,” he said. “We’ll only have an hour, tops.”

  She glanced at Gibbs. “One way or another, I don’t think this’ll take long.”

  Cesar nodded and tugged off his gloves. He followed her into the courtyard and wrapped his fingers around two of the main struts in the exoskeleton’s torso. Electricity climbed across his body. It arced between him and the suit. Three small cracks echoed in the air and he vanished. “Yeah,” said the battlesuit. “I’m only at twenty-three percent in here.”

  Gibbs stepped in and unhooked the power cable. “It’ll have to do.”

  The skeletal titan flexed its fingers.

  Danielle walked through the wide door and stepped out under the canopy. She curled her hands into fists as she left the walls behind her. A shudder tried to start in her gut and she clamped down on it. No weakness. Not now.

  Most of the Unbreakables were there, working out in the long, end-of-day shadows. Johnson and Wilson traded places on the weight bench. Hancock held one of the big plates in both hands and was curling it behind his head. Taylor had a dumbbell in each hand and curled them up to his shoulders again and again. A bar settled behind Kennedy’s neck just as she locked eyes with Danielle.

  Why did all their exercise seem so wrong?

  The rack of rifles was behind them. Behind all of them. If Gibbs or Hector had any thoughts of grabbing a weapon, they’d have to fight past every one of the soldiers.

  Danielle wondered who was up in the sniper nest, and how good a view they had through the canopy.

  Gibbs settled in on one side of her, Hector on the other. She didn’t hear the exoskeleton, but sometimes Cesar managed to move damned quiet in it. Better than she ever could. She hoped he was right behind them.

  “We need to talk,” she told the first sergeant. “Now.”

  Kennedy heaved the bar up over her head and brought it down in front of her. It paused at her waist before she crouched and let it settle on the ground. “Sure,” she said. “What about?”

  Danielle pulled her fists up and set them against her hips. “What are you all up to?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re—”

  “No games,” said Danielle. “Explain the supplies you’re hoarding and why your soldiers aren’t exactly killing themselves to help out when things go wrong.”

  The smile melted off Kennedy’s face. Everything drained away until the only thing left was the first sergeant. “I beg your pardon?”

  “What happened the other day at the gate?”

  Kennedy’s face shifted from neutral to aggressive. “That’s not your concern.”

  “Fuck it isn’t,” spat Hector. He pointed at Wilson. “Exes got in and this guy took his sweet time doing anything about it.”

  Taylor’s weight
s hit the ground. Wilson let the barbell clang down onto the stands. He sat up on the bench, opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. He looked at the first sergeant.

  “You’re lucky he did anything for you, you fucking gangbanger reject,” snarled Taylor.

  “Shut up, Specialist,” said Gibbs.

  “Fuck you,” Taylor said. “Sir.”

  Kennedy glared at the soldier. Taylor glared back, then bit his lip. He shuffled a few steps back and muttered something under his breath.

  She turned her attention back to Danielle. “It’s an internal matter,” Kennedy said. “Nothing that concerns you.”

  “If exes are getting into Eden, it concerns me,” said Danielle.

  The four other super-soldiers spread out. Not much, but enough to be out of each other’s way. All of them stared at Danielle.

  The battlesuit crunched in the gravel behind her. She wondered if it was strong enough to take all of them. Two or three, no problem. Five at once, with no armor and no weapons…

  Past the weight bench and the gun rack and the crates of supplies, a few people stood up in one of the garden lots to find the source of the raised voices. Keri the big scavenger. Javi the loudmouth. Lester. Smith. Like Danielle didn’t have enough reasons to be worried about what could happen here.

  And then her eyes settled back on the barbell. The damned barbell. What was wrong with it? She looked at the dumbbells Taylor had dropped and tried to find a correlation.

  Kennedy was looking her in the eyes. The first sergeant’s face and brows were rigid and stern. Her eyes were…sad? Pleading? The look popped in Danielle’s mind—the expression of someone hoping desperately you were going to cover for them.

  Cover for what?

  And then, days late, she did the math.

  She looked at the barbell on the stand. And the one at Kennedy’s feet. And the dumbbells Taylor had dropped. And the iron plate Hancock had been using.