Ex-Isle

by Peter Clines

  She looked over at the legs again.

  Her body always repaired itself. Burns. Cuts. Even her hair grew back. Doctor Connolly at the Mount said it wasn’t “healing,” but never wanted to explain the difference. Madelyn wondered if the woman had already explained it to her a dozen times and finally just gotten frustrated.

  Whatever drug or treatment or miracle cure her dad had given her, it let her fix her injuries. Repair every injury she could remember getting, and probably a bunch she couldn’t remember. And it made sense things would repair faster if they were all in the same place.

  She lowered one elbow, then twisted her other shoulder hard enough to lift herself a little bit and get her hand down. Her arm straightened out, her body tipped up, teetered, and then flopped over on the pile. She slid a few feet and almost tipped again, but she grabbed a handful of Hawaiian shirt on one body and stopped herself.

  A sensation twitched in the back of her brain and carried down to her tongue. She was hungry. Starving.

  Could you be hungry without a stomach? Or intestines? A Dad question. He knew all those answers.

  She shook it off, pushed herself up onto her hands, and started to crawl toward the legs. There was just enough torso below her ribs to drag across the pile and make her into a rough tripod. She was pretty sure the scratch-thump-scratch-thump as she moved was the broken end of her spine bumping against things. It was good she didn’t feel a lot of pain.

  Her slide had taken her a little farther from the legs, so her crawl was uphill and across uneven ground. Twice the pile shifted beneath her hands and sent her sprawling. She stopped herself from tumbling and hand-walked across the rest of the bodies.

  Madelyn slipped one last time and flopped down with her head on her own thigh. Weird on so many levels. She grabbed her legs and threw one arm over her lap. Her fingers tugged at the buttons on the cargo shorts. She wasn’t used to undoing them from this angle. A memory floated up from the soup at the bottom of her mind. Out in the desert, going through the pockets of dried-out bodies in a car. Buttons had slowed things down then, too. Velcro would’ve been much smarter. Mental note for her next mission.

  She was on a mission. A mission with St. George and Zzzap. That’s where she was. A mission and something had gone wrong. If she’d been on a life raft yesterday, she probably wasn’t at the Mount. Maybe a boat? The hold of a big ship?

  “Crap,” she muttered. The word didn’t make any sound, but she heard her dry lips brush against each other, and it was better than nothing. She’d been digging at the wrong pocket. Again, not used to it from this angle. Her hands made their way over to the other thigh pocket, the one pretty much in her armpit. She pushed her fingers into the pocket and found the folded-up plastic bag she’d put there when she was in the life raft. Four good-sized pieces of chicken jerky. Her mouth couldn’t get wet, but her tongue twitched again. She fumbled with the seal, yanked out the smallest piece, and crammed the whole thing in her mouth. Her jaws chomped it to a meaty pulp while she tore another piece in two with her fingers.

  A thought hit her just before she shoved the next piece between her lips. Most of her digestive system was scattered across the pile. She didn’t even know if her stomach was still in her rib cage, and shuddered at the thought of reaching in to check. The jerky might be going to waste, falling out of her throat and into an empty body cavity.

  Madelyn sighed and swallowed the meat in her mouth. The rest went back in the bag. After a moment’s thought, she unzipped the top of her wet suit and stuffed the bag between her boobs. If she fell asleep she might forget it in a pocket, but she’d notice it there pretty quick.

  She pushed herself back up onto her hands and crawled over her legs. She turned herself around so she was facing the open wound of her waist. She could see her hips and the other half of her spine and something that might’ve been…her uterus, maybe? Gallbladder? Something smooth and slick and gray. She didn’t want to think about it too much, and she hadn’t done well in biology, anyway. One of the few sore points with her dad.

  She reached out and wrapped her fingers around her intestines, half expecting to feel a squeeze in her belly. It was like holding a soft, limp garden hose. She could feel a few small lumps through the flesh and wondered what she’d eaten. Her eyes closed, and she tried to take a calming breath.

