Yesterday's Gone: Season Six (18 page)

“All right, all right,” a new voice said. A tall, lean, muscular man with a jet-black beard began waving his arms. “Break it up. Dinner first, dessert later.”
 

Skull Tattoo said, “Looks like you’re going inside” then prodded them to march forward, toward the waiting containers. They were greeted by the old man with the eye patch, holding the doors open. He had no smile. No expression at all. Just a routine day of rounding up refugees and placing them in containers.

Skull Tattoo shoved Brent inside.

Two bright halogen lights were rigged on a pole just outside the container entrance. The old man turned them on to illuminate the squalor. There were four others, chained with wire by their collars, to pipes running the length of both sides of the twenty-foot-long, eight-foot-wide, and eight-foot-tall container. When the light came on, they threw their hands over their eyes, some crying out from the pain of the sudden light penetrating their darkness.

Brent was six steps inside, just in front of Teagan and the kids, still beside Sammy, when the door clanged shut behind them, and they were plunged back into darkness.
 

Brent gagged.
 

The room was thick with body heat. The stench of sweat, piss, and shit assaulted his nostrils. He forced his breathing into a regular rhythm, and swallowed vomit rising like a tide in his throat.
 

Ben coughed. “It smells like the outside bathroom in here.”
 

“You’ll get used to it,” someone said in the dark.
 

Brent couldn’t imagine that wasn’t a lie.
 

The door swung open again, and with it came the bright light. A trio of bandits stepped into the container. Because the light was directly behind them, their faces were cast in shadow, making it difficult to see if these were new people or some of the others Brent had already noted. Skull Tattoo, old Pirate Man, Purple Hair, Tommy, and of course, Marcus.

One guard stood at the doors, rifle aimed at them to ensure everything went smooth.

A part of Brent wondered what Boricio would do. Obviously, they were about to get chained inside the container. At that point, they’d be fucked. But now, they still had a chance at freedom. At least a better chance then they’d have in a few minutes.

He glanced up at Sammy. The man’s eyes were wide, maybe thinking the same thing.

Brent’s heart raced in anticipation, thinking about what the big man might initiate. Before, he didn’t want Sammy to do anything. But now he wasn’t so sure. They had no assurance that Marina would make it back. This might be their only shot. They could disable these men, grab their guns, and maybe shoot their way out of the compound.

Brent looked at Teagan running her hands over the kids’ shoulders, trying to keep them calm.

The bandit closest to Sammy leaned over, grabbed a length of wire, and attached it to the collar on Sammy’s neck, locking it with a small but formidable-looking lock. It happened quickly, but just like that, they’d lost their shot at escaping.

Sammy was confined.

The others were next.

Brent used his scant seconds to survey the room.
 

Brent imagined he was in the field, absorbing facts for later. He saw everything with the corners of his eyes, afraid that if he seemed to be looking hard, or moving his head too much, he’d earn another blow to the skull.
 

He looked at the other prisoners.

There was a young mother who looked to be in her thirties. A young teenage girl clung to her side. A fat old man sat beside her, shirt crusted in what looked like old food. Brent wondered how much of the rotten smell belonged to him. On the far end of the bar, a big bruiser with bulging muscles and not an ounce of fat was lying in the corner, eyes closed, face bruised and bloodied. He looked scary enough to be one of the bandits but was obviously not, given that he was beaten, if not altogether broken, maybe even dead.

Becca started crying again, despite Teagan’s attempts to soothe her.
 

Brent wanted to reach out, tell Teagan and Becca that everything would be okay. Promise his son that they’d get out of this, just like they’d managed to get out of everything before. He wanted to ignore the growl inside him insisting that all hope was false, and that they were surely approaching their end.
 

He wanted to ask the bandits why they were in there, hoping against hope that one of the three might have enough humanity left to tell them what was coming. They couldn’t all be crazy, violent rapist fucks, could they? Surely, some still had a heart.
 

But Brent was too scared to make words or raise his head, still smarting — and leaking blood — from the last time he had.
 

He kept telling himself it was best not to provoke anyone’s wrath. If they stayed under the radar, they might have a chance.
 

They had to be patient. Help might be coming.
 

With everyone shackled, Ben clung to Brent, and Becca to her mother. Mercifully, the bandits allowed it. But clemency ended there.

The bandits cut away the ropes that had tied them together then gathered the remains, lest anyone use it to fashion a weapon or something. Brent was no longer tied to the others, but that gave him no comfort. Now they were all tied by metal wire, much harder to break than rope, to the metal pipe along the container’s left side, where Muscle Man lay crumpled in the corner.

 
The door clanged shut. The container fell into darkness, save for hundreds of thin beams of moonlight coming through holes drilled in the roof.
 

Brent felt grateful for the relative darkness. At least no one could see him crying, praying he could keep his family safe from the wolves outside the door.
 

* * * *

CHAPTER 10 — Emily Roberts

Emily knew she should be more scared, essentially a prisoner of these rebels. But she didn’t feel like a prisoner so much as one of the group.

All that time living on The Island, she’d hoped there were people somehow surviving out here, in The Wastelands, and not just savages as the teachers and aliens had led her to believe. No, these people weren’t savages; they were survivors reclaiming their lives.

She’d seen, in Luca’s memories, all that they’d been through.
Experienced
the memories unspooling like a tapestry for her to read, absorb, and experience as if she’d been with them these past few years. Lifetimes of pain, and yet they still fought, clinging to hope that they could have something like normal lives again.

