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

On the seventh, as it started to go high, she reached forward and grabbed the lever.

The ex lunged for her.

Lester shrieked. Danielle threw herself back and hit the tool chest again. One of the drawers caught her right on the spine, just below the ribs. The panic twisted around her and squeezed. Her heart slammed back and forth, determined to get free this time.

Her hand was okay. She held it up, forced it open, looked at the back, looked at the palm. Nothing. Not even a faint scratch. The ex hadn’t touched her. She was okay.

The dead man lifted itself off the table. Its remaining front tooth had broken on the Longshot’s exposed framework. Now it had a jagged fang next to the steel post. The better to bite with.

Its blazer lifted away from the weapon. The lever sat back and cocked. Armed and ready. She’d pulled it back. She didn’t even remember getting her hand on it.

She released the knot of muscle in her gut and took a deep breath. A calming breath. Her mind and heart were racing, but she was pretty sure it had just been two or three minutes since the ex had wandered in through the side door. No more than four.

It hadn’t lunged. It wasn’t smart enough to lunge. She’d gotten under it, and when it went after her gravity had taken over and given it speed. It had fallen on the table, not lunged.

Danielle forced herself to breathe slowly and studied the ex. Its build, its jeans, where its shoulders sat. She took a small step to the right. The dead man leaned after her. It bumped the table again. The gray hands stretched for her and fell short by almost two yards.

The ex’s stomach pressed against the Longshot’s muzzle. A hex nut at this range would tear through the dead man’s gut and shatter the spine. It would still be able to crawl, but not fast enough to stop her from running out, grabbing a pistol, and blowing its head off.

The Longshot’s trigger sat on the front left. If she moved around, the ex would follow and spoil the shot. She might get it in the hip, but she wasn’t sure that would do enough damage to cripple the dead man. Was there a way to make it crouch and put its head in front of the muzzle? Probably not.

She’d have to reach across the weapon again to fire the Longshot. Or figure out a way to release it from behind. But that would take time she didn’t have. The side door was still open, and other exes were out there.

The dead man’s teeth slammed together, and she heard a harder click when the jagged front tooth struck the enamel below it. The steel post and broken tooth could rip through her shirt sleeve. And the contact suit. And her arm.

The impact of the shot would knock it away. Even with gravity on its side, it wouldn’t be able to reach her before she reached the trigger. It couldn’t.

Danielle glanced over at Lester. The man had slid the rest of the way down the wall and into a crouch. He pushed himself back into the corner of the wall and tool chest, his arms still over his head.

She shook her hands at her sides and squared her jaw. Sucked in a breath. Tried to ignore the trickles of cold sweat crawling through her clothes.

The table rocked as the ex tried to shamble through it again. The dead man’s gray fingers grabbed at the air in front of her. The chattering of its teeth seemed to grow louder in anticipation.

Danielle reached for the trigger.

The ex dropped toward her arm, jaws spread open.

Gibbs was slowing the gardeners down.

He knew it. He was pretty sure they knew it, too. Cutting across the soft earth of the gardens was just too much work with the mechanical foot. And slogging through thirty feet of soil clogged up the joints. The gears in his ankle and toes were stiff, his limp was even worse, and it was slowing him down.

It wasn’t by much in the big scheme of things. But it was enough that the huge ex with the trap and the others with it kept up with movie-monster efficiency. They lurched and staggered and managed to stay about twenty feet behind his group.

He needed more space. Enough time to stop, line up his rifle, and drop all of them. If his math was right, he had nine rounds left in the magazine.

They stumbled onto another path. He recognized it. There was a display of birdhouses with peeling paint and a grove of tall cactus plants. He stopped and waved them down the path. “This way,” he snapped. “Back to the main building.”

Desi and the rest of the work crew ran past him. Gibbs herded them along and picked up the rear. The path was hard dirt with patches of wood chips. Much faster. His mechanical foot hit the ground, and he felt it give a bit as the impact shook some soil out of his joints.

They ran to the end of the path, where it opened up onto a small lawn. Up ahead he could see the toolshed and the greenhouse lit up in the stark floodlights of the main building. Danielle had the side door open and waiting for them, a bright rectangle in the dark. There were two exes between the group and safety. Easy to dodge.

He stopped and swung up the rifle. The ex-redneck was just under thirty feet away. Not a great lead, but enough of one. The zombie’s single white eye made a great target in the low light. Gibbs lined up, breathed out, and squeezed the trigger.

The eye vanished. The redneck dropped. The animal trap pinged against a rock as it hit the ground.

Gibbs shifted his aim onto the next ex, a dead man with thinning hair and a baggy brown suit. His