Yesterday's Gone: Season Six (16 page)

Teagan inched forward but was ordered back by Hook Nose as he brought the horse toward the bed of leaves and the body sprawled across it.
 

It was Marina, lying there on the ground, perfectly still, faceup, arms sprawled, eyes closed, blood on her face and neck.

Oh God, no!

Had Marcus seen her, killed her, then kept on riding ahead?

Hook Nose dropped to the ground with a thud. He looked down at Marina, shrugged, then kicked her in the ribs. Her body trembled from the force of his foot, but Marina made no other sound.
 

Hook Nose drew a sword from the scabbard at his back, mouth curled in a wicked grin. He nodded then moved to plunge his blade.

It stopped an inch from her skin. Marina’s eyes opened, and her hands circled the metal. Blood gushed from her fingers, seeping between them, spilling down over her knuckles and onto the blade.
 

Hook Nose lost his calm to terror. His eyes were confused, his bottom lip quivered, and he lost his grip on the hilt.
 

A fat Hispanic behind Teagan yelled, “What the fuck?” then he and the others rushed toward Marina.
 

Teagan couldn’t imagine where she found the strength, or the will, but Marina managed to twist the blade without losing her fingers then turn it around and bury it in her attacker’s chest.
 

Hook Nose fell forward, probably dead before hitting the ground. Marina grabbed the sword, this time by the handle, blood pouring like a faucet from her skin.
 

Fat Hispanic’s rifle was aimed, but Marina swung the sword in a wide arc, slicing into his throat before he pulled the trigger.
 

Blood sprayed from Fat Hispanic onto Marina’s face and body. He dropped his rifle, hands clapped to his gushing throat.

A shot rang out, maybe hitting Marina before she darted past the tree line and disappeared into the woods.

Bandits flew by Teagan, emptying their guns in pursuit.

Suddenly, it seemed as if there was nobody watching them. Three bandits on horseback were ahead of them, watching after the bandits who took off after Marina.

Teagan looked back, caught Brent’s eyes, and shook her head. He and Sammy looked ready to strike the three remaining bandits, but all were unarmed. If they tried anything, the five survivors, including Ben and Becca, would be cut to nothing.
 

Sammy looked ready to go anyway.

Brent planted a hand on Sammy’s shoulder to stop him.
 

One of the three horsemen, an old man with an eye patch, who reminded Teagan of a pirate, turned his horse around and started toward them. He reached down and, proving his strength despite his age, grabbed Becca and planted her in front of him. She buried her face in the horse’s mane and sobbed.
 

Ben, still connected to Becca by a length of rope to his collar, was tugged forward and nearly fell.

Brent helped him up as the pirate watched them.
 

Pirate said, “Anyone speaks, moves, or looks like they’re gonna, I kill every one of you. Understood?”
 

Everyone nodded, Ben sniffling back tears.
 

No one spoke.

Teagan had to piss but knew better than to ask. She held it in, trying to think of anything other than having to piss.
 

Time seemed to stretch forever with just them and the three horsemen. Neither the Reaper nor the others had yet returned.
 

Maybe Marina had killed them all. Was it too much to hope?

Several minutes later — it felt like an hour — the men and woman who had chased Marina into the woods returned.
 

“Did you get her?” the old pirate asked.
 

The ugly blonde said, “I think we got a couple of shots in her, but who knows? She disappeared.”
 

An ugly man with a T-shirt that read,
I hope you like feminist rants, because that’s sort of my thing
added, “Bitch was fast.”
 

“So what now?” asked the pirate. “We go and find her or leave her for the aliens?”
 

The blonde shrugged. “We wait for Marcus.”
 

As if on cue, without a single snapping twig to announce his horse, Marcus appeared like a ghost.
 

“She best bury herself. If the aliens find her, bitch’ll wish she was dead.
We
find her, she’ll wish I was an alien.” A beat, then the Reaper added, “Have you all ever eaten human flesh? It’s tasty. Children are especially yummy.”

He glared down at them without a trace of anything but stone-cold seriousness.
 

Before Teagan could stop herself, piss darkened her crotch. Marcus looked down, saw the soaking spot, and smiled.
 

She felt another chill at the man’s rotting teeth.
 

He turned around and twirled his finger in the air. “We got places to be before dark.”
 

Marcus trotted forward. Everyone fell in line behind him.
 

Teagan wasn’t sure how long they walked, but she’d never felt so exhausted. They were spent and thirsty but had yet been given a chance to rest or offered water. Nor did they ask. While Becca was on horseback ahead with the pirate, Ben was walking between her and Brent, staring straight ahead, his face dirty, save for where tears had cleared a path on their way down his cheeks. His eyes were numb, just like Brent’s, staring ahead, marching on toward the unknown.
 

They didn’t head down to PCH like she expected. Once close to the bend at the hill’s bottom, they turned and started heading up another hill to the east, into what had once been a nice neighborhood in the hills with huge houses and even larger yards — both overgrown with vegetation.

The followed a long street, cracked and broken in parts, but still relatively holding together against nature. The followed a twisting path of side roads as day flirted with night.

They stopped in front of a wall tall enough to make Teagan think it might be missing a drawbridge. In contrast to Alto Verde’s opulent architecture, the wall was sloppy, with bricks askew in uneven rows, mortar oozing like pus from a wound. A wooden gate was cut roughly into the wall. Two armed guards stood in front, one on either side. Neither spoke, though both nodded at the group’s approach. Above the guards, a wooden sign was somehow fixed to the brick.
 

