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

“He’s right,” said Hancock. “We need to keep their attention.”

Kennedy nodded. “Don’t be brave,” she told Wilson. “They get close, you catch up to us.”

“No worries there, top.”

The Unbreakables ran deeper into the garden. Wilson looked at the approaching zombie horde and raised his rifle to look down the sights. Right in front was the dead teenage girl he and Franklin had tossed over the fence the other day. Its left shoulder and arm hung low, even while the hand at the end twitched. Part of the dead girl’s cheek had been torn loose against the pavement when it’d hit the road, and it hung in a loose flap against its face.

“It’s always the cute ones,” he muttered, and squeezed the trigger.

Cesar watched the soldiers vanish between the two boulders. He heard a shot, then another one. Most of the exes stumbled down the tree-shaded path after the Unbreakables. A few stragglers lurched off into the garden plots, more or less in the direction Gibbs had run with the garden people. A couple zombies in the far back of the horde shifted around and wandered back toward him.

He swung his stiff arm and slammed it into two exes, catching each of them in the skull. The dead people collapsed. He grabbed a one-armed woman with a skinless face and flung the zombie over the fence.

Another gunshot from the path.

He could do this. He could deal with all of them. He just needed to figure out how to get away from the fence.

There was a stubby chain on one of the dumpsters, something to lock it shut, but it was barely long enough to go around the post, and he didn’t have a way to fasten it. There were a few lengths of old twine and thin rope inside the big bin, things that had been cleared out of garden plots, but he could tell they were all too brittle and rotted to be any good. If he had both hands free, he was strong enough to tear the dumpster apart and make strips of metal…but he didn’t have both hands free.

Another gunshot echoed to the battlesuit’s microphones. A moment later, over the clicking of hundreds of teeth, he picked out the hard clack of a gun locking open. Whoever was shooting had just run out of ammunition.

He looked around for a trash can or a garden stake or a signpost. Something he could use to tie the fence in place. Something metal and solid.

And then he had an idea. It wasn’t a great idea, or a safe one, but he knew it would work. And he didn’t have anything else.

He shifted his bulk around and traded hands so the stiff arm was holding the chain-link. He squeezed it a little tighter, pulling the fence right up to the steel post. A few more exes tried to gnaw on him, and he backhanded them away. The blow knocked the head off a dead man and sent it spinning into a garden plot. The plot with the white-and-orange birdhouse. He’d have to remember it and make sure everyone was careful there until they found it.

He looked at the battlesuit’s left arm and wondered if he was going to have some more killer scars or something a lot worse.

Cesar’s steel fingers reached into the superstructure of the crippled arm and tore out one of the support struts. He screamed, and the suit’s speakers turned it into a roar. His vision fogged with white and gray static. His legs trembled. He focused on his hand, on keeping the fence tight and near the post.

The camera view cleared. A few lines of text across his vision warned him of possible structural damage. Oh, Jesus, his arm was on fire.

A bunch of the exes had turned back. Looked like his screams sounded better than gunshots. Good thing.

Then he reached over and ripped another strut loose. Another scream echoed off the trees and houses. He felt his knees shift. The battlesuit staggered, and he caught himself before it tipped over. He willed the static out of his vision.

The left arm wobbled. Two of five supports gone. The wrist felt weird, like it was sitting wrong. But the hand was still holding the fence up.

His free hand bent one of the supports against the post. Then he looped it around the steel pole and threaded it through the chain-link. He squeezed the ends together and bent them over each other twice like a giant twist tie.

He smacked a few more exes away and bent the other support. This one went under the hand holding the fence. It took a little longer to get this one around the post and through the fence, but then he knotted it in place.

It took him a moment to wiggle his fingers free of the chain-link. The fence squealed a bit as exes piled against it, but it held. It’d hold for a little while, at least.

Cesar stepped back. An ex grabbed his damaged arm, and he flung it away. One of the fingers trembled when he made a fist, and the wrist was tweaked. An ache throbbed deep inside it. But it worked.

He swung the fist around, and an ex’s skull exploded on impact. He grabbed one in each hand and hurled them back over the fence. A dead woman tried to wrap its arms around his waist, and he crushed its shoulder and neck between his fingers.

The throb in his arm faded a little.

He set the battlesuit’s speakers to PA mode, max volume, and his power level tipped from thirteen percent to twelve. “Hey,” he shouted. He flung the dead woman away, swept his arms out, and smashed half a dozen exes to the ground. “Zombie folks! Get back over here. Got a little something special for you.”

The horde turned and came to see what he had to offer.

SLOW WASN’T IN Zzzap’s nature in the energy form.