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

a wall of fences. Chain-link backed by wooden fencing. Literally, the backs of fences, put up by long-dead homeowners who hadn’t wanted to look out at a community garden.

Some of them were still back there, stumbling in their backyards. Danielle could hear teeth chattering. Twice she’d glimpsed a shadow of movement between the wooden slats. Both times it had made her freeze up. She’d had to count off five slow breaths before she could move again.

In the five minutes since Gibbs had walked off, she’d barely gone forty feet.

Danielle wondered if the guards back at the gate were watching her. They were supposed to be watching the fence lines and the street, but she was standing by one of the fences. She was thirty yards from the Hot Zone. Someone must’ve noticed her.

Something thudded against the far side of the wooden fence hard enough that the chain-link rustled for an instant. It got her moving—a wide, serpentine movement that wove back and forth from fence to garden plot, but it was movement.

She sucked in air. Her breathing couldn’t keep up with the thunder of her heart. Both sounds echoed in her ears. White spots appeared in the air in front of her.

No, she told herself. They’re not in the air, they’re just in your vision, and you are not passing out.

Danielle lifted her head. She shoved her hands down and grabbed her pant legs to help hide the tremors in her arms. Even through four layers of clothes, people would be able to see it.

Another breath.

Up ahead was a clean spot. No leaves or dirt on the narrow strip of pavement. The pile of bodies had been here, the one Les…Lester had shown off the other day. The exes that had been killed by the Gardener. Cesar had mentioned something about all the bodies being moved. Part of the general cleanup of the garden. Lester had most of the people harvesting all the existing food, but some just weeded and cleaned out all the crap.

She shuffled past the clean spot. Up ahead stood an old storage shack. Past that, an open space, a wide spot in the utility road that marked the corner of the garden. She’d covered one short side of the garden. Maybe a sixth of the distance in just ten minutes.

The click-click-click of teeth bounced off the wooden fence and the edge of the shack. Once Danielle passed the small structure, she’d see the northern fence. The one with the ditch full of exes that had paralyzed her during Lester’s tour.

But they’ll be farther away, she told herself. Much farther, and I know they’re there. No one’s springing them on me.

Another minute of hesitant steps got her to the shack. Then she moved her foot forward, shifted her weight, and an ex came into view, pressed up against the fence. The dead woman wore some kind of police uniform, but it was tan instead of dark blue. The light uniform contrasted the huge spill of dried, black blood that covered the ex’s shoulder and spilled onto its chest.

Her next step revealed a dead man and something so withered Danielle wasn’t sure what it had been when it was alive. The chattering grew in the air around her. A dead woman with a shredded shirt pawed at the chain-link fence. So did a tall man with dark skin. A small ex sprawled against the fence, pushed flat by the bodies behind it.

Every inch of movement showed her more of the dead. She could see ten, then twenty, then at least thirty. Each step was smaller than the last, but there were so many against the fence, all tumbled down from the freeway and attracted to the sounds of living people. A tall cluster of cactus, just a dozen feet ahead, and a thick patch of cornstalks were the only things blocking her view, and once she went past them she’d see all of the exes. The whole north side of the garden.

Danielle’s shirt tightened on her. Her shirt, her bra, her hoodie…all so tight she could barely breathe. The ACU jacket was a weight on her chest, straining her lungs and her heart and crushing her arm and—Christ, she thought, I’m having a heart attack.

No. No, I’m not. It’s just another damned panic attack. That’s all. There’s nothing wrong.

She forced her eyes open and her arms away from her body. Air flooded into her lungs. Sweat coated her body and soaked her clothes.

Her eyes went to the fence line. The solid fence line. Even more 55-gallon drums had been added along the length, and a few planks of wood. It wasn’t much, but it was still better than just the chain-link.

I should’ve been helping with this, she thought. I’m a goddamned engineer and I’m sitting inside while they’ve been trying to build a better barricade.

And the shack was behind her.

None of the zombies noticed her. Their chalk eyes aimed past the cactus and corn at something she couldn’t see. They bit at the air and strained against the fence.

The panic creeped back up her body. It crawled over her stomach and across her back and set prickly fingers on her chest and shoulders. The sweat made her clothes clingy and tight.

An image slid through her brain. Some of the Unbreakables—maybe Taylor and Hancock, of course it would be them—finding her curled up on the utility road. Shaking in a little fetal ball. No one would be able to depend on her again after that. No way they’d let her near the battlesuit.

She had to go back to the main building. But if she went back, she’d never get past this. But if she went any closer to the exes, she’d break down and never get in the suit again. But if she…

“No,” she said. She clenched her jaw. For a moment, her anger contributed to the panic loop. Then it punched through. Danielle took eight strong steps, right up alongside the cactus, before her breath caught again.

So many