by Peter Clines
She grabbed the side of her pants and squeezed. “The whole place has been cleared? All the exes cleaned out?”
His face lit up again. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“The story about this place? God, I thought everyone knew.”
She looked at Cesar. He shrugged. Kennedy stared back at the artichokes.
Lester slipped past them and waved for them to follow. They retreated a few paces and turned down a different path through the garden. He glanced back and kept waving, an overeager tour guide.
“This place should’ve been dust years ago,” he explained. “That was our first big surprise—how much of the garden had lasted. This side of the hills, all of the valley, it’s a desert. The only reason it was ever green was because of us. With no people, you’d expect everything up here to dry out in a few months, tops.”
“Automatic sprinklers?” asked Kennedy.
Lester shook his head. “No. Even if they were, they would’ve stopped when the utilities shut down. Now we’ve got the well Zzzap drilled for us, but before that he was doing it all with solar stills and irrigation.”
“He?” asked Danielle.
“We don’t know his name,” said Lester. “We’ve just been calling him the Gardener.”
“The Gardener,” echoed Kennedy.
Cesar gave Danielle a gentle elbow. “And you said the Driver was a dumb name?”
“It is a dumb name.”
“As near as we can tell,” Lester said, guiding them into a cross-aisle, “when the exes first started showing up and everyone made a run for it, this guy came here. And he just…took care of the place. Watering, weeding, keeping the fences up, and cleaning it out. That’s why it’s all in such great shape.”
They stepped out of the aisle onto a strip of sun-faded pavement. The far side of it was a chain-link fence. Behind that was a tall wooden one, a classic American picket fence, right down to the white paint and beveled tops. Someone’s backyard butted up against the community garden.
Next to the fence was a pile of eight or nine bodies. They were dried out and shriveled, almost skeletons. In several places the skin had crumbled to show pale bone. None of them moved.
Danielle sucked in a sharp breath.
“There’s three more piles like this one around the garden,” said Lester. “Check this out.” He reached out and pushed at the closest body with his boot, tilting the head. The neck creaked as it twisted.
A razor-straight gash ran right above the dead man’s brow. It stretched across the entire forehead, almost temple to temple. The papery skin around the wound trembled, as if there was nothing underneath to support it.
“What is that?” asked Kennedy. She stepped past Danielle to examine the bodies. “An axe wound?”
“That’s what we thought at first, too,” said Lester, “but then a few weeks ago we found the Gardener while we were sweeping for exes.”
The answer leaped to Danielle’s tongue. “It’s a hoe.”
Cesar looked at her. “What?”
“A garden hoe,” said Danielle. The mechanics of it unfolded in her mind. “I mean it’s an axe with the blade mounted crosswise instead of in line with the haft. It’d lose a bit of force, but with a long handle giving you leverage it could still do some serious damage.”
Lester smiled and nodded. “Yeah, the Gardener figured that out, too. Like I said, about forty bodies around the perimeter, and we’ve found a few places where it looks like he dumped them over the fence while he could.”
“So where is the great Gardener?” asked Kennedy.
Lester walked back toward the aisles and pointed. “About three rows over. We walked real close to him when we first came down that way.”
“He’s dead?” Cesar asked.
Lester nodded. “Looks like he sat down in a nice chair, finished off a bottle of scotch, and put a bullet in his head. Right through the roof of the mouth. No chance of coming back. He had the hoe with him.”
Kennedy gave a slow nod of approval.
Danielle felt the sweat running again, but forced her hands to stay at her sides. “Any idea why?”
“We’ll never know,” Lester said. “Not for sure. My guess though…” He held up his hands and hooked the fingers into claws. “My mother had rheumatoid arthritis. His hands are twisted up the same way, especially the left one. It might just be a rigor mortis thing, but he was pretty old from the look of his hair. I think he realized he was running out of time, might’ve been in a lot of pain, and just…”
“Bang, thud,” said Cesar.
