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

cuff, then did the same with the other wrist. “Keep your arms in place until she’s got the guards.”

Mitchel Kirby with one l was hating life.

He dragged his bowie knife along the sharpening rod. It was really some kind of big kitchen knife, not an actual bowie knife. Malachi had told him the name of it once, when he’d showed Mitchel how to sharpen it without wrecking the edge.

Normally the sound of the knife on the rod made him feel tough, but now the slight vibration from it traveled up his arm to his nose, like the little tremor before a sneeze. And the tremor felt like broken glass in his nostrils.

He was pretty sure Nautilus had broken his nose, and positive he’d broken a tooth. His first square one, top back left. Mitchel’d touched his nose once, and it felt like being stabbed with a red-hot knife. He’d wiped his mouth five or six times, and there was still blood in his mustache. The side of his face was swelling, too. He could feel it.

The boss had just turned on him for looking at some dead girl’s cooch and little apple titties. What was the big deal? It’s not like he’d touched her or anything. Well, sure, he’d touched her when he’d dumped her body in the Hole. But she was for-real dead then, so who cared?

The top of the sun dropped under the horizon. The sky was still bright, but it wouldn’t last long. Have to light the fires soon. And maybe goddamned Hong would come relieve him so he could get someone to check out his nose. Could a broken nose get infected?

Who cared about the dead girl at all? She was a fucking ex. Why was he getting his nose broken and his tooth knocked out over her? It’s not like he killed her. Or infected her.

He was getting thrown under the bus was what it was. The boss was losing hold, and Mitchel was the sacrificial lamb. Nautilus needed to look fair and tough and all that shit, so Mitchel had to take the fall.

If the damned fish man tried something like that again, though, Mitchel would gut him like a fish. Yeah the boss was strong and tough, but a sharp knife would still go through his skin and open him up. If nothing else, he needed to remember Mitchel was one of the chosen. He knew where the bodies were buried, so to speak.

Mitchel wasn’t stupid. Every job he’d ever had, he figured out how he could rob the place. The Walgreens in Kailua. The Jack in the Box at King and McCully. The beach sandwich shack. Even that secondhand DVD store in Honolulu, and he’d only worked there for twelve days. He could’ve robbed any one of them blind and gotten away with it, because he planned ahead.

He always knew there was a chance his past would come back to haunt him. Maybe one of the girls would start talking and make herself out to be some kind of victim. Or maybe one day the big guy would come back from a swim with one of the people he’d let live, and they’d point the finger at him. Nautilus liked having loyal people, but Mitch knew sometimes examples had to be made. And in one or two of these hypothetical cases, he’d be prime example material.

So he had a plan ready. He called it plan B, because everybody in the movies ended up going to plan B anyway and it always worked. So he figured he’d just start with that one. He was smart that way.

Something moved in the corner of his eye and knocked him out of the shallow depths of his thoughts. He brought one hand up to protect himself while the other hand fumbled with the knife, but it was just a girl. One of the older ones, walking toward him. She was wearing a tight black sweatshirt that left her smooth belly exposed, and it was zipped low, too, so he got a glimpse of the cleavage between her firm little apple tit—

Mitchel’s gaze went up to her face, and as she stepped forward he saw the dead white eyes under the brim of her baseball cap.

He glanced down, just for a second, looking for his shotgun, and when he looked back up her fist was coming at his face. He lashed out with the knife and the little fist hit him right in his broken no—

He didn’t black out so much as white out. His whole brain just turned to light and roaring and then he came out of it and SWEETHOLYSHITTHEPAIN!! A fucking Fourth of July Roman candle was going off in his head. His jaw locked up so his breathless scream just came out as a long hiss. He couldn’t even open his left eye and his right eye was watering and there was blood in his mouth and holy fuck the little dead girl was back and she was going to kill him because his nose hurt so much.

His hands were empty. He’d dropped his knife. He still didn’t know where the shotgun was. He was on his knees in front of the dead girl. He put his hands up to protect his nose, and her fist slammed into the side of his head. Not hard enough to knock him out, but it shook his nose again and made his eyes spasm.

Her foot sank into his gut, air shot out of his mouth, and it whistled over the empty socket of his tooth like a fucking razor blade. He tried to suck some air back in. One scream. One scream and the brats died and it was all her fault. Her and the fucking super—

She punched one of his protective hands right in the palm. He tried to grab her fist, but the back of his own hand smacked into his broken noOHFUCKINGHOLYJESUSTHEPAIN. The white sound faded, and he opened his eyes