Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (48 page)

He tore through the hallway, then down the stairs and to the front door, swinging it open as Charlie’s feet hit the front porch.
 

“Well, hell’s bells, Charlie Cheese Dick,” Boricio said. “Welcome the fuck home!”

* * * *

CHAPTER 10 — Ryan Olson Part 2

Black Mountain, Georgia

March 31, 2012

FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…

“Please, kill me,” Ryan begged Lisa as she aimed the shotgun at his face. “Please. I don’t want to be one of them.”

The shotgun shook in Lisa’s hands, and Ryan could see the emotions spinning like pinwheels in her eyes. She wanted to do it. Wanted to kill him. But a part of her still saw him as human and not one of the monsters which had just butchered the woman and her unborn child.
 

She pulled the gun away, then sharply spun so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

“Kill me!” Ryan repeated, now shouting.

“No!” Lisa said, shaking her head and turning back to face him. “You’re not one of them! Boricio said you were different and I believe him. We need to get out of here and save him. And I need your help.”

“No,” Ryan said. “Go alone.” He shook his head. “I can’t help you.”

He was swirling with too many emotions, mostly rage, along with the endless clicking, beeps, and mutant shrieks swimming across the surface of his mind. Beyond the cacophony was something else — a bottomless hunger nothing would sate.
 

As Ryan looked at Lisa, he began to imagine how easy it would be to bite into her flesh, and taste whatever it was she had inside her.

He shook his head, closing his eyes, trying to drive the sick thoughts from his head before they drove him to action.

It was happening.

He was turning.

As memories of the mutant feasting on the baby ran through his head, Ryan felt another wave of nausea stewing in his guts.
 

Then he felt something else . . . a sick delight in the sensation of the unborn flesh in his — and the other mutant’s — teeth, ripping the life from its body and gulping it down like milk from a mother’s breast.

“We’ve gotta go,” Lisa said, offering Ryan a hand to help him to his feet. “We need to get out of here while we still can.”

“I can’t go with you,” he said.

“You have to!” Lisa cried. “I can’t stop them alone.”

“I’m . . . changing.”

“What?!” Lisa said, taking a step back.

“It’s happening. I can feel it.”

“No,” Lisa said, shaking her head. “No, you’re just trying to scare me so I’ll shoot you.”

Ryan forced himself to look at her, barely able to control his rising urge to bite her. He could sense her fear which further fueled his hunger.

“Fucking kill me or I will eat you just like he ate her and her baby!” Ryan screamed.

He rose to his feet and started to walk toward her, eyes boring into her, glaring. If she wasn’t going to shoot him, he’d scare her into it. He had to end this now.
 

He had nothing left.

He was becoming a monster.

Time to die.

Maybe he’d see Mary and Paola in Heaven, assuming Heaven wasn’t as much of a lie as Earth had turned out to be.
 

He looked into Lisa’s scared eyes and stepped closer, just inches away.

“Do it!” he screamed.

Lisa stepped back and lifted the shotgun, aiming it at him, crying, “Please, don’t make me.”

“Do it! Do it! Do it!” he goaded her.

“Are you sure?” she cried, shotgun shaking in her hands.

“Please,” he begged. “Please.”

He closed his eyes, bracing for the bullet. As Ryan waited for death, he drew more thoughts from the mutants, the infected, Charlie, and the Darkness swirling inside him.

He saw that the Darkness was walking up to a house.

Is this where Boricio is?

The door opened.
 

Ryan saw the other Boricio answering the door, a wide smile of recognition on his face. Beyond Boricio, he saw another familiar face —
Mary!

And there, beside her . . .
 

Paola!

They’re alive!

They’re here and alive!

Ryan couldn’t die now.
 

He had to get to them.
 

He had to protect them.

He had to say something to stop Lisa before she shot him.

He opened his mouth and cried, “Nooo!”

He was too late.
 

The gun thundered before the world went silent.

TO BE CONTINUED…

YESTERDAY’S GONE

EPISODE 18

“Hard Reset Protocol”

* * * *

CHAPTER 1 — Luca Harding

Saturday

October 15, 2011

morning

Las Orillas, California

Luca’s skin was burning. He opened his eyes and put an end to the dream where Mommy was making eggs on his arms.

The sun was brighter than it should have been. Light poured through the window like buckets
 
splashing against the glass.
 

Luca turned to look at his
Cars
alarm clock, but it was off.

He didn’t like the feeling in his arms, tingly bad and kind of burny. Luca wanted to scratch his skin, but stopped himself because Mommy said that scratching always made things worse.

The itchy burny would probably go away if he ignored it. 

Luca pulled off the covers and got out of bed, then went number one in the bathroom. His toothbrush was on the counter when he went pee, but was gone by the time he flushed the toilet.

Just like his
Cars
alarm clock when he went back inside his room.

The house was too quiet.
 

Luca went to the closet, peeled off his Lego pajamas, pulled on his jeans and his favorite
Star Wars
tee shirt — the one that said “
I had friends on that Death Star”
that his dad bought because he thought it was funny.

Luca dropped his Lego pajamas on the floor only a second before, but they were already gone, just like his
Cars
alarm clock and everything else in the room — the bed, the desk, his toys, all of it gone. His room was completely empty, the walls were now white instead of blue, and there was a different carpet on the floor which smelled new.

He went to the window because he wanted to see the rainbow he thought would be there. But there wasn’t a rainbow.
 

There’s supposed to be a rainbow.
 

This wasn’t right.
 

Nothing was.
 

Luca couldn’t hear his mom or his dad, or his sister, Anna. He felt like he’d been in this feeling before, too. But the house was even emptier than it had been the last time. It felt like his family had moved away in the middle of the night and sold the house.

Luca blinked, and wanted to cry. He hated that everything was different.
 

He went to his window again and saw a sign in the front yard which read, “FOR SALE.”

Oh my God, they did sell the house! They moved away without me!

Luca ran to the kitchen, looking for the phone so he could call his Mom’s cell phone. He had to get a hold of her and tell her to come back. She forgot him. The phone was gone though. The kitchen was just as empty as every other room. He tensed as something flashed at the corner of his eyes. Luca expected to see his cat, Lucky, but Lucky wasn’t there. He saw a dog instead.

And suddenly memories began to come forth.

“Dog Vader!” Luca cried, happy to see his old friend.

The dog sat on its haunches for several seconds before he opened his slobbery jaw and said, “I never liked that name, you know.” Dog Vader made a low rumbling growl to let Luca know he was only joking.

“Do you still want me to call you Kick?”

Dog Vader said, “It doesn’t matter what you call me, so long as you listen to what I say.” Dog Vader was using his Serious Voice. But Luca didn’t want to hear the Serious Voice, at least not inside his too-empty house. “Can we go outside?” Luca asked, then said, “Aren’t we supposed to get the bathtub car and follow the rainbow?”
 

“There are no more rainbows, Luca,” Dog Vader shook his snout back and forth. “And there
 
aren’t any rainbows like before.”
 

Dog Vader went from his haunches to all fours, then trotted toward the front door where he waited for Luca to open it. They stepped into the bright light outside together. And just as Dog Vader said, there were no rainbows.

“Where did they go?” Luca whispered, realizing that he didn’t feel the itchy burny anymore either. “Where’s my family?”

“They were never here. On this world, they died two years ago. Everything you saw was a lie,” Dog Vader said. “But a necessary lie. A good one.” Dog Vader’s snout suddenly shortened and his shoulders started to grow as he lost all his fur. “A lie without cause is a lie without effect.” He went from all fours back to his haunches, until he was suddenly standing on two human feet.
 

Dog Vader was no longer a dog. He was the tall Indian, towering over Luca, with a giant flowing headdress and a long plastic pipe.
 

“You lied to yourself,” the Indian said.
 

Luca slowly shook his head, trying to understand.
 

“You have stolen from
you
, Luca. The YOU from the other Earth lost his mother and father, so he decided to steal yours. Then some part of you, maybe some parts of him, made you believe the lie when you arrived here. You saw things as you wanted to see them — as you
needed
to see them — in order to cope. I was here to help you find Will. I made the rainbows, and then led you to him.” The Indian looked down, then gently set his palm on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Luca” he said. “Don’t cry. There are ways to make everything right.”
 

Luca wiped his right cheek, then swiped at the other one. “How?” he asked, looking up at the Indian.
 

“You must go to Black Island. There is a vial in the moon in the bedroom of the boy who stole your life. In that vial is something which can either be very good or very bad. YOU have to open it, Luca. You do, before anyone else finds it.”
 

“I can’t do that,” Luca shook his head. “I’m not strong, or brave. I know I look like an old man, but I’m only a boy inside.”

“You aren’t
only
a boy,” the Indian said. “You never were. You are pure, Luca. Even when walking through the mind of another, you’ve never done so with dirty feet. And yes, you
are
brave, my boy, for it is only the courage to continue that counts, and you’ve never failed to set one foot firmly in front of the other no matter how scared you were. You are the only one who can balance the world against the Black Pieces.”
 

“The Black Pieces?”
 

“Yes,” the Indian nodded. “The Black Pieces, The Darkness, The Void, The Oblivion, The Wicked Iniquity of Nothing, and The Limbo — it has more names across more universes than there are grains on your beaches or stars in your sky. The Black Pieces,” the Indian continued, “are the opposite of me.”

“So, what are you?”

“We, The Darkness and Us, started out the same. We are Light. We are Life, Creation, and We are the Infinite Possibility of All. But we can also be tainted and turned into The Darkness. It destroyed one realm we lived in. So our children sent us out in vials, in hopes that we might be found and bring Light back into being.”

Luca shuddered. His itchy burny was back, even if it was only in his mind. He was confused. He’d heard people say the monstrous things that had been attacking them were aliens. But the Indian was describing it so differently. Like they were these forces, rather than actual physical alien beings.

“Why can’t
you
fight the Black Pieces?”
 

The Indian shocked Luca with a long fit of laughter before he said, “I
can
fight the Black Pieces, and I
do
.” He looked down at Luca, his hand still resting on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m fighting The Black Pieces right now by standing here speaking with you. However, I am but a part, a small part against the many. We need to find the vial to become stronger — to multiply as The Darkness has.”
 

The Indian dropped to his knee, then set his pipe on the porch and held Luca’s eyes. “You
will do
something about it, Luca. Because you are strong, and because you are brave, even if you do not yet see it. But I am spread too thin to win this war. I am not really here,” the Indian waved his hands up and down his body. “At least not like you see me. No more than the rainbows in the sky which led you to a father from another world. I am but a residual of the Light passed from the Luca of one world to the Luca in another. I am inside you, but I’m not strong enough alone.” He pat Luca on the back. “I need,
we
need
to get the vial.”