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

wasn’t really missing out on something. Tastes like chicken, just like everyone says, but it feels a little more like fatty pork in the mouth, y’know? Then I thought it might be infected. I know cooking’s supposed to take care of that, but maybe I hadn’t heated it enough. So I puked all that up.

Necrophilia wasn’t really my thing. Still isn’t. Only some really fucked-up people would be into that. But I’d had a couple drinks one night and the woman wasn’t too ugly. Still pretty fresh, too. Don’t need to ever do it again, but kind of proud that I did it, y’know? Another one of those things everybody thinks about.

A couple weeks after that, though, had a chance to do it with an ex. Nikki again, just for a couple of minutes. Held her down with my foot on her chest, took one last look at her sweet tits and ass. But one dead chick was enough for me. It’s not like I’m some weirdo or something. So I shot her twice in the head.

Over the course of the almost-year, I crossed a lot of shit off my fuck-it list.

I got pretty bored, though. I liked to tell myself I was some pirate king of zombie Hawaii, but I was just bored as hell. I had one bullet left in one of my pistols. Not the cop guns. Those were long gone. This was some rich prick’s big chrome revolver. Something like Dirty Harry or the Lone Ranger would use.

Anyway, I’d saved one bullet. I’d told myself it was for if I got bit or something, so I wouldn’t have to change. I could go out on my own terms, like Pop did. Honest, though, I knew the right day was going to roll around and I’d just suck the big hard one. I mean, that’s the whole point of the fuck-it list, right? When you’ve done everything, it’s time to check out.

And then he showed up.

I heard all this water dripping, and the boat rocked a bit. Just enough to feel it. It was a pretty good-sized yacht, but he’s pretty fucking big.

I saw him standing there by the back ladder. Seven feet tall, five across, and blue as a goddamn Smurf. It was like some kind of man-shark crawled up out of the ocean to get me. A were-shark.

Nautilus. The hero of Hawaii. I’d seen him on the news a couple of times. Rescuing lost boats or swimmers. One time he fought off a shark, and another time he caught a couple drug smugglers using a sailboat.

You want to know scared? I’d spent a year doing everything I could think of off my fuck-it list—some stuff you know can’t be excused, normally—and a superhero shows up.

He had the teeth and the skin. Could he smell blood in the water like a shark, too? I’d cleaned up the business guy and his wife a couple of days ago, before I even touched their liquor cabinet. Even mopped up and threw the sheets overboard with the bodies. Real burial at sea, which is probably more than they deserved. Maybe that was how he found me?

I remember wondering if I could pull the gun and get it in my mouth before he stopped me. I didn’t want to go through zombie apocalypse justice. Whatever it might be.

We stood there looking at each other for a minute. Then he waved at the pistol and told me I wouldn’t need it. He was here to help. Something like that. I was kind of hungover.

Anyway, he asked if I was doing okay. If I needed help. Said he’d been rescuing people lost at sea for months now and had pretty much given up on finding anyone else. Then he asked if I’d seen what happened to Oahu. I told him sorta, and he said that was good, too.

And the whole time his nose was twitching. Sniffing the air. Maybe he smelled the blood. Maybe it was just me. I was on the fourth or fifth day with that shirt. Hadn’t had a shower since dumping the old folks overboard.

But he never said anything. I think he understood. We all had to do things to survive. Nobody was judging.

He gave me a sales pitch about this safe place he’d been helping to build. A fleet or an island or something. Again, hungover at the time. It makes sense now, looking back, but I wasn’t really sure what he was saying then.

Still, whatever he was offering had to be better than blowing my own head off out of boredom. So I said yes. And he said good.

Which was how I ended up out at Lemuria. Stupid fucking name, but it was weird to see so many people at once.

First thing I did was run. They had this big long oil tanker, and it was the first time I’d had more than a hundred feet to walk in a straight line. I ran the whole thing. Got sick as a dog. Threw up. I’m not built for speed. More of an endurance guy. The ladies like that more, anyway.

And Nautilus made me one of his top people. ’Cause I think he did know. He knew Mitchel Kirby with one l is a guy who’ll get things done. I’m a guy who’s not afraid to get my hands dirty if I need to.

We had a good thing going out here. I had all the power and perks, but not a lot of responsibility. More than enough women were willing to get me off at night for a few extra mouthfuls of food. Hell, I think I’d fucked half the women on the island in the first two years. Life was good. Maybe not pirate-king-year good, but better than I ever had things before the dead started to rise.

And then the rest of the superheroes showed up.

“WITH ALL DUE respect,” said Gibbs, “you really stink.”

“Shut up,” Danielle told him