Ex-Isle

by Peter Clines

  The sound of teeth echoed up to her.

  She jumped down one more staircase and landed in front of the long gangplank that led down onto the tanker. A man and woman pushed themselves flat against the wall opposite it. The walkway was covered by a white awning with the dolphin logo printed all over it.

  A dead man lumbered off the gangplank and onto the cruise ship’s deck. The bony ex had a ring of white hair around a circle of bald. Half the skin of its jaw was gone, showing off yellowed teeth and bone streaked with dark red.

  The zombie ignored her. Its dead eyes turned to the couple. Its teeth slammed together again and again, louder for the lack of skin covering them.

  Madelyn slammed into the ex, driving her shoulder into its chest. It tumbled back, and its head slammed against one of the metal guide rails of the walkway. Not hard enough to stop it, though. It fell at the feet of another ex and pawed at the ground.

  “Go,” she yelled over her shoulder. “Get away.”

  The man and woman stared at her with wide eyes. They were scared of her, too. They just saw another zombie.

  The second ex stepped forward. Its nose was a bloody, broken mess. This one was wearing one of the blue Navy coveralls. Its name had been LOWE. Now that she knew what to look for, she could see the white eagles on the collars, blurred by gore. A large chunk with charred edges was missing from Lowe’s shoulder, like someone had tried to blow the dead man’s head off with a shotgun and just taken part of the collarbone.

  She caught it in the gut with a solid kick. The dead man staggered and tipped back into the sloped walkway. It landed on two exes behind it, a pair of women, and the three of them formed a wobbly undead tripod.

  She grabbed the railings on either side of the gangplank, swung her legs up, and drove both feet into Lowe’s chest.

  It was enough to make the tripod collapse. The exes knocked down one more as they fell, but there were more shuffling up the ramp. The angle was low enough for them to stagger and crawl without risk of tipping.

  She glanced back. The couple had vanished. She wasn’t sure if they’d run up the stairs or down the hall deeper into the ship.

  She took a moment to tug at her wet suit. Ripped into two pieces, the top half was riding up and the bottom half kept sliding down. It was still tight enough to stay on, she just felt like she was on the verge of a wardrobe malfunction, even wearing her jacket and shorts.

  The white-haired ex pushed itself up onto its hands and knees. She reached out with her foot and tugged the dead man’s arm out from under it. It collapsed back to the ground, and its head hit the deck with a loud thunk.

  On the walkway, the four exes she’d knocked down crawled forward. A dead woman in a swimsuit clawed its way past Lowe, even as Lowe dragged itself forward on bruised arms. More of the dead behind them tried to walk over the fallen ones. They slipped and wobbled and had trouble keeping their balance, but they were working their way back up the long ramp.

  There were at least a dozen of them farther down the covered walkway. Exes as far as she could see. If it got too packed, she wouldn’t be able to knock them over again. Their own numbers would keep them standing, even on the ramp. And then they’d make it up to the Queen.

  A few yards down, a thin chain dangled on the side of the gangplank. A small clip almost touched the ground. A matching chain hung on the other side. At some point it had probably held a sign warning people about wet floors or closed doorways.

  The closest ex on its feet—a black man in one of the blue coveralls—was just passing the chain.

  She ran down the ramp, stepped on Lowe’s back and swimsuit woman’s shoulder, and shoved the dead man as hard as she could. It outweighed her two to one, but the run gave her momentum. The big ex stumbled back, but the massed undead kept it from falling, just like she’d feared.

  Madelyn grabbed the chains on either side and pulled them together. The clip slipped through one link and hung just below her waist. She stepped back and stumbled on the legs of the other dead woman, the heavy one in shorts and an oversized T-shirt.

  The big ex—the name on the coverall said BERNARD—lumbered up the ramp again and the chain tightened against its thighs. It didn’t notice and kept shifting its feet. Another ex shuffled past, a dead girl a few years younger than Madelyn, and the chain caught it across the waist.

  The railings trembled a bit, but they seemed to be holding for now.

  She turned to the other half of her problem. The crawling exes kept moving forward. Five of them, if she counted the white-haired man near the top of the walkway.