  Still no lungs. Or lung muscles. Dammit.

  It made sense to have all the parts in the same place.

  She pulled, and the length of intestine slithered across the pile toward her. Her hands stretched out, grabbed, and pulled again. One of the loops straightened out. Another tug made a section higher up the pile shift a bit. She realized she could go faster if she pulled hand over hand. Smaller movements, but faster. She had to stop at one point when a loop of intestine got caught on a body. Four hard shakes got it loose.

  Her guts slipped over the corpses as she dragged them home. A few moments later the end popped up over the far side of the pile, a lopsided bean about the size of a softball. She was pretty sure it was her stomach. It bounced and twisted across the bodies as she pulled it close.

  A quick wave of dizziness ran through her head and down her arms. A minute or two at best before she passed out. No journals, either. She was going to have to figure out most of this again when she woke up.

  She turned around again and then lowered herself onto one elbow. It put her at a good angle to flip herself over without sliding down the pile. She wiggled on her shoulders, reached down to grab at the hem of her cargo shorts, and tugged the two halves of her body together. Then she reached out and scooped the yards of intestine toward her. She shoved the stomach up into her body cavity and piled the rest below her ribs.

  “I’m on a mission,” she said, mouthing each word. “I’m on a mission and my body’s repairing itself. I’m on a mission and my body’s repairing itself. I’m on a mission and my body’s repair—”

  Madelyn woke up screaming. Or she would’ve if there’d been any air in her lungs. She wasn’t sure why she was screaming. She didn’t remember having a bad dream. She hadn’t had a bad dream in years.

  She hadn’t had any dreams in years.

  Her body tingled, like the pins and needles after a leg or hand fell asleep. But it was everywhere. Like her whole body had fallen asleep.

  Which, granted, it did sometimes. But it never felt like this when she woke up. Not that she could remember, anyway.

  And, wow, was she hungry. Starving hungry. Hadn’t eaten in days hungry.

  The only lights were high above. It looked like sunlight seeping in through cracks. More than enough for her to see by. She sucked in a deep breath and sat up.

  Her chest crinkled as she did. Madelyn pulled the zipper down on her wet suit and found a bag of chicken jerky wedged in her sports bra. She had no idea how it had gotten there, but she was glad to see it. She shook the bag out and looked around.

  There were a lot of exes. At least sixty or seventy exes she could see, but probably more. It was a big crowd. Most of them just swayed back and forth—that weird thing they did when they hadn’t seen anything move in a while. Maybe a third of them staggered around. The closest ones were a couple of yards away. It was a big room. The sound of all their teeth echoed off the metal walls.

  Solid metal walls. Big sheets of metal. She couldn’t remember seeing anything like that anywhere in the Mount.

  “Ewwwwww.”

  And she was sitting on a pile of dead bodies. A couple still had some meat to them, but most of them were just withered skeletons. A few moved their mouths open and shut, but didn’t have the strength for actual teeth-clicking. Some were dressed like tourists, but a lot of them were wearing dark jumpsuits.

  Madelyn pushed herself up onto her feet. A few quick steps carried her down off the pile of limbs and torsos without tripping. Her boots hit the floor and she wobbled. Her core muscles felt loose, almost rubbery.

  She wiggled her toes and felt them flex inside her boots. She could feel the thin spo
t in one of her socks. A few threads stretched back and forth across her big toe and caught on the nail. She’d meant to cut her nails before the mission, but she’d found some black nail polish and done her toes two days before and didn’t want to waste it.

  Where the heck was she? She’d woken up in her room yester…no. On a small boat? An orange inner tube? A life raft. She’d been on a life raft with Mom and they were going to…no, dammit. She’d been with St. George and…and…and Barry! St. George and Zzzap.

  She was on a mission. She’d been hurt. Her body was repairing itself.