The sign, in rough red paint, read,
Welcome to Hell.
 

* * * *

CHAPTER 7 —
It
 

After Paul and Wasterman left the room,
It
stared at the monitors, unable to look away from the sight of Luca teleporting in and saving the group.

Why did this boy-turned-man continue fighting?

Or rather, why did The Light continue to fight for the humans?

Couldn’t
It
see that they’d lost the war? Were the ships in the sky, the flattened cities, or the millions of corpses not proof enough? The old world was gone; a new species had inherited it.

Yet the humans continued fighting progress.
The Light
continued fighting his collective. Every day,
It
lost touch with more and more of the creatures
It
had unleashed on the world.
 

Where were they going? Were the humans killing them? Or was The Light somehow thinning their ranks?
 

Why?

“Why do you torment me so?”
It
asked the video.

Part of
It
wished
It
could teleport to where Luca was at that moment. Teleport in, grab him, teleport out. But
It
knew that Luca would sense
It
coming. And would throw up defenses.

No,
It
had to plan this carefully. Move in at the exact right moment. Perhaps
It
wouldn’t get Luca now, but
It
had little doubt that one of
Its
plans would come to fruition. Luca, The Light, would be caught soon enough.

It
had to be patient. Had to remember that battles were fought in incremental stages. If you moved too soon and exposed yourself to the enemy, you would be vanquished. The human race had existed for hundreds of thousands of years, and they weren’t quite ready to lie down for the new order just yet.

Again, he wondered why The Light was fighting on the side of the humans. If The Light and Darkness had both, in fact, been designed by the Pruhm to help usher in destruction, why was The Light now fighting to preserve humanity?

It had to be because of the humans The Light had come into contact with. When
It
was in
Its
primal form, in the vials,
It
was untainted, programmed to both create and destroy as
It
saw fit. Damaged humans had been beneficial to
Its
growth — showing
It
what must be done to usher in the new world and species.

But the naive, the gullible, and the innocent had infected part of
It
, turning it into this so-called
Light.
Twisting
Its
purpose, giving
It
some sort of empathy with the creatures marked for extinction or evolution.

The Light saw
Itself
as the hero in this act, a force of Good. But
It
saw the truth — that The Light was only harming life’s purpose — to fulfill
Its
potential. As far as
It
was concerned, The Light was an anathema to life. The Light was clinging to a dead world, to a dead species, preventing progress.

And
It
would do everything in
Its
power to extinguish The Light once and for all.

It
thought about
Its
moment of weakness back on the other world’s Black Island.

Darkness and Light had shed their mortal husks and fought in their pure forms. During that battle,
It
glimpsed something
It
had never seen — a peace that existed within The Light. A peace so tranquil, so promising,
It
was momentarily tempted to surrender to The Light, to forget
Its
own purpose.

But
It
couldn’t surrender.

It
was not designed to acquiesce. And progress was rarely peaceful. It came in violent fits.

It
wondered how long
Its
masters would continue to sit by and watch as
It
continued to lose control of the Ferals, which were running wild, killing at will both humans and Guardsmen sent into The Wasteland.
It
had to figure out how to reverse this situation and seize control of the collective before losing connection to all but those on the ship and The Island.
 

It
stared at Luca’s image on-screen, knowing that he, or The Light inside him, held the answers. The Light would allow
It
to finally reconnect with
Its
collective. And once
It
had regained full control, and could finally evolve humans properly,
It
could break free of
Its
masters’ chains and be something more than the Pruhm or humanity ever dreamed they could be.

* * * *

CHAPTER 8 — Mary Olson

As the sun was setting, Mary knew some bad shit was afoot.

She could tell in the way everyone was looking at her. Could tell from Keenan, Boricio, and Lisa’s traded secret glances. Could tell from the way the girl seemed to have everyone wrapped around her little fiction: being able to telepathically connect with her father — even though the bitch had yet been able to do so.

What’s the deal? Is Daddy’s connection down? Maybe he didn’t pay his telepathy bill.

What utter bullshit.

Maybe the girl had fooled everyone else, but Mary refused to buy what the girl was selling.
 

Mary sensed the trap before, and figured they were still in its jaws, even if none of them had the sense to know better. They were like mice marveling over all the cheese they found on top of this conveniently placed wooden contraption. She wasn’t sure whose naiveté disappointed her more, Keenan’s or Boricio’s.

Keenan was a brilliant strategist, a former secret agent, and one of the deadliest close-quarter fighters she’d ever seen. He was also a skilled marksman. The full package. The guy you want leading your team, even if he was gruff.

Boricio was her closest friend, and lover. He was charismatic as hell and a lot of fun to bullshit with, even if he was an egomaniacal psychopath. He was supposed to have her back, without question or argument. That was the arrangement she
thought
they had. She’d defended him early on when some of the group had grown tired of his “beer-battered bullshit.” When they’d started to see glimpses of his past in their dreams, thanks to whatever the hell alien stuff was coursing through Luca.

Then there was Luca. He was no longer just a boy. He was two boys and an alien, who had claimed to have part of Paola in him, too, until Mary told him to stop telling her that. Mary refused to believe that any part of Paola lived inside him. It was a macabre joke, some game the alien was playing to manage their emotions — to make them think they’d not lost as much as they had. Maybe The Light was on their side, but The Light wasn’t human, no matter what, and as far as Mary was concerned, The Light couldn’t be completely trusted either, even if it was saving them. The question was — why was it saving them? To what end did it continue to keep them alive?