Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (6 page)

“Ah,
Boricio
,” Lisa said. “Interesting.”

“You looking for him too?” Ed asked.

“Not exactly.”

“What’s that mean?”
 

The door in the front of the stockroom crashed open, killing their conversation and drawing their attention. A pint-sized steroid case named Rojas ran inside the warehouse, holding his M-16. He looked — for the first time since Ed had met him — nervous.
 

“We’ve got a problem, Sergeant,” Rojas said.

“What?”

“The parking lot. There’s a shit-ton of them out there.”

“A shit-ton?”

“Hundreds!”

Ed’s eyes widened. No way he heard Rojas right. He’d never seen more than two dozen together.

“Hundreds?” she asked, “Are you fucking with me?”

“No, Sgt. They’re out there, like they’re waiting for us to come outside.”

Lisa swallowed, visibly shaken.

A gunshot suddenly echoed from somewhere inside the store.

“What the hell?!” Lisa shouted, grabbing her shotgun and running out the door behind Rojas, leaving Ed and Brent handcuffed to the shelving.

“Hey!” Ed screamed to no one.

Shit!

More gunshots echoed inside the store, followed by the sound of crashing glass.

Ed looked down at his cuffed right hand, and pulled as if he’d somehow get loose, despite hours of trying already. Brent frantically tugged at his own cuffs, also without luck. Ed scanned the area searching for anything he could reach with his left hand or feet, but there wasn’t anything that hadn’t been there 10 minutes earlier.
 

More automatic gunfire, followed by more shattering glass, then more gunshots again. A man screamed — a quickly fading scream, thick with death and torment, followed by more blasts, rapid fire — the M-16.

“Shit, they’re inside the store,” Ed said, now looking up at the shelves above him to see if anything was there he could maybe shake down. The only thing he could see above him was more of the same — wrapped pallets of cardboard boxes and neatly stacked cases of soft drinks.

More gunshots, then another scream. Another Guardsman. Or maybe the same man in even more pain. The scream was chased by the deafening thunder of what sounded like someone throwing cars across the store. Ed could only imagine the hellish chaos on the other side of the warehouse door.
 

Soon, he realized with a terrible clarity, he wouldn’t have to imagine it at all.

As if fate was reading his mind, the door at the front of the stockroom banged open and two of the loping dark aliens crashed through, immediately spotting Ed and Brent — snacks held captive.

“Fuck!” Brent screamed as he began to pull harder, the cuffs digging deep into his wrists.

Ed wondered if Brent might pull his own wrist off to get away. Ed began to pull at his own cuffed hand as the aliens stood fully upright, towering in triumph as they approached, as if enjoying the conquest as much as the coming kill.

Ed met the black glassy eyes of the creature closest to him.
 

“Fuck, you things are ugly,” he said as he stopped pulling on his cuff, and instead braced for whatever defensive measure he might be able to make. He had one hand and two feet, and would be damned if he allowed the first, or first five of the fuckers to kill him.

Brent was tugging hard and screaming, “Oh God! Oh God! I don’t want to die!”

Ed would have tried to talk him down, but Brent was in a fat panic, and Ed couldn’t afford to pay attention to anything but the approaching threat as it stepped forward, stopping six feet in front of him.
 

He thought of Jade back on the island, and hoped like hell that Sullivan would keep her safe. That his counterpart — the other Ed — wouldn’t, or couldn’t, be so cruel as to kill his doppelganger’s daughter.

The two creatures stood side by side. The one on the left opened its mouth and screamed its unholy shriek, digging into Ed’s skull like razors scraping 0ver his nerves.

“Come on, you fucker!” Ed growled through gritted teeth, as he squatted, rolling from foot to foot, preparing to move — as much as possible — and kick the fucker as hard as he could.
 

The one on the left ran toward him, clawed hand raised, ready to swing down and tear Ed’s face to Big League Chew.

