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

“Yeah.”

“But you’re not questioning me about not being there.”

“You’re not saying you’re the Mighty Dragon.”

“Okay, yeah, but…” Barry stopped, shifted his weight onto one hand, and rubbed his temple. “Hey, is there any chance you’ve got a wheelchair stashed here somewhere? Or just a chair-chair? It’s kind of a pain to keep holding myself up like this.”

“In a minute,” said Steve. “We’ll get you back to your friends, you can all rest for the night, and tomorrow morning we’ll all talk with the boss.”

“Why not tonight?”

“Quarantine,” the tall man said. “Just want to make sure you’re all clean before we let you out and about.”

“Isn’t that what this whole strip search was about?”

“Just a follow-up thing. You can get infected other ways, too.”

Barry looked at him. “It’s Madelyn, isn’t it? You’re just waiting to see if she attacks somebody or something.”

Steve shrugged. “You brought an ex on board. We’ve got to keep everyone safe.”

“She’s not an ex. She’s just a teenage girl. Sort of.”

“She’s dead, right?”

“Well, yeah. But not that way.”

“If she’s dead,” said Steve, “she’s an ex.”

Barry leaned forward and crossed his arms. “I’ve got to be honest,” he said, “I’m sensing some serious trust issues from you guys.”

THE SUN CAME up over the freeway and flooded the armor’s optic systems. Cesar shook his head until the whited-out view readjusted. Color flowed back into the world, and he saw the garden, the fences, and the exes out on the street.

“You okay?” asked Gibbs. The hisses and whirrs of his foot blended in with the sounds of the titan as they walked the fence. It was only Cesar’s second time out in the battlesuit, and they were still checking a few things.

“Sunlight made the lenses flare up,” Cesar said. “Just took a minute to adjust.”

Gibbs frowned. “That shouldn’t be happening.”

“Might just be me, y’know. I get all the input direct.”

Gibbs pulled his clipboard out from under his arm and made a note as they walked.

The community garden had been two big areas on opposite sides of a residential street, each one surrounded by a low chain-link fence. Those fences had been connected and reinforced with vehicles, like the Mount. Granted, Eden’s wall contained a much higher class of car, overall. And a lot fewer of them.

It was still a bit of a work in progress. Lots of vehicles could be found in the suburban residential area—mostly SUVs and sports cars—but they hadn’t had as much time to gather them and get them into place. Unlike the Mount, the cars weren’t stacked, and in most places it was just a single car parked against the fence. There were still long stretches with nothing but chain-link, posts, and some plywood to block the view.

One such place was the Hot Zone, the twenty-foot-wide walkway between the two gardens. When the people of the Mount first started working on Eden, they’d extended the fence across the road. St. George had found extra material around some nearby houses and driven new posts into the pavement. It was where they’d set up their gates for the trucks, and where the vehicles were parked.

The gates and necessary open space also made it the least reinforced part of the fence line.

Cesar and Gibbs walked past one of the Hot Zone’s simple guard stations. The blueprints showed a squat tower, but for now it was two folding chairs on a stack of wooden pallets, just high enough to see over the car that reinforced that length of fence. A man and woman sat and watched the exes thump against the vehicle. They each gave the armor a nod. “Good to have you out here, Cerberus,” said the man.

Cesar raised an arm and gave them a confident salute. They both smiled before turning back to the undead.

The exoskeleton and the lieutenant walked out of the Hot Zone and continued along the fence line. Cesar looked at some of the exes straining against the fence. There hadn’t been many when they’d arrived a few days earlier, but all the activity in the garden had attracted them. He winked, or thought of winking, and the armor’s targeting system came up with sixty-three targets. One shy of hitting its max. Dozens and dozens of red crosshairs filled his view. He swept them away with another thought.

Instead, he looked at the faces. St. George did that. He tried to remember these were people once, not just teeth-clacking zombies. So Cesar wanted to do the same.

There was a dead woman in a floppy straw hat that was close to falling off its head. A gaunt man in a black suit and tie had withered away to skin and bones. A kid about Cesar’s age was missing its entire right arm at the shoulder. A couple of zombie kids got jostled at hip-height, their faces pressed into the fence. One little boy gnashed his teeth on the chain-link.

One—it might’ve been a flat-chested woman or a slim man—had a chunk missing from its head, including one eye. Cesar could actually see inside its skull. However much of an ex’s brain needed to be destroyed to drop it, this one was just a few points above that.

The blood on all of them was thick and dry, like layers of old paint.

“Huh,” said Gibbs.

“What?”

“They’re following you.” He gestured at the exes as their skulls turned after the battlesuit. “They’re watching you.”

“Yeah, man,” said Cesar. “That’s what they do. You new here?”

The lieutenant snorted. “You’re in the suit. Why are they still going after you?”

“ ’Cause it’s what they do. That’s why Danielle’s so…” He dropped the volume of the speakers. “That’s why she wants to get back in here, bro. So she’ll feel safe when they go after her.”

“Right,” said Gibbs. “Except she’ll be in the armor. Wearing it. Meat in a can.”

“Bro…”

He shrugged it off. “It makes sense they’d go after her. Why are they going after you?”

“What do you mean?”

Gibbs reached up between the struts and put his