  Her wet suit was ripped apart just above her waist, all the way around. Stretch lines wrinkled the material, like it had been pulled tight before tearing. The zipper was snapped in the middle, and the splayed-open ends showed off gaps from missing teeth. Her bare stomach looked fine, though, and aside from the tingling she couldn’t feel any other injuries or…

  Madelyn shifted her hips, leaned back a bit, and looked at her stomach again in the light.

  The skin across her belly reminded her of fast food wrappers, all slick and see-through. She could see dark veins and strands of muscle going back and forth. Her belly button was a little knot of cloudy gray.

  She turned her hips a little more and pulled up the ragged edge of the wet suit. There were a bunch of holes in her side. Oval ones, maybe two or three inches long and half that wide. The gray muscles underneath flexed and relaxed as her hips moved.

  “Huh,” she said. “This is new.”

  “COMPANY’S COMING,” SAID Barry.

  Five people walked across the deck. Three adults and two children. When they got closer to the cage, St. George saw one of them was Eliza. One of the others was the dreadlocked man from his examination.

  The boy was eight or nine with a red baseball cap. He could’ve been a younger version of Devon, just without the wiry biker beard. The little girl had brown hair and Asian features. St. George was pretty sure she’d been in the courtyard when they’d had their meeting with Nautilus. She wore a baggy dress, and it took him a moment to recognize it as a modified T-shirt.

  Eliza looked over her shoulder into the distance, then at St. George. “Did your friend explain to you how things work?”

  “About the other kids in cages?” He glared at her. “Yeah, he did.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t have a real problem believing you’d do it.”

  “Good enough.” She took a few steps to her right and stood where they could both turn their heads and see her. “We’re going to open the cage. If you try anything, there are still guards watching. They’ll signal the drop.”

  “Why are you opening the cage?” asked St. George.

  “We’re going to let the kids trade places.” She looked at Barry. “We’re going to do one at a time, so there’s always going to be someone cuffed to you. Clear?”

  “Crystal,” he said.

  “Why even risk it by trading them out?” asked St. George.

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “We’re not going to leave them in there with you twenty-four-seven. They’re going to go home to their families and play with their friends.”

  “Well, yeah,” Barry said. “I mean, keeping someone locked up in a cage all day would be cruel and barbaric.”

  “Cute.”

  “I’m just glad someone’s thinking of the children first.”

  “Keep this simple,” she said, “and you get breakfast.”

  The dreadlocked man stepped forward and spun the dial on a padlock. It opened with a clunk. He unwrapped a length of chain, stepped back, and pulled a big panel of the cage open with him.

  Eliza stepped inside and crouched by Colin. She unlocked him and shifted his manacle onto the little girl in the T-shirt dress. Then the broad-shouldered woman took Kaitlyn out and put in the boy St. George already thought of as Little Devon. The boy whimpered as the shackle ratcheted shut on his wrist.

  “Hey,” said Eliza, taking his chin. “Be brave. Your dad’s proud of you.”

  The boy stuck out his chin and nodded.

  Colin yawned. Kaitlyn waved from outside the cage. “Bye, Barry.”

  “Bye,” he said. He waved back and managed a tight smile. “You be good. Learn some more stories for me.”

  The dreadlocked guard frowned. “Don’t talk to her.”

  “Hey,” said Barry, “she talked to me first.”

  Dreadlock opened his hands and let the cage door fall back into place. It crashed shut, and the echo rang across the deck. He wrapped the chain around its bars and slammed the lock shut.

  “Wow,” said St. George, “you’re so brave when it comes to prisoners and children.”

  The man took a step forward, but Eliza stopped him with a raised hand. She set it down gently onto the little girl’s shoulder. “Kaitlyn,” she said, “you can’t forget, these are bad men.”

  “Not Barry. He’s funny.”

  “They’re liars.”

  Kaitlyn’s eyes got wide.

  “So, about breakfast,” said Barry. “Whenever I’m being held captive by a bunch of nutjobs, I like to go with French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon. If you’ve got cream for the coffee, that’d be fant—”

  “You’ll get some food once we’ve checked the kids and made sure nothing’s happened to them.”

