Ex-Isle

by Peter Clines

  I don’t know what Bryan said to his wife and daughter. I’m glad I don’t have some kind of super-hearing or something. They cried. They hugged. He kissed them both on the forehead. They helped him back over to me, and then they backed away.

  His wife and daughter looked at me. They were devastated and pleading and holding back tears. There was no anger or hate, at Bryan or at me.

  He hooked his arm around my neck again. I held him by the waist, kicked off, and we sailed up to the top of the Melrose Gate. Both of us pretended not to hear the wails and crying behind us, but I think he did a better job than me.

  Another leap sent us over the street and above the studio next door. It was awkward gliding with another person, but I was getting better at it. At least he wasn’t fighting me.

  I kicked off the roof of a studio stage and got us higher in the air. We sailed past the studio, over a few houses, crossed another intersection, most of another block, and came down on the roof of an apartment building almost half a mile from the Mount.

  The roof had a few potted plants, three wooden deck chairs, and one of those big shade umbrellas. It had been a great place to hang out once. If it wasn’t for the sound of clicking teeth from the street below, it’d be peaceful.

  I let go of Bryan. He looked fine now. If I hadn’t seen the red on his sleeve, I wouldn’t’ve guessed he was sick.

  Then he let out a deep, hacking cough and sprayed blood on the concrete roof. His knees buckled, and he dropped onto one of the chairs. He hung his head between his legs and shook for almost a full minute.

  Then he pushed himself up and looked at me. There were spots of red on his lips and chin. “I’ve been holding it together so long,” he said. “Feels like my body’s catching up for lost time.”

  I pulled one of the plastic bags out of my pocket. I’d been carrying two or three of them at a time for the past week or so. In my head I called them survival packs. I was pretty sure if Stealth had caught me with them she’d’ve given me a lecture about wasting resources. I liked to tell myself she knew I was doing it and just wasn’t saying anything until she had to.

  I handed the bag to Bryan. “Here,” I said.

  He looked at the collection of pills and lozenges. “What’s all this?”

  “The round ones are aspirin,” I said. “Those are cough drops. The square ones are gum. Y’know just to make your mouth feel clean. It’ll help with hunger, too.”

  “Okay,” he said. He sifted through the bag’s contents as I named them, then stopped on another pill. Blue and oval. “What are these?”

  “Those,” I said. “Those are sleeping pills. Y’know, for if you can’t sleep.”

  He smirked and then coughed again.

  “It’s not a suicide thing,” I told him. “There aren’t enough of them. It’s just…if you’d rather be asleep.”

  “I get it.” He nodded. “Thank you.”

  “There’s some bottled water over there.” I pointed in the corner of the railing. Half of it was gone, used one way or another by other people I’d brought to this rooftop. “The door leads down into the building, but there might be…well, exes down there.”

  “Right.” He dropped the bag on the roof next to the chair.

  “And you get a nice sunset view.”

  He choked down another cough. “Never been much of a sunset person.”

  “Sorry.”

  His head hung on his shoulders for a minute. “Will you really keep an eye on them? Jen and Lynne?”

  I crouched next to him. “I will.”

  “Jen’s my wife. Lynne’s my daughter.”

  I nodded.

  “And can you…” He took a deep breath, and it rattled in his chest. “Can you make sure they…that they don’t run into me again? That they never see me like that?”

  “If that’s what you want?”

  His head went up and down three times, quick. Then he turned away and coughed. He kept coughing. Some liquid streamed out of his mouth and hit the roof near the plastic bag. It was clear with streaks of red.

  He hacked up a bit more. Then he rolled back onto the chair. “I think you should go,” he said. “Thanks for everything. For all of this.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I thought they were going to shoot me at the gate. You let me say good-bye to my family.” His foot scuffed the roof near the bag. “You’re giving me the option to die in peace. Thank you.”

  “I…You’re welcome.”

  He settled his body and closed his eyes. “Just keep them safe,” he said. “Please. Just keep them safe.”

  “I will.”

  I stood there for another minute and watched his breath go in and out. Each one rattled in his chest and shook its way out of his lips. Once it sputtered, and I saw two drops of red spit out.

  Another minute passed, and I realized he was done with me. No more looking or talking. I couldn’t blame him. Exile sucked, even if you understood why it was happening.

  I found the spot between my shoulder blades, took a few steps, and launched myself off the roof.

  MADELYN SAT ON the top of the water tower and looked down at the Mount. There was a tiny lip around the edge of the tower. Just enough to brace your heels on. She thought about crawling up to the peak and standing by the needle, but she liked sitting down.

  It was a nice night. Warm. No clouds. The lights across the Mount made it look warm and friendly in the middle of the dark city.

  She’d woken up two hours ago in her room. There’d been a wet suit by her bed somebody had ripped in half, some clothes that smelled like brine, and a note to be on top of the water tower by nine o’clock. It was her own handwriting, including the upside-down ampersand she drew in the corner sometimes to prove a message was really from herself.

  She skimmed her journals and read about a mission out to an island, a night in a life raft, an island made of ships, some creep watching her undress, and fish stew. Then the entries jumped two days ahead and talked about Nautilus, exes, being torn in half, most of the people on the ship-island being jerks, Barry almost killing himself to save Los Angeles from a submarine that was going to launch a nuclear missile, and spending the night on an old yacht in the middle of the ocean on the way home while Barry went on ahead.

  There was a full-length mirror on her closet door. Madelyn stood in front of it and looked at the smooth, unmarked skin of her stomach. No wounds. No scars. Not even scabs or stretch marks.

  She’d pulled some clothes on while she read the journal entries again. There were enough of her tics and shortcuts to know she’d been trying to cover a lot in very little time.

  And now she sat alone, watching people wander around below the water tower and wondering why she’d told herself to climb up to the top of the water tower.

  “He should be here shortly,” said a voice behind her.

  “Ahhh!” She bounced and almost slipped over the lip.

  Stealth stood at the tower’s peak. Her cloak swirled around her in the breeze without making a sound. Beneath her hood, her masked face seemed to look at the Corpse Girl.

  “Hi,” said Madelyn.

  “Good evening.”

  “You scared me for a second there.”

  Stealth said nothing.

  “He who?”

  “St. George. He left this afternoon on an errand. I expect him back in the next four minutes.”

  Madelyn smiled. “Four exactly?”

  “Assuming he keeps a constant speed and does not alter his course, yes.”

  She thought about questioning that, but shrugged it off. “So where’d he go?”

  Stealth turned her head and looked off toward the hills and the distant mountains. “He did not say. But judging from his trajectory, I believe I have an idea.”

  “Where?”

  “That is for him to say.”

  Stealth was a statue at the top of the water tower. Madelyn thought about climbing up the slope to join her, then decided against it.
/>   “Is Barry okay?”

  “He is in intensive care,” said the cloaked woman, “two floors above your room. He weighed ninety-seven pounds when he reverted to human form. He has lost significant muscle mass, all of his hair, and his finger- and toenails. He displayed several symptoms of imminent myocardial infarction, but Doctor Connolly has managed to control these.”

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  Stealth crossed her arms under her cloak. Madelyn wondered how the woman was standing so straight and still on the sloped surface while a breeze tugged at her cape.

  “He may not be able to transform into Zzzap for some time without putting himself at risk,” Stealth said. “Once his condition stabilizes, he will need to regain much of the mass he has lost.”

  “Oh.” She tapped her fingers on the top of the water tower. It echoed like a big drum.

  Two uncomfortably silent minutes later, St. George came soaring out of the night sky.

  Madelyn laughed and looked up at Stealth. “How did you do that?”

  St. George pushed his goggles up onto his forehead and looked at her. “Do what?”

  Stealth said nothing.

  He hung in the air in front of Madelyn. “I’ve got something for you,” he said. “If I’d known, I would’ve gotten them sooner.”

  “Gotten what?”

  He unzipped his brown leather flight jacket and pulled out a manila envelope. It bulged a bit in the middle. He held it out, and Madelyn leaned forward to take it.

  The envelope was filled with photographs. Thirty or forty of them in different sizes. She pulled a few out and angled them to catch the moonlight. The top one in her hand showed a dark-haired, brown-skinned woman in her thirties sitting at a desk in front of a laptop.

  “Who’s this?” Madelyn shuffled the picture to the back. The next one was the same woman smiling, caught in the moment just after a laugh. The photo after that showed a man with a beard and glasses holding a baby in his arms.

  Then there were two ten-year-old girls doing homework together at the table. One of them had dark hair and eyes like the woman in the other photos. The other girl was blond, with a ponytail that ran out of frame.

  “Is that me?” Madelyn held the picture up to the light. “Is that me when I was alive?”

  “Captain Freedom told me that your father kept lots of pictures of you in his office out at Project Krypton,” said St. George. “I think I got all of them. There’s a bunch of you, your dad, a couple with friends. A lot with your mom.”

  “My mom?” She flipped through the next few photos and found herself back at the front of her small handful. The woman at the desk. The woman smiling.

  “There’s a couple of the two of you together, too. And some of the whole family.”

  Madelyn slid the pictures back into the envelope and stood up. Then she threw herself off the water tower and wrapped her arms around St. George’s neck. He grabbed her by the waist and floated back to the top of the tower. “Easy.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much.” She pulled back and smiled at him. A tear slid away from her chalk eyes.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  She stood there, smiling, and then glanced up at the cloaked woman. “I should go and let you two talk or…whatever.”

  “Be careful on the way down,” he said. “No more sudden jumps.”

  “Sorry.” She swung her legs onto the ladder. “Thank you.”

  He smiled at her and nodded.

  Madelyn vanished down the ladder. The sound of her boots on the rungs faded to distant vibrations. Then those were gone, too.

  “You have a new coat,” Stealth said.

  “Yeah.” He tugged at the lapels of the flight jacket and smelled saltwater. “A goodwill exchange with Eliza, the woman who’s running Lemuria now. She’s about my size, and we each liked the other’s coat better.”

