Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (9 page)

Rojas was the first to fire, but a second later, Billy, and Brent joined. Lisa didn’t fire her shotgun, and Ed was out of ammo. Ed hoped none of them missed and hit the old man, given how far he was out of ideal range. The creature closest to the old man stopped like a broken toy, then spilled to the asphalt. The old man started running toward the grocery store at the speed of fright as bullets buried themselves in the half-dozen aliens behind him.
 

The crew on the roof made a fresh pile of six, but then hell opened its doors and sent a thin line of aliens into the world. A sea of black spilled from the woods and toward the parking lot.
 

The old man then did the impossible — stopped running toward the grocery store, and turned back toward the station wagon, quickly closing the distance. He jumped inside the station wagon and slammed the door.
 

“What the fuck is he doing?” Lisa said.

Rojas said, “The aliens have the perimeter. No way he’s getting out of the lot. They’re gonna tear that station wagon to shit.”

The old man then surprised Ed again as he stepped out of his car and into certain death, slamming the car door behind him. He grinned towards the roof and then held an air horn triumphantly in the air.
 

The air horn’s blast bellowed in the air.
 

The monsters started shrieking, screaming, and clicking, a few of them falling to the asphalt before scrambling up and running into the woods. To Ed’s open mouthed surprise, the remainder of the aliens in the parking lot joined their brothers, fleeing into the dark woods as if their very survival was buried in the leaves.
 

The old man blasted his air horn again and the aliens ran faster. Swarms of aliens flooded from the store, running around and past the old man as if terrified of the mighty air horn, as he blasted it on repeat.
 

The scene was almost comical. Their weapons did nothing to scare the aliens, but this old man and a horn was like some kinda Pied Piper herding them away.

“What the fuck?” Ed said, shaking his head as Lisa whispered the exact thing behind him.
 

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Brent said.
 

Lisa said, “A fucking air horn? They’re doing shit all wrong at Mountain.”
 

Rojas laughed, but no funny was inside it.
 

Ed was still shaking his head as the old man smiled in triumph, standing in the empty parking lot waving his air horn in the air.
 

“We’re coming down!” Ed called. The group went downstairs, one by one, Ed in the middle, Lisa in front and Rojas and Billy pulling rear. The stockroom and store looked as if they’d been hit by a tornado. The only thing left of the other two Guardsmen were chunks of flesh and pools of blood.

Ten feet from the doors screeched a wounded alien stuck underneath a fallen shelf. Rojas fired his rifle into the alien’s head, gritting his teeth and squeezing the trigger like he was waiting for a ding and the prize to follow.
 

They crossed the parking lot, approaching the old man. They stopped at their black van. The doors had been torn off and the tires punctured by the aliens.

The old man said, “You’ll never be driving that thing again,” shaking his head. “I’m awfully grateful for you saving me from the demons the first time around, before I got ‘round to using the sense the Good Lord gave me.” He laughed. “I’d be thrilled to give you a lift, anywhere you need to go.”
 

Lisa, Rojas, and Ed all exchanged glances.

The old man mopped his brow. “That was Black Mountain, you said, right? Just up Highway 14?”

Ed said, “Yeah,” looking at the old man, up and down, trying to decide whether he was sharp as a bayonet or wacky as a dime bag.

Lisa stepped in front of Ed and said, “Thanks for the ride, sir. That would be great. And yes, we’re headed to Black Mountain.”
 

The old man bowed his head. “Of course, miss. It’s my pleasure.” He smiled again, beamed actually, then turned and led the group back to his station wagon.
 

At the car, Lisa turned around, shotgun aimed at Ed. “Everyone in the car. Except Ed.”
 

Lisa pulled the handcuffs from her back pocket as Ed stood, nostrils flaring. “Sorry, but you’ve gotta come with us.”

“I thought we were gonna talk.”

“And we will. Back at Black Mountain. I swear, I’ll make sure nothing happens to you or Brent. You’ve got my word.”

“Yeah, because your word mean so much.”

Lisa slid the cuffs on, at least giving him the courtesy of binding his hands in front of him and not behind his back.

Everyone piled inside the wagon and the old man pulled from the lot, pulling a left onto the first road they hit. He was two blocks out when Brent broke the silence.
 

“Thanks for the ride, sir,” he said. “We’re all really grateful.” Then, like a good reporter, “What’s your name?”

The old man said, “You can call me The Prophet.”

* * * *

CHAPTER 9 — Luca Harding Part 2

Luca stepped into what was left of the barn and stared down at Rebecca’s dead body.
 

Her throat was slit, and her eyes stared up at him in a death gaze that would never close unless he fixed her.

He had to try and save Rebecca. And he didn’t care what Boricio said.

And Boricio was saying a lot as he followed Luca, stuff about how Luca had to stop already. He’d done what he could. If he tried to save the girl, he would age to death. Luca didn’t know why Boricio cared so much what happened to him. It wasn’t as if Luca served much of a purpose to their group now other than slowing them down. If saving Rebecca meant death for him, it was worth it.

Luca didn’t want to go on like this.

It wasn’t just that he was old. He’d seen people older than he looked that seemed to do alright. But Luca was also in pain. Physical and mental.
 

So let Boricio run on and on about how he was making a huge mistake. Luca tuned him out. Boricio would get over it. Just like Mary would get over him not bringing Desmond back.

Boricio was pacing three feet behind him as Luca carefully dropped to one knee and put his hands on either side of Rebecca’s face. Luca was about to do the thing he didn’t quite know how to do, the thing that just sorta happened, when he heard Will speak inside his mind.
 

