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

to go to sleep?” he asked her. “You’ve been real good keeping me company while George was asleep. He can talk with me now. We’ll keep quiet.”

“ ’Kay,” she said. She rolled over and put her head against Barry’s other calf. “G’night, Barry. G’night, Sajorj.”

“Sleep tight,” said Barry.

She yawned again and her eyes fluttered.

He tipped his head back so it was brushing St. George’s. “So, here’s what I’ve put together from what the kids told me, kind of aging some of it up a bit so it makes sense,” he said. “Nautilus is a full-on hero to these people. Pretty much everyone out here believes the reason they’re all alive is because of him. He helped put the boats together into this island, he finds other boats for them to salvage, fishes with them, takes care of any exes, all that sort of stuff. And he tells lots of stories about back before the ex-virus, when he was a full-time superhero with his best friend, the Mighty Dragon.”

“What?”

“Yeah. You’re kind of a local legend by association, if that makes sense. There are stories about you two fighting mobsters, robots, sea monsters, saving the world.”

St. George turned his head. “Sea monsters?”

“Yep. So says the gospel according to Kaitlyn.”

“But I’ve never even met the guy until today.”

“No one seems to care,” Barry said. “It’s like he’s pulling a Jonathan and editing himself into all of your life and history.”

“A who?”

“Jonathan, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They did an episode where he cast a spell that made him the most important person in town, so he became the main character of the show. They even redid the opening credits so it was all—”

“Barry.”

“Sorry. I just thought you’d remember that one. I mean they fully committed to—”

“Barry!”

“Right, sorry. Anyway, Nautilus’s told everyone he’s best buddies with the Mighty Dragon, and now everyone’s so deep in the fandom they kind of gloss over some of the more…well, evil stuff he’s doing. He says something’s for the greater good, so they all go along with it.”

St. George turned again so he could see his friend in the corner of his eye. “Yeah, but this? This has to be too much.”

“You think they had cages for a dozen kids just sitting around?” Barry shook his head. “From what Kaitlyn and Colin told me, this is standard procedure whenever a new ship shows up. They’ve both been in the cage at some point before, him twice, her once. Any newcomers give in because nobody’s going to risk getting a bunch of kids hurt. Then they become part of the community, drink the Nautilus-flavored Kool-Aid, and everybody’s happy.”

“Jesus,” muttered St. George. “How does he get anyone to go along with it? Parents let him do this to their kids? Hell, why don’t we hear all the kids crying right now?”

“The kids don’t think there’s anything weird about it,” Barry said. “This is all normal for them. They think it’s a game. It’s what they grew up with. Figure any kid under the age of ten has spent at least half his life out here.” He gestured at the two children curled up against him. “Heck, these two have never even seen dry land. They were born out here.”

“So you think this is some kind of cult?”

“For some of the adults, yeah, but I think the kids just don’t know any better.”

St. George looked across the nighttime deck. Two of the guards were talking in low tones. He thought one of them, Mitchel with one l of the cowboy mustache, might be staring at the cage, but he couldn’t be sure.

Then Mitchel set off memories of Madelyn glaring at the man, and then the image of her being torn in half. The look of terror on her face. Her limbs sagging as her spine came apart. The sound of wet meat hitting the ship’s deck.

He shook the thoughts from his mind. “And all this stuff about being dead? And Los Angeles being destroyed?”

“Yeah, I heard some of those stories, too. Translating from little kid, it seems like most of these ships decided to stay at sea when the ex-virus broke out. A couple of them formed a little fleet. They got food drops from helicopters for a while, but then those stopped.”

“When was this?”

“She’s three and a half, George.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Anyway, they were starving, and when people died they started turning into exes anyway. Not clear how the virus got out here. And that’s about when Nautilus showed up and told them that they’d nuked all the big cities to stop the spread of the virus. They had to stay out here until all the radiation cleared. When fuel started running low he helped them push the ships together like this.”

“He pushed the ships together? By himself?”

“According to Kaitlyn, he’s the strongest man in the world when he’s in the water. What do you think?”

“He’s no lightweight.” St. George rolled his stomach muscles, then shifted his jaw back and forth. “So nobody saw or heard the nukes? He just showed up and told them it happened and they all believed him?”

“Well,” Barry pointed out, “there was Hawaii. And it was the CDC’s fallback plan, right? And a plot point in at least a dozen movies. Is it really hard to believe they’d believe it?”

“I guess not.”

They sat in the cage.

Barry lowered his voice a little more. “Did you ever hear anything about him being all, y’know, delusional? ’Cause everything I’m seeing and hearing says Nautilus let his Aquaman syndrome drift all the way over into a full-on Napoleon complex, if you know what I’m saying.”

St. George shook his head. “I knew of him, but I’d never met him or even seen any interviews or anything. What about you?”

“I’ve been trying to think about it,” Barry said, “but all I remember is making a joke with someone. Banzai, maybe. I wasn’t sure if he took his name from the submarine, the shell, or the gym equipment. Banzai’d seen a picture of him online,