Yesterday's Gone: Season Six (15 page)

Just looking at the woman — the bruises and track marks on her arms, old abrasions on her face, scratches all over — Paul could tell she’d been through some serious shit and was using a lot of drugs to cope with life in The Wastelands. He’d have to wade through it all to determine her worth as a host.
 

There was a time when he’d have dismissed her as dysfunctional without even sifting. She had too many strikes against her. But lately the people being picked up were looking worse and worse, and beggars couldn’t be choosers when crops were thin. They needed new bodies. The upper levels were designed to accommodate the aliens in their current forms, but their bodies were atrophying at an alarming rate. And who knew how quickly they could get their baby farm producing more children for the aliens to use?

Paul shuddered. He wasn’t sure which grossed him out more: the aliens’ insect-like bodies or their gelatinous true form. He’d been present for three implantations so far, and had barely been able to hide his disgust.
 

At least they weren’t using his body — or Emily’s.

“So,” the redhead said, her voice slurred, “who the fuck are you?”

God, I hate my job.

“I’m here to determine if you’re a match for our program.”

“I don’t wanna be part a no program. I jus’ wanna go home,” she said, her voice slightly raised, body still sedated.

Judging from her grammar, she was the right amount of stupid to make for an appropriate host. The aliens didn’t want morons but found the ignorant easier to placate once inhabited. How exactly the aliens pacified the host mind, Paul wasn’t certain. He imagined that they flooded the host mind with arousing sensations — similar to the consumption of food, sex, and drugs. Intelligent people were coddled in a different way — making them feel like they were part of the decision-making process rather than a vessel used by the aliens.

Paul wasn’t sure which would be a worse hell: thinking you were an equal in your body or being distracted by a flood of meaningless pleasantries.

Well, ignorance is bliss, right?

He asked the woman a series of questions designed to relax her mind, to make her more receptive to his infiltration.

Six questions in, the door to the room opened.

Paul was half out of his seat ready to yell at whoever the hell was interrupting him. But it was Desmond.

“We need to talk.”

**

Paul couldn’t do anything other than stare at the command center screens, watching replays of the woman, whom Desmond called Mary, slicing his daughter’s neck on repeat.

He wanted to hit something while watching the video footage shot from the shuttle. No, not something — Desmond. And not hit, but murder.

“She’s not dead,” Desmond assured him. “I’m certain that Luca has healed her.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because if she were dead, her chip would’ve exploded.

“You put an
exploding
chip in her?”

“Would you please relax?” Desmond said as if they were discussing a minor inconvenience rather than his daughter’s throat being slit and an explosive tracking chip embedded in her body.

“What are you doing to get her back?” Paul asked, voice too loud, too stern for Desmond’s right-hand man, Wasterman. Paul didn’t give a fuck.

“We’re monitoring the situation,” Wasterman said.

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

Wasterman’s bushy eyebrows arched as if to ask,
Who the hell do you think you are?

Desmond, in his calmest smile and voice, said, “We are tending to the situation and have eyes on their location now.”

“So why the hell aren’t you there getting her, and your target?”

“I assume you want your daughter back in one piece?”

“Well, yes, of course.”

“Then we need to be cautious. I meant what I said before, Paul. You and your daughter are valuable members of our family. We’re not going to let anyone harm her.”

Paul pointed at the monitors and his daughter’s throat being slit. “Yeah, some job you’ve done. What if Luca hadn’t teleported in and saved her? Could
you
have healed her?”

“We would have tried our best.”

“But no guarantees, right?”

Desmond met his eyes. Paul felt something shifting under the surface, something that said he was pushing his luck. Worse, Paul was doing so in front of Desmond’s underling. You don’t show up the boss in front of his subordinates. That never went well, in Hollywood or the alien apocalypse.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said, trying his best to show he meant it. “I … I just get rattled not being able to do anything. And seeing that …
that bitch
… do that to Emily only pisses me off more. What the hell did Emily ever do to them?”

“You’ll get your chance to do whatever you like with Mary soon, Mr. Roberts. I promise. For now, please trust that we have the matter under control.”

“So, why did you bring me in here? Just to update me? Or do you need something more?”

“You
are
the perceptive one, Mr. Roberts.” Desmond smiled. “When we capture Luca, I’ll need you to get inside his head to ensure he doesn’t teleport away, and extract information I want. Do you think you can do that?”

“Aren’t you able to get inside his head?”

“No. Unfortunately. He’s a blank spot on my radar. I can barely sense him. I certainly can’t access his head.”

“So, how do you think
I
can get in there?”

“If Luca healed your daughter, it may have opened a doorway.”

“But first we need to get him, and my daughter.”

“We’re already on it, Mr. Roberts.”

* * * *

CHAPTER 6 — Teagan McLachlan

The trees behind Teagan seethed with unseen dangers. She could feel the bandits’ weapons as if pressed to her flesh.
 

“Trot,” said a threatening voice from behind.
 

She wanted to glance back, see how many men might be prodding her forward, but Teagan didn’t dare. She urged Whinny forward and quietly surveyed the scene.
 

Sammy’s eyes were fixed on a black man in front of him — the only man she’d ever seen who might have been larger than Barrow. Brent turned to Teagan, his eyes full of apology for a disaster he couldn’t have stopped. Becca was sobbing. Ben held out until he saw Teagan approaching. Then he, too, surrendered to tears.
 