  She grabbed swimsuit woman by the ankles and shuddered. The ex’s skin was puffy and moist. All the fluids had settled low inside it, and it had been on its feet for years. It crawled forward and stumbled over its own hands when its legs didn’t move.

  Madelyn heaved and dragged the dead woman back down the ramp. It left streaks on the walkway floor. She dropped its legs, grabbed Lowe by the cuffs of the blue coverall, and hauled the dead man back, too.

  It wasn’t a great solution, but she figured it would let her hold the walkway until more help arrived. If she was quick, she could run and maybe do the same thing on the next gangplank.

  Then, with a snap and the jingle of loose links, the chain snapped behind her.

  St. George soared over the tanker. Down on the deck, a man with a shotgun put down another ex before his weapon racked empty. He pumped it two more times as St. George dove toward him, and at the last minute spun it around and slammed the butt into a zombie’s jaw. He hit it again and ignored the two other exes coming up alongside him.

  St. George grabbed the man under the arms and carried him into the air. The shotgun plunged to the deck. The man screamed bloody hell until St. George dropped him onto the crane. He grabbed the railings and glared up at the hero.

  “You’ll be safe up here until we get things under control,” St. George told him. He took off before the man could say anything.

  He swatted three exes away from a pair of women and pointed them up onto the low catwalk running the length of the tanker.

  A dead man had a woman pinned down on the deck next to one of the garden plots. She pushed and kicked until St. George grabbed the ex by the neck and hurled it across the deck. It bounced once, slammed into the far railing, and fell in a heap.

  He helped the woman up and tried not to look at the bites and scrapes on her arms. “Thank you,” she cried. “Thank you. You saved me.”

  He threw himself back into the air.

  Most of the exes seemed to be coming out of a door beneath the ship’s bridge. The sooner he cut them off, the better. More than a hundred dead people already roamed the deck, and maybe a third of them were headed toward the gangplanks.

  He landed by the door. A dozen pairs of zombie eyes turned to him. The closest was a thin, grandmotherly woman with thin gray-white hair and matching skin. It wore a gore-splattered sweatshirt with the cruise line logo. The dead grandmother reached for St. George with stubby, chewed-off fingers. A stout ex in a wifebeater and flannel shirt shuffled at him from the other direction. A gaunt thing in a stained T-shirt grabbed at him with its one good arm. The other one was pinned to its chest with what looked like a steel rod, and St. George realized the ex had been shot with a speargun. The click-click-click of their teeth seemed louder as it echoed off all the metal surfaces.

  A quick flick of his wrist broke Grandma’s neck, and the ex collapsed with its jaw still gnashing up and down. His fist came around and struck the flannel shirt zombie, knocking it off its feet and a few yards down the deck. The speared ex clawed at his arm and bent its head to chew on his flesh. He swatted its skull like a mosquito, crushing it. Teeth and bone and damp meat pattered onto the deck.

  He glanced over his shoulder just as an ex stumbled through the doorway. Its chest was a mass of dried blood, shredded fabric, and knotted tissue. A shotgun wound that had dried in the air—St. George had seen it before. He slammed his palm into what was left of the
zombie’s breastbone and sent it flying back through the door. It struck the far inside wall and left a smear as it slipped to the floor.

  He slammed the steel door behind it and yanked down the latch. A person could open it. To the dead, it might as well be a steel wall.

  Another ex, a teenaged blonde in a cruise ship uniform, staggered toward him with arms up. St. George grabbed one of the dead thing’s arms and swung the body into the air. Its feet knocked down two more zombies as he brought the dead woman around in a circle and…

  His hand tightened on the gray wrist before it slipped away from him. There were other boats down below the tanker’s railing. He wasn’t sure where they were, and the last thing he wanted to do was drop an ex on top of some family as they were turning in for the night. Strong as he was, he didn’t think he could throw the dead woman and be absolutely sure it’d gone past all the ships.

  The ex hung at the end of his arm, teeth clacking together. It reached up and clawed at his wrist with its free hand. He swung the woman’s body again, low this time, and knocked down three more of the walking dead. Then he let go and momentum sent the dead blonde tumbling and thumping across the deck.

