Ex-Isle

by Peter Clines

  The pieces lined up in her mind.

  A single set of weights, split four ways.

  Danielle looked Kennedy in the eyes. “What’s happening to you?”

  The first sergeant’s mouth was tight.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Tell all of us, or I will.”

  “It’s none of your fucking business,” Taylor said.

  “Everything that happens up here is my business,” said Danielle. She focused on Kennedy again. “You’re all getting weaker, aren’t you? Weaker and slower.”

  Gibbs blinked twice. “What?”

  “You’ve all been working out with less weight,” said Danielle. “You’re running laps around the garden, but not much faster than any of us could.”

  She looked at the other soldiers. Wilson and Taylor wouldn’t meet her gaze. Hancock stared down at the iron plate in the dirt.

  The sun dropped below the houses to the west. Danielle crossed her arms. In the corner of her eye, she saw Javi the loudmouth slink off toward the concrete path and other garden plots. Half the crowd drifted away. The rest shamelessly eavesdropped as best they could.

  “Well?”

  Kennedy sighed. “They’re fading.”

  “What is?” asked Cesar.

  “The enhancements Professor Sorensen gave us out at Project Krypton. They’ve been fading for months. Decreasing. However you want to put it.”

  Danielle looked at the tall sergeant. “How? I thought he changed you genetically.”

  Kennedy shook her head. “He warned us this could happen. Over time, our brains could make new pathways, relearn how to play it safe again.”

  “How to be weak,” Taylor muttered. “Fucking science bullshit.”

  “We just don’t do enough,” said Gus Hancock. “It all kinda crept up on us.”

  Gibbs looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “These were intended to be active combat enhancements,” Kennedy explained. “Soldiers would get them and go into a combat zone for eighteen months or two years or whatever their deployment was. Being in-country, being on constant alert, would keep everything going. Our bodies and brains would keep running on the levels he set them at.”

  “So you’re saying…what?” Hector crossed his arms. “Zombie apocalypse wasn’t active enough for any of you?”

  “No,” said Kennedy, shaking her head again, “it wasn’t. Once we had the Big Wall built, the threat level dropped. Once Legion vanished, it plunged. We’ve been doing busywork for almost a year now. Every now and then one or two of us might go out on a scavenging run. We can exercise tons, but our day-to-day activity is…well, normal. And our bodies have been readjusting.”

  “But, the other day in the garden,” Cesar said, “you jumped, like, thirty feet without even trying.”

  “I jumped fifteen feet with a running start,” corrected Kennedy. “This time two years ago, I could do twenty feet from a standing position.” She waved a hand at the weight set. “We all used to be able to press close to half a ton. A few of us could even go higher. Now most of us can barely press five hundred pounds. Franklin can’t even do three hundred anymore. At this rate, I figure we’ve got another six months to a year before we’re all, well, human again.”

  Danielle let her arms drop to her side. “Not exactly something to complain about.”

  Kennedy gave her a weak smile. “Says the woman desperate to get back into her armored battlesuit.”

  Hector snorted. Gibbs almost managed to hide his smirk.

  The exoskeleton leaned forward. “So you’re taking all the protein powder and stuff because…?”

  “To try to slow it down,” said Gibbs. His eyes passed over the soldiers. “That’s it, right? You thought maybe if you kept feeding your muscles they’d last a little longer.”

  “That was the hope, yeah,” Johnson said.

  “That’s why we’re all out here,” the first sergeant explained. “It was a chance to start training again, to be more active, to try to halt the degeneration. And to do it with a lot fewer eyes on us.”

  “Why? Why not just ask for help? Doctor Connolly could’ve—”

  “Because this is a military problem.”

  Gibbs rolled his eyes.

  “Jesus,” Danielle said. “When are you going to get it through your heads? There is no more military. No more us and them. We don’t have enough people left for us and them.”

  “These are my soldiers,” snapped Kennedy. “My platoon. They’re my responsibility.”

  “What about Freedom?” asked Gibbs. “Is this happening to him, too?”

  Wilson snorted. “The captain’s unstoppable. We’re all the prototypes. He’s the next generation. The real deal. He’s going to be like that forever.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sorensen was sure,” said Kennedy, “and he’s been right about everything else.”

  “Does he know what’s happening to all of you?” Danielle asked. “The captain?”

  “He does,” the first officer said. “We debated this action, but in the end he agreed it would be better for morale if we were training out of sight.”

  “So you both knew you were leaving Eden poorly defended.”

  “No,” said Kennedy with a shake of her head. “We’re still the best choice to be up here. We may not be as strong as we were, but all of us are still twice as strong as an average adult.”

  “But not as strong and capable as you’d led us all to believe,” Gibbs said.

  Hector pointed a finger up at the roof. “What about your watchtower?”

  “What about it?” Kennedy glanced up, then back at Hector.

  “Why’re they watching the people inside the fence?” asked Danielle.

  Kennedy shook her head. “It’s a sentry position to watch the exes.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course it is. What else would it be?” She leaned her head back. “Sergeant Pierce?!”

  A call came down through the canopy. “Yeah, First Sergeant?”

  “What’s in your sights right now?”

  Johnson noticed something on his boots and began to study it. Pierce’s voice rang down from above. “Dead guy over by the east gate. Ugly bastard with one arm and half his face gone.”

  Kennedy looked at Hector, then Danielle.

  “Sergeant Johnson,” said Gibbs, “care to tell us what you were looking at?”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re the one we all saw looking somewhere that wasn’t the fence line.”

  “I don’t recall, sir.”

  “I think the lieutenant just asked you to remember, Sergeant,” Kennedy said.

  Johnson twisted his lips. “I was checking out the woman,” he said.

  Danielle almost laughed. “What?”

  Johnson straightened up a little more. “It’s been warm, ma’am, and Desi, one of the people working the gardens, she’s been wearing a lot of shorts and tank tops and…” He shot a quick glance at Kennedy. “She’s really well-shaped, First Sergeant.”

  Hector rolled his eyes. “Pig.”

  “Hey, I mean it,” said Johnson.

  Kennedy turned back to Danielle. “Happy now?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Hang on,” said Cesar. The battlesuit unfolded a steel finger to point at Kennedy. “Still one question. If this isn’t some big plan, why’ve you been so friendly? Why’ve you been trying to get Dr. Morris on your side?”

  Kennedy shifted her stance. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Ahhh,” Gibbs said after a moment. “I’m going to guess the first sergeant wasn’t trying to get Dr. Morris on ‘their’ side as much as on ‘her’ side.”

  A quick flush of blood washed through Kennedy’s cheeks and vanished. She had remarkable self-control. “You have no business talking about it, Lieutenant,” she said. “It’s my private life. I keep it private.”

  “I think Dr. Morris made a good point a few minutes ago,” said Gibbs. “There isn�
�t much of a military left. You can safely assume you’re not obligated to follow the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ guidelines anymore.”

  Danielle blinked. “Oh.”

  “Fucking dyke bitch,” muttered Taylor.

  Kennedy spun and slammed her fist into the soldier’s gut. It hurled him back through the thin wall of shrubs. He crashed to the ground, rolled over twice in the dirt, and came to rest at the edge of the garden plot. Smith looked at him and smirked.

  “Specialist,” bellowed Kennedy, “you’d better stay down if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Hector said. “Weak as a kitten. No good like this at all.”

  Taylor coughed a few times, sat up, and shook the dust from his hair. He glared at the first sergeant, but he kept his mouth shut and didn’t stand up. He turned his gaze on the people watching, instead. Smith and the others slipped away into the garden.

  “So,” Danielle said to Kennedy, “I think we need to reconsider how things are going to work up here, with all this new information in mind.”

  Kennedy took a breath, then nodded.

  “We’ll want to get Lester in on it, too.” She nodded at the head gardener. He’d snuck closer to listen. “And Al. They’ll both need to know.”

  “Right,” said Kennedy. “Of course.”

  “For now, we could burn up some extra power and give the battlesuit an extra patrol each day, but after that we—”

  The warning bell rang. They all looked in different directions, at the closest borders of Eden. The main building was in the way for most of it. The chain-link and wooden fences off to their left looked as solid as ever.

  “Probably Pierce got his rifle stuck in the cord again,” muttered Johnson.

  The bell kept ringing.

  Lester stepped forward. “Doesn’t that mean—?”

  “Oh, crap,” Danielle said. Her arms pulled in tight against her body.

  “Holy hell,” shouted Pierce up above. “Half the south fence just went down!”

  MITCHEL KNEW HE was screwed. He prided himself on being good at reading the signs. And he knew what the signs were saying right now.

  Get. The hell. Out.

  As soon as he’d woken up from the dead girl’s ambush, he’d crawled away, then run. Every step made his face ache and he bit back howls of pain. But he had to run, because it was time for plan B.

  It was all over. No denying it anymore, these guys were the Mighty Dragon and Zzzap. And he was pretty sure the zombie girl was Stealth. Or maybe Banzai. They were here, all good and righteous and truthful, and the boss’s time on top was over.

  Hell, even if Nautilus wasn’t done here, Mitchel’s throbbing face was a pretty clear indicator where he was going to be left when things settled. Either the heroes would throw him overboard or Nautilus would. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

  His nose hurt. Like getting jabbed with pins and razors and burning cigarettes all at once. If it hadn’t been broken before, the little zombie bitch had done it for sure.

  Definitely time for plan B.

  One of the yachts, the MystRunner, had a spare lifeboat down by its stern. Not one of the big deluxe boats, just an inflatable raft with oars. That’s why it had been ignored for so long. Well, that and he’d put a big padlock on the hatch. He’d stashed a few bags inside when he could—some simple tools, bottles of fresh water, dried fish. About two weeks of supplies, if he wasn’t greedy. Enough to get him away from Lemuria.

  He couldn’t get away from Nautilus, though. If the big guy came after the lifeboat, he’d catch it, easy. Mitchel knew he’d need a distraction. Something to keep everyone busy long enough that once they had time to go after him, he’d be halfway back to Hawaii and it just wouldn’t be worth the effort.

  Which is why he was deep inside the oil tanker. Nobody wanted to see their still-moving wife-husband-kids-parent get tossed overboard, so most of the infected bodies—and almost-bodies—got tossed down into the Hole. Mitchel had just tossed the zombie girl down there the other day. There were almost three hundred exes in the Hole. A damned good-sized distraction.

  There was really only one way for the exes to go with all the narrow hallways and stairs. He’d spun the wheel and pulled the latch on the inspection door to the tanker’s forward chamber. It slid open, the zombies stumbled out, and then someone hit the side of the ship with a big hammer.

  The hallway rang like a gong. The deck plates shook like the vibrating bed in a cheap motel. The tremor made Mitchel’s nose jangle with pain, and he stumbled to his knees.

  A bunch of the exes fell flat on their faces. One dead woman tipped over, and its forehead hit the raised edge of the hatch with a sound like breaking wood. It slid down into the chamber and out of sight.

  He scrambled away from the exes. The one in front, a young blonde with short hair and a cruise ship uniform, reached for him with two mutilated hands. Its snapping teeth echoed in the metal hallway. Behind it was a dead black man with a gore-soaked mustache and a red jacket.

  Mitchel got to his feet and ran. He might’ve been a little hasty setting plan B in motion. If the island had hit something, people’d be distracted enough. He might’ve set all the exes loose for nothing. Which would suck for them.

  He glanced over his shoulder, his one small shred of decency wondering if there was any chance of getting the hatch closed again. But there were already a good twenty or thirty exes in the hallway, with more stumbling out over their fallen numbers. A few of them had wandered in the opposite direction, but most of them were between him and the hatch.

  So Mitchel went back to plan B. He led the exes down the narrow hall and to the set of metal stairs. And the dead men, women, and children followed him back up to the deck.

  The impact shook the ship again.

  Not good, said Zzzap.

  Hussein ran for the railing. “Is he attacking us?”

  “He might’ve already broken through the hull,” said Eliza. “He’s strong enough.”

  St. George and Madelyn followed him. “Wouldn’t we feel it if the ship was sinking?” she asked.

  “Not as fast as you’d think,” Devon told her. “There’s a lot of different bulkheads that are sealed off from each other. It’s more like, by the time we could feel the ship was sinking, it’d be too late to do anything about it.”

  St. George rolled his shoulders. “I need to get down there.”

  And do what? Zzzap flitted above the deck. Almost drown again?

  “I could go,” said Madelyn. “I don’t need to breathe.”

  Yeah, but we’ve seen how the Corpse Girl versus Nautilus fight plays out, said Zzzap.

  “If I build up enough speed,” said St. George, “I might be able to grab him and drag him out.”

  What do you mean?

  “Straight up, straight down. A high dive.”

  Devon frowned. “Won’t that just, like, crush you?”

  “I’m tougher than I look.”

  He’s going to have home court advantage, said Zzzap. Better sight, better maneuverability. A chunk of your strength is just going to go to fighting water pressure.

  “Yeah, but so will his.”

  No, said the gleaming wraith, his body’s designed around being underwater. That’s why he’s so strong on the surface.

  St. George bit his lip. “Do you have a better idea?”

  Another tremor shook the man-made island.

  “Here,” said Devon. “You’ll need these.” He held out a pair of long, sealed packets. Glow sticks.

  St. George tore open the ends and slid the tubes into his hand.

  “How long have you been hiding those for?” asked Madelyn.

  “Got ’em out of your packs.”

  St. George flicked his wrist, and the tubes slapped hard against his other palm. He shook them three times and a dim glow appeared. Two more shakes doubled the intensity. “Not sure how far I’ll be able to see with these.”

  Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll be a
ble to see you.

  “Great.”

  “Kick his ass,” said Madelyn.

  St. George focused on the spot between his shoulder blades and shot into the sky.

  He sucked in air. He’d read somewhere, ages back, it was more efficient to take lots of short, quick breaths than one long one. He sucked in air again and again and his chest expanded as he arced across the sky, passing over the oil tanker, a smaller yacht, and the tugboat.

  Then he kicked his feet up, pointed his hands down, and accelerated toward the water.

  Hitting it wasn’t as bad this time. He was going faster, but he was prepared, like a high-diver knifing into the water. Bubbles roared in his ears. Salt pricked at his eyes. The hull of the yacht rushed past him, and then there was the tanker a little farther off.

  He spent his momentum arcing back beneath the ships, gliding into the dark. The glow sticks made a hazy ball of light around him. Barely ten feet. He could see the bottoms of the ships, but even those blurred into the nothingness.

  He moved forward, crossing under the yacht, amazed at how far his momentum was taking him. Then he spun in the water, looking back at the dim shafts of light beyond the boats. He’d gone almost fifty feet down and another fifty under the island. He hadn’t taken a single stroke or kicked his legs once.

  The water flowed across his clothes, and his clothes brushed his skin. But he still felt it. The tingle between his shoulder blades.

  He was still flying.

  He was flying underwater.

  St. George managed a brief smile before moving forward.

  The water shifted around him, and the whale loomed out of nowhere.

  It headed straight for him, a huge black-green dome less than twenty feet away. He couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or he just happened to be in the way. It moved with the slow grace of something massive, forcing the ocean out of the way.

  The rounded front of it was almost fifty feet across, and the body stretched out behind it into the darkness. There were no flippers. No eyes. The dark skin looked featureless in the weak light.