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

The cry echoed through the crowd. People panicked and surged away. They clogged the stairs, and some jumped off the helipad down to the deck. A few stepped forward with their farming tools raised.

One, he couldn’t help but notice, was the woman with the pitchfork.

Alice swung her shotgun between Zzzap and the dead girl. The bald man took a few steps back. Eliza had both pistols on St. George, one lower than the other.

Madelyn sighed.

“Calm down,” said St. George. “She hasn’t attacked anyone. She’s not doing anything.”

“Move out of the way,” said Eliza. “She’s infected. She has to be put down.”

“I’m not infected,” said Madelyn. “I’m just dead.”

St. George smiled. “She talks a lot for an ex, doesn’t she?”

“Hey!”

“Mister,” said the black man, “this is your last chance. Move away.” He pushed past Eliza and lowered his shotgun toward the Corpse Girl.

George…?

“I’ve got it.” St. George reached out and wrapped his fingers around the weapon’s muzzle. His palm blocked the barrel. “Again,” he said, “I think you just need to stop for a minute, calm down, and consider what’s going on here.”

The man stared at St. George with cold eyes. “You do not want to be playing this game with me, mister.”

“I’m not wor—”

The roar of the shotgun echoed across the helipad, and then the open space swallowed up the sound. The blast knocked St. George’s hand away from the barrel. More people shrieked. Madelyn was one of them.

St. George glared at the man. Then he held up his hand. Smoke curled off the cuff of his leather jacket. He opened his fingers and let the buckshot clatter and ping down onto the deck. “I’m fine with it if you want to keep playing this game,” he said, “but I think my turn’s going to go very differently than yours.”

About twenty people were left up on the helipad. They stared at St. George with wide eyes and open mouths. The Middle Eastern man with the shovel studied the hero’s face.

“You rock,” said Madelyn.

Sure, sighed Zzzap, take all the cool moments for yourself. I’ll just hang back here with the power of a star and make sure you’re well-lit.

“We’ve been polite,” St. George told Eliza, “but I think at this point either we start talking, we start fighting, or we leave. Your choice.”

She didn’t take her eyes off St. George, but she holstered one of the pistols she’d been pointing at him and made a point of fastening the strap over it. Then she raised her hand. “Everyone stand down for the moment.”

“For the moment?” Madelyn raised an eyebrow.

Eliza turned her head, still keeping her eyes on St. George. “Steve,” she told the black man, “stand down.”

Steve still had his shotgun up. His wide eyes flitted back and forth between the barrel, St. George’s hand, and the pellets being pushed along the helipad by the breeze. He looked at Eliza and lowered his weapon.

She turned her full attention back to the heroes. “We’ll talk more once you’ve cleared inspection and we’ve established who you are.”

“I told you who we are,” said St. George. “The Mighty Dragon. Zzzap. Corpse Girl.”

“So you say.”

Madelyn shook her head. “You’re telling me you never heard of the Mighty Dragon?”

“Of course I have.” Eliza tipped the pistol aimed at St. George. “Doesn’t mean I believe you’re him.”

“Who else could I be?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but you’ll understand if I don’t believe you’re the Mighty Dragon.”

“No,” he said, “not really.”

She took a step back and murmured some quick commands to the bald man with the biker beard. He glanced at the heroes, nodded, and jogged away. His feet clanged down the helipad stairs and he was gone.

I think this was a Twilight Zone episode, Zzzap said. One day you wake up and nobody knows who you are.

“They know who I am,” said St. George, “they just don’t believe I’m me.”

“Is that a line from a song?” Madelyn asked. “It should be if it isn’t.”

Eliza stepped back to them. “Here’s how it works,” she said. “You get a full exam to make sure you’re not infected. We hold you in quarantine overnight. If you pass, tomorrow we’ll talk.” She stared at Madelyn.

“I’m not an ex,” said the Corpse Girl. “I’m just like all of you, I’m just…dead. It’s my superpower.”

“Not much of a superpower,” said Eliza.

Madelyn smiled. “It all depends on what you do with it.”

Do you have a big problem with the ex-virus out here? asked Zzzap.

The square-shouldered woman furrowed her brow at the wraith, and he repeated himself. She shook her head. “It was bad at first, on different ships. We lost a lot of people. Once we all came together, we got strict about who could come aboard. We haven’t had someone turn in almost ten months.”

Steve stared at St. George. “Why do you call yourself the Mighty Dragon?”

He shrugged. “It seemed to make sense. I could breathe fire and sort of fly.”

“No, I mean, why didn’t you pick your own name? It’s disrespectful.”

“What is?”

“Using his name,” said the big man. “A lot of people looked up to him.”

“It’s my name,” St. George said. “I made it up.”

Steve grunted.

Eliza gestured at the red gym bag with her pistol. “What’s in there?”

“Some supplies for the trip,” said St. George. “Food, water, some clothes. There’s a bag with about a thousand vitamin C tablets. We thought you might be suffering from scurvy out here and figured they’d make a nice gift.”

“Where’d you get those?” Eliza asked.

We make them, said Zzzap. It’s a little time-consuming, but it’s pretty easy once you’ve got everything set up.

“Where the hell are you people from?” asked Alice. “I mean, how’d you dodge everything and end up with all this stuff?”

“It took a lot of time,” said St. George. “For a long while we were struggling and scraping by. But we managed to get a lot of survivors together and we’re doing…okay. Not great, but okay.”

“And where is this?”

Hollywood, said Zzzap.

Steve looked at the wraith. “What was