  Screams echoed across the deck. In the distance, some of the farmers backed up to the far rail. A cluster of exes had blocked them from the walkways leading up to the cruise ship. The farmers pushed them back with rakes and hoes.

  St. George launched himself into the air. He skimmed across the deck, spread his arms wide, and plowed through the crowd of zombies. At least seven of them were dragged away, and when he stopped they went tumbling across the deck. Two of them twisted their necks and stayed down. The others stumbled back to their feet with limp arms and jaws.

  He marched back and grabbed two of the remaining exes by the necks and slammed their heads together. A crack of bone echoed up from the impact, and both zombies sagged in his grip. He let them drop and punched another one in the back of the neck, turning its spine to gravel.

  He recognized Malachi in the group of farmers. The bitter-faced old man had hit the last ex in the chest with his hoe. It pressed in and tried to reach past the tool for the older man. They leaned into each other, an inside-out game of tug-of-war.

  St. George grabbed the ex by the neck, set his hand on its head, and twisted the skull around so it faced him. The body sagged beneath his hand, and he noticed the constant motion of the teeth and jaws had worn furrows into the dead man’s lips. He turned and tossed the body at the exes he’d bowled over with his charge. Three of them went down again. The others would be in reach in a minute or so.

  He looked at the group. “Everyone okay? No bites or scratches?”

  The farmers nodded. Malachi’s mouth was a tight line. “We tried to get to the Queen,” said one of the others, a woman with scars under her thin hair, “but they’re everywhere.”

  He glanced back at the crowd of exes. Some were milling about as the undead did when they didn’t have a target. Another dozen were heading toward him.

  “They’re going to kill us all,” muttered one of the others, a man about St. George’s age. “All dead. All of us.”

  “Shut up, Claude,” snapped an older woman.

  The hero stepped past them and looked down. A few yards back, a rope ladder led down to one of the fishing boats. “There,” he said, pointing. “Let’s just walk back over there. You can get down to that boat and you’ll be safe.”

  “But they’ll know where we are,” Claude whined.

  Just like Eliza had told St. George, most of the people had never dealt with a full-scale outbreak of the undead. They’d had isolated individuals, but never mass numbers. Never a horde. They’d been living in fear of something none of them had ever experienced or understood.

  “They won’t be able to follow you,” St. George said. “They can’t climb a ladder, and the railing’s too high for most of them to fall over it by accident.”

  “But—”

  “You’ll be safe,” he said. “Trust me.”

  He walked back and grabbed one of the approaching exes, a thin man with a wispy beard. His hand closed on its throat, and its jaw beat down on his knuckles. He wrenched its neck and tossed the limp body at a dead woman in a long sundress. They crashed down on the deck together.

  St. George looked out at the deck as he wiped his hands on his pants. More screams reached his ears. He hoped the guards were better at fighting exes than the farmers.

  They moved twenty feet down the deck to the ladder. There was a small gate in the railing. Malachi pushed the older woman out of the way so he could climb down first. St. George rolled his eyes. Claude, for all his whining and doomsaying, held his arms out and let the woman go next.

  Another ex stumbled toward them. It wore moldy jeans and a denim shirt missing one sleeve. The exposed arm had three clear bites on it. One of them was still half covered by some dangling bandages. The dead man’s teeth were muffled by bits of dried material jammed between them. St. George tried not to think about what the material could’ve been.

  It reached for him. He batted its hands away and drove a punch into its cheek. The side of the ex’s face collapsed even as the impact snapped its head back. It crashed to the deck, twitched twice, and went limp. Even its teeth stopped.

  Maybe a dozen down, another hundred or so to go.

  He hoped things were going better for Barry.

  THERE WAS A clump of bone jammed in the left elbow joint. Cesar thought it might be part of a jawbone. The servos strained against it, and it limited his range of movement. He thought about folding the exoskeleton’s arm up and trying to crush it, but worried he’d blow out the motors altogether and leave himself with a crippled arm.

  He could still swing it like a club for now.

