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

exes. A hundred along the back fence, easy. Maybe two. Past the chain-link was nothing but dull skin and pale eyes and so many teeth, shaking the air with the ongoing barrage of clicking.

Somebody else watched the exes, too. A tanned, bald man with work gloves and no shirt. He stood a few feet from one of the fence poles, between two of the big barrels. The dead tried to push fingers and lips and teeth through to reach him. One tall woman with no scalp had an arm over the fence and across the barbed wire. The dead thing swung its hand back and forth, grasping for the man even as it ripped its own limb apart on the steel barbs.

The chain-link swelled and squeaked. For every one of the zombies that managed to push hard, another stumbled and dropped back down into the ditch between the fence and the freeway. A constant cycle of exes, never getting enough traction to actually knock the fence down.

The man reached out and rocked one of the barrels just as she registered the tattoos across his arms and shoulders. He tugged on the drum, and it tipped up into his hands before he let it drop.

“Hey!”

Her shout echoed across the garden. The man spun around and took a few steps away, a movement too smooth to be the first time he’d done it. Almost a dozen undead skulls swung in her direction, but her anger and amazement at the man—at Javi—let her ignore them.

“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled at him. She took a few more adrenaline fueled steps before the exes began to shut her down. They were so close. Some of them turned their focus on her.

Javi’s brows narrowed. “What’s it to you?”

“Are you messing with the fence?”

“No.”

“What the hell were you doing?”

“Nothin’,” he snapped back. “I was just checking it out.”

She looked at the 55-gallon drum. As far as she could tell from fifteen feet away, he hadn’t moved it. It had dropped right back down in the same position.

Don’t look at the exes, she told herself as the swinging hand brushed through the top of her field of vision. Just don’t look at them. Stay angry at him.

“This is the only thing keeping us alive,” she said. “If they get through, pretty much everyone in here is going to die.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And we both know who will and who won’t, right?”

Her anger tripped over its own feet. “What?”

Javi kicked the barrel. The echo rattled inside of it and blended into the chatter of teeth. “This is all fucking crap,” he said. “Empty barrels. Old wood. Tryin’ to dress it up and make it look like you people give a flying fuck about any of us. This goes down, you’ll be safe inside and all of us will be out workin’ massa’s fields.”

“What are you…? Are you still thinking that? What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Nothin’s wrong,” he said. “I’m just not as dumb as all the rest of these sheeple. I know where things stand.”

“I’m not sure you know where you’re standing now,” snapped Danielle. She needed her anger back. Needed it strong. Her right knee trembled inside her pant leg.

Where were the patrols? Supposedly guards and super-soldiers did regular laps around the garden. Why was she dealing with this idiot?

“You’re supposed to be some awesome robot-mechanic,” he said. “Funny they don’t got you helping to make the fence safer. Funny you aren’t askin’ to do it.”

Her anger stumbled again. The tremor had reached her hips. “I wanted to,” she said. She pressed her hands against her sides and set her jaw. “I’ve just been busy with Cerberus.”

Javi shook his head and dismissed her with a wave. He turned and headed back toward the garden plots. “When it all comes down,” he said over his shoulder, “I’m gonna fight. Don’t think I won’t.”

Danielle waited until there was almost thirty feet between them. Then she spun and lurched back up the utility road. She couldn’t run, but her frantic steps carried her away from the exes, past the cactus, past the shed. The sound of teeth faded to its usual dull clatter. Her breath whooped in and out. The sweat stained through her hoodie and made her ACU jacket damp.

She wanted to scream.

“GAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH…”

Madelyn wasn’t sure why she was screaming. She didn’t remember having a bad dream. She hadn’t had a bad dream in years.

She hadn’t had any dreams in years.

At least it hadn’t been a loud scream. Just one of the muffled ones, where you stop yourself as soon as it starts. Not quite as embarrassing.

The room was dark and big. Pitch dark if she couldn’t see anything. Echoes and acoustics told her the size. A gymnasium, maybe?

Where was she?

She’d woken up in her room yesterday…no. Wait. Yesterday she was on a boat? An inner tube? An orange inner tube?

A raft.

She’d been on a life raft with Mom and they were going to see Dad. No, dammit. St. George. She’d been with St. George and…and…and…St. George and Barry! Zzzap!

She needed her journals. Where were they?

Where was she?

Madelyn sat up. Well, tried to. Her head and shoulders went up about three inches and then flopped back down. The move made her dizzy. Her arms felt funny, like they were sitting on her shoulders the wrong way.

She reached up to touch her forehead and poked herself in the cheek. Her arms weren’t where they were supposed to be. Or her head wasn’t.

She took a breath to calm herself and realized she couldn’t breathe. Not that she needed the air, it was just a habit she still had. But she couldn’t get her lungs to fill up.

She tried to take another calming breath, then mocked herself for being stupid. The mocking was good. She could still embarrass herself out of panicking.

Her hands came up again. Her neck was sore. She found two weird lumps on the side of her throat. The