Ex-Isle, Peter Clines [ebook smartphone .TXT] 📗

the palm. It had turned her left hand into a claw.

She saved one last glare for Danielle. The redhead wasn’t surprised. She’d been the one who shot the fingers off. Christian walked with a limp now, too. Connolly had fixed the kneecap as best she could, but the bullet had done a lot of damage.

Danielle hoped it hurt a lot.

Christian turned to stare out at the road. She’d chopped her black hair into a short, masculine style. With her different clothes and posture, she didn’t look anything like the councilwoman who’d been part of the Mount since the beginning.

Which made sense, because she really wasn’t anymore.

“Yeah,” said Danielle, “even her.”

MADELYN LEANED IN close to St. George’s ear. “You know what’s awesome about having my memory reset all the time?”

He twisted his head around. She wasn’t far away, but they were moving fast enough that she was a little hard to hear. “What?”

“By tomorrow I’ll have forgotten this whole boring trip!”

He laughed. It shook him enough that she clenched the straps of his harness even tighter and flattened herself against his back. Her head pressed down between his shoulder blades. She’d kept it there for most of the flight so far.

They’d been flying for almost seven hours, skimming along about sixty or seventy feet above the ocean. Nothing but sky and water for most of it. The air was cool and wet and salty.

In all fairness, St. George didn’t think the trip had been all boring. Three things had broken the monotony. Maybe an hour of excitement spread out over all their flight time.

They’d come across the first one about two hundred miles past the island of Catalina (now the home of about three hundred exes and twice as many bison), barely an hour out into the ocean. The sun-bleached sailboat’s lines were brittle and its sail tattered. They’d found no bodies and no exes. A few old cans sat in the small pantry, two bottles of water in the mini-fridge. The drawers near the bed held clothes for a man and a woman.

The second had come two hours and three hundred miles later. A quartet of humpback whales had churned through the sea below them. St. George, Madelyn, and Zzzap had paused to watch for a few minutes before the massive creatures dove beneath the surface and vanished.

The third had been almost three hours ago. The large yacht rode low in the water and leaned to one side. There’d been nine bodies. Three of them were still moving around. One had been an older man with a thick beard and a dark polo shirt. The two others had been younger women, a blonde and a brunette. The blonde wore a swimsuit covered with old blood splatters. The brunette ex just had bikini bottoms, but was painted with gore from its chin to its stomach.

St. George had put down the man and the topless woman. The ex in the gory one-piece followed them back out onto the deck, its teeth clicking the whole time. He’d tossed it out over the water. It sank beneath the waves and vanished.

“Do you think sharks eat exes?” Madelyn had asked. “Or do the exes eat them?”

“The ex-virus doesn’t affect animals,” St. George reminded her.

Still, said Zzzap, zombie sharks. Got to admit, that’d be kind of cool, in a really horrific way.

They’d had a quick snack on the tilted deck before taking off again.

On St. George’s left, the sun crept closer to the horizon. Moving west had slowed it down a bit, just enough to notice, but they had maybe an hour of daylight left. He looked down at the boxy white case hanging from his left hand. It was the size of a large cooler and weighed a little less than Madelyn. They’d found it in Marina Del Rey on their second try.

To his right, the light shifted as Zzzap raced back to them. He’d been flitting ahead and back since they’d left the yacht. Still on track, he said. It’s about another eight hundred miles that way. Give or take.

St. George slowed down and felt Madelyn shift on his back. “We’re not going to make eight hundred miles before it gets dark,” he said. “You want to go a little farther or call it a night?”

Doesn’t matter to me either way.

“Is there anything neat up ahead?” asked Madelyn. “Another boat? Desert island? More whales?”

I think I might’ve seen a dolphin.

She shook her head. “I say we call it a night.”

“Okay, then,” said St. George. He slowed to a stop in midair. “Making camp.”

He shifted and felt Madelyn pull on the harness straps. The red gym bag swung back and forth between them. He hefted the white case.

It’s silly, said Zzzap, but I’ve kind of always wanted to see one of these things in action.

“Me, too,” said Madelyn. She was leaning forward, trying to see over St. George’s shoulder.

“On three, then?” he asked.

They counted together. The white pack plummeted through the air. It hit the surface and vanished beneath a swell. A few seconds later the raft exploded up out of the waves, spraying water in every direction.

The life raft was a bright orange hexagon about ten feet across. A canopy stretched over it on inflatable arms and created a small tent. It trembled on the waves while a last few wrinkles stretched tight, and then it was still.

Okay, said Zzzap, that was pretty damned cool.

“Hella cool,” said Madelyn.

They sank down until they were a few feet away. Zzzap kept a safe distance. Madelyn shifted on St. George’s back, and he heard her fumbling with her harness. She slid off his back, down his arm, and caught herself on his hand. She dangled for a moment while he carried her over the raft’s entrance. He let go and she dropped a few feet onto the raft. She wobbled and fell forward into the tent.

“It’s like a bounce house in here,” she called out to them.

St. George unslung