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

and stretched his arms up high over his head. He had a collection of gang tattoos on his arms, too, much more impressive than Cesar’s or Javi’s.

He grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and started pushing it across the parking lot. The exes along the fence followed him, shifting and bumping into each other as they moved. A dead man and woman both wore black-and-purple LA Kings jerseys. One had a ragged hole in the side of its neck, the other’s shoulder was a mess of sun-baked meat. Past them was a massive ex. It had been a huge woman when it was alive, in height and weight. Death and years in the sun hadn’t shrunk it much.

A teenage girl with dark hair and dried blood around its mouth stood near the steel gate. At first glance, Cesar thought the dead girl looked a lot like Madelyn. But its eyes were the wrong shape, and its skin was a yellow ivory while Madelyn’s was chalk white. And the ex was flat-chested, but he’d learned that might just mean it had dried out a lot.

Two of the super-soldiers kept an easy watch farther down the fence line, on the other side of the dumpsters. Wilson still wore his full uniform, while Franklin had stripped down to a sand-colored T-shirt. The latter grunted out push-ups while the former egged him on. The suit’s directional microphones heard Wilson chanting “Fifteen…Sixteen…Seventeen…”

Hector was halfway across the lot with his wheelbarrow. The exes had stumbled and rolled and shifted along the fence. The huge dead woman staggered back, then lunged forward and slammed into the gate. Kind-of-Madelyn was crushed between the ex’s bulk and the steel bars.

The microphones picked up a squeak of metal on metal that drowned out the constant clicking of teeth for a second. A sharp bang. A quick scrape.

The gate swung open.

The kind-of-Madelyn ex was pushed forward and fell beneath the massive dead woman. A withered, sexless figure dressed in rags lurched behind them. The battlesuit’s targeting systems picked out seven more forcing their way through the gate. Two other zombies staggered in on either side of the obese one. The three of them stumbled forward and wedged themselves between the gate’s pillars for a moment.

Hector looked up at the sound of metal on metal. He saw the exes as they fumbled through the gate. He dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow.

Cesar lunged forward.

Gibbs yelled something.

Wilson and Franklin looked up from their exercises.

Even without all of its armor, the exoskeleton weighed enough to take chunks out of the pavement as Cesar raced for the gate. He passed Hector, grabbed the withered ex reaching for the man, and hurled it over the fence. A second ex staggered past him, and he brought a steel-and-carbon fist down on its skull. He grabbed the limp form by the neck and flung it back the way it came.

“The gate,” shouted someone. It sounded like Gibbs. “Close the gate!”

In the distance, the warning bell rang.

Cesar lashed out an arm and closed a fist on an ex’s shoulder. He swung it around and used it to knock a dead woman over backward. Both of them fell, and he slammed down two punches that struck bone and went through to connect with the pavement.

Proximity warnings flashed in his eyes, and the huge dead woman slammed into him. The ex had to weigh three hundred pounds, easy. The impact forced one of the titan’s legs back. Broken teeth snapped shut again and again inside the sagging face. Cesar could see strands of hair and flakes of blood between the teeth.

He set his hands on the ex’s shoulders—strong, mechanical hands—aimed, and heaved. The dead thing sailed back and knocked over five-six-seven other dead people as it flew through the open gate. The battlesuit’s targeting system highlighted each one.

Cesar stomped forward and drove his fist into another ex. The dead man in the Kings jersey. The punch blasted through the corpse and left it impaled on the exoskeleton’s arm. The click-click-click of the zombie’s teeth didn’t falter. It flailed at the battlesuit’s head, its fingers filling the field of view. He grabbed it with his free hand and pried it off. It dropped to the ground and twisted back and forth.

The exes forced their way through the gate, jamming themselves in the opening again and slowing down the flow of their numbers. Only a handful had made it through.

Cesar reached out with both hands, fingers spread wide. He struck one ex in the chest, another in the shoulder, and caught a third between them. Servos spun, pistons thrust, and he shoved the undead back between the two pillars. Four or five more went back with them. One stumbled, tipped over, and landed on top of the obese woman.

The exoskeleton reached out and grabbed the gate with gore-soaked fingers. Cesar swung it toward himself and then pushed it shut. Two or three exes pressed against it, but the suit overpowered them with minimal effort and power drain. One last dead person, a man with blood-streaked sideburns, tried to stumble through the shrinking opening. The battlesuit’s servos whined once and crushed the man’s arms between the gate and the latch.

Cesar shifted his feet. He set two steel toes against the base of the gate and locked the joints. “I got it,” he called back.

The targeting system lit up something in the rear cameras. The kind-of-Madelyn. It was inside the gate.

The dead thing staggered after Hector, its arms raised and teeth chattering, but Franklin was between them. The soldier darted in, slapped the dead girl’s hands down, and then leaped back out. The ex’s head swung to follow him, and it turned away from Hector. Its arms came back up as Franklin jumped in to tease it again.

Wilson lunged in from the side and grabbed the dead girl by one arm. The ex twisted around, and Franklin grabbed the other arm. They dragged it back to the fence line. The ex rolled its head from