Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (4 page)

Adam fell silent and the darkness seemed to wrap around them like a huddle of angry arms.

“Then what?” Charlie asked, surprised he’d slept through gunfire.

“Nothing. It’s been 20 minutes or so. I heard something out there, but I’m not sure who, or
what,
it was.”

“Think it might be those things?”

“I dunno. What else would they be shooting at?”

Someone moved in the dark.

“Hello?” a voice called. It sounded like a child, though Charlie couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl.

“Shh,” Adam whispered as he flicked on his lighter, then held it to his face to display his friendly smile. “It’s okay, we’re only stopped for a minute.”

Adam held out the lighter to see who they were speaking to. It was a boy, nine years old or so. His eyes went suddenly wide as Adam made the error of moving the lighter back and forth across the cargo hold, showing the boy all the bodies around them.

The boy screamed.

“Shh!” Adam said, flicking the lighter shut and casting the truck into darkness again.
 

The boy screamed louder and Charlie heard him scramble back and hit the side of the truck’s inner wall.

“Put the lighter on,” Charlie whispered. “You scared the kid!”

Adam fumbled in the darkness and the lighter hit the ground. “Shit,” he said. “I dropped it.”

The boy continued to scream as Charlie rushed to his side, fumbling in the dark and cursing himself for his clumsiness, hoping he didn’t wake anyone else, or worse — alert whatever enemy might be lying in wait outside the truck. He had to calm the kid down before he drew attention to them.

“Shh,” Charlie said, inching toward the boy. “Everything is okay.”

He stumbled in the dark, then fell face first onto one of the sleeping people. “Sorry,” he said, carefully reaching around the woman beneath him as he tried to stand. The woman squirmed beneath him and cried out, as if she’d just woken to Charlie’s jabs.

“Sorry,” he repeated, pushing himself up and toward the crying boy, who had stopped screaming, but seemed on the verge of hyperventilating.
 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Charlie said. “Did you find the lighter, Adam?”

“Not yet!”

Idiot!

Charlie’s hands found the wall, then he slid down and pressed his back against it as he listened for the kid, still inching toward him. Finally beside him, Charlie put a hand awkwardly on his shoulder. Charlie felt the kid flinch.

“It’s okay, we’re gonna be okay. The people are just sleeping.”

“Where are we?” the boy said.

Charlie was about to answer when he heard a shriek outside. One of the creatures.

Shit.

“What was that?!” the kid screamed far too loudly, grabbing Charlie’s arm, and curling his fingers into Charlie’s flesh.

The monster, or monsters, slammed on the outside walls of the truck, creating an echo chamber that rang through Charlie’s ears as they continued their shrieking. Must have been two of them, one on either side, judging by the sounds.

The kid cried out, “Please, I don’t wanna die!”

“Find that fucking lighter!” Charlie growled at Adam as more people in the truck began to wake up, some murmuring to themselves and some asking what happened. A few started to cry louder to match the increasing volume of the creatures trying to get inside the truck.

“I’m lookin! I’m lookin!” Adam whined. Then finally, “I found it!”

Adam tried to get the lighter to light, but his fingers had apparently stopped working.
 

“Just bring it here!” Charlie snapped.

Adam stumbled forward in the dark, making his way toward them as the truck started to shake. The pounding continued to echo inside the truck like thunder rolling through a tunnel. The boy screamed so loud that Charlie couldn’t hear what the people were saying. All hell was about to break loose if Adam didn’t get that fucking lighter to him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Adam said, stumbling his way over to Charlie until he practically fell into his lap.

The inside of the truck was a chaotic mix of people screaming, crying, combining with the pounding and shrieking coming from outside.

This is what death sounds like. Confusion. Chaos.

Adam thrust his hands forward and Charlie found his arms in the darkness. He followed them down to the wrists, then snatched the lighter from Adam, flicked it open and spun the wheel.

Darkness persisted and Charlie heard someone vomit, and splash of putrid mess instantly wafted to his nostrils.

“Oh God!” someone screamed, already panicked and at the edge of hysteria, and someone else, or maybe the same person, puked again.

Charlie’s hands shook as he feverishly fought to make a flame.

Come on, come on, come on!

Someone in the truck cried out, a scream that instantly registered above all others for its sheer intensity. Then Charlie heard the unmistakable sound of wet flesh being torn.

What the fuck?!

More screaming as everyone started pushing and shoving, moving toward the closed doors of the truck, as if trying to escape.

Charlie finally got the lighter on and cast the truck and its occupants in an orange. Given the gift of sight in the dark, fresh screams erupted in the hold as Charlie scanned the flickering movement of bodies and shadows in search of a sign to tell him what was spooking the natives.
 

The lighter went out.

“Fuck!” Charlie said as someone slammed into his body.

Charlie fell back against the wall, dropping the lighter as the truck turned into a bedlam of screams, punching fists, clawing hands, and kicking feet. Charlie fell on top of the boy, instinctively trying to protect him as Adam tumbled over them both.

“Get the fuck off of me!” Adam screamed. Charlie could feel Adam’s weight shift over him as he shoved someone back.

Outside, the shrieks grew louder.
 

The truck rocked harder as Charlie’s hands scrambled for the fallen lighter. Someone stepped on his fingers and Charlie screamed, yanking his arm back and cradling his injured fingers.
 

“I got it,” Adam yelled, then moments later the orange light flickered across Adam’s face. He smiled as he held the lighter in front of him, basking in the glow of his awkward accomplishment.
 

Charlie laughed at Adam’s simplicity, to find joy in such madness. Then Charlie saw what had drawn the screams.