Ed fell on his side, pushed himself forward as far as he could, then swept his feet out, knocking the alien down, on top of him.

Ed screamed as he brought his knees up and into the alien’s chest, then head butted the creature as hard as he could in its face. The alien screamed, then slid back as Ed kicked out, hooking the alien by the neck, and yanked it back into the metal shelving beside.

The creature screamed as Ed twisted his body and kicked it square in the face, his boot pushing through its soft head, and pushing whatever bones it had back into its skull as its body fell into death spasms.

Brent screamed as the second alien ran toward them.

Ed’s boot was stuck in the first alien’s face.
 

Fuck!

Ed struggled to pull his foot free, but the creature was charging too fast. He hoped like hell Brent could do something to protect them.

A gunshot thundered through the warehouse, causing instant pain, and whistling, inside Ed’s eardrums. The alien fell to the floor in front of him, its head caved in, and black goo oozing out onto the gray concrete.

Ed looked up to see Lisa standing with her shotgun, and Billy with his Glock 22.

She raced toward Ed, then slid to a stop just inches from him holding the keys to his handcuffs.

“Hold them off!” she yelled at Billy, who took aim at the aliens spilling through the door and into the warehouse.

Lisa slid the key into the keyhole, but it slipped and fell to the ground.

“Fuck!” she said, glancing back as the aliens barreled down on Billy. He opened fire. She grabbed the key and put it into Ed’s other hand, “You do it!”

She grabbed her shotgun, then fired at the aliens pouring inside. Lisa would run out of shells soon. She needed Ed’s help.
 

Ed slid the key into the hole, clicked the handcuffs open, then handed Brent the key. He ran to Billy, who had a second Glock in his waistband. Ed grabbed it, not even bothering to see if the clip was full, as an alien soared toward them on all fours, shrieking.

Billy’s gun was out of ammo but he kept pulling the trigger, either not realizing, or not knowing what else to do as the alien came toward him, ready to bite.

Ed stepped in front of Billy at the last possible second and the alien’s open mouth came up to bite Ed instead. Ed shoved his hand, with the gun, into the alien’s mouth and pulled the trigger twice.

The alien’s body went slack as the back of its head exploded in black goo and bits of fatty meat and fleshy bone. Ed flung the alien from his body, then brought the pistol back up to fire at another charging alien.

Lisa blasted it down before Ed had a chance.

Ahead of them, one of the men, Rojas, entered backward, firing his M16 at aliens following him.

All the aliens that had made their way inside the stockroom were lying in piles. “Come on!” Ed screamed, above the whistling in his eardrums. “We’ve gotta block the door!”

They raced toward the door as Rojas dispatched the last of the approaching aliens, then slammed the door shut. Ed slid the lock shut. It looked strong, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Ed and Brent pushed four wooden pallets between the door and the immediate wall, stacking one on top of the other to keep the bottom of the door secure.
 

Aliens began to bash against the door from the other side, as if to test the lock’s integrity. Ed wasn’t sure how long the lock, or makeshift braces, would hold up to dozens of aliens battering their bodies against the door.

Ed looked toward the back of the stockroom. It was shaped in a giant L, and he would have bet his left nut, and maybe even his right, there was at least one other entrance into the room from the back of the store. That meant aliens could be storming in to flank them. They had to find safety now. He looked up and saw that the top shelf was close enough to one of the skylights that they might be able to stack some stuff to climb out and onto the roof.

“Let’s climb the shelves!” he yelled, pointing up. “I don’t think they can climb!”

“Better idea!” Lisa shouted. “There’s a ladder around the corner, leading to the roof!”

Ed gave her a thumb’s up and they raced toward the back of the store, climbing the ladder as the sound of destruction echoed from the store and into the stockroom.

Rojas went up the ladder first, pushing the hatch open, then peeking out to make sure no aliens were on the roof.
 

“All clear!” Rojas shouted from above.