It was admirable, and the opposite of what The Island had taught her — life lived by alien rule, never stepping out of bounds or being noticed, lest you lose your independence and become another body for the aliens to usurp. Just another puppet.

Some of the group scared her, like Mary. But Emily had seen what had happened to her, how the aliens had killed Mary’s daughter, how she’d lost her husband to the infection. How she’d lost two babies. The horrible things the woman had been through, and had to do for survival, was nothing short of admirable. She wished Mary had stayed — Emily wanted her to know that she understood and didn’t hold any grudges for Mary slicing her throat.

Most of the group was sleeping on the apartment floor, using jackets as pillows. Emily was surprised they could sleep in such conditions but knew they’d slumbered through worse. Out here, you took rest as it came because you never knew when you’d need energy to fight or escape.

Emily wasn’t the only one unable to sleep.

Neither could Boricio. He’d spent an hour pacing near the windows overlooking the street below, punctuated with several stops, lifting of binoculars, then a sigh as he lowered them. She’d heard his many unsuccessful attempts to reach Mary on the radio.
 

Emily got up and went over to Boricio.

“Any sign of her?”

He shook his head.

“I’m sorry if this is all because of what happened with me.”

Boricio looked at Emily like he was about to speak but said nothing. He turned back to the window, staring out at the night. She couldn’t tell if he was using darkness to ignore her or scanning the night for Mary.

“Do you think she’ll come back?”
 

“Hell if I know,” Boricio said. “At first, I thought so. We’ve done the old Whitney and Bobby before. She’ll storm off but always come backs after she’s let off some steam. This time … I dunno.”

“What’s the
Whitney and Bobby?
”
 

Boricio looked at her, annoyed. “You get ahold of your daddy yet?”

“No.” Emily looked down. “I can’t feel him.”

“I thought you said you were telepaths. So why ain’t he picking up the ole psychic hotline?”

“We’ve never talked before … like that.”

“What?” He turned to Emily, his eyes wild. She’d seen a few dark flashes of Boricio’s past in Luca and knew the man could be menacing, but nothing prepared her for his fiery stare. “I thought you said you could reach him.”

“I’ve tried before. And I’ve felt him push back, like closing the door on someone you don’t want in your house. They know you’re there and can choose whether to welcome you in. I thought if I knocked, he’d open the door. But it’s like I can’t find his door.”

“Fucking great,” Boricio grunted, throwing his hands up then turning back to the window, crossing his arms.

“I’m sorry.”

“Just stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Apologizing. This is, what, like, the tenth time you’ve said sorry to one of us. Stop it. That shit looks suspicious.”

“What do you mean?”

“We took you. We slit your throat, and you’re walking around here apologizing to everyone for the inconvenience.”

“I feel bad that Mary left, and everyone seems angry at me.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll get over it! Just stop apologizing, and start trying to find your daddy’s knock knock.”

“What are we going to do if I can?”

“Not if,
when,
” Boricio said, turning back to her. “You
are
going to get ahold of him. As for what we’re gonna do, I don’t know yet. But you are going to get us on that fucking island so we can take care of Desmond once and for all.
Capisce?
”

“Huh?”

“I mean, do you understand? Jesus, didn’t you ever watch any movies?”

“Sor — um, no. Not like that.”

Boricio shook his head. “Get some sleep. I’m going to the roof.”

The way he said it, and the way he immediately headed for the ladder, told Emily he wanted to be alone. She’d annoyed him enough.

Emily returned to her spot beside Luca on the floor. He’d been asleep when she left but was now awake. It was so weird seeing him as an old man. In Emily’s head, he was closer to her age. With open eyes, he was a horrible joke. Or a curse.
 

She settled beside him and looked into his eyes. Deep in his old and wrinkled face, Luca’s eyes were still vibrant and young. The same eyes that had stared back from his younger version when she was in his head.

Keeping her voice low, she asked, “Can’t sleep?”

“Off and on. I’ve been trying to find Mary but haven’t been able to feel her.”

“Do you think something happened? I mean, can you always feel her?”

“Not always, no. And lately, I feel like she’s been pushing me out.”

“My dad does that to me. I tried sneaking into his head, looking around to see what I can find, to figure out what he knows about my abilities.”

“Abilities? You have others?”

“Well, not really. I don’t think so. A few times, I thought I saw things before they happened, but nothing I could be certain of. What about you? What else can you do?”

“I don’t really know until I know.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s The Light inside me, and sometimes it tells me to do or think something. Sometimes, it happens. I can heal. I can teleport. If I really focus, I can control someone.”

“Really? Like the aliens? You get inside them?”

“Not quite. I mean, I don’t think so. More like I think for them to do something. Kinda like your telepathy, where I can hear and see their thoughts, but I can get them to say or do something. But it’s hard, and it doesn’t always work out so well.”

She stared at Luca for a long while, wondering what it was like to be old and young at once. How it felt to have missed so many of the things you looked forward to doing when you got older — driving, dating, getting married, having kids.

Of course, none of those things were common in The Wastelands, or on The Island. Those were dreams of a lost life, luxuries no one could afford.

It’s not so bad,
his voice answered in her mind.

Are you reading my mind?
she asked, surprised to hear him speaking in her head.

No, you were broadcasting your thoughts into mine.

Oh, really?

Yes. And for the record, I try not to think about it much.