“Yeah. He’s still in his chair. Been there for about two years, I’d guess. He’s covered in bean plants. They just climbed all over him.”
“And you left him there?” asked Kennedy.
Lester shrugged his not-that-muscular shoulders. “He loved this place. He’s not coming back. It just felt right to leave him in his spot, like a memorial. You want to see him?”
“No thanks,” said Danielle.
Cesar looked at his boss. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s get this finished up, bro. We need to go get Cerberus put together.”
“Right, of course,” Lester said. “Sorry. Let’s swing back this way, and that’ll bring us around to the main building.”
He led them deeper into the garden. They walked past a trio of people harvesting green squashes and one person digging a trench. The narrow path led them between a plot filled with cornstalks and another that looked like grapevines.
Danielle registered the chattering just as they stepped out of the tall corn.
Another section of faded pavement stretched in front of them, part of the same service road circling the garden. A chain-link fence stood on the far side of the pavement. It was four feet tall and lined with 55-gallon drums. A single strand of barbed wire twisted along the top.
Past it was a wall of exes. At least a hundred of them stretched along the length of the fence. Dead men and women, young and old, some covered with gore and some with just a single obvious wound. Many of them had dried out after years of exposure, but a few still had curves. The lasting effects of a very healthy life or a surgically-enhanced one.
The four humans stepped into the open, and the undead turned chalky eyes on them. The dead pushed at the fence, shifting as they milled and shoved. It flexed and straightened, flexed and straightened, squeaking every time. It was just high enough that the exes’ grasping hands ended up pressed back against their bodies. The click-click-click of their teeth rattled across the road.
Danielle staggered back. Her heart tried to pound its way out of her sweat-slicked chest. She couldn’t get any air into her lungs. The ACU jacket seemed to tighten around her.
Kennedy caught her before she fell. “Easy,” said the first sergeant.
“That’s the freeway up there,” said Lester, pointing up the ridge behind the exes. “A lot of these guys fall down the embankment and get stuck in the ditch. The Gardener reinforced the fence with those barrels, but it’s pretty solid on its own. And they can’t get any numbers or leverage on it because of the uneven ground back there.”
Danielle sucked in a breath. There was too much space. Nothing but open space between her and the exes.
Kennedy grabbed Danielle’s left hand and held it tight. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “They can’t get past the fence.”
Lester walked away down the road, gesturing at the mass of zombies. Cesar followed him. “We’ll have to clean them all out at some point,” continued Lester, “but for now there aren’t enough to pose a worry for us. We’ve planned to make this a regular part of all patrols for now.”
Danielle grabbed Kennedy’s arm. The first sergeant had muscles like rock. She closed her eyes and pulled in another breath, and then another one.
“It’s okay,” Kennedy said again. “You’re okay.”
Cesar glanced back and saw Danielle curled over next to the first sergeant. He cleared his throat, breaking Lester’s monologue. �
��You know what, bro,” he said, “can we just cut this short and go straight back? I think we’ve all seen enough.”
Danielle forced herself up, lifting her head and straightening her back. She ignored her pounding heart, her sweaty skin, the tremble that swelled in her chest, and pushed her arms down. She fought her screaming instincts and turned her back on the dozens and dozens of exes past the fence line. Two jerking steps had her back between the corn and the grapes. Three more was far enough to muffle the sound of clicking teeth.
Kennedy walked next to her. The first sergeant half carried her through the cornstalks and back into the open area. The bright purple artichokes were on her left now, and there was the ruined umbrella. Kennedy had a good sense of direction.
“Sorry,” Lester called out from the other side of the corn. “I get carried away when I talk about the garden. I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time.”
Cesar fell in behind them, between Danielle and Lester. They marched back through the overgrown garden. The main building stood a hundred yards away, just visible over the tall plants.
The sounds of teeth and squealing chain-link faded behind them. The pressure on her side faded, and Danielle realized her arm was no longer crushed against her. It wasn’t moving away from her body, fear still held it rigid. Kennedy still held her other hand.