They followed him onto the roof one at a time, with Billy going second, Lisa third, and Brent next. As Brent began to climb, two aliens made their way in through one of the other doors in the rear of the store. He raced up the ladder behind Brent, his face practically in Brent’s ass.

Ed heard shrieking beneath him, but didn’t dare look down. He hoped to be up and out of their line of sight before the aliens could see where they’d gone. He’d hate to find out this way that they could climb. If the aliens got onto the roof, it was only a matter of time before Ed and the group were overrun, even if they were able to pick the fuckers off one by one as they crawled through the hatch.

Once Brent was standing up top, he reached down and pulled Ed the rest of the way. Then they quietly closed the hatch.

Ed stood on the gravel, and let out a gasp, “Holy shit!”

Ed leaned over, sucking wind, his legs in pain from being forced into action after three days of inertia. He caught his breath while staring at the hatch, hoping like hell it wouldn’t pop open.

“Oh my God!” Brent said, looking out at the parking lot.

Ed stood, went to where Brent was standing, then stared out at the sea of creatures. The lot was packed with more aliens than Ed had seen during his entire time patrolling New York.

He saw hundreds. Maybe a thousand.

All of them waiting for something.

* * * *

CHAPTER 6 — Boricio Wolfe Part 2

Mary’s little lamb took 10 minutes to start batting her eyes. She was probably getting the man-kid’s kibble n’ bits to do a little batting too. Weird how Boricio didn’t see the aging happen, it just was, like when you look down and see the blood but wonder when in the fuck you were cut. He looked over at Luca, poor fucker looked older than he did, maybe over 40 and not even half as handsome.
 

Boricio wondered if maybe he should just get the flying fuck all out of Dodge while the gettin’ was good. It wasn’t like he’d never been the only one howling at the moon before. Maybe he’d find out where those fuckers Charlie and Adam got off to.

Mary’s little lamb may have been able to bat her eyes in 10 minutes, but she took a year and a goddamn half to open her mouth, and when she did, it was to give the man-kid a bullshit “thank you.”
 

Luca pet the side of her cheek and said, “I need you to help me.”

Her response wasn’t much more than a whisper. “What do you need?”
 

Luca smiled, fucker looked like he was half crying, then said, “I want to save your mom.”
 

A tear fell from the lamb’s cheek and she said, “Thank you, Luca,” her voice about cracked in half, like she was choking on a chicken bone before she managed to squeak another. “Thanks so much.”

“But,” Luca got ready to thicken the plot. Boricio smiled. “I can’t save Desmond.”

The girl’s eyes went glassy. “I just can’t.” Luca shook his head. “I love Rebecca. I have to save her.”
 

“Why can’t you save them both?”

“I’ll be too old. I can only save three people. You, your mom, and Rebecca.”

He looked down.
 

Paola said, “Oh,” as though she just realized how old Luca really looked, even older than he did before the monsters stopped her breathing. Shouldn't have been too hard to see, since Luca’s hair had a bunch of salt where there’d only been pepper before.
 

“Mary’s going to be mad at me,” he said, eyes getting watery as a bucket. “And I need you to help me make her not mad.”
 

Boricio was getting bored of the live action Disney Channel movie scene. Mary’s little lamb finally said, “Okay.”
 

After a pause, Little Lamb added, “Are you sure? About Desmond?”
 

Boricio said, “And circle gets the fucking square!”
 

The man-kid didn’t even look, like Boricio wasn’t talking at all.
 

Boricio paced in a circle, waiting for their scene to finish while wondering what sort of shit Luca had actually “fixed” inside him. Shit seemed broken, like the wrong feelings were assigned to the wrong shit. Like he knew what he wanted to fucking order but the goddamn waitress kept screwing the pooch with the wrong dishes in each of her hands. You could kill a waitress for not getting shit right, but what were you supposed to do when the shit that was wrong was coming from inside you?