Ex-Isle by Peter Clines (electronic reader TXT) 📕

the red gym bag and let it hang from his hand. “Incoming,” he said, and swung it into the raft.

“Got it!”

He turned to Zzzap. “You ready?”

The brilliant wraith nodded. He lowered himself to a foot above the surface, and the water began to steam below him. First time for everything, he said.

He pulled his arms and legs in close to his body, and his light dimmed. The air around him settled and then made a quick, dry woofing sound as it was shoved out of the way.

Barry cannonballed into the ocean. He came up a moment later, shook the water from his eyes, and looked up. “Oh, it’s great,” he said. “You should try this. It feels like the warm spot in a pool, but in a good way.”

“I’ll pass, but thanks.”

Barry stretched up a thin hand, and St. George grabbed it. He dragged his friend through the water to the raft. Madelyn was waiting for them. “Robe or sweatpants?” she asked.

“Sweats,” said Barry.

She pulled a roll of black fabric from the gym bag and placed it near the entrance. Then she crawled to the far side of the tent and faced the wall. “Okay,” she called out, “my innocent eyes are averted.”

St. George heaved Barry’s naked form out of the water and into the raft. “It’s for your own safety,” said Barry. “Seeing me naked could ruin you for all other men.”

“Too late,” she sang at the orange wall.

Barry rocked back and forth on the floor and wrestled himself into the sweatpants. “All clear,” he said. “Thanks for the moment of almost-privacy.”

St. George leaned in through the entrance. “No problem,” he said. “Hang on for a second.”

He put his hands against one of the inflatable supports and pressed. The raft turned in the water as he drifted in the air. He rotated it a third of the way around, then stepped inside.

“What was that about?” asked Madelyn.

He waved his hand out the entrance. “Sunset view.”

She crawled over on her knees, and Barry shifted himself over on his hands. “Nice,” he said. He reached into the gym bag and dragged out a thick cranberry robe. He wrapped it around himself and tugged at the lapels. “It’s very Hef, don’t you think?”

“Did Hef end up in a lot of lifeboats?”

“No idea.” Barry reached into the bag again and pulled out a Ziploc full of jerky.

“Dibs,” said Madelyn.

“Actually,” said Barry, tossing the dried meat to the Corpse Girl, “did anyone ever check out the Playboy Mansion? It’s in LA, right?”

“Yeah,” said St. George. “But I don’t know where. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been there, though.”

“It’s got the big pool. The Grotto. And a lot of zombie Playmates. You’d know.”

“Y’know what,” said Madelyn, tearing off a chunk of jerky, “you two guys just go right along talking about the Playboy Mansion in front of the teenage girl. There’s nothing skeevy about it at all.”

Barry laughed, and St. George blushed a little.

“Why’d you drop into the water?” she asked Barry. “Isn’t that kind of dangerous for you with, y’know, your legs?”

“Well, if I tried to drop into the raft I’d either burn a hole through the roof or bounce off.”

She smirked. “I mean, why not change in the water?”

He shook his head. “Not a good idea. Water and the energy form don’t mix.”

“Electricity and water?”

“More like the emergency cooling system in a reactor,” he said. “They’d douse the core with water if it was overheating. Same thing with the energy form. If I’m in the water, I’ll just bleed energy like mad. And the energy is me, soooo…” He shrugged.

“Gotcha.”

They ate a dinner of jerky and soybeans, sipping water while they watched the sun vanish over the horizon. Madelyn chewed on one last piece of dried meat while she unzipped her backpack and pulled out the bag with her journals and pens. “Okay,” she said, pushing her goggles up onto her forehead, “time to write down the day.”

The biggest downside to Madelyn’s condition was her near-inability to form memories past the moment of her death. Every time she fell asleep, her brain reset itself and she forgot the previous day. The only way she’d found to learn new things was to keep a detailed journal and reread it each morning. It could take her four or five days of repetition before a name would stick with her, even longer for other facts.

St. George pointed at a bundle on one of the tent’s supports. “I think there’s a flashlight in the emergency kit.”

“Don’t need it, but thanks.” Madelyn thumbed through the journal, her chalk-white eyes darting back and forth across different pages. She flipped a few more over and began scribbling.

St. George settled against one of the thick inflated tubes. The raft didn’t rock on the waves, but every now and then a little tremor shook the outer walls. “So, did they see you when you went back to the island?”

“The Others?” Barry shrugged. He pulled a third oatmeal bar from the bag. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“The Others?”

“He’s talking about Lost again,” said Madelyn without looking up from her journal.

Barry tapped his nose and smiled at her. “I don’t think I got any closer than a mile,” he told St. George, “and I was there for ten or fifteen seconds both times. But the sun was on the other side, and this last time it was pretty dark behind me. If they happened to be looking that way, I would’ve been tough to miss.” He bit off a mouthful of oats and fruit. “You really worried about the element of surprise?”

This time St. George shrugged. “It’s always tough to tell how people are going to react, y’know?”

“I’m surprised Stealth hasn’t written up some first-contact rules for us.”

“She tried, way back when, but even she admitted there were too many variables.”

Barry smiled. “So how are we playing it tomorrow? Riding on your rep?”

“Maybe. Winging it, I guess.”

“The usual, then.”

“Yeah.”

The sunset faded, and the inside of the tent went from dim to dark.