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

“We’re in Los Angeles,” said St. George. “If you know the city, our main complex is near Hollywood, heading toward downtown.”

Eliza’s lips flattened out. Steve lifted his shotgun and held it across his chest. Alice’s face came close to a snarl.

St. George looked at each of them. “What?”

“It isn’t that bad,” said Madelyn. “I always heard bad things about LA, too, but it’s nice. The Mount is huge. There’s tons of room, and you can just walk around without worrying about exes.”

Alice brought her shotgun around. It wasn’t pointed at the Corpse Girl, but it wasn’t far off, either. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No.”

Whatshisname is back, said Zzzap.

The bald man with the biker beard came up the steps to the helipad. He took a few deep breaths and nodded. “Rooms are ready. Thirteen, fourteen, sixteen.”

Eliza nodded. “Last chance for you and your people to get lost,” she told St. George. “Our home, our rules. Everyone gets checked. No exceptions.”

He looked at his friends. “I think we’re all okay with that, yeah?”

Madelyn shrugged. Zzzap nodded.

“Okay, then.” Eliza holstered her other pistol, but the shotguns and spears stayed up. “Follow me.” She scooped up the red bag and headed for the stairwell. Steve, Alice, and the others stepped aside and gestured for the heroes to follow her.

“Welcome to Lemuria,” said the Middle Eastern man as they walked past him. His flat tone made it less a greeting and more a statement. He didn’t meet their eyes.

Lemuria? Zzzap glanced back at the man.

“It was a made-up continent,” Alice said as they walked down the steps. “Some guy made it up back in the 1800s to explain where lemurs came from.”

“That’s stupid,” said Madelyn.

No, actually, that’s pretty much the truth, said the wraith. He drifted down from the helipad and followed alongside the dead teenager. I was just expecting you would’ve gone with Atlantis or Lost Island or something.

“We’re not in the Atlantic,” said Alice.

They walked along one of the gardens. People stared. Most of them were adults, but there were a few teenagers.

The garden was a raised bed, about twenty feet wide and a hundred long. There was another one a few yards past it. There were lots of plants growing that St. George recognized, but none he could name. The soil was dark and wet. Thin streams of brown water leaked out from the edges. He wrinkled his nose.

“Whoa,” Madelyn whispered. “Even I can smell that. Kinda like a sewer.” Her nostrils flared and her lips tightened up.

No, I get that, Zzzap said to Alice, drowning out the Corpse Girl. Lemuria’s just a little more obscure than most people would’ve chosen. You have my geeky approval, believe me.

“We don’t need your approval,” said Steve.

I’m just saying—

“If you don’t want to tell us the truth, just keep your mouth shut,” the big man said. “Got it?”

“What’s the problem here?” asked St. George. “Why is it so hard for you to believe we are who we say we are?”

“Because you’re lying,” Eliza said over her shoulder.

“But he’s not,” said Madelyn. “He’s the Mighty Dragon. He used to be, anyway.”

Steve turned and glared at them. “The Mighty Dragon’s dead,” he snapped. “Everyone knows that.”

St. George stopped walking. “What?”

“He’s dead,” growled Steve. “He died when they nuked Los Angeles to contain the virus.”

I THINK I saw Kathy earlier. Way up on Western, past the freeway. It was just a thin figure in white, standing in the middle of the road about a mile and a half away.

It could’ve been a zombie altar boy, I guess. Anybody in a white outfit. There’s probably a few hundred people in white staggering around Los Angeles right now. It might’ve just been light gray that looked white because of the distance. The odds of it being my dead girlfriend are pretty slim.

Some people think I’ve got all kinds of eye powers. Telescopic sight. X-Ray vision. But the goggles don’t make my eyes better, they just keep everyone else safe. Truth is, I’m not much better off than anyone else when it comes to seeing things at a distance.

I’m pretty sure it was her.

I wanted to quit being Gorgon after she died. I just wanted to curl up in my apartment for a month. Or punch something. Punching won out.

One good thing about the zombie apocalypse—there’s lots of stuff to punch. Idiot gangbangers. Looters. Hysterical people. And zombies.

Lots of zombies.

Stealth had me on escort duty. Getting some of the better-armed groups into her film studio fortress. The ones who can travel on their own without too much help.

Today’s group was twenty-three people. Two extended families out of Hancock Park area and four loners we’d picked up on the way. Mostly adults. A few kids. One baby keeping its trap shut. A few old people. One woman was in a wheelchair. I figured she was a goner. Her grandson pushed her, never fell behind once. He had Grandma’s chair leaning back in a wheelie the whole way. They’d been hiding out six blocks away from the studio, so the decision was we could make it on foot safer and faster than driving a truck with a loud engine. I’d taken a quick hit off the group, enough to get me up to tier-two strength so I could deal with any problems that showed up.

We passed Wilton, worked the whole group around an abandoned SUV, and I saw the corner of the studio half a block up ahead. I also saw about half a dozen exes between us and that corner. With the thirty or so dead people trailing us since we passed Western, that added up to some of my group dead if I didn’t take care of things.

One thing Kathy and I learned fast. Standing still is how they get you. Except for the Mighty Dragon, everyone who’s tried to stand their ground against these things has been overwhelmed and died. Everyone. Police, soldiers, stupid punks with guns. Hell, they even took