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

His jacket pulled tight under his arms as the ocean went black around him.

“LIZA,” SHOUTS STEVE.

I turn, hear a few more yells, and see one of the new arrivals just over a yard away from me. He’s crossed a third of the Pacific Eagle’s deck in just a few seconds. He’s lucky no one’s shot him. There are lots of itchy trigger fingers here.

It’s the big guy from the end of the line. One of the eight people we found adrift on what looks like a Discovery Channel research ship. All Asian, except one of the women who looks like she may have mixed ancestry. She and one other woman speak some English. They say they ran out of fuel seventeen months ago, started drifting, and have been living off fish, kelp, and distilled seawater.

I’d pegged the big guy as the twitchiest of them. When he hadn’t tried anything after fifteen minutes or said anything all through the speech, I figured he’d wised up and gotten his nerves under control. I’m usually good at reading people, but it’s not the first time I’ve been wrong. Over the past three years since Lemuria came together, I’ve guessed wrong a few times. Some people I thought were clean had hidden bites. A few I thought were safe and sane—as sane as Mitchel, at least—turned out to be complete head cases.

I’ve survived all of them. Mostly because I don’t care if they kill me or not. Not being scared if you’ll die lets you be a lot gutsier as a fighter.

I haven’t been scared for a while now.

My left hand goes up to warn the big guy, to hold him off, even as the fingers of my right hand flick the strap on my holster. He doesn’t seem to notice either. I hear shouts and late warnings. He slams into me and takes us both down to the deck.

Just before we land I crack my forehead against his. It’s not a great head butt. Too much of it gets spread between us. But it keeps me from slamming the back of my head on the deck and it catches him off guard.

He’s big, but not as heavy as he looks. Who is these days? He has a beard and breath that smells like the worst parts of the ocean and the tiny scabs of early scurvy across his scalp.

I hear footsteps. Steve yelling commands. People are coming to drag the big guy off me. He’s not doing much past shouting and keeping me pinned. I don’t think he thought it through past “knock down the woman in charge.”

If Maleko was here, if he was Nautilus, the big guy would be sailing through the air right now. He’d hit the water a hundred or so feet away from Lemuria. Probably break an arm on impact. And then he’d drown. Slowly. Painfully.

The pistol settles in my right hand. If I shoot him at this range, I’ll be covered in his blood. And we don’t know if he’s infected or not yet. If any got in my mouth or eyes or if I’ve scraped an elbow on the deck…

Everyone else realizes this, too. It’s why they haven’t shot him yet.

I keep my finger off the trigger, stretch my arm up around his back, and let the pistol’s barrel crack against the back of the guy’s skull. He jerks his head back and it lets me get back under his arm and smash him across the jaw with the pistol.

He’s twisting off me, trying to get away, but I follow him. I spin the pistol in my hand and swing my arm. He rolls over, brings his own arm up, and the butt of the .45 catches him right below the wrist, right on the bone. He howls. The pain’s sharp and fresh and he thinks it’s broken.

The fight’s over, but there needs to be an example.

I stand back up and bring the butt down hard on his shoulder blade. The same side as the hurt wrist. He howls. Like the wrist, it isn’t broken, but he’s going to feel that for a couple of days. I kick him in the ribs, just for good measure.

“He was stupid,” I tell his shipmates, raising my voice so it’s almost a shout. “And he just made all your lives worse. Now we can’t trust any of you.” I wave my free hand at Steve. “Get them all cleared and then quarantine them. Be thorough.”

He nods.

“And for Christ’s sake,” I tell him, “don’t call me Liza.”

“Sorry,” he says. His mouth twitches into that almost-smile he does sometimes.

I wave him away. He turns back to the new arrivals. Steve and I have worked together for two and a half years now. If I trusted anyone here on Lemuria, it would be him and Maleko.

But I don’t trust anyone.

The new arrivals file past me, flanked by Steve, Devon, Alice, and a few other faces I don’t recognize. Because I’m looking at the woman at the front of the line. Forty, weathered, black hair with a single thin line of gray.

The woman wears a frayed red T-shirt, almost pink it’s so faded, with a stylized black mask across the chest. I’m pretty sure it’s the superhero from Los Angeles, the Mighty Dragon. The one Nautilus is always talking about. The one John was so sure would fix everything.

I’ve never been a superhero fan. Not as a kid. Not as an adult. Even when real superheroes started showing up across the world. Stealth. The Dragon. Midknight. The super-samurai in Japan. Some people never get into sports or game shows, no matter what amazing thing’s going on. I never got into superheroes.

John was into all that stuff. He believed in heroes. Comic books. Movies. All the real ones. He kept saying they’d save us. They’d save the world.

He’s been dead for almost three years now.

I stop at the base of the ramp and look