Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (3 page)

“You haven’t killed me yet,” Will said, an odd smile crossing his face, like one of those fuckers who thinks his IQ has another digit to keep his shit from stinking.

Boricio stepped forward, craving a pull of the trigger, and barely resisting the urge.

See how he smiles with half a face.

“No, not
yet
,” Boricio growled.

Will said nothing, staring down at Luca’s closed eyes. Then he looked up to Boricio and said about the dumbest fucking thing that could’ve come from his mouth, “He’s dying.”

“No fucking shit!” Boricio said, and this time he couldn’t resist. He swung the barrel of the shotgun and hit Will hard in the forehead, knocking him back to the snow.

Boricio looked down at Luca, confused as an odd new feeling flooded his body, filling him with something he couldn’t remember feeling before — sympathy.

Fixed me? More like he took out my batteries!
 

Fuck.

Boricio felt tears welling in his eyes.

What the fuck is this shit?
 

He turned away, wiping his eyes. The anger returned, and he shoved the barrel of his shotgun at Will’s head.

“Why the hell did you shoot him, you Sasquatch looking pile of shit? He trusted you!”

“I had to. The dreams told me.”

“Dreams? If I did everything my dreams told me to, Brad Pitt’s head would’ve been an ashtray on my coffee table watching me bang Angelina sunrise to sunset. The fuck you talking about? Start speaking English, or I’m gonna shut you up permanently.”

“Tell me. Did he try to heal the others?” Will asked.

“Yeah, a couple. But he said it’s not working now.”

“Yes,” Will nodded, “that’s what I saw in the dreams.”

“You wanna stop speaking in ancient Chinese secret and tell me what the fuck you’re goin’ on about, old man?”

“You can save him,” Will said. “In fact, you
will
save him.”

Boricio laughed.

“
Me?
Save him? Clearly you’re new to this program, hombre. I ain’t the fucking hero. I don’t save the day.”

Will shook his head, pointing back at Luca. Blood was spilling from Luca’s mouth.

“Hurry!” Will said.
 

“What the hell am I supposed to do?!” Boricio asked, annoyed, and suddenly feeling a need to try and save the man-kid. “Tell me what to do!”

“Put your hands on him,” Will said, his voice rising in anger or urgency. “Like you saw him do with the others.”

Boricio was going to argue, but something in his head, maybe instinct, or remnants of Luca playing puppet master, pushed Boricio to a kneel beside Luca. He saw in his mind what to do next, like a memory.

How do you have a memory of shit that ain’t happened?
 

Boricio felt like he was on another trip like when he drank that shit back in the rich fuck’s house.

He leaned down and put his hands on either side of Luca’s face, feeling warmth like liquid fire spreading through his limbs and into his fingers. And then from his fingers and into the man-kid.

Boricio stared at his hands, as if they were being moved by another. He wondered again what in Hell’s sweet honey pot Luca had done. He had
fixed
him, but he’d sure as shit done something else too.

Luca’s eyes shot open like someone had flipped a switch inside him, and he started coughing up blood then sucking at air and gasping for breath.

Boricio started to pull away, but couldn’t. His hands were locked onto Luca, as some sorta whatinthefuck kept flowing from Boricio and into Luca — as if the boy were sucking his life from him. Warmth turned to pain and started shooting like a scattergun through all of Boricio’s body, as he clenched his teeth and tried to work up the strength to break the connection.

Let go!

Boricio pulled, but felt as if someone had glued his hands to Luca and if he pulled too hard he might rip the kid’s face off. The pain, however, gave him no choice but to keep trying to break free.

Finally, Boricio was able to wrench himself away. He fell back into the snow writhing in pain.

Luca rose from the dirt, staring at Will, who was still sitting on the ground from when Boricio knocked him down. He looked at Boricio, then back at Will, his face twisted in confusion.

“Why?” Luca asked, his voice caught between confusion and anger.

“I’m sorry,” Will said, wiping a tear. “It was the only way.”

“Only way for
what?
” Luca asked.

“For that,” Will said, pointing at Boricio, rising to his feet, body feeling like it was on fire.

“Why you all looking at me like that?” Boricio asked.
 

Luca’s eyes were wide, as if he were staring at a two-headed demon sucking on a dick made of fire. Luca opened his mouth, but said nothing.

“What the fuck you looking at?” Boricio growled.

“I’m so sorry,” Luca said.
 

“Sorry? For what?” Boricio asked, confused, and feeling another new feeling — fear. They were clearly looking at his face.

What the hell happened to me?

He reached up to touch his face, but his hands were buzzing, too numbed to know what he was touching. He looked around, then saw the headlights of Will’s car shining on them. He stepped past Will and Luca, moving toward the car as fast as he could despite the 15 bags of fuck all that had slapped him in the face and now seemed to rest on his shoulders.

Boricio reached the car, driver’s side door still open, then bent to see his reflection in the mirror.

Oh Fuck.

He looked like he’d aged a decade, maybe more.

“What the hell did you do to me?!” Boricio roared, spinning around.

“I don’t know,” Luca said, surprising Boricio by not stepping back. “I swear.”

I should shoot this pair of fucks right here, right now, and get the hell out of Dodge.

But Boricio couldn’t leave.
 

Something was holding him here.

The need to stay with the man-kid sang in the same sweet tune of instinct that had fueled the engine of Boricio’s entire life. He screamed in frustration, grabbed his shotgun off the ground, and pointed it at Will.

“Talk! Now!”

Will shook his head, “I don’t know any more than you do. Only what I saw in the. . .”

“Yeah, yeah, the fucking dream!” Boricio curled his lip and gritted his teeth. “Then tell me what you saw.”