Behind Adam, a woman stood, her head hanging limp barely hanging by bloody flesh and bone from her neck, replaced by a bulbous, shiny black head of one of the creatures, its mouth open wide and bloody teeth glistening in the flames.

“Oh fuck!” Charlie said.

“What?” Adam said, turning around.

The creature lunged at Adam, its fingers fused in a fleshy blade, clawing across Adam’s face and then through his neck. The creature’s other hand found the opposite side of Adam’s face then wrenched Adam’s head free from his neck in an eruption of hot blood and sudden black as the lighter fell to the floor of the truck.

“Adam!” Charlie screamed.

* * * *

CHAPTER 4 — Luca Harding Part 1

Luca dropped to Will’s side, ready to heal him.

“No,” Will said, slowly shaking his head as his eyelids fought gravity. “Not me. You can only save three. Don’t waste it on me.”

“I can’t let you die!” Luca cried.

“I’m only injured. I’ll be okay,” Will said, covering his stomach wound with his left hand, and raising his head to meet Luca’s eyes. “I can be fixed. But only you can bring back the dead. Go. Now.”

“Who do I save?” Luca said, turning around to the sea of bodies. Most were well beyond help, with missing limbs, many sitting in sloppy piles of guts, feasted on by the army of monsters. Saving any of them would be impossible, Luca figured.
 

Luca thought of his fallen friends — Paola, Mary, Desmond, Linc, and . . . Rebecca, who he lost in the barn when the creatures overran it. Everyone was fighting for their lives, with whatever they could get their hands on — axes, bats, and pitchforks — as the fire spread into the barn. The smoke and flames were blinding. Somehow, Luca lost sight of Rebecca.

He found her a few moments later, at least a couple two late. She was sprawled across the ground with her throat slit, one of the monsters standing above her, blood dripping from its clawed hand.
 

Luca lost it, swinging his axe with blind rage into the creature’s head with a thunk. The creature fell to the dirt, but Luca yanked the axe out and kept hacking, screaming, until Boricio pulled him back.

“We’ve gotta get outta here,” Boricio said, as flames licked wood and planks began to fall. “They’re gone.”

Everyone was dead, except for him and Boricio, until Will showed up with the gun one minute later, shooting Luca, only God knowing why.

Now Luca had to decide who lived and who stayed dead — assuming he was really able to bring anyone back. How could he choose? His heart immediately chose Rebecca, Paola, and Mary. But he felt a high wave of guilt for not choosing Desmond. Then a smaller wave for not saving Linc. He didn’t know Linc as well, but the man had risked his life to save them on more than one occasion. If not for Linc, they wouldn’t of even made it to the Sanctuary.

How am I supposed to choose?

Luca looked to Will, but his eyes were barely open.

“I need to rest,” Will exhaled, allowing his lids to close fully.

“Help me move him to the car,” Luca turned to Boricio.
 

Boricio looked about a decade older, and still seemed half in shock.

They lifted Will’s sleeping body, then carried him to the car. Snow started to fall faster as the wind began to howl around them, whipping his hair into his eyes. Once they set Will in the back seat, Luca hopped into the driver’s seat and started the car. The gauge showed nearly full, so he turned on the heat and closed the doors, leaving the driver’s window open enough to reach inside, in case the doors locked.

Luca and Boricio stood three feet apart in awkward silence, staring at one another.

Something happened between them, something Luca couldn’t fully understand. He had fixed something inside Boricio. He knew that much. Yet at the same time, there was something else happening — something Luca didn’t understand at all.

Boricio had seen inside him, just like he had seen inside Boricio. Had Boricio “fixed” him in some way too? Or was Luca now broken? Is that why he hadn’t been able to heal earlier? Had Boricio taken his power, giving it back only after bringing Luca back from the brink?

“I don’t know what to do,” Luca shook his head, looking down at his boots.

“He said you can save three, right?” Boricio asked.
 

Luca nodded, then looked up at Boricio. “Yes.”

“I’d say save that girl you like so she can play with your acorn. Then save Black Godzilla. And even though I don’t trust the beady-eyed fucker a bit, I’d say Desmond’s as good a bet as any. He looked like he could handle himself and smarter than the average bear.”

Luca shook his head. “I can’t just let Mary and Paola die! They’re my new family.”

“Yeah, that may be truer than the titties on your girlfriend, but right now, family might as well be the fucking flu,” Boricio said. “Right now, it’s survival of the fittest, and saving either Mary or her little lamb will be a smear of fuck-butter on your bread. You weren’t fast forwarding through the commercials when that shit went down, right? You saw them creature features fuck this shit up, right?” Boricio swiveled his hand up in the air, indicating the charred lot that used to be the Sanctuary.
 

“Yeah,” Luca said, trying not to cry. At times like this, he still felt like a child, which made him hate his adult body even more. At least he could cry when he was a kid, and no one would ridicule him or tell him to act like a man.
 

“When shit went down, who was left? You, me, and Black Godzilla.”

“His name was Linc,” Luca interrupted.

“What?” Boricio said. “It’s not like I called him Niggerzilla. Truth, when shit went down,
we
were the ones standing. You, me, and him! You think that’s by accident? Fuck no, that shit is by design. Strongest plus youngest plus smartest equals Fuck Yeah! That’s the only math you need to get through this shit.”

Luca flashed back on Paola dying, and how he’d been unable to stop Brother Rei from pulling the trigger. He had to undo that.
 

Luca turned from Boricio and walked toward the Hole. The door leading to the basement was still intact, not burned like most of the rest of the attached house.

“What the hell are you doing?” Boricio said, following close.

“I’m saving Paola first.”

“Paola?! Dude. That wasn’t even the girl you liked! Was she letting your bald butler get away with the crime and I don’t know about it? Because if not, leave her in the dirt.”