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

Then the guards closed in and started moving them toward quarantine and screening. A couple of the people freaked out a bit, but they all knew it was coming. I’d explained it to them before we’d left their safe house, and the bilingual folks had translated for the three or four of them who were bad with English.

It’s a smart procedure. The guards walk them about a block down one of the studio roads to the quarantine building. Gives them time to see who’s limping, favoring arms, or just acting funny. It’s a way to spot people with bites they’re keeping quiet about. They all know they’re going to be found out eventually, but they still hope for the best.

Quarantine’s a big movie theater at the far end of the studio lot. It can hold a couple hundred people, but I don’t think there’s more than fifty or sixty in there at a time. Everyone stays there until they get checked out. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, I know, locking a bunch of untested people in a room together, but it isn’t. Unlike the movies, exes don’t reanimate in seconds. No one falls down dead and then jumps up as a zombie thirty seconds later. It takes a couple of hours for the ex-virus to get someone back on their feet.

Counting these people, I’ve helped get almost two hundred people inside so far. Two hundred people saved in less than a week.

It’s been seven weeks since she died. Since Regenerator screwed up and didn’t save her. He said we had more time, she’d be fine for another day or so, he needed to focus on more serious cases. Then she started convulsing. And bleeding out.

By the time someone found him she was already dead. There was nothing he could do. He put his hand on my shoulder and told me how sorry he was.

I think if the Dragon hadn’t shown up, I might’ve killed him. Or I would’ve found out just how fast he can heal. How many times can you crush someone’s hand in five minutes?

When I found out he’d been bitten, I almost laughed. Four weeks to the day after Kathy died. Irony. It’ll get you every fucking time.

The robot walked over to stand near me. I know it’s armor, not a robot, but I can’t help it. First impressions and all that crap.

“Close one,” said Cerberus. The words had a sharp, harsh edge. I think she had something set in the speakers so she’d sound tougher.

“Shouldn’t’ve been,” I muttered. “If they’d just kept moving it wouldn’t’ve been a problem.”

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you cleared.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Every time I come back in, I have to go through a full exam. That’s the big procedure right now. It’s why all the people I brought back are in quarantine. One by one they’re brought out, taken somewhere secure, and stripped naked. Every inch of you gets checked for cuts, scrapes, stabs, bites—anything that means you could be infected. They even look at your tongue. I know Stealth wanted to shave people’s scalps, but the Dragon thought that’d be pushing it.

Plus, head wounds bleed like mad. You can’t hide one. Even an old one’s going to have a big scab, and if it’s older than that…well, it’d be clear you’re infected.

We walked down the road to one of the four white pop-up tents that had been set up near the quarantine building. Two for men, two for women. The guards were leading a teenage girl with messy brown hair into the farthest tent while we approached. She hadn’t been in my group.

Cerberus stopped a few yards away from the tent and let me walk in on my own. One of the few privileges of being a superhero. I can cut in line for the naked test.

An older guy with a beard was waiting in the tent. He’d checked me four or five times before. I think his name started with a J. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to introductions these days. He had two folding tables on either side of him.

Two guards with rifles flanked the tent’s entrance. One of them wore a camo jacket with a Marine badge on the shoulder. I knew there were a couple real Marines here, but there were also people floating around who’d found or looted military clothes. This guy’s posture didn’t scream military.

Some people freaked out during the test. That’s why there were armed guards. A few of them had reason to freak out. I’d never asked what happened when they found somebody with a bite. To be honest, I didn’t care.

The bearded guy smiled at me. “Y’all want to admit anything up front, save us some time?”

I shook my head and pulled my gloves off. They had some slime and a bit of blood on them. I dropped them on the left-hand table. Questionable material. No one was sure how the ex-virus spread, so anything questionable got doused in disinfectants, washed, and doused again. I’d get them back just in time to head back out again.

I shrugged out of my duster and draped it over the table on the right. Then I unbuckled my body armor and pulled it over my head. Arm guards were next, then my utility belt, and my shirt. All piled on the right.

“Goggles,” said the guard in the Marine jacket.

I stopped unbuttoning my jeans and looked at him. “What?”

“Take your goggles off,” he said.

Nobody else said anything. I felt my mouth twist. “Are you new here or just fucking stupid? The goggles don’t come off.”

His jaw tensed up. He started to raise his rifle, but the other guard pushed it back down. “Sorry, Gorgon. He’s new and stupid.”

I shook my head and let my jeans drop. I was a boxers man for years, but over the past few weeks I’d switched to briefs, just to speed this whole process up and spare myself a little dignity. They hide a lot less.

“Got