Will looked at the ground and swallowed, “Whatever’s in Luca. Whatever makes him special. He transferred that to you. I had to make sure you gave it back.”

Boricio wanted to shoot the old bastard right there on the spot, just to satisfy the itch. But, again, something inside him kept his finger from squeezing the trigger.
 

“Why?” Luca asked. “Wait. Does this mean I can heal people again? Can I—” Luca looked back toward the barn where Linc and Rebecca’s bodies lay in a heap, slaughtered by monsters. Then he looked toward the dungeon where Mary and Paola’s bodies lay on their way to forgotten. Finally, Luca looked past the barn where Desmond’s corpse lay, along with the dozens of others, man and creature alike, littering the Sanctuary like a battlefield.

Luca swallowed, then whispered. “I can bring them back?”
 

Will looked up from the ground after a quarter of eternity spent chewing the question.

“Yes, you can bring them back. But not all of them. Only three. After that, you’ll have aged to near dying.”

“Just three?” Luca whispered, eyes on Will.

“Three,” Will repeated, as he struggled to stand.

Something looked off about the old man. Then, as Will flinched and fell back a step, Boricio saw the crimson bleeding between his fingers and realized the old fucker had been hiding an injury to his gut.

Will fell to the ground, gasping for air, about to add one more body to the battlefield.

* * * *

CHAPTER 3 — Charlie Wilkens Part 1

Charlie was in a room he didn’t recognize, and without any memory of how he got there, or where he’d been before he woke handcuffed to a table. Three of the walls were gray concrete, just like the floor. The fourth mirrored, like he’d seen in interrogation rooms on TV and in the movies. The room was empty, except for the chair he was sitting in and the table his right hand was cuffed to a metal bar on top of the table which seemed built expressly for the purpose of handcuffing.
 

A bare light bulb hung limp from a chain, flickering on and off above him with an intermittent buzzing sound.

Where the hell am I?

Charlie stared at his reflection. He looked like he’d aged five years or more in the last five months. He looked down at the cuffs, so sturdy, shiny silver, and official looking. He wondered if they belonged to a cop and whether he’d been arrested for something.

For what, though? And are cops really on duty at the end of the world?

It wasn’t as if any law was left in the land, let alone officers to enforce the rules. Arrest seemed unlikely. Yet, here he was.

But who else could’ve done this? And what the hell do they want from me?

“Hey!” he called. “Show your face, pussy!”

Charlie got only an echo as a response. And his scared reflection which betrayed the bravery of his taunt.

“Hey!” he screamed, loud enough to put a scratch in his throat, shaking his hand, the cuff biting into his wrist.

Behind him, a door opened. Charlie looked up in the mirror and saw Boricio enter the room, wearing a dress shirt and pants, his hair neatly trimmed and styled.

“Boricio?”
 

“Well, I ain’t the goddamned Easter Bunny,” Boricio said, closing the door and circling behind Charlie before settling himself on the other side of the table.

“Where the hell are we? Why am I in handcuffs?”

Boricio looked up and held his finger to his lips, “Shhh, keep it down, Charlie Brown. You don’t want to wake the others.”

“Others?” Charlie asked, looking around the room. “What others?”

The light bulb lightly swayed above them, as if someone had tipped it. Charlie looked up, then watched as Boricio’s shadow bounced back and forth alongside the light’s movement.

Boricio looked around, rotating his finger in a small circle before he said, “You don’t see them?”

Charlie stared at Boricio, waiting for him to break into a laugh. But Boricio was playing it straight.

“Come on, this is some kinda joke, right? You’re fucking with me. You, Adam, and Callie, you’re all fucking with me. Ha-ha, real funny. Now let me out,” Charlie said, shaking the handcuffs.

Boricio stared him in the eyes. “Nobody’s joking,” he said. You need to wake the fuck up right now, Chuck E. CheeseDick, because shit’s about to get thick as a handful of jizm hair gel out there.”

“Out where?”

Boricio pointed again, “You really can’t see them?”

Charlie looked around again as the light continued to dance with the shadows. Charlie thought he saw something move past him, quickly flying by on the left.

He turned to find the shadow just as the light above him died, casting the room into pitch black.

“You need to wake up, man,” Boricio said in the darkness, his voice sounding muffled, as though underwater. Only it was no longer Boricio’s voice, and it was coming from someone beside him.

Charlie woke up to Adam shaking him on the left shoulder and whispering, “Wake up, man. Something happened.”

Charlie’s head was throbbing behind a tangled web of confusion. He shook his head, wondering where in the hell they were and how they got there. They might have been in the back of a cargo truck or something; he couldn’t tell. Wherever it was, it was a winter of black and cold. And he heard no sounds of movement, so if they were in the back of a truck, the wheels weren’t rolling.
 

“What’s happening?” Charlie asked.

“Shhh,” Adam said, “I don’t think the others are awake yet.”

“Others?” Charlie said, thinking of what dream Boricio had asked him.

Adam moved a bit in the darkness and then a moment later, Charlie heard the unmistakable sound of the a lighter top flipping open, immediately followed by a couple of flicks and then a flickering flame which nearly died in the gust of Adam’s excited breath.

“See,” he said, his face seemingly red in the glow of the flame, then pulled the lighter away and waved it back and forth.

They were indeed in a truck. A dozen or so other men, women, and children were lying — either unconscious or dead — on the floor surrounding them.

“What’s happening?” Charlie repeated in a whisper as Adam flipped the lid to smother the flame.

“I dunno,” Adam said, keeping his voice low. “I woke up about a half hour ago. We were driving then, but the truck stopped a few minutes after I woke up. Then I heard someone scream and what I’m pretty sure there were assault rifles firing.”