Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone) (39 page)

“My guess is something bad happened and they don’t want to upset me.”

“You think she’s dead?”

Ed looked at Brent, “You sure are chatty.”

“Sorry,” Brent said, “I just like to know what’s going on, what’s at stake.”

After a few moments, Brent spoke again, “ I gotta ask you something that’s been gnawing at me since the other night, when you went all parallel universe on me: why did you picked me?”

“I told you. Michael is dead. I need someone I can trust. Though, Michael was a hell of a lot less chatty.”

“Yeah, but you hardly know me. And this
is
a Black Island-sanctioned mission, right? If that’s the case, why not just take any of the other men who are surely more equipped to get your back? What are we
really
doing here?”

Ed looked at Brent and grinned, “Anyone ever tell you that you ask too many questions?”

“Every day at my old job,” Brent said, smiling back. “So, is that an evasion or the opening to an answer?”

Maybe this guy has better field-sense than I thought; he can sure smell out answers.

“Here’s the deal,” Ed drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel. “I can’t trust everyone on Black Island. I knew Michael was clean, but I have my suspicions about others. They have a mole, someone working in the interests of Black Mountain. Maybe even a few people; I’m not sure. I can’t go into the how’s and why’s, but I’m fairly certain the place has been compromised. And the mole may even be among the original six.”

“Original six?” Brent asked.

“There is a room in Black Island that seems to have been spared whatever happened on October 15. I’m thinking there’s a reason for that, and it might not be a good reason. Six people from this world survived, including my parallel, Sullivan, and four scientists. I have reason to believe that one or more of them are complicit in the events of October 15, and I’m not sure they want us to succeed in finding Boricio. This mission is critical; I need at least one other person with no connections to anyone. And I have a good feeling about you.”

“Good feeling?” Brent asked suspiciously.

“OK, I’ve been watching you, and so far, you
seem
clean. Well, clean for a journalist, anyway.”

Brent laughed.

They drove a while longer, the weather growing uglier with every mile. They drove through a few patches of rain and were now getting some snow, which slicked the empty roads. This was the first snow he’d seen all season, and so late in winter too. There were a few people at Black Island researching weather patterns; he’d even seen video of a bizarre tornado, bigger by far than anything ever captured on camera. It grabbed an entire city, then threw it down in a stack of debris as though it were cleaning a house and sweeping dust into a corner. Weird shit. Ed found himself wondering if the weird storms were an extension of the aliens in some way. He hoped not. If the storms
were
an alien creation, God help the humans who tried to survive them.

Brent had been quiet a while. Ed looked over to see that he’d fallen asleep, his head on the passenger window.
 

Would he have gone through with his crazy plan if I hadn’t intervened? Would he have been able to infect someone as he intended? And, God, what would the consequences have been?

Ed supposed it didn’t matter. The people in charge wouldn’t have let Brent leave with two infected people, no matter whom he had as a hostage. Ed had played out extraction scenarios in his head a hundred times, imagining how he’d rescue his daughter. It wasn’t feasible; a facility like Black Island had too many failsafes to allow someone to slip in and out without harm. And while Ed might be able to defeat the security, and even reach to his daughter, he doubted he could escape in a manner that wouldn't put her at mortal risk.
 

And risking Jade wasn’t an option. She’d already suffered enough from the curse of being his daughter.

The way he figured it, they had no reason to harm her; there was nothing to gain in pissing him off by hurting her, especially when they allowed so many civilians to live on the island unmolested. Plus, their stated goal of trying to rebuild society seemed genuine enough, at least on the face of it. But that meant they would have to do everything that needed to be done to protect that goal, no matter who was in their way. So Ed would play ball. He’d worked for worse people, after all.
 

His parallel, the other Keenan, said his daughter would remain safe. Ed trusted him with that much. Keenan 2 had lived a slightly different life, a daughterless one, and Ed figured that though she were not his flesh and blood, that there may be some sort of connection which would keep her safe for a little while, anyway. Ed knew that Keenan 2 wasn’t the puppet master. Second in command, maybe. But not in charge. Someone else was pulling the strings behind the scenes, isolated from everyone and everything, using Keenan 2 as an intermediary. As Ed continued driving through a world growing whiter, he wondered if he’d ever find out who was really the man behind the curtain at Black Island.

Is there a seventh person?

**

They reached the east coast of Georgia by nightfall. They arrived by way of Interstate-95, though there were several times when they had to find a detour around some obstruction, one of the many new travel norms of their brave new world.

Ed decided to locate a hotel to stay at for the night. They’d need a solid night’s rest before searching for Boricio in the morning. He had a feeling they’d need every watt of energy their bodies could produce, especially if they came across anyone from Black Mountain. He found a newer-looking Holiday Inn off the highway, which looked nice and alien-free. The hotel was a free-standing building at the end of a shopping plaza that included a few restaurants, a Home Depot, a department store, a small grocery store chain he’d never heard of, and four different banks. He chuckled at the profligate abundance of banks in this world as well as his own.
 

He cut the lights as he pulled into the hotel’s parking lot, which was 60 percent full from the guests who involuntarily checked out on October 15, then waited 10 minutes to scout the scene for any aliens. None showed.

They grabbed their gear and headed inside. On instinct, he began securing the perimeter, once inside. He locked the lobby’s glass double doors . He checked the side doors and confirmed they couldn't be opened from the outside without a key card (which wouldn’t work anyway without electricity), then headed up seven flights of stairs, banging their rifles and shouting the entire time, to attract anything that might be inside the hotel to come out now, rather than later when they weren’t prepared.

