Ex-Isle

by Peter Clines

He wiped his hands on the canvas cover and walked back to Madelyn. She tugged on the fingers of her left hand. Each one popped back into place. “Hey,” she said, shaking the hand loose, “can you stand on my foot?” She swung her hips and put the twisted leg in front of him.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He pressed his boot down on hers. “Good?”

  “A little harder. Make sure you’ve got it pinned.”

  “It’s pretty sol—”

  The Corpse Girl wrenched her hips back, and the leg cracked three times. She yelped. St. George yanked his foot away and she stumbled. “Okay,” she said, “that tingled a little more than I thought it would.” She rubbed her stomach, then took a few cautious steps. “Don’t think I tore anything, though.”

  A rumble and crash echoed across the water—the sound of a wave breaking on the shore. The crash faded into an ongoing hiss. Even some of the remaining exes turned, attracted to the sound.

  A wall of gray clouds rolled across the ocean toward Lemuria.

  By his seventh pass, Zzzap was almost three-quarters of a mile out. Two circles back he’d decided to focus on the eastern side of Lemuria, the side closest to the mainland. It made sense Nautilus would head in that direction.

  He still hadn’t found the sub.

  He shot higher into the air and tried to see something—anything—in the mess of signals and waves and patterns of the ocean. Some clue to where the sub might be or where it might’ve been. A trail of heat. A series of ripples that went against a current. Anything.

  Back on the island he could see people running. And dying. Even from a few thousand feet away, they were bright yellow-and-orange outlines against the cool blue of the tanker’s deck. Electromagnetic auras crackled around them.

  One of them gleamed like a star as it rushed across the ship. St. George in flight. The distant outline stopped, reversed, and lifted two of the glowing outlines up above the deck.

  One of the orange outlines at the other end of the tanker flared and began to cool down. Its aura flickered and faded. The figure dropped, and a rippling wave passed over it. An ex, moving in to feed.

  Back during the Zombocalypse, when the virus first swept across the planet, Zzzap had had a lot of trouble spotting the exes. They didn’t give off any heat, barely had an electromagnetic aura, and sometimes they wouldn’t bang their teeth together. He saw the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but they only registered in a small fraction of it.

  It had taken him almost three months to figure out he needed to change how he looked for exes. He was used to looking for the pile of signals and wavelengths living things gave off. But exes weren’t explosions of heat and color. They were cold and dull. They blended in. He had to know to look for them, like trying to spot the Predator. They were the monster that was in plain sight until it moved, and even then they could be tough to pick out.

  Son of a bitch. If he’d had a mouth in the energy form, he would’ve smiled. Or kicked himself if he’d been physical.

  His gaze swung back to the ocean. He’d been searching all the currents and patterns for another boat, looking for one of them to stand out like a copper penny in a pile of silver dimes. He changed his focus.

  He looked for the quarter in the pile of dimes.

  A sub was going to be subtle. It’d be insulated to keep in heat so nobody froze. And it’d be shielded from radiation. No point having a nuclear sub loaded with missiles if the enemy could just find you with a Geiger counter. Plus the crew wouldn’t have anywhere to go, so all possible radiation sources would be shielded for them, too.

  Just ahead of him and off to his left, in the middle of the spraying lines and spinning circles, there was a dull spot. Just enough to register. Long and thin, like a gigantic cigar. It was about a mile past the island and picking up speed.

  Now that he knew where to look, he could also pick out the wiggling, kicking form at the end of it. Nautilus was actually pushing the sub. It weighed a hundred tons or so, and he was pushing it through the ocean like a guy trying to push start his car.

  Maybe he was the strongest man in the world when he was in the water.

  Zzzap swooped down and flitted along the surface. If Nautilus was still outside the submarine, there wasn’t any danger of him launching a missile at the last minute. So once it went down, the threat should be done.

  And even as he thought this, the kicking figure stopped pushing and slid up the length of the ship. Heading for a hatch. Nautilus had spotted him, and apparently the merman was a big fan of Operation: Spoilsport.

  Zzzap knew the basics of nuclear bombs. Enough to know there was a small chance he could set off a warhead if he passed through it. So no burning a hole through the front of the sub.

  He wasn’t sure where the reactor was located, but he was willing to bet it was toward the back, closer to the propellers and the actual engine. Logically, from the back, it’d be propellers, engine, then the reactor. So if he punched a hole or two through the back fifth of the sub, he felt pretty sure he wouldn’t cause a major radiation leak or an explosion.

  Well, not an additional explosion, anyway.

  He steeled himself, lined up, and knifed down into the water.

  The ocean boiled at his touch. Only a thin sheaf of it, barely half an inch from the energy form, turned to vapor as his energy bled off into the surrounding water. But it kept bleeding, like a gunshot wound to the gut. He hemorrhaged heat as more and more water poured in to fill the envelope of steam around him.

  Zzzap willed himself even hotter, easing back on the mental hold he kept around himself. He cut through the submarine’s hull. Water bubbled around him as it flooded into the ship and hissed into steam on the molten edges. A few tubes melted, a steel shaft, and he was out the other side, his phantom skin crawling at the physical contact.

  He looped down through the ocean and shot back up through the sub. This time he went straight through the engine, a huge block of hardened steel. It turned to slag at his touch, and he blasted out the top of the hull. More water seethed around him, and then he was back in the air.

  The ocean roared and churned below him. A last few air bubbles erupted from the sub and scattered the patch of boiling water. Steam rose up off the cooling water. Lots of steam. Ten seconds in the ocean had created a dense fogbank, and it was spreading out across the water.

  Zzzap shuddered in the sky. On a guess, he’d just used up about a quarter of his energy. Maybe more. He didn’t want to think about what that meant when he changed back to human form. It wasn’t like he had a lot of excess weight to burn.

  Below him, the water bubbled and spat into the air. He could just see the long shadow, the cool lack of radiation, as its tail end sank down. The nose tilted up and brushed the surface. Then the sub let out a last burst of air, rippled the water one more time, and headed down to the ocean floor.

  Zzzap hoped he hadn’t just cooked the last six blue whales. He couldn’t see anything floating on the surface. Nothing the size of a whale, anyway. Or even a dolphin.

  Or a person.

  He wondered if Nautilus had made it inside the sub. Or, if he hadn’t, if he’d been scalded by the water. Neither was a pleasant way to go.

  Then he thought of the children hanging in cages, waiting to be drowned, and found he didn’t care.

  The wave of warm steam rushed across the island. Condensation coated everything. St. George wiped water and sweat from his brow.

  “Wow,” said Madelyn. “I thought that was a bomb going off.”

  “Me, too,” he said. He glanced up at the cruise ship. People lined the higher railings. “Everyone okay up there?”

  The Lemurians waved and called back.

  “They’re still a bunch of jerks,” muttered Madelyn.

  “Try to remember they’ve been under different conditions than us,” said St. George.

  “Yeah,” she said, “sometimes people are in bad conditions, but sometimes they’re just jerks. Maybe they weren’t all
jerks to start with, but I think a lot of them are jerks now.”

  “At least you’re just calling them jerks.”

  “I’m being polite.”

  The fog brightened around them. It wasn’t daylight. More like a full moon had come out from behind the clouds. He looked up and saw the glowing figure above them.

  “Whoa.” Madelyn looked up at the wraith. “Are you okay?”

  Maybe. Not sure. Zzzap’s light was dim, not much more than a hazy glow in the mist.

  “How bad are you?” asked St. George. “We can try to get some of our supplies back. Maybe get you a couple sweet potatoes from their—”

  Zzzap waved his arm. I’m past the really hungry phase, he said. I don’t think…I think I shouldn’t change back until we’re somewhere with, y’know, better medical facilities.

  “Yeah?”

  Yeah. I’m…I’m feeling a little light-headed.

  “Do you need to go now?”

  I’ll be okay. Just…don’t ask me to kill any more submarines. The wraith shook its head. Besides, how would you two find your way home without me?

  Madelyn peered out at the ocean through the mist. “So that was the sub?”

  Yeah. It’s about half a mile down by now.

  “Nautilus?” asked St. George.

  Zzzap shrugged. No idea.

  “Did he go down on the sub?”

  Madelyn snickered.

  Zzzap buzzed out a chuckle. Honestly, I don’t know. I think he saw me coming and went to launch his missiles, but then I lost track of him when I boiled the ocean.

  “So what happens now?” asked Madelyn.

  St. George looked back up at the cruise ship, then down the length of the tanker. All four gangplanks had been knocked down onto the tanker’s deck. “I think all the exes are trapped on this ship now,” he said, “but we need to make sure none of them got onto the Queen. Once we know, we can—”

  Something heavy and metal rattled behind him. Madelyn’s eyes got wide. Zzzap brought his arms up, fingers spread. St. George turned and—

  The anchor knocked him across the deck. The chain trailed after it, then whipped back into the mist. The links clinked in the fog, and the huge piece of steel came rocketing out at him again.

  St. George lunged into it, grabbed the anchor, and yanked hard. The ripple shot up the chain, and Nautilus came flying out of the mist. It was like a shark rushing in to feed.

  St. George swung the anchor up and struck the merman across the face with it, smashing him to the deck.

  Nautilus rolled, spat out some blood and a triangular tooth, and threw himself at St. George. The shell shoulder plates slammed into the hero’s chest, and the impact flung them both down the length of the ship. They landed on an ex and crushed its hips to gravel. The merman twisted around and pinned St. George to the deck.

  Blisters dotted Nautilus’s arms. In places his blue skin had sloughed off to show tender, raw flesh beneath it. Heat radiated off his body. He glared down at St. George.

  “Why?” he growled. “Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?” His punch slammed St. George’s head back against the metal deck. The boxing-glove fist came down again and again.

  St. George pushed down against gravity and threw the merman off him. Nautilus spun in the air and landed in a crouch. He took a step forward, and the tanker deck brightened.

  Hey, Jabberjaws, said the wraith. Back off. He held up a hand that popped and sparked in the mist.

  “Save it,” said St. George. “I’ve got this.”

  You sure?

  St. George nodded, and Nautilus slammed into him again. They slid through one of the garden plots, spraying plants and dark soil across the deck. St. George smacked the merman in the chest with a palm and sent him flying.

  As soon as he landed, he charged forward again. St. George batted away the first punch, and the second. The third caught him across the jaw but left Nautilus open for a gut punch that bounced him into the air and dropped him to his knees.

  “Not so good without a bunch of children covering for you,” St. George said.

  Nautilus roared, lunged, and swung one of his boxing-glove fists around again.

  St. George grabbed the wrist, twisted, and got it behind the merman’s back. Nautilus snarled and brought his other fist around, but the hero was already too far behind him. He threw another punch anyway, and when his fist swung back St. George slipped his arm under the shell-armored shoulder and grabbed the other man’s bull neck.

  Nautilus roared. His shark teeth snapped in the air. It was a thin, sharp sound. “You can’t hold me forever,” he growled.

  “Not planning on it.”

  St. George focused on the spot between his shoulder blades and launched them up into the night sky.

  The merman’s head slammed back and cracked into St. George’s forehead. The hero shook it off. The arm in the half-nelson jabbed back, but it couldn’t reach.

  They flew faster, higher into the air, and the mist fell away. The wind shrieked in their ears. St. George glanced down and saw a flicker of light on the deck of the tanker. Zzzap, taking out the last of the exes.

  “Barry pointed out why you’re so tough,” he said to the merman. “When you’re like this, your body’s designed to survive deep underwater. Tougher, stronger, more resilient. That’s why you’re so strong on the surface.”

  Nautilus brought his legs up and swung them back in a kick. It only grazed St. George’s knees, but it made the two men sway in the air. The merman wheezed out a breath and twisted his shoulders again. St. George tightened his half-nelson and willed them to go higher.

  “But it hit me a few minutes ago,” said St. George, “that if you’re built for those super-high undersea pressures, really low pressure must be brutal on you. Like those stories about deep-sea fish that explode when you bring them to the surface.”

  His breath, always hot from his fires, steamed in the cold air. It bit through his jacket and his wet suit and nipped at his ears and nose. He looked down and guessed the ocean was almost three miles below them.

  He sucked in a mouthful of thin air and went even higher.

  Nautilus threw his elbow at St. George’s head again. It didn’t come anywhere close. The veins bulged on the arm.

  “As I see it, you’ve got two choices. You can stay like this and we’ll see if we both freeze before I hit deep space or if you explode like a fish.”

  Nautilus turned to St. George and hissed. The sound rattled in his barrel chest. His teeth gnashed together like an ex.

  “The other option is you change back to your human form. The high altitude will still mess you up, but I think your odds of survival will be much better. And we go back down and talk and figure out what to do with you.”

  “Why?” hissed the merman.

  St. George slowed their ascent. “Because those people down there trusted you. You owe them answers.” He took in another breath of thin air.

  “Why are you so greedy?” asked Nautilus. The arm in the half-nelson sagged. The fist behind his back flopped open.

  “What?”

  “All I wanted was what you have,” the merman whispered. Dark blood was trickling from his nostrils, and veins bulged across his chest and face. “What they’ve always given you. Admiration…respect…Why did you have to take it all away?”

  St. George took a few breaths. “You held them prisoner and demanded it from them. You forced it out of them. I didn’t take it,” he said. “You never really had it.”

  Nautilus sighed and sagged in the hero’s grip. St. George hung in the air. The ships were tiny models far below, the little Matchbox boats he’d had as a kid.

  Then the merman twisted around and slammed a punch into the hero’s side. It was hard and sudden enough to break St. George’s concentration. They dropped a few feet before he focused again.

  Nautilus threw his arm up, slid free of the half-nelson, and kept dropping.

  St. George lunged after him.

  The merm
an fell like a skydiver, angling his body into the wind. He picked up speed, dropping as fast as St. George could fly after him. His clothes rippled and snapped in the wind as he cut through the sky, passed over mist-shrouded Lemuria, and rocketed toward the ocean.

  St. George willed himself faster. They were halfway down. He shrank the distance between them to twenty-five feet. Twenty. Fifteen.

  They hit the fogbank and the horizon vanished. Clouds and water filled his view in every direction. He could see individual waves.

  His fingers brushed webbed toes. He put on a last burst of speed and grabbed at the foot. Nautilus kicked him away. St. George reached and grabbed again. The ankle was small enough that he could get his fingers around it.

  The merman spun and lashed out and howled. His gnashing teeth were small and square. White showed around desperate, dark eyes.

  St. George tried to slow them down, tried to bleed off a little bit of their momentum. Nautilus slammed his other heel down on the hero’s hand. He kicked again and again, but there was only normal human strength in the tanned leg, and St. George’s fingers were like stone.

  St. George pushed back against gravity. Inertia tried to tear the other man from his grip, and he fought that, too, grabbing hold of the ankle with both hands. The downward plunge became a slant. And then an arc.

  They swung across the ocean. Nautilus stretched down, and his fingers brushed the surface of the water. Then St. George lifted them up into the air and brought them around in a wide circle. The ships of Lemuria were dark shapes in the mist, but they were enough for him to get his bearings.

  Nautilus—Maleko—stopped fighting and let himself hang from the hero’s grip. His oversized clothes sagged on his small body. Frustration squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Sorry,” said St. George. “You don’t get to take the easy way out.” He paused as they flew through the air. “I don’t know what went wrong, why you did all this, but it’s over. You’re going to explain yourself, and then you’re probably going to have to answer to all these people.”