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

she crouched and let it settle on the ground. “Sure,” she said. “What about?”

Danielle pulled her fists up and set them against her hips. “What are you all up to?”

“I’m not sure what you’re—”

“No games,” said Danielle. “Explain the supplies you’re hoarding and why your soldiers aren’t exactly killing themselves to help out when things go wrong.”

The smile melted off Kennedy’s face. Everything drained away until the only thing left was the first sergeant. “I beg your pardon?”

“What happened the other day at the gate?”

Kennedy’s face shifted from neutral to aggressive. “That’s not your concern.”

“Fuck it isn’t,” spat Hector. He pointed at Wilson. “Exes got in and this guy took his sweet time doing anything about it.”

Taylor’s weights hit the ground. Wilson let the barbell clang down onto the stands. He sat up on the bench, opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. He looked at the first sergeant.

“You’re lucky he did anything for you, you fucking gangbanger reject,” snarled Taylor.

“Shut up, Specialist,” said Gibbs.

“Fuck you,” Taylor said. “Sir.”

Kennedy glared at the soldier. Taylor glared back, then bit his lip. He shuffled a few steps back and muttered something under his breath.

She turned her attention back to Danielle. “It’s an internal matter,” Kennedy said. “Nothing that concerns you.”

“If exes are getting into Eden, it concerns me,” said Danielle.

The four other super-soldiers spread out. Not much, but enough to be out of each other’s way. All of them stared at Danielle.

The battlesuit crunched in the gravel behind her. She wondered if it was strong enough to take all of them. Two or three, no problem. Five at once, with no armor and no weapons…

Past the weight bench and the gun rack and the crates of supplies, a few people stood up in one of the garden lots to find the source of the raised voices. Keri the big scavenger. Javi the loudmouth. Lester. Smith. Like Danielle didn’t have enough reasons to be worried about what could happen here.

And then her eyes settled back on the barbell. The damned barbell. What was wrong with it? She looked at the dumbbells Taylor had dropped and tried to find a correlation.

Kennedy was looking her in the eyes. The first sergeant’s face and brows were rigid and stern. Her eyes were…sad? Pleading? The look popped in Danielle’s mind—the expression of someone hoping desperately you were going to cover for them.

Cover for what?

And then, days late, she did the math.

She looked at the barbell on the stand. And the one at Kennedy’s feet. And the dumbbells Taylor had dropped. And the iron plate Hancock had been using.

The pieces lined up in her mind.

A single set of weights, split four ways.

Danielle looked Kennedy in the eyes. “What’s happening to you?”

The first sergeant’s mouth was tight.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell all of us, or I will.”

“It’s none of your fucking business,” Taylor said.

“Everything that happens up here is my business,” said Danielle. She focused on Kennedy again. “You’re all getting weaker, aren’t you? Weaker and slower.”

Gibbs blinked twice. “What?”

“You’ve all been working out with less weight,” said Danielle. “You’re running laps around the garden, but not much faster than any of us could.”

She looked at the other soldiers. Wilson and Taylor wouldn’t meet her gaze. Hancock stared down at the iron plate in the dirt.

The sun dropped below the houses to the west. Danielle crossed her arms. In the corner of her eye, she saw Javi the loudmouth slink off toward the concrete path and other garden plots. Half the crowd drifted away. The rest shamelessly eavesdropped as best they could.

“Well?”

Kennedy sighed. “They’re fading.”

“What is?” asked Cesar.

“The enhancements Professor Sorensen gave us out at Project Krypton. They’ve been fading for months. Decreasing. However you want to put it.”

Danielle looked at the tall sergeant. “How? I thought he changed you genetically.”

Kennedy shook her head. “He warned us this could happen. Over time, our brains could make new pathways, relearn how to play it safe again.”

“How to be weak,” Taylor muttered. “Fucking science bullshit.”

“We just don’t do enough,” said Gus Hancock. “It all kinda crept up on us.”

Gibbs looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“These were intended to be active combat enhancements,” Kennedy explained. “Soldiers would get them and go into a combat zone for eighteen months or two years or whatever their deployment was. Being in-country, being on constant alert, would keep everything going. Our bodies and brains would keep running on the levels he set them at.”

“So you’re saying…what?” Hector crossed his arms. “Zombie apocalypse wasn’t active enough for any of you?”

“No,” said Kennedy, shaking her head again, “it wasn’t. Once we had the Big Wall built, the threat level dropped. Once Legion vanished, it plunged. We’ve been doing busywork for almost a year now. Every now and then one or two of us might go out on a scavenging run. We can exercise tons, but our day-to-day activity is…well, normal. And our bodies have been readjusting.”

“But, the other day in the garden,” Cesar said, “you jumped, like, thirty feet without even trying.”

“I jumped fifteen feet with a running start,” corrected Kennedy. “This time two years ago, I could do twenty feet from a standing position.” She waved a hand at the weight set. “We all used to be able to press close to half a ton. A few of us could even go higher. Now most of us can barely press five hundred pounds. Franklin can’t even do three hundred anymore. At this rate, I figure we’ve got another six months to a year before we’re all, well, human again.”

Danielle let her arms drop to her side. “Not exactly something to complain about.”

Kennedy gave her a weak smile. “Says the woman desperate to get back into her armored battlesuit.”

Hector snorted. Gibbs almost managed to hide his smirk.

The exoskeleton leaned forward. “So you’re taking all the protein powder and stuff because…?”

“To try to slow it down,” said Gibbs. His eyes passed over the soldiers. “That’s it, right? You thought maybe if you kept feeding your muscles they’d