All the noise was for not; the hotel was a ghost town.
 

They found a room with two Queen beds and a small kitchen suite. Ed drew the drapes and lit a few of the small battery operated lanterns he’d brought, placing them along the floor in the bathroomto cast just enough light into the main room that they could see without broadcasting their location beyond the thick hotel curtains.

“Hope you like canned pasta,” Ed mused, opening a duffel bag and tossing Brent a can of spaghetti and meatballs.
 

“You didn’t bring a hotplate or anything?” Brent asked.

“We don’t want to cook anything; that would attract attention.”

“Ah,” Brent said, pulling the tab on his can. Ed handed him a plastic fork, and they dug into their dinners.

“Not exactly Jane’s cooking, but surprisingly not horrible.” Brent said.

Ed sat on the floor, scooping food from his can, ignoring Brent’s many attempts to start a conversation. He never understood why people wanted to talk while they were eating. He put up with it from his family, since he figured that’s what he was expected to do. But that didn’t mean he’d put up with other people doing it. People talking during dinner may as well have been fingernails on a chalkboard.

“What’s the worst thing you ever had to eat?” Brent continued, deaf and blind to Ed’s uncommunicative posture.

“I ate a spider once, does that count?” Ed said, hoping to end the conversation.

“What the hell?” Brent said, nearly spitting out his food. “Really?”

Ed couldn’t help but laugh.

“You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. It wasn’t terrible. They’re not as bad as people say. Well, until I realized it was pregnant. Oh, what a mess that was. Little baby spiders spilling out all over the place. Kinda looked like wet, dark pieces of pasta, actually.”

“Stop!” Brent said, looking like he might vomit.

Ed smiled.
Good, now I can eat in peace.

He shoved a meatball into his mouth, as Brent dipped his uneaten forkful of pasta back into the can.

**

Sleep took them by 10 p.m. Ed didn’t bother structuring night shifts as he didn’t anticipate any problems, none at least that he couldn’t handle with an open bag of ammunition at his bedside.
 

Once asleep, he dreamed he was in a field of tall grass that stretched to forever. The voice he’d been dreaming of was back. Brent was also there, walking beside him, looking down at a map.

“You’re close,” the voice said.

“Who’s that?” Brent asked.

“You can hear it?” Ed said, surprised.

“Yeah, who is that?”

“If you can hear it, you don’t need to ask,” Ed said, not intending to be cryptic, though it wasn’t like he was the one choosing his words. The voice was speaking through him.

Brent looked back down at his map. “I see it here.”

Ed stared at the map too, which looked like one of those old treasure maps you used to see in movies and comic books, with a big red “X.”

“Uh-oh,” Brent said. “It knows we’re here.”

Ed looked at him, confused. Was the voice now speaking through Brent? Who, or what, was “it?”

Overhead, the sky grew instantly black, darkness spreading like spilled ink in clear water, canvassing the world. Wind and rain were on sudden assault everywhere around them, whipping the long blades of grass against their faces in stinging lashes. The wind howled like a scattered pack of wounded animals, crying at once from every direction.

Ed closed his eyes, lifting an arm to cover his face, pushing through the grass.

“Keep going!” he shouted to Brent, as they pushed blindly into the thrashing sea.

The assault ended as suddenly as it began, though the darkness still churned overhead. When Ed gazed around, Brent was gone. He turned, searching, and called out, “Brent!”

And then he heard the sound of a child singing. He couldn’t tell if the voice was that of a boy or girl. The melody sounded like a religious hymn, though he couldn’t make out the words.

He continued forward until he spotted a church steeple peeking over the grass.

“Brent?!”

Nothing but the child’s singing, coming from the church. He was close enough to determine the tune –
Jesus Loves Me
– but was still too far to decipher the words.

He raced forward and came out into a clearing in front of a church, standing before a barracks-neat row of three houses in the background. In front of the church were six giant wooden crosses. The child, in a white robe, was knelt down singing in front of one of the crosses.

Oh my god, someone’s nailed to it.

Ed moved closer as the child’s singing continued.
 

“The Darkness loves me! This I know,

for The Prophet tells me so.”

His slowed his gate as he locked onto the bulging dead eyes of the man on the cross.

Brent.

Brent had been crucified, nailed in place through his hands and shins. His limp mouth hung agape, tongue savagely removed. Dried blood has pooled in the stubble upon his chin. He smelled of death. A crude mark had been etched into the flesh of his chest. Ed stepped closer to make it out. It was a number, 9.
 

“Little ones to Him belong;

They are weak but He is strong.”

And then the singing stopped.

* * * *

LUCA HARDING: PART 1

Kingsland, Alabama

The Sanctuary

March 24

11:07 a.m.

Everything had been weird since yesterday.

Mary, Will, and Desmond weren’t talking with the others too much. They seemed angry at Rebecca’s mom and The Prophet.
 

Luca wanted to be angry at the people for punishing Rebecca, cutting all her hair off and making her cry. And he
was
angry, at first. But then he began to pick up on all the feelings of the people like radio signals and realized that things weren’t as simple as he’d first thought.
 

When he focused in these frequencies, he learned that some of the people were mad at Rebecca and Carl, but most were afraid for them. That meant they were acting out of fear, not anger. And while Rebecca’s mom, Sarah, seemed angriest of all, she wasn’t really. She was actually the most afraid, convinced her daughter was going to hell and thus doing what she believed was right. Luca’s radar was intercepting more than just sensory feelings, though. He was sometimes catching snippets of actual dialogue.
 
At first, he thought he was overhearing bits of conversations. But no one was ever talking.
 
That could only mean one of two things: