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

faceless zombie lumbered at me. I kicked it hard in the gut. Lots of soft tissue to absorb a blow, but it’s a hinge point. Bodies fold there.

Faceoff staggered back, but it didn’t fall.

Dammit.

“Go,” I yelled over my shoulder. I pointed past Faceoff to the studio’s big main entrance. “I’ll keep it busy. Get to the gate!”

In the back of the group, I got a quick glimpse of Ilya urging them on. The big group of exes behind them was getting closer. I could hear chattering teeth. Lots of them.

Then Faceoff bit my arm.

It’s not a big deal. I’ve been bitten two or three times. They can’t make it through the leather sleeves on my duster. In a way, it’s a good thing. Once an ex has a mouthful of people, it’ll stop fighting.

It hurts like all hell, though. Especially when they start gnawing. For someone who looked like they’d been dead for at least a month, Faceoff still had some pretty impressive jaw muscles.

I let the zombie chew on my sleeve while the rest of them ran past me. Even the kid pushing Grandma in her wheelchair. I was going to have some serious bruises on my arm when this was done.

Ilya stopped for a second and raised his bat, but I waved him on. They needed someone watching their back. Depending on how this went, it might not be me.

The sound of teeth got louder behind me. Got closer. I wasn’t going to have a lot of time.

Once they were a few yards away, I punched Faceoff in the forehead. It didn’t flinch, so I punched it a second time. And a third. On the fourth I felt something crack under the mess of its face.

For a few seconds it felt like it was looking at me. Its eyes kind of flickered, like it knew who I was and what I was doing. What would happen if it didn’t respond. It was just a second, but man…I could feel hate in that look. Like it knew me.

Then the moment passed and I hit it again. This time the punch knocked it off my arm. One of its front teeth popped out, tumbled over my sleeve, and bounced off my chest.

The teeth-clicking was loud behind me. Less than twenty feet away loud. I didn’t have much time.

I slammed my fist into the lack-of-face again and felt its nose collapse. The impact knocked it back again and let me kick its legs out from under it. I left it there and ran to catch up with the group. I didn’t waste time looking behind me. They weren’t close enough to bite, so they weren’t close enough to matter.

I caught up to the group just before the gate. The exes farther down the street had seen them coming and staggered forward. Three of the men had stopped to shoot at them. I grabbed two of them and shoved them toward the gate. “Idiots,” I shouted. “Just—”

The third one spun around with his pistol up. One of the dads, Jorge, I think. His eyes were scared. Somewhere on our little jaunt he’d snapped. Maybe right here.

No time to deal with panic. My goggles snapped open as soon as I saw his eyes. Just for two seconds. I felt the strength pour into me as it leeched out of him. Not much, but it was something.

The pistol dropped and he stumbled. A lot of people have told me seeing my eyes is like getting hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat. It makes dealing with people very easy. Living people, anyway.

“Help him inside,” I told the other two. “Now.”

They looked at him, then at me. One of them glanced back at the mob of exes. There was a walking corpse with a Nike logo on its shirt about twenty feet from us.

“Now!”

The two men grabbed their friend and ran for the gate. The guards inside had opened it about five feet, and the big robot, Cerberus, stood out in front. There were half a dozen exes flopped around its feet. One or two of them were still snapping their jaws. The robot had two more, one in each hand. She threw one at the approaching mob, then the other.

I stepped forward, grabbed the Nike lady by the shoulders, and hurled it back at the crowd. Three of the exes went down in a heap. And that was pretty much it for my borrowed strength.

The entrance to the studio is this big cobblestone driveway up through a double arch. Very old-California, old-Hollywood classy. The wheelchair was stuck in the ruts. Six blocks the kid makes it pushing Grandma and the chair gets stuck fifteen feet from the gate. Almost everyone else was inside. The two guys dragged Jorge right past Grandma and her wheelchair without stopping. The kid couldn’t get her free and another quartet of exes was closing in, with a lot more behind them.

I flicked open my goggles and drained Grandma until she passed out. It gave me the boost I needed. A good tier two. I threw her over my shoulder with one hand and flung the wheelchair at the exes with the other. When the kid tried to say something I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to the gate.

Cerberus smacked away two last dead people, stepped through, and the gate clanged shut behind her. A pipe slammed down into a set of brackets they’d welded across the entrance. About twenty seconds later the clicking got louder and the arms started reaching through the bars to claw at the air. Some of them had expensive watches or rubber bracelets or rings. A few of them were missing fingers or whole hands.

The family surged forward and caught Grandma as I set her down. I know enough Spanish to know they were worried she was dead, but she started moving and mumbling while they talked. They shot me some angry looks I ignored. Another plus of