“You can’t save her,” he said. “It will kill you if you try.”
 

Luca tried not to be angry. “I thought you said I could save three people. I only saved two.”
 

“You
did
save three,” Will said. “You saved an entire family, Luca. Paola, her Mother, and her unborn sister. That makes three.”
 

Luca gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He wanted to cry.

“I didn’t know,” Will said. “I didn’t see it ahead of time, and was out cold when you were on your way to rescue Paola. I couldn’t have stopped you.”
 

Will’s mind went suddenly silent, and made no noise for a minute, almost like he was dead, but then he came back, almost louder than before.
 

“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I’m sorry about Rebecca. But I have an answer.”

“To what?” Luca said.

Will’s laugh was too broken to call anything but a bark. When he was finished, he said, “An answer to a question I didn’t know we were asking.”

Luca was quiet, waiting for Will to continue. When he finally did, his voice was so weak it was barely there. “You can go home, Luca. You can all go back home.”

Luca swallowed. “How?”
 

Could he and Paola and Mary, and the new baby inside Mary really all be safe together?
 

“How?” Luca asked. “How do we get back home?”

“There is another you and another me,” Will said. “Like us but different. We’re on their world. Not our own.”

Will’s signal was barely there and his color almost gone. “You have to get to Black Island. It’s just off New York. And find the other Will. And tell him . . . tell him to look in the moon.”

“Look in the moon?” Luca asked.
 

The silence was so long after Will said the word ‘moon,’ that Luca couldn’t keep himself from asking any longer. “Will?”
 

He called and called with all his mind, but Luca couldn’t find Will anywhere.
 

“Will!” He called again, this time out loud.
 

Boricio was suddenly in front of him, looking down at Luca cross eyed.
 

“Will!” Luca screamed, again in his mind, but with everything he had.
 

Luca heard the cry of silence.

The man with the lobster tacos was dead.
 

* * * *

CHAPTER 10 — Charlie Wilkens — Part 2
 

Charlie had no time to grieve as his friend’s dead corpse threatened to crush him.

Instead, he pulled the boy toward him, then Adam’s body on top of them both, shielding their huddle from the erupting chaos and bloodshed. The truck continued to rock back and forth.

It had to be a terrible nightmare Charlie would wake up from any second.

Nothing in reality ever gets this bad.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up!

But he wasn’t waking up.

The boy cried under Charlie. Charlie put his hand over the boy’s mouth and whispered in his ear, “Shh, it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

Charlie kept repeating his promise, over and over, as if repetition bred truth.

More screams amid the echoes of tearing flesh and deathly gurgles that flooded the death chamber. Charlie squeezed his eyes tight and continued to repeat the phrase over and over.

“It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay . . .”

Gunfire erupted outside and Charlie felt warmth from a thin ray of hope as the truck finally stopped rocking.

The kid squirmed his mouth from Charlie’s hand and cried out.
 

Charlie said, “Shh, wait.”

Bodies continued to shuffle, kick, scrape, and scream everywhere around him as Charlie held tight to Adam’s body, praying like hell that the monster wouldn’t smell his attempt to play dead, then head back over to feast on his flesh.

The shrieking outside stopped, though the screaming, and now shrieking and clicking inside the truck continued. It seemed as if at least two creatures were inside with them.

Two monsters among a dozen people. It wouldn’t be long before the creatures had killed everyone and turned their attention to searching for survivors, and finishing their jobs. Charlie hoped like hell that whoever was outside would open the truck before then. He would take the boy and run, as fast as they could, and never look back.

After what felt like minutes, the gunfire stopped, but the truck stayed sealed. The screaming inside the truck had ceased, replaced by the sound of clicking, shrieking, and dying.

Oh fuck, they killed everyone.

We have to keep quiet.

Charlie’s grip on Adam’s body slipped and he let go of the kid’s mouth to grab Adam’s body to use as a shield. The child’s cry brayed loudly over the swiftly fading final seconds of death all around them. One of the creatures shrieked, then advanced toward them in the darkness.

Fuck!

Charlie was torn, not sure if he should stay put, push the kid out to let him die, or scream for help. He was tempted to let the kid die, but shame kept his arms wrapped around the child. He screamed instead, “Help! There’s a kid in here alive! Help! Help! Help! Help!”

Charlie started to pound on the wall as both creatures shrieked, and continued toward them.

He had seconds until they were on him.

Something clicked, just inches behind him.

Charlie turned to face the black surrounding him, clenching his hands like claws and bracing for impact.

The door to the truck suddenly rolled toward the sky, slapping the top of the truck with a clank of metal as twilight illuminated the carnage inside the truck, with two creatures looking like some twisted and mutated monstrous set of Siamese Twins.

Fresh gunfire erupted into the truck, and the creatures’ bodies danced under a hailstorm of bullets. The few bullets that didn’t sink into their flesh, whizzed by and into the back of the truck, plinking off or sinking into the metal with a series of hollow but nerve rattling thuds. Charlie pushed himself against the boy as close to the wall and as low as he could get as the boy continued to cry.

When the creatures both finally fell, and the bullets stopped blasting, Charlie called out, “There’s two survivors in here. We’re human.”

“Show yourselves —
slowly
,” a man’s voice commanded.

Charlie pushed Adam’s headless body out of the way and onto the slaughterhouse floor of the truck, swallowing his need to vomit, distinctly aware that puking might make him a target of the three men in black uniforms holding their guns steady on his crawl.