  St. George cleared his throat. “You mean like someone leaving them outside in a cage overnight?”

  The woman grunted and guided the kids away. The guards followed her. Kaitlyn snuck a last glance at Barry, then looked away.

  “You didn’t write my order down,” Barry called after them. “Are you sure you’re going to remember it?”

  The girl played with her end of the shackle. Little Devon scowled at Barry. He scooted across the cage until the chain was tight between them. Then he shooed the girl back until her chain was tight, too.

  An hour later, the sunburned guard with the peeling nose showed up carrying a tray of bowls. A holster rode on his hip. He handed two of them through the cage to the kids, then slid two more a little closer to St. George and Barry. The bowls held more stew, but it was closer to soup than the stuff they’d had the day before.

  “Dammit,” said Barry, glaring at the bowls.

  Peel looked up. “What?”

  “This isn’t what I ordered. I told her to write it down.”

  St. George smirked. The little girl giggled. Even Peel’s lips curled up a bit.

  “The service here has really gone downhill.”

  The guard pulled a canteen off his shoulder and twisted the strap around a crossbar so it hung inside the cage.

  “How are we supposed to eat?” asked St. George. He shook one wrist and jingled the cuff binding his arm to Barry’s.

  “Sorry, man,” said the sunburned man. He didn’t meet St. George’s eyes. “It sucks, but I’ve got my orders.”

  St. George sighed. “We’ll figure something out.”

  The guard walked a few yards away and sat down on a hatch with his back to them.

  After a few tries they figured out how to take turns lifting the bowls, twisting their arms and leaning to the side. Barry slurped his bowl empty on his third turn. St. George sipped his. Little Devon pulled down the canteen and passed it back and forth with the girl. After his third sip, he grudgingly held it out for Barry, tilting it so the chained man could swallow a few mouthfuls.

  “Thanks,” said Barry.

  Little Devon glowered at him.

  “How you doing?” asked St. George.

  “Locked in a cage,” Barry said. “You?”

  “Kind of the same. I meant calorie-wise. Are you doing okay?” He twisted around toward his friend.

  Barry shrugged. “Been worse. Could be better.”

  St. George set his bowl on the floor and slid it behind him, toward his friend. “Here. You can have the rest. I’m not hungry.”

  “Why? Was yours worse than mine?”

  “Once we g
et out of here, I can’t have you weak. You need it.”

  The sun crept higher and forced the shadows back into hiding. A few more people appeared, most of them wearing broad hats and carrying farm tools. They stared at the prisoners in the cage until one of the guards—cowboy Mitchel with one l—yelled at them to get to work. Some of them crouched and worked the soil with their hands. Others pushed at the sides of the raised beds with their tools. A few had watering cans they moved back and forth between the plants while they snuck looks at the superheroes.

  “Hey,” said St. George.

  Peel looked over.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  The sunburned guard glanced at Mitchel farther down the deck. “I’m just supposed to feed you and get the bowls back when you’re done.”

  “So they said you couldn’t talk to us?”

  “What’s your question?”

  St. George tried to nod his head toward the farmers. “Devon told us you got seeds from the cruise ship. Where’d you get all the farm stuff?”

  “Huh?”

  “Pitchforks. Hoes. Rakes. That’s not stuff you find on a boat.”

  The corners of Peel’s mouth twitched again. “Depends on the ship.” He tapped a foot on the deck, then chucked his chin at the stack of containers. “The Pacific Eagle had over eight hundred shipping containers on her when it joined us. Tons and tons of made-in-China crap.”

  “Sounds like a lucky break for you,” said Barry.

  The sunburned man shrugged. “Eighty percent of it was useless shit. Electronics, car parts, toys, games. Stuff like that.”

  “At least all the kids had a couple good Christmases,” said St. George.

  Peel smiled. A real smile. “My kid got fifteen Transformers that first year.”

  “That was a good year for Transformers,” agreed Barry. “They did some really sweet G1 rereleases.”

  The guard frowned.