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

I was sick when I was a kid. I think whatever he did then made me like this after I died.”

They looked at her again, their eyes going up and down her body.

“How did you die?” asked the young woman.

Madelyn bit her lip. “Ahh,” she said. “Well, I don’t really remember it. I have memory problems sometimes. There’s a lot of stuff I’ve forgotten.”

“So you don’t know how you died?” Alice’s brow knotted up.

Madelyn looked at the pile of clothes. “Could I just put my underwear back on, at least? The exam’s done, right?”

“How’d you die?” asked the cowboy.

She sighed and looked down at the floor. “I think I got torn apart by a bunch of exes.”

“So you have been bitten,” said Alice.

Barry pushed himself over and back up into a sitting position. He tensed his abs to hold himself in place and dragged the robe over himself. “Everybody convinced I don’t have the mark of the beast or anything like that?” he asked, bracing his arms on the floor. “Or do I need to flop around like a fish for another ten minutes?”

“We have to be sure,” said Steve. There were two other men with shotguns. They’d relaxed a bit when it became clear Barry couldn’t walk, but they hadn’t lowered their weapons. “I needed to make sure you weren’t faking.”

“Faking what?”

“This.” He waved his hand at Barry sprawled on the floor. “It might be a trick.”

Barry glared up at Steve. The other man looked six feet over him from his current position. “Yeah, I’m tricking you into putting me in a very vulnerable position. Damn, I’m clever.” He shook his head. “What’s next? You want to drown me in the pool and make sure I’m not a witch? Or just see if I weigh as much as a duck?”

Steve let the barrel of his own shotgun drift down to the floor. “When was the last time you had contact with the ex?”

“What ex?”

“The dead girl you brought with you.”

“It’s Corpse Girl,” said Barry. “Like Steamboy, but with more death. I think she copyrighted it, so be careful about using it too much.”

“Answer the question.”

“What are you asking? ‘Contact’ is pretty vague. Are we talking about the Sagan book or the movie with Jodie Foster or First Contact when the Borg travel—”

Steve tapped his boot against Barry’s foot. A little harder than a tap, but not a kick. “When was the last time you touched it?”

Barry raised an eyebrow and looked from his foot up to Steve’s face. “We have to work on your people skills.”

“Answer the question.”

He sighed. “I think we might’ve brushed feet while we were sleeping last night, but it’s hard for me to be sure.” He waved at his legs.

“You slept with it?” spat one of the guards. He had the dark, flaking skin of someone who lived in an ongoing cycle of sunburns and peeling.

Barry twisted around to look at the man. “First off,” he said, “she’s a she, not an it. And yes, all of us slept together in the same life raft.”

“I’d never close my eyes around one of those things,” muttered the other guard. There was a thin gap between each of his teeth, as if they’d been spaced out.

“So, hey,” said Barry, “fascinating as all this narrow-mindedness is to listen to, how about we shake things up with a little quid pro quo, Clarice?”

Steve looked down at him. “What?”

“While we were walking up here, you were talking about the bombs going off. When did that happen?”

The tall man’s jaw tensed up.

“Hey,” said Barry, “I’m flopping on the floor. You can at least answer one or two easy questions, right?”

Steve’s fingers flexed on his shotgun and Barry tensed. He found the switch in the back of his mind, the one that turned him back into Zzzap, and put a little bit of mental pressure against it. The change took less than a second, but it didn’t hurt to be ready.

Then the tall man’s grip shifted. “About four and a half years ago,” he said. “Right after things got bad.”

“What day?”

“We don’t know for sure. We were all out here, at sea. One day the Internet crapped out, and then all the broadcasting stopped. And then…” He tapped his fingers on the shotgun. “We think they dropped the bombs in July or August.”

“August of…2009?” asked Barry.

Steve’s jaw shifted again and he nodded.

“Typical government morons,” said the gap-toothed guard. “Too late to do any good.”

Barry nodded without hearing the man. “So,” he said, “you saw the flash or what?”

Steve shook his head. “Not from out here. We got it all from witnesses. Los Angeles was just a crater. Most of the West Coast was gone. Most of Honolulu, too. The whole island of Oahu.”

“Yeah,” said Barry, “I’ve seen Honolulu, too.”

The sunburned guard looked down his peeling nose at Barry. “How d’you know about Honolulu but not know about everything else? Where’ve you been all this time?”

“I have been,” said Barry, “in Japan.”

The men paused and looked at each other. “Japan’s still there?” Steve asked. “I heard Tokyo got hit, too.”

Barry shook his head. “Nope. Must’ve been a translation problem. They’re fine.”

The man’s eyes opened a little wider. “Really?”

Barry nodded. “All the experience they had dealing with giant monsters, you think they couldn’t deal with a zombie uprising?”

Peel frowned. “Giant monsters aren’t real.”

“A couple of years ago we would’ve said zombies aren’t real,” said Barry. “Let’s not say anything that’ll make us all look stupid later, right?”

Peel nodded awkwardly.

“Remember the super-samurai? Most of them survived and they’ve got a safe zone set up, and, hey, speaking of which, are we pretty much done here? I’d love to get back with my friends.”

“In a couple of minutes,” said Steve. “What about your buddy? Why’s he keep saying he’s the Mighty Dragon?”

“Why do you keep saying he’s not the Mighty Dragon?”

“Because the Dragon died in LA,” said Peel.

“How do you know that? You don’t even know when the bombs went off, but you know