  The power levels worried him more than the arm. The fighting and his stunt with the dumpster had burned off a chunk of the batteries’ charge. He was down to seventeen percent—maybe twenty-five or thirty minutes under great conditions.

  And these really weren’t great conditions.

  There were still more exes in front of him than the battlesuit’s targeting systems could handle. Sixteen of them were on a direct path between him and the fence’s closest point. Another forty-two between him and the farthest point of collapse.

  The exoskeleton pivoted at the waist so Cesar could look over his shoulder at the soldiers behind him. He’d lost Gibbs somewhere. The lieutenant had vanished, along with the gardeners who’d been working in one of the nearby plots.

  “I’m gonna try to pull the fence up,” he called back. “Can you hold ’em for a few minutes?”

  “Make it fast,” Kennedy yelled over the sound of teeth and bullets. Her head settled back to her rifle sights and she fired again. One of Cesar’s sixteen exes twitched and sprayed black blood out of the back of its skull. It collapsed.

  Cesar stomped forward and brought his fists down to crush two skulls. He scooped up another ex, a woman with white-blond hair and jogging clothes, and hurled it out past the fence. The hand came back down as a fist and shattered a dead man’s neck and shoulders. The battlesuit’s other arm, the stiff one, hurled a zombie away, but it got more height than distance. It dropped hard out on the street and splattered across the pavement. The fist came down like a hammer even as the other hand grabbed an ex by the arm and flung it away.

  The system cleaned a path to the fence, even if all the movement attracted more exes. Better him than the soldiers, though. Even as he thought it, a dead man with dark hair and a withered blade of a nose tried to grab the exoskeleton’s arm. The zombie cracked teeth on one of the pistons before Cesar swatted it away.

  The fence sagged for about forty feet before righting itself at a distant post. At least a dozen exes stood on the fallen section as they staggered into the garden. He shoved an ex away and crouched to grab the end closest to him. The battlesuit’s steel fingers slid through the chain-link.

  Just like Danielle had said, a stiff cable threaded through the top of
the chain-link. The frayed end had a sharp loop in it, like it had been curved so long or so tight the curve had just become part of the cable. Just inside the curve hung three little things like padlocks held together with hex nuts. The little locks hung loose, but the cable was crimped on the side of the loop across from them where they’d bound the wire rope tight against itself.

  He tugged on the fence, and a double handful of zombies wobbled as it shifted beneath their feet. Another pull gave him a sense of the weight and made a dead woman topple over. He straightened the battlesuit’s legs and hauled the fence back up into position. Exes tumbled on both sides. One bent over backward, and its spine made a sound like a branch breaking. He stepped back, pulled the chain-link back to the post, and it stretched tight and solid.

  The barrier was back up.

  “Okay,” he called back to the soldiers. “I got it!”

  As soon as he spoke, he realized he was trapped.

  The moment he let go of the chain-link, the fence would drop again. He could see at least twice as many exes in the street outside, with more shambling closer. There was no way the suit’s oversized fingers could work the hex nuts on the little clips, and he wasn’t sure how they went on, anyway. There wasn’t enough of the cable to tie it around the post.

  There were still more exes inside the fence line than the targeters could count. Maybe eighty or ninety. Some of them were still trying to gnaw on the exoskeleton, but most of them were closing in on the small group of soldiers. Rifles were dropping them, but not fast enough.

  And they were running out of ammo.

  Javi stumbled through the dark garden. He’d headed for the main building and figured he could lock himself in the pantry or the bathroom or the toolshed or something. Somewhere safe.

  He hadn’t expected the cable to slip so fast.

  When he’d seen Cerberus and the soldiers and the robo-foot guy all arguing, Javi knew what way things were going. He saw the writing on the wall and knew it was time to add a few tags of his own. He’d already snuck a wrench out to the fence once or twice over the past few days and just given the connectors a little quarter-turn. Enough so he could loosen them fast when he needed to. It was supposed to be a fail-safe protection thing. A weapon of last resort. When the guards all made their move, tried to kill all the Seventeens, he’d be able to take them all with him. Or die knowing they were going to get theirs as soon as the cable went.