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

He slammed the steel door behind it and yanked down the latch. A person could open it. To the dead, it might as well be a steel wall.

Another ex, a teenaged blonde in a cruise ship uniform, staggered toward him with arms up. St. George grabbed one of the dead thing’s arms and swung the body into the air. Its feet knocked down two more zombies as he brought the dead woman around in a circle and…

His hand tightened on the gray wrist before it slipped away from him. There were other boats down below the tanker’s railing. He wasn’t sure where they were, and the last thing he wanted to do was drop an ex on top of some family as they were turning in for the night. Strong as he was, he didn’t think he could throw the dead woman and be absolutely sure it’d gone past all the ships.

The ex hung at the end of his arm, teeth clacking together. It reached up and clawed at his wrist with its free hand. He swung the woman’s body again, low this time, and knocked down three more of the walking dead. Then he let go and momentum sent the dead blonde tumbling and thumping across the deck.

Screams echoed across the deck. In the distance, some of the farmers backed up to the far rail. A cluster of exes had blocked them from the walkways leading up to the cruise ship. The farmers pushed them back with rakes and hoes.

St. George launched himself into the air. He skimmed across the deck, spread his arms wide, and plowed through the crowd of zombies. At least seven of them were dragged away, and when he stopped they went tumbling across the deck. Two of them twisted their necks and stayed down. The others stumbled back to their feet with limp arms and jaws.

He marched back and grabbed two of the remaining exes by the necks and slammed their heads together. A crack of bone echoed up from the impact, and both zombies sagged in his grip. He let them drop and punched another one in the back of the neck, turning its spine to gravel.

He recognized Malachi in the group of farmers. The bitter-faced old man had hit the last ex in the chest with his hoe. It pressed in and tried to reach past the tool for the older man. They leaned into each other, an inside-out game of tug-of-war.

St. George grabbed the ex by the neck, set his hand on its head, and twisted the skull around so it faced him. The body sagged beneath his hand, and he noticed the constant motion of the teeth and jaws had worn furrows into the dead man’s lips. He turned and tossed the body at the exes he’d bowled over with his charge. Three of them went down again. The others would be in reach in a minute or so.

He looked at the group. “Everyone okay? No bites or scratches?”

The farmers nodded. Malachi’s mouth was a tight line. “We tried to get to the Queen,” said one of the others, a woman with scars under her thin hair, “but they’re everywhere.”

He glanced back at the crowd of exes. Some were milling about as the undead did when they didn’t have a target. Another dozen were heading toward him.

“They’re going to kill us all,” muttered one of the others, a man about St. George’s age. “All dead. All of us.”

“Shut up, Claude,” snapped an older woman.

The hero stepped past them and looked down. A few yards back, a rope ladder led down to one of the fishing boats. “There,” he said, pointing. “Let’s just walk back over there. You can get down to that boat and you’ll be safe.”

“But they’ll know where we are,” Claude whined.

Just like Eliza had told St. George, most of the people had never dealt with a full-scale outbreak of the undead. They’d had isolated individuals, but never mass numbers. Never a horde. They’d been living in fear of something none of them had ever experienced or understood.

“They won’t be able to follow you,” St. George said. “They can’t climb a ladder, and the railing’s too high for most of them to fall over it by accident.”

“But—”

“You’ll be safe,” he said. “Trust me.”

He walked back and grabbed one of the approaching exes, a thin man with a wispy beard. His hand closed on its throat, and its jaw beat down on his knuckles. He wrenched its neck and tossed the limp body at a dead woman in a long sundress. They crashed down on the deck together.

St. George looked out at the deck as he wiped his hands on his pants. More screams reached his ears. He hoped the guards were better at fighting exes than the farmers.

They moved twenty feet down the deck to the ladder. There was a small gate in the railing. Malachi pushed the older woman out of the way so he could climb down first. St. George rolled his eyes. Claude, for all his whining and doomsaying, held his arms out and let the woman go next.

Another ex stumbled toward them. It wore moldy jeans and a denim shirt missing one sleeve. The exposed arm had three clear bites on it. One of them was still half covered by some dangling bandages. The dead man’s teeth were muffled by bits of dried material jammed between them. St. George tried not to think about what the material could’ve been.

It reached for him. He batted its hands away and drove a punch into its cheek. The side of the ex’s face collapsed even as the impact snapped its head back. It crashed to the deck, twitched twice, and went limp. Even its teeth stopped.

Maybe a dozen down, another hundred or so to go.

He hoped things were going better for Barry.

THERE WAS A clump of bone jammed in the left elbow joint. Cesar thought it might