  “Are you confident they have Nautilus confined?”

  “I don’t think he wants to escape,” said St. George. “Having everything collapse on him all at once like that, having the truth all come out, I think it kind of broke him. Last I saw him, he was just sitting in the Queen’s brig in his human form. Wouldn’t even look at me. Eliza’s got him on suicide watch.”

  St. George stared across Los Angeles toward the Pacific.

  “You are worried about them?”

  “Not them,” he said. “Well, a little bit them, but I think they’ll be okay once they’re all ferried back to here or San Diego and better fed.”

  Stealth dipped her chin. “The submarine?”

  “Yeah.” He let his boots settle on the top of the tower near her. The breeze wrapped him in her cloak. “Nautilus had nuclear missiles. He just stumbled across a sub, and he had the power to wipe us out, just like that. If he’d fired them when he found it, we never even would’ve known what hit us.”

  “And you worry someone else may do the same.”

  He nodded. “There’s a ton of this stuff lying around out there. We’ve been worrying about rifles and helmets, and for all we know there’s a survivalist militia out in Colorado with a dozen Minuteman missiles or something.”

  “Doubtful,” said Stealth. “Most Minuteman silos are located in either Montana, North Dakota, or Wyoming.”

  “The point is, we’ve been thinking the exes are our big problem, and there’s tons of big problems out there. All the old ones, just waiting for someone to find them. Or, hell, just waiting for a natural disaster. What if an earthquake hits a missile silo? Or a tornado hits some CDC laboratory?”

  “The world has never been a safe place,” she said. “The ex-virus did not make it more so.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s just…scary. Just a reminder how fast we could still lose everything.”

  She took his hand. “Then we shall make sure we do not,” she told him.

  “You sound pretty confident.”

  “Of course. I have the Mighty Dragon on my side.”

  He chuckled. “Thanks.”

  “That was a good thing, what you did for Madelyn.”

  “I should’ve done it ages ago. I knew she had memory problems. I knew the pictures were out there. I just didn’t think how much better it would make things for her.” He looked down at the Mount. “I was thinking, while I flew home, I should do this for all the Krypton soldiers. I could fly back, fill two or three duffel bags with personal belongings they left behind. Photos. Clothes. Books. Whatever they want me to grab.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and lowered her head to his shoulder.

  “Really, we should do it for anyone we can. How many people would love to get an old wedding album or a yearbook, or just some photos off their wall? Something to remember the past.”

  “It would be a large undertaking.”

  “It’d be worth it, though.” The breeze filled her cloak out, then pulled it tight on them again. Beneath it, he wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “You are a good man, George.”

  “I’m trying.”

  Well, I’m never doing a book like this again.

  Allow me to explain.

  Last year I finished up a book called The Fold that a lot of you have read and enjoyed. As I mentioned in its acknowledgments, it took some extra work to get that book as polished as it was. Said extra work took time. And said time cut into the schedule for writing this book, the one you’re holding and reading right now.

  I needed to be able to write Ex-Isle fast and clean with no hesitations or wrong turns. Knowing this, I made a decision. I would do something I hadn’t done in years, something I swore never to do again. I would outline the book.

  Now, to explain, outlines and I…we don’t have a great history together. There were some fun flings back during our shared school years—a little dabbling, you might say—but in the end we figured out that we really weren’t right for each other. If I get involved with an outline…well, I end up blindly following it. No matter what. Even when it�
��s really clear that things should be going another way, I keep following the outline. It’s a bad habit I’ve never been able to break.

  It took me a while to figure out I’m much more of a pantser, as some folks like to call it. I do much better with loose guidelines and general directions than a solid map. It’s a method that has done very, very well for me, overall, and some of my most popular books have had the least amount of planning behind them. If someone else happens to work well with outlines, that’s fantastic. They’re not for me, though. Nowadays, if an outline and I see each other at a party, we make excuses to never cross the room so we can keep the illusion of civility.

  But I figured these were desperate times. And I think many of us here have gone back and done things we know we shouldn’t during desperate times. I just figured this time I’d know what I was in for. I would outline the hell out of the book—every chapter, every beat, every character moment. But I’d also remember that I had a say in it and watch out for the traps and blind alleys that I was following for no reason. Everything would be fine this time.

  It didn’t work out that way. Shocking, I know.

  Oh, sure, it was fun and easy at first, but after a few weeks the outline and I were butting heads. Things slowed down and by the two-month mark we were being very passive-aggressive toward each other. And, as always happens in these cases, it’s the book that gets stuck in the middle, wondering what it did wrong.

  I ended up trashing about a third of what I’d done with the outline, starting over, begging my editor for more time…and, well, you’re holding the result.

  Moral of this story—if you’ve got a system that works for you, don’t go revisiting one you know doesn’t.

  Especially not when you’re on a deadline.

  All that being said, there are a few folks who deserve some thanks for all of their help.

  Mary answered questions about scurvy, nutrition, and other medical things. Also, double that thanks retroactively to her and Tansey, who both helped me with the original science behind Project Krypton’s super-soldiers.