The big patch of sunflowers stood next to the path ahead. Past that, the fifteen-foot swath of peas and beans Lester had pointed out during the walk. They were already halfway to the main building. Halfway back to Cerberus.
Two people worked in a plot the next row over. One of them, a black man with a fuzzy scalp, leaned on the long handle of some garden tool. His smug expression dropped as the quartet moved out from behind the patch of sunflowers and into view. The other worker also had a near-shaved head, an older white man with a heavy brow and a torn earlobe. He was kicking at something on the ground, half-hidden by the overgrowth between them. A large bag or sack or…
Dim recognition flickered in Danielle’s mind. The two men were soldiers from Project Krypton. Not Unbreakables, but some of the civilians who’d been recruited into the base’s ranks.
And she recognized what the man was kicking.
“Hey!”
The leaning man stepped back and tried to look busy. Earlobe looked up, angry at the interruption. The look slipped when it landed on the quartet. It fled when he saw Kennedy.
The first sergeant was a few beats behind Danielle. “Privates,” she bellowed. “What the hell are you doing?”
Fuzzy took a few steps away, tensing to run. Earlobe looked frozen between fight or flight. He glanced at the shape on the ground.
Kennedy let go of Danielle’s hand, took a few running steps, and leaped into the air. She sailed over the patch of vegetables and landed between the two men and the thing they’d been attacking. “I said what the hell are you doing, soldier?” she bellowed again.
The two men froze, stunned by her shock-and-awe display of power.
Danielle lunged into motion. They were just people. She could deal with people, even people in wide-open spaces. She took a few quick steps to a cross-path that let her cut across to the other aisle. Cesar’s loping footsteps followed her.
When she realized how much she’d been acting on instinct, she paused. The pressure of the open spaces pushed down on her. She looked at the figure on the ground, shoved back the thoughts she’d had, and took a breath to steady herself. “You okay?” she asked.
Christian Smith uncurled from the fetal position she’d been wrapped in and crawled away. She grabbed a fence post and dragged herself to her feet. Cesar tried to help her up, but she smacked his hands away and hissed at him. It was a soft sound with no bite behind it.
“I apologize, ma’am,” said Kennedy. “These—”
It earned her another weak hiss of air. Smith’s lips fired off a flurry of silent curses and insults. Danielle wasn’t a good lip-reader, but most of the words were short and to the point. Kennedy stayed just as silent throughout it.
When Smith was done with the first sergeant, she turned and launched another volley at Danielle. A few moments in she coughed, a jarringly loud sound, winced, and grabbed at her side with her claw-hand. She wound up her silent speech by giving Danielle the finger. Then she limped off toward the main building.
Danielle had known John Smith, the man who’d somehow copied his consciousness into Christian’s body, erasing her mind in the process. Danielle had dated him. Slept with him. Lived with him.
She recognized the eyes in Christian’s face. They were a different shape and color, but still…they were John Smith’s eyes.
“I’ll make sure these two know not to try something like that again,” Kennedy said.
“Fuck that,” said Earlobe. “You know who she is.”
Kennedy whipped a finger into the man’s face. “Private, did I give you permission to speak?” she barked.
He stiffened. “No, First Sergeant,” he said.
But his eyes followed Smith up the path as he spoke.
ST. GEORGE WOKE up to the pounding sound of drums.
Madelyn scooted on her knees to the front of the raft and thumped on the inflated tubes there, too. She threw open the flaps of the tent and let in the morning sunshine. “We’re out in the ocean,” she called over her shoulder. “I think this is a lifeboat.”
He stretched. “Is it?”
She leaned out and splashed at the water, then squinted up at the sky. “Were we in a shipwreck or was it just a really wild party?”
“D’you remember anything?”
She dropped back inside the tent and blinked a few times. She crawled back to her bag and journals. Her eyes closed and her brow furrowed. “Flying with you and Zzzap,” she said. “A big fire.” She shook her head and opened her eyes. “That’s it.”
