Ex-Isle by Peter Clines

Author:Peter Clines [Clines, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780553418316
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2016-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

HIS OWN COUGHING woke him up. There was saltwater in his mouth, scratching at his tongue. He spit it out, coughed up more, and spit that out, too.

St. George opened his eyes enough to wonder where he was. Somewhere dark. His clothes were damp, and the cold reached through his wet suit. He blinked a few times, salt stung his eyes, and he blinked a few more. He reached up to rub them, and something tugged at his wrists.

“Owwww,” said Barry from behind him. “Watch it. You almost dislocated both my arms.”

“You’re okay?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. They squeezed a lot of water out of you, and you’ve been out cold since then.”

“How long?”

“About twelve hours, I think. I nodded off for a while, and you were still out when I woke up. The sun went down about an hour, hour and a half ago.”

St. George looked around and tried to blink more water from his vision. He thought they were under the wooden gazebo in the cruise ship’s courtyard. His eyes cleared a little more and he saw the slats were much closer. And made of metal.

The cage had been bolted together out of railings and a few long strips of steel. It sat a few yards from a two-high stack of storage containers. Half a dozen low bonfires lit up all of the metal deck he could see. In the flickering light he saw the outline of plants twenty or thirty feet away, and his nose caught the strong smell of…what had they called it? Night soil.

He moved his arms again. He and Barry were handcuffed back to back, wrist to wrist. Shackles connected his feet.

“Madelyn,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Barry. “Still dead.”

St. George closed his eyes and took a few slow breaths. He felt a faint tingle at the back of his throat. The faint ember of a fire, weak but growing.

“How’d they get you?”

Barry sighed. “The whole thing was a trap, George. All the little kids there at that gathering? Human shields.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I realized that a minute into beating the crap out of him.”

“If this is what happens when you beat the crap out of someone, I think you need to get some pointers from your girlfriend.”

“Not in the mood, Barry.”

“Yeah, sorry. Anyway, I couldn’t fire any bursts without hurting a kid or blowing a hole straight through the ship. Then Nautilus came back with you half dead, put one of his funky Deep One hands over your nose and mouth, and said he’d smother you if I didn’t turn human. Soooo…yeah, not a lot of options.”

“Why haven’t you changed back to the energy form?”

“Ummmm…You might not have noticed but we’re all in kind of close proximity here.”

“Yeah?”

“George, when I change everything around me tends to get incinerated by the radiation surge. The air all around the energy form hits six hundred degrees before I get it under control. It only takes a second, but still…”

“So? You know it wouldn’t hurt me.

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