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

side to side, gnashing its teeth at them. They were yellowed, and the front two were cracked and splintered. Another way it didn’t look like Madelyn.

The super-soldiers reached the fence next to Cesar, counted to three, and threw the ex over it. The kind-of-Madelyn sailed up over the chain-link, over the undead, and crashed down onto the pavement. It twitched a few times, then rolled over and struggled back to its feet. One side of its body sagged where it had struck the street.

“We’re clear,” Wilson called out. Gibbs limped forward. A few people appeared on the path behind him. Smith. Desi. Javi.

“WHAT THE FUCK?” bellowed Hector. He glared at the two soldiers, at Gibbs, up at Cesar, at anyone he could blame for his close call.

“You okay?” asked Franklin. “Did it get you?”

“No, it didn’t get near me,” said Hector. “What the hell were you waiting for? Why didn’t you punch its head off?”

“You’re fine,” said Wilson. “That’s all that matters.”

“No it isn’t all that fucking matters,” said Hector. “I wanna know how the fuck it got in here!” His finger stabbed through the air toward the exoskeleton. Past it, to the gate. “What the fuck was that? All this time something just had to lean on the fucking thing to open it?”

Steel scraped on pavement as Gibbs walked up to stand near the exoskeleton. “About four hundred pounds had to throw itself against the gate all at once. It was a cheap latch that just got overlooked in the rush to get things set up here.” The lieutenant tapped the gate, and the exes on the other side of the steel mesh flailed at his knuckles.

He walked back to Hector. “We stopped it, nobody got hurt. Like Wilson said, that’s the important thing.”

Hector shook his head and stalked back to his wheelbarrow. “Fuck all you guys.” He pushed it across the pavement toward the crowd of gardeners at the edge of the parking lot.

“Cesar,” called Gibbs, “is the gate secure?”

“Yeah,” said the exoskeleton.

The lieutenant looked at the two soldiers. “Go down to the scrap pile by the back fence and find something to brace this with. Some cinder blocks or long boards or something.”

The two men glanced at each other, then nodded. “Yes, sir” echoed across the lot.

“Man,” said Cesar after the soldiers jogged away, “so this thing’s just barely been held shut all this time?”

“Looks like it.”

“That’s crazy, man.” The battlesuit shook its head. “Lucky we were here. Lucky those guys were here, too.”

“Yeah.” Gibbs stared after the soldiers. “I think we were lucky.”

ST. GEORGE PACED in the small room. “How late do you think it is?”

“It’s been about an hour since they brought us breakfast.” Barry sat on the edge of the couch. He’d asked again for a wheelchair, but hadn’t seen one yet.

Breakfast had been a salty stew of fish, potatoes, and a few green bits he couldn’t identify. Madelyn had picked all the fish out of her bowl and eaten it plain. She’d given Barry the rest of it.

It was a nice little suite. St. George guessed it wasn’t the best on the ship, but he was pretty sure it was better than average. It felt like a high-end room in a midrange hotel. There were two separate bedrooms, a couch, some chairs, and a small dining room table bolted to the floor. He’d slept on the couch and given Barry and Madelyn the beds. Barry got to sleep so rarely it seemed rude not to give him the best accommodations, and it only seemed right to give Madelyn some privacy.

All things considered, it was one of the nicest rooms he’d spent time in over the past few years.

St. George glanced over at her. The Corpse Girl sat in a large, comfy chair reading her journal entries from last night. The square-shouldered woman, Eliza, had brought the journals and clothes to their room, but nothing else from the red gym bag.

Except for her chalk eyes flitting back and forth, she was motionless. No rise and fall of her chest, no flexing stiff limbs. She hadn’t looked happy when the three of them had been brought back together the night before. After assuring him they hadn’t hurt her, she’d brushed off his questions about her examination to write in her journals. He wasn’t sure if she’d ever slept. She’d been awake and reading when he woke up. And still not in a mood to talk.

“So,” said Barry, “how much longer you want to wait?”

St. George paused and tapped his fingers against his thigh. “I don’t know,” he said. “I want to help. I don’t like giving up on anybody…but these people are wearing on my patience.”

“They’re seriously paranoid,” agreed Barry, “but I think it goes with this deluded view of the world they’ve got.”

“I know we’ve all probably thought about it,” said St. George, glancing at Madelyn, “but maybe…could this be a mind-control thing?”

Her chalk eyes paused in their back-and-forth.

“Agent Smith? The real Smith?” Barry shook his head. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s possible, I guess. He made all of us believe a bunch of stuff, but this doesn’t seem like his style.”

“How so?”

“First, let me point out I’ve always wanted to say that about a super-nemesis, so let’s remember today for that.” He paused for laughter, sighed, and continued. “Second, it just doesn’t feel like his kind of gig. Not to be harsh but…well, these people don’t have a lot to offer.”

“Not that we know of,” said St. George.

“Oh, sure, there’s always a chance the cargo ship had the Ark of the Covenant down in the hold or something. But, realistically, does it look like these people have anything Smith would want? That’d make it worth his time to come out here?”

St. George shrugged, then shook his head.

“And, seriously,” said Barry, “how lame does your theory have to be if I’m the one offering the realistic view?”

Madelyn snorted out a laugh. She still didn’t look