“The fire was a couple of days ago.”
“Oh.”
“Quiet,” muttered Barry without opening his eyes. “Some of us are still using the waterbed to sleep.”
St. George prodded him. “Come on. We’ve still got a lot of flying to do today.”
“I don’t,” Barry said, throwing a robe-wrapped arm across his face. “I can be there in less than an hour. Why can’t I sleep in?”
“Get up.”
“But mommmmmmmmm…”
Madelyn chewed on another strip of jerky while she read through the journal pages. “We’re going to an island made up of boats?”
St. George bit off a chunk of an oatmeal bar and nodded.
She skimmed through a few more pages. When she was done, she closed the notebook and picked up the other one. It was smaller and more dog-eared. She opened it to the first page and began reading.
Barry wolfed down his third oatmeal bar, reached over, and pulled a piece of jerky from the Ziploc next to Madelyn. She slapped his hand. He smiled and waved the strip of dried meat at her.
They finished breakfast while Madelyn refreshed her memories. Then she and St. George pulled their harnesses back on while Barry worked himself out of the robe. Madelyn turned her back while she repacked the bags.
Barry crawled to the tent entrance and wiggled out of his sweatpants. “Whoa,” he said. “Sea air’s a little brisk in the morning.”
St. George lifted his friend by the armpits and held him out over the water. “You ready?”
He nodded. “Frak, yeah. Throw me before I freeze.”
St. George bent his arms and hurled Barry up into the air. The black man soared into the morning sky, flailed a bit as he began to arc back down toward the water, and then exploded in a blast of light. A wave of heat rippled out through the air and over the life raft.
That’s better, said Zzzap. Good night’s sleep, some food. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready to go explore a mysterious man-made island.
St. George slung the red gym bag over his shoulder. Madelyn ate one last piece of jerky and shoved the Ziploc into a thigh pocket. She glanced around the te
nt. “So we’re just going to leave this out here? Seems kind of…I don’t know, wasteful.”
The batteries in the flashlight sparkle, said Zzzap, pointing at where his eyes would be. It’ll drift, yeah, but I should be able to spot it on the way back.
St. George crouched in the entrance in front of Madelyn. “Seatbelts on.”
She wound the strap through his harness and grabbed his shoulders. “Ready.”
“Then here we go.” He focused on the spot between his shoulder blades, just above where the D-ring sat, and launched himself into the air. Madelyn hollered as they shot up sixty, eighty, a hundred feet into the air and then leveled off.
Okay, said Zzzap. He pointed west and a bit south. That way.
It was late afternoon when Zzzap came rushing back from his latest scout-ahead and gave them a thumbs-up. They slowed to talk. About another sixty miles, said the gleaming wraith.
“Just over the horizon?” asked Madelyn.
Maybe another twenty minutes, half an hour. He looked at St. George. Pretty sure they saw me this time.
“How sure?”
Ummm, well they were pointing and shouting and waving things.
St. George nodded. “Okay, then.” He leaned forward and pushed through the air again.
Twenty-five minutes later the first shapes appeared on the horizon. They slowed to a halt in the air. He glanced at Zzzap. “That it?”
Yep. Any further ideas on how you want to do this?
St. George looked at the form in the distance. It was a blocky bulge sticking out of the sea. “Let’s not go too crazy,” he said. “Maybe once around the whole thing, figure out a place to land, and see what they say. Sound good?”
Works for me.
“And me,” said Madelyn.
He glanced back at her. “If anything goes bad, just stay low, okay?”
“Bad like people shooting at us?”
“That was what I was going for, yeah.”
They headed forward again. The shape on the horizon looked like a real island for a few minutes as it grew in size and detail. Then the lines and angles of it became clear. When they were still about two miles away, St. George pushed himself higher into the air, almost two hundred feet up. He wanted a good view of everything.