Whinny stopped a few feet from the captives, Nickel beside her. Teagan was afraid to look around but counted six bandits from what she could see, two of them women, not including however many were behind her and Marina.
 

One of the women had bright-red hair, filthy and ratted, hanging in a thick curtain around her filthy, stained face. The other looked like she might have been a preapocalypse blonde, before the world turned her into a monster willing to aim a sawed off shotgun at children.
 

The most menacing bandit stared Sammy down. He was riding atop Bashful, but Teagan pegged him to be around seven feet tall. He had a kinky black halo of hair, jutting out from his head in ragged tufts. A long scar bisected his face into two ghastly, unequal parts, the ugliest sharing the side with a milky blind eye.
 

He looked like a living nightmare, and judging from appearances, had to be the Reaper.
 

He finally spoke with a voice that sounded like an ancient engine forced to turn. “Anyone else trip-trapping across my bridge? Or you six the last of them?”
 

The man sat on his horse, eyes scraping the group, drifting from Brent’s sweaty terror to Sammy’s throttled rage to Ben’s and Becca’s sobbing.
 

The Reaper, if that’s who he was, had barely an ounce of fat on his body. Muscles rippled across his bare chest and bulged the fabric around his thighs and legs.
 

Teagan tried not to give way to tears.

“I said, anyone else trip-trapping across my bridge?”

“This is it,” Sammy said. “You butchered the rest of us.”
 

Teagan’s heart pounded painfully hard, hoping that Sammy hadn’t just asked the beast to kill him. Or
them.

The Reaper smiled and showed his rotting teeth. “That’s right.” He leaned toward Sammy. “I did.”

Sammy flinched and staggered back.
 

The Reaper smiled wider. “I did what I had to so the rest of you would be smart enough to keep yourselves from doing something stupid. Should I have finished the job?”
 

He glanced at the group then settled back on Sammy.
 

Sammy held the man’s stare for as long as he could —
 
three seconds at most — then fell another step back, swallowed, and said, “No.”
 

Eyes still on Sammy, the Reaper again displayed his rotting teeth. “I’m guessin’ you was expecting to hit the highway without any highway men, am I right?”

“We didn’t expect anything, one way or the other. We had a run-in with some aliens up at our farm.” Sammy nodded toward the hills. “And we needed to reach the highway. We meant no disrespect, and hold no grudges. Let us get on our way, and you’ll never have to see us again.”
 

“That’s awful nice of you to keep them grudges to yourself.” The Reaper laughed. “Now, what would make you think I don’t want to see you again?”
 

The Reaper turned from Sammy to Teagan and licked her with his good eye.
 

“Howz about I let
some
of you go — keep the rest as fair trade?”
 

Brent got stupid: “Don’t you dare touch her!”
 

The Reaper nodded at a hook-nosed man standing behind Brent, holding a blade. A beat later, Brent was sprawled on the ground, screaming, covering his right eye to keep gushing blood from his head gash from getting inside it.

“You must have me confused for someone patient, or maybe a man who might be interested in your side of whatever bargain I’m not likely to make.” Again, the Reaper raked the group with his gaze. “Anyone else have anything to add?”
 

No one did.
 

The Reaper turned and rode Bashful into the forest.
 

The hook-nosed man reached down and took Brent’s gun then searched his body for anything else he might be carrying.
 

“Weapons in a pile.” He pointed to the ground.
 

Teagan was unarmed but lost her horse. Sammy’s gun and knife were taken.
 

The hook-nosed man climbed onto Teagan’s horse and addressed the group. “Any of you wants to come at Marcus, you best not miss. He’ll clean his teeth with your bones.”
 

If Marcus was the Reaper, it didn’t look like he cleaned his teeth with anything at all. The thought failed to improve Teagan’s mood.
 

The bandits put collars on all of them then tied the adults to one another, then Becca and Ben to each other, then marched them into the woods at gunpoint. She wasn’t sure how many of them there were, as some had stayed behind in the woods. She could hear them moving as they started marching to wherever the hell Marcus was leading them.

She hoped that they didn’t find Marina. And that Marina was somehow tracking them. Maybe she could go and get the others and save them.

Teagan turned to check on the kids marching behind her, sniffling back tears. One of the women barked, “Turn around!”

Teagan did.

“And stop your damned crying, kids, or I’ll give ya somethin’ to cry about!”

Teagan wanted to tear the bitch’s eyes out.

After what felt like an hour of relatively silent marching, Teagan saw a flash of movement to her left. And then it was gone. But she was pretty certain she’d seen Marina’s green scarf.

She
is
following us!

But even as she felt a ray of hope, Teagan wondered if maybe it was just wishful thinking. Maybe she hadn’t seen anything but what she’d wanted to. Surely, if there were someone tracking them, the other bandits would’ve noticed. Hell, maybe it was even one of the bandits traveling in the woods. Maybe the bandit had killed Marina and taken her scarf.
 

No, no, it
has
to be her.

Has to be.

Any other possibility was too horrible to consider.

If it were Marina, Teagan wondered what she was planning. Marina wasn’t exactly Ed or Boricio. But she was a fighter. And she clearly wouldn’t leave them to the Reaper. Not that Teagan could blame her if she did.
 

Teagan held her pace for another fifteen minutes, wondering if any of the other refugees saw Marina. And then Teagan saw something ahead in the brush, lying on the ground, a dead woman with a green scarf.

No, no, no!

“Hold up!” yelled the hook-nosed man, seeing the same thing.

Whinny whined. Brent and Sammy stopped marching.