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

“You’ve got to find it. We don’t know how far he’s going to go before he launches one of the missiles. Madelyn and I will help contain the exes here.”

Mekka-lekka-hi, said Zzzap. The wish is granted. He shot up into the sky.

St. George turned to Eliza. “Do your guards have any experience with exes?”

“We…” She looked over at the cruise ship and the tanker beyond it. “Not enough. None of us have dealt with large numbers of them since before we formed Lemuria.”

“Get your people off the tanker, if you can. Tell them to keep the exes off the walkways. Better yet, cut the walkways loose and let them drop.”

“We can’t do that. We don’t have a way to replace them.”

“You don’t have a way to replace the people, either, do you?”

Eliza bit her lip again.

“Right. We’ll try to keep the exes contained to the tanker and rescue anyone still there.” He looked at Madelyn and held out his hand. “You and me, then.”

“Sweet.” She reached out, grabbed his wrist, and his fingers closed around hers.

St. George launched himself into the air and dragged the Corpse Girl along with him. He swung around to the cruise ship and flew over its tall hull. Another shriek rang up to them, then a gunshot, and then more screams.

Then the sound of teeth.

Once they passed the Queen’s smokestacks he could see at least a dozen exes. They’d already made their way up the long gangplanks and onto the cruise ship, lured by the sights and sounds of prey. Three of them were crouched and using their jaws to tear mouthfuls of flesh out of a figure. The light was bad, but St. George was pretty sure he glimpsed dreadlocks when one of the exes rocked to the side.

More exes spread out across the tanker’s low deck. Some of them staggered through the gardens. Others headed for the lower ends of the walkways.

A few figures moved faster, but they were almost all heading in the wrong direction. Some ran toward the front of the tanker. One had a shotgun, but a few of them tried to fight the exes with garden tools. Several of them screamed.

“I’ll save the people down there,” said St. George. “Can you hold that first gangplank on your own? The one closest to the hatch they’re coming out of?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“You sure?”

She smiled up at him. “Dead certain.”

“Please stop that.”

“Never!”

St. George swung his arm, loosened his grip, and Madelyn dropped to the upper deck of the cruise ship near one of the stairwells. She put her hands on the railings and slid down the first flight of stairs. A few running steps put her at the next landing and she leaped down that flight, guiding herself along the rails.

The sound of teeth echoed up to her.

She jumped down one more staircase and landed in front of the long gangplank that led down onto the tanker. A man and woman pushed themselves flat against the wall opposite it. The walkway was covered by a white awning with the dolphin logo printed all over it.

A dead man lumbered off the gangplank and onto the cruise ship’s deck. The bony ex had a ring of white hair around a circle of bald. Half the skin of its jaw was gone, showing off yellowed teeth and bone streaked with dark red.

The zombie ignored her. Its dead eyes turned to the couple. Its teeth slammed together again and again, louder for the lack of skin covering them.

Madelyn slammed into the ex, driving her shoulder into its chest. It tumbled back, and its head slammed against one of the metal guide rails of the walkway. Not hard enough to stop it, though. It fell at the feet of another ex and pawed at the ground.

“Go,” she yelled over her shoulder. “Get away.”

The man and woman stared at her with wide eyes. They were scared of her, too. They just saw another zombie.

The second ex stepped forward. Its nose was a bloody, broken mess. This one was wearing one of the blue Navy coveralls. Its name had been LOWE. Now that she knew what to look for, she could see the white eagles on the collars, blurred by gore. A large chunk with charred edges was missing from Lowe’s shoulder, like someone had tried to blow the dead man’s head off with a shotgun and just taken part of the collarbone.

She caught it in the gut with a solid kick. The dead man staggered and tipped back into the sloped walkway. It landed on two exes behind it, a pair of women, and the three of them formed a wobbly undead tripod.

She grabbed the railings on either side of the gangplank, swung her legs up, and drove both feet into Lowe’s chest.

It was enough to make the tripod collapse. The exes knocked down one more as they fell, but there were more shuffling up the ramp. The angle was low enough for them to stagger and crawl without risk of tipping.

She glanced back. The couple had vanished. She wasn’t sure if they’d run up the stairs or down the hall deeper into the ship.

She took a moment to tug at her wet suit. Ripped into two pieces, the top half was riding up and the bottom half kept sliding down. It was still tight enough to stay on, she just felt like she was on the verge of a wardrobe malfunction, even wearing her jacket and shorts.

The white-haired ex pushed itself up onto its hands and knees. She reached out with her foot and tugged the dead man’s arm out from under it. It collapsed back to the ground, and its head hit the deck with a loud thunk.

On the walkway, the four exes she’d knocked down crawled forward. A dead woman in a swimsuit clawed its way past Lowe, even as Lowe dragged itself forward on bruised arms. More of the dead behind them tried to walk over the fallen ones. They slipped