Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (38 page)

As Charlie read the page Callie was holding up, she one-handedly scribbled on another, then held it to the glass for Charlie.

It read, “I’ve never really let people get too close to me. And I didn’t want to let you in, either. Yet, you found a way inside my heart. I guess, what I’m trying to say is that I love you, too.”

He finished the page and met her eyes. They were tearing.
 

He cried, too, as he set his hand against the glass, wishing like hell he could touch her and hold her. He was almost willing to break glass again, and get shot to death by Guardsmen, if only to hold her for one more minute.

“I love you,” he said, mouthing the words, feeling as if the weight of the world had slipped from his shoulders and his soul. A giddiness took its place.

They lied down, side by side, separated only by glass. Charlie felt himself drifting into a post-orgasm slumber, a stupid grin still lighting his face.

Suddenly, Callie tapped on the window three times in sharp succession. Charlie jumped, startled.

Her eyes were large and frightened. Charlie looked around, but couldn’t see what she was afraid of. Callie grabbed her pen and paper and started scribbling, then held up the paper.

“Boricio knows the old man next to you! They were yelling at each other earlier.”

“So, what does that mean?” Charlie wrote, shrugging.

“I dunno,” she wrote. “But be careful.”

“You too.”
 

They each returned to their mattress, but Charlie couldn’t sleep with his mind circling any of the many reasons Callie might have been spooked by the old fat man in the cell next to him.
 

Though he was facing Callie, both their hands touching the glass, Charlie couldn’t help but feel like the old man was lying in the dark, awake and watching them both.

**

The next morning, Charlie woke to the sound of knocking.

Callie was standing at the doorway with a Guardsman in black, waving goodbye.

Charlie jumped from his mattress and went to the door, then set his hand against the glass to meet hers. He mouthed, “I love you. Be careful.”

“I love you too,” she said. Their eyes locked in a final lingering moment before the Guardsman gently pulled her away.

Charlie watched them walk down the hall and then to the doors. As Callie slipped from view, Charlie returned to his mattress and lay down. He turned his head to the glass and stared over at Callie’s mattress, and the piles of their correspondence from the night before lying scattered across her sheets. Sitting on her pillow was a paper he hadn’t seen before — a drawing of a heart, and inside the heart, an almost perfectly rendered drawing of Charlie.

He stared at it, thinking back to the drawing he’d made of her. She’d never said she was as good an artist as he was.
 

Yet, Charlie was staring at proof.

He looked at the drawing for what felt like forever, feeling like his heart was breaking into pieces too small to stitch, hoping like hell that Black Mountain would cure him so that he could be with Callie again.

As he dared to hope, the lights went black as though they were mocking his ambition.
 

**
 

Charlie woke to a row of bright lights flickering on in the cells, and a lone Guardsman making his way down the line with a cart full of breakfast trays.
 

Breakfast was a bowl of cereal without milk, two bottles of water, and a peach, which he figured must have been grown in a garden somewhere on the mountain. His stomach grumbled as Charlie stared down the line waiting for the Guard to arrive. Suddenly, Charlie realized that the old man in the cell beside him was looking at him.

Not just looking — staring, with all his fat, old, pasty nakedness pressed against Charlie’s glass wall.

Charlie nearly jumped back in shock.

What the fuck?!

The man turned away when he noticed Charlie looking back, but it was too late. He’d already spooked Charlie.

The old man went to his door as the Guardsman approached, moving his pasty flesh flat against the entrance.

“What the fuck is his deal?” Imaginary Boricio asked, appearing out of the blue, wearing a black tee shirt and sweats just like Charlie had been given, and jerking his thumb toward the old man’s cell.

“I dunno,” Charlie said out loud, not even bothering to mask his dialogue back to Boricio in thoughts. He’d put mayo on his knuckle sandwich while the cameras were rolling; he didn’t think he could get more embarrassed than that.

“Nice performance last night, by the way,” Boricio said clapping his hands. “Ol’ Chucky finally scored him some Callie! Even if it was a solo performance.”

“You were there?” Charlie asked.

“I’m always here, lil’ buddy,” Boricio tapped his temple. “I’m in your head.”

“Well, I’m just glad you didn’t pop up last night. That would’ve been a mood killer for sure.”

“Who ya kidding, you would’ve both loved it if I whipped out my slim reaper and put on a show for the both of ya!”

“Not now,” Charlie said, “I don’t wanna lose my appetite before breakfast.”

Charlie glanced back up to see if the Guardsman was done giving the old man his food, and was shocked to see the old man standing entirely still, his mouth stretched impossibly wide as black smoke-like liquid rose from his throat, then spilled out of his mouth and floated down toward the slot at the bottom of the door.

“What the fuck is that shit?!” Imaginary Boricio said.
 

The Guardsman stared, seemingly unable to move away, as the black thing floated through the slot and then up until it was standing in front of him. The darkness started to swirl within itself, gathering mass, then suddenly thrust itself through the man’s glass mask and into the Guardsman’s helmet as he swiped helplessly with his hands at his headgear, falling to the ground.

“What the fuck?!” Imaginary Boricio screamed, running to Charlie’s cell door. “What the fuck is that shit?”

The black thing forced itself into the man’s mouth until it had completely disappeared inside him, leaving the Guardsman lying like an empty pile on the ground.

Charlie looked over in the cell beside his just as the old man fell to the floor, so hard the fall must’ve shattered the back of his skull. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling as a sea of blood pooled from under his head.

