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

first shot missed. He growled, re-aimed, and the ex lurched just as he fired.

A gray-skinned woman in a lab coat tripped over the fallen redneck and tumbled onto the path.

Gibbs fired a third shot, and the dead man in the brown suit twitched once and collapsed. He tracked it down as it fell, then panned the rifle over and put a round through the top of Lab Coat’s head. Six shots, three dead.

More exes came up the path behind him. More than he’d thought. At least five or six. He lined up on the next one, realized he didn’t have enough ammunition, and took a few steps back.

His foot—his real foot—slipped on a patch of wood chips and loose dirt at the edge of the lawn. There was plastic under them, some kind of anti-erosion thing Lester had talked about over dinner the other night. Gibbs went down hard. The impact rang in his tailbone and jarred the rifle from his hands. The strap tangled around his arm, and he fumbled to get the weapon back in his grip. His metal foot kicked at the path, but the spike-heel just plowed through the dirt.

The exes shambled closer. The click-click-click of their teeth broke the air into small, jagged bits. At the front of the horde was a gray-skinned girl with long pigtails and a gore-stained dress. The dead girl’s left arm ended just past the shoulder in a dried, messy stump. The ex’s remaining hand reached for him.

He let the rifle drop and pushed at the walkway with his hands and feet. It moved him back, but not enough. As slow as they were, the exes moved faster. The dead girl crouched, her gnashing teeth dipped toward his leg, and—

Warm fingers brushed his neck. His collar and shirt yanked up, and he was dragged away from the undead. His steel foot carved a furrow across the lawn. His savior huffed and grunted and hauled him five-ten-fifteen feet away from the horde before letting go of his collar. Gibbs scrambled to his feet and turned to give a quick thanks to—

Smith panted and glowered at him. She stepped past him, put both hands on the haft of the shovel she’d been carrying in her claw-hand, and smashed it across the dead girl’s jaw. The ex spun in a full circle and dropped to the ground. The dead man behind it, a workman or groundskeeper in simple clothes, tripped and fell forward onto the path. She brought the shovel down on the dead man’s head.

Smith turned back to Gibbs. Anger and regret and disgust fought for dominance on the woman’s face. She jerked her thumb once at the main building and then took off. She didn’t look to see if he followed.

The dead girl clawed at the dirt path and pushed itself up on its one good arm. It flopped over twice before it managed to push itself to its feet. Its head sat crooked on its neck, but not enough to put it down.

Gibbs followed after Smith. His metal toes dug at the lawn but didn’t slow him down. He threw his legs forward and caught up with the Asian woman halfway down the path.

The exes followed.

The sound of gunfire by the fence dropped. “I’m out,” shouted Taylor. He let his rifle drop and pulled the homemade brass knuckles from his pockets.

Kennedy did a quick head count and came up with about seventy exes left in the parking area. Sixty-nine as Wilson dropped another one. Hancock’s rifle bucked against his shoulder, and he lowered it with a scowl when none of the zombies fell. “Same!” he yelled.

Between Wilson and herself, they had maybe a dozen rounds left between them. Even if every one dropped an ex, it left them on the wrong side of an eleven-to-one fight. Tight odds even if they were all still in peak condition.

Across the parking lot, a baker’s dozen of zombies pawed and grabbed at the exoskeleton. Its movements weren’t as fluid as usual, as if it had been damaged. Or wounded, with Cesar running it. The battlesuit grabbed them one by one with its free hand and flung them away. The other hand stayed clamped to the fence pole with the links threaded between its fingers.

“Cesar,” she yelled. “Support!”

“I can’t leave the fence,” he called back. “I’m holding it up.”

Kennedy lined up on a bald ex with what looked like a saw blade stuck in its head. “Figure something out.”

“I need some rope or chain or something.”

“Figure it out!” She squeezed the trigger, and the round pinged off the goddamned saw blade. A second round punched into the dead man’s forehead and it collapsed.

Her rifle was empty. She swung it around to use like a club. “Falling back, heading east,” she told the squad. “We’ll try to lure them away from the main building.”

The closest ex was four yards from them. Its jaw snapped shut with a clack, and Wilson blew its teeth out through the back of its skull. It tipped back into the horde behind it.

“Who’s going to lure them the fuck away from us?” growled Taylor.

The Unbreakables dropped back a few feet and shuffled to the left. The zombies shifted and staggered after them.

“We get them heading that way,” said Kennedy, “swing around the back fence and double-time it back to the main building. We reload and regroup there.”

They each took a few steps and leaped. Their muscles were still strong enough to carry them a few yards—enough to make the exes pivot and stumble. Some of the exes fell. A few others tripped over the fallen.

The path on this side was a dirt service road between two small boulders. A good chokepoint. They jogged a few yards down the road, and Wilson turned with his rifle. “I’ve got about five or six rounds left, First Sergeant,” he said. “I can slow ’em down a bit.”

“Stay together.”

“Noise’ll keep ’em coming this way, too,” he pointed out. “We don’t want to