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

Muah-hah-ha, said the brilliant wraith. This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi, it will soon see—Hey, y’know, all the good quotes about the Rebellion are very pro-Empire.

“Hi, Barry,” said Ash.

Hey, you found your dad.

“Yup.”

“Can I go home now?” Lily asked Madelyn.

“I think so.” The Corpse Girl looked up at the others. “Do you know where her parents are?”

“They’re in one of the staterooms on board the Queen,” Hussein said. “People whose children are chosen get the best accommodations.”

Gosh, I’m surprised more people aren’t up for it, said Zzzap.

The deck shifted under their feet. A low vibration echoed up through the hull, the aftershock of a gong. Every inch of the ship trembled, then settled.

“What the hell was that?” Devon looked back and forth across the deck. His eyes settled on St. George.

The hero put up his hands. “How should I know?”

Madelyn stood up and kept a hand on Lily’s shoulder. “Did we hit something?”

“We are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” said Hussein. “There is precious little for us to hit.”

“Another ship?”

“We’d’ve seen it coming,” said Steve.

The deep clang echoed from below again. Madelyn looked over the railing. “We’re running into something,” she said.

Could the ships be bumping against each other?

“Not in calm water,” said Hussein, “and it doesn’t sound like that when they do.”

Zzzap shot up into the air and made a quick circle around the ships. He zipped back down to them. I don’t see anything, he said. It’s got to be something underwater.

“What?” said Devon. “Like Hussein said, we’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s too deep for reefs.”

“Maybe something new?” Madelyn looked over the railing again. “An underwater volcano or something? Or a shipwreck?”

“Still too deep,” Hussein said.

The sound echoed up through the hull. This time St. George saw the cruise ship tremble, too. Either the shockwave was growing, or it had been hit, too.

It had been hit. The words echoed in his mind. They hadn’t hit something, they’d been hit.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “I don’t think Nautilus went fishing.”

“WHY?” SAID DANIELLE. “What would they get out of it?”

“They get to be in charge again,” said Cesar. He glanced out at the courtyard. The sounds of exercise went on without pause. “I always said you can’t trust the government people.”

“Hell, yeah,” agreed Hector.

“They’re not the government,” said Gibbs. “They’re the military.”

“Same thing,” Cesar said.

“Not even close,” said Danielle. “But it still leaves me asking why.”

“Government paranoia aside, I think Cesar’s right,” said Gibbs. “Think about it. They’ve got their own enclave set up here. A safe zone, a decent supply of weapons and ammunition, two big trucks with gasoline. Almost, what, three quarters of the Valley has never been scavenged, so there’s even more supplies.”

“And they got a whole garden,” said Hector, “and people to work it for them.”

Danielle ran it through her head again. “I don’t know. I’d buy Taylor staging some kind of mutiny, maybe Hancock following him, but not Truman or Pierce. Definitely not Kennedy.”

“Pierce was out there scavenging,” Hector said with a snort. “He’s the one who lied about the supplies.”

“I just…” She closed her eyes. “If Barry was here, he’d be rattling off some stupid movie rules about the military doing crazy things during a zombie apocalypse. No offense,” she said to Gibbs.

“None taken,” the lieutenant said. “But we’re a ways after the apocalypse now, and this isn’t a movie.”

They all watched her, waiting for a cue.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go ask them.”

Cesar’s eyes got wide. “Just like that?”

“I don’t want to waste time on this,” she said, walking across the room. “It’s either something we need to deal with right now or not at all. So let’s go find out.”

Gibbs came up behind her. “We shouldn’t…”

“Shouldn’t what?”

Gibbs’s gaze flitted back to the Longshot. “We shouldn’t go out there unarmed. Just in case.”

“We won’t be,” said Danielle. She looked at Cesar. “Get in the suit.”

“What?”

“Now. We need muscle backing us up.”

“It’s still charging,” he said. “We’ll only have an hour, tops.”

She glanced at Gibbs. “One way or another, I don’t think this’ll take long.”

Cesar nodded and tugged off his gloves. He followed her into the courtyard and wrapped his fingers around two of the main struts in the exoskeleton’s torso. Electricity climbed across his body. It arced between him and the suit. Three small cracks echoed in the air and he vanished. “Yeah,” said the battlesuit. “I’m only at twenty-three percent in here.”

Gibbs stepped in and unhooked the power cable. “It’ll have to do.”

The skeletal titan flexed its fingers.

Danielle walked through the wide door and stepped out under the canopy. She curled her hands into fists as she left the walls behind her. A shudder tried to start in her gut and she clamped down on it. No weakness. Not now.

Most of the Unbreakables were there, working out in the long, end-of-day shadows. Johnson and Wilson traded places on the weight bench. Hancock held one of the big plates in both hands and was curling it behind his head. Taylor had a dumbbell in each hand and curled them up to his shoulders again and again. A bar settled behind Kennedy’s neck just as she locked eyes with Danielle.

Why did all their exercise seem so wrong?

The rack of rifles was behind them. Behind all of them. If Gibbs or Hector had any thoughts of grabbing a weapon, they’d have to fight past every one of the soldiers.

Danielle wondered who was up in the sniper nest, and how good a view they had through the canopy.

Gibbs settled in on one side of her, Hector on the other. She didn’t hear the exoskeleton, but sometimes Cesar managed to move damned quiet in it. Better than she ever could. She hoped he was right behind them.

“We need to talk,” she told the first sergeant. “Now.”

Kennedy heaved the bar up over her head and brought it down in front of her. It paused at her waist before