Charlie looked around the cell block, and saw that everyone else was doing exactly as he was — staring in wide-eyed shock at the pair of fallen bodies.

Then one of the bodies stood — the Guardsman.

Charlie stared, wondering what had happened to the man. His helmet’s glass mask was shattered, and his eyes were vacant as if he’d suffered a concussion.
 

Where did the dark thing gone?

“I thought it went inside him!” Boricio said. “What the fuck?”

The Guardsman turned to Charlie’s cell, removed his glove from his hand, then put it on the pad next to Charlie’s cell.

“Is he letting us out?” Imaginary Boricio asked.

The Guardsman’s eyes went black. Charlie’s heart started beating at triple its usual speed.

“Fuck, it’s
in him! And now it’s coming in here!” Boricio yelled.

The glass door slid open and Charlie fell three steps back, unsure of what in the hell he was dealing with, preparing for anything. He had to get past the Guardsman and alert someone.

The Guardsman went from slowly shambling toward Charlie to suddenly jumping at him. The man, impossibly strong, lifted Charlie from the floor, then shoved him hard against the glass wall behind him.

“Fuck!” Charlie screamed, trying to kick out, or summon whatever the hell it was inside him that had turned him into Super Charlie when he took the guards out his first day on the block.

The Guardsman, seemingly possessed, clutched Charlie’s neck, his fingers squeezing tighter into him as he moved in closer, opening his mouth impossibly wide.

Oh God, no!

A dark bulb, like a rotten fetus, pushed itself from the Guardsman’s mouth, a solid-looking form at first until it went flimsy and began inching toward Charlie’s open mouth, which the Guardsman’s fingers had roughly plied wide.

Charlie tried to bite down, to chomp off the man’s fingers, but it was too late — the darkness was forcing its way into his mouth, with the taste of bitter chemicals and promised death.
 

Charlie choked, spitting the chunks of black and bile that felt like they were boiling his throat. When he stopped spitting, he had to gasp for air. That’s when the blackness infiltrated the rest of him, pouring into his body all at once.

Charlie felt
It
inside him immediately.

He was merely a passenger in his own flesh.

It
had taken over.

And
It
was going to break out of Black Mountain.

* * * *

CHAPTER 10 — Boricio Bishop

Black Island Research Facility

September
 
2011

ONE MONTH BEFORE THE EVENT…

When Boricio woke up, someone in a yellow hazmat suit was entering Rose’s cell. Rose was lying on the mattress, still asleep. At least, Boricio hoped she was only sleeping.

Boricio leaped to his feet and pounded on the glass wall of his cell, seeing a group of three men standing in a semi-circle outside of Rose’s cell. The group included Will, Ed Keenan, and Sullivan — they were keeping this experiment on the down-low, apparently.
 

Will turned to Boricio and walked over, and touched a panel beside the door. A radio crackled to life in the cell, “Yes, son?”

“What’s going on?” he asked. “What are they doing with Rose?”

“Dr. Williams created a new serum, using a different vial. To see if we can cure her.”

Boricio gasped, tears flooding his eyes, surprised that Will had agreed to do what he said he wouldn’t.
 

“Thank you, Dad,” Boricio said.

“Don’t thank me yet. I have no idea if it will work,” Will said before he returned to join the others in front of Rose’s cell.
 

Boricio couldn’t see much, since the people were in the way, but he saw the yellow suit bending down, likely injecting Rose with the serum.

Boricio put his hands on the glass, trying to get a better look, hoping like hell the serum would work this time. Dr. Williams, Boricio noted, was not in the room. Perhaps he was on lockdown somewhere, awaiting the results of this experiment.

Boricio swallowed, hoping against hope that they could undo the damage his actions had caused.

Please be okay.

He didn’t care if they could cure her paralysis or if she never ever remembered Boricio again, he just wanted her human again. He’d rather her be a stranger than have her live as the monstrosity she’d become.

He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if this serum didn’t work.
 

Yet, his mind went there, anyway, wondering if Will would be patient enough to continue experimenting with other serums? They’d have to, he figured. They were scientists, and they’d witnessed a mutation unlike anything ever seen before. Even if Rose was Hitler reincarnated, they’d keep working to cure her. That’s what scientists did. And besides, curing her was in line with the Remedy Project’s goals.

No way in hell the vials could ever have a human application if they didn’t figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. With Rose, they had something years ahead of schedule — a human subject. Without Rose, they had nothing. The project would be set back years, if not permanently. Or — and at this thought, Boricio began to worry — they’d have to experiment on the only other known subject, Luca.

No way in hell Will would allow that.

So they had to cure Rose.

He hoped.

“It’s administered,” the man in the Hazmat said over the speaker.

Keenan said something, but Boricio couldn’t hear it above the sudden static of the speakers in his cell.

The man in the hazmat suit was breathing heavy and said, “She’s waking up.”

Boricio moved to his left, trying to see beyond the men, but couldn’t see anything other than the top of the hazmat suit’s helmet as the man, who Boricio now recognized by his voice as Anderson, looked down at Rose.

And then came the screaming — a scream so loud and shrill that it crackled the speakers and hurt Boricio’s ears. Boricio couldn’t tell if the scream was male, female, or even human.

A loud thud crackled over the speakers as the man in the hazmat suit was thrown against the glass wall of Rose’s cell, and then he slumped to the ground. Something black moved like lightning in Rose’s cell, hopping on top of Anderson. The smash of glass and the sound of wet flesh ripping came through the speakers. The men jumped back, startled, and Boricio was given a clear view inside Rose’s cell.