Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone) (47 page)

Luca would soon play a large role in the inevitable. He simply needed a little encouragement, a nudge in the right direction. The Prophet gave
John
the breadcrumbs to lay, which made it easy for Luca to follow him precisely where he wanted him – here, behind the walls of The Sanctuary, sharing the soured air with his pompous flock.
 

Things were starting to settle into place, the pieces finally fitting together. It would happen soon — the event he’d been made for; the event that would unite his scattered parts and fraying fragments into the the fabric of the future.
 

John
could feel the grand design like these humans felt hunger.
He
was born from the past, was the core of the present, and the only thing the future cared about. Because
John
was all that mattered to the universe,
he
knew things the humans never could, things they were not designed to see.
 

How could they expect to stare into the infinite when they couldn't even smell the sour of the air?
 

John
could see his true purpose forming in the shadows around him, slowly taking shape – crawling through the forest, waiting in the mountains, and lingering in the shadows while
he
waited behind the walls of The Sanctuary, preparing to strike.

His communication with the creatures these people called demons, monsters, and bleakers had grown stronger over the months.
John
was able to command them no different than he commanded his hand to pick up a drink, or his arm to bring it to his lips. The creatures were an extension of him, a deadly appendage, but they had grown dangerously restless, craving more strength in their numbers. They were gathering together in the world outside The Sanctuary, infesting new hosts, and spreading like wildfire through a bed of broken branches.

The Prophet had started the fire; he had been tricked into opening the vial and setting this life free – this life that feasted on death; this life that would erase the old.

The pieces were settling into place — until this morning.
 

Until
John
sensed the
thing
in the woods, watching them.

It was human, but not like the others. It was something more. Something
John
felt he should comprehend, but didn’t, couldn't, even though he clawed inside his mind searching for the answer. Though the answer lay hidden,
he
had no more time to search. That
something
was standing in the snow, waiting at the gates of his death camp. That much
John
knew for certain.
 

A knock on his door confirmed what he knew.
 

“Brother John,” Brother Rei called from the other side of the door, “We have a visitor.”

John
stood, allowing the morning sun to warm his nude shell, then slipped into his pants and shirt, then a robe over both. Humans felt the need to wear so many clothes, almost as if the layers could disguise the lies inside them.

John
opened the door and saw the red fear brewing in Brother Rei’s eyes, “He’s still outside the gate; Brother Linc hasn’t let him in yet. The man just showed up out of the blue this morning, saying something about God calling him here. I don’t like the look of him.”

John
walked past Brother Rei, then descended downstairs, out the front door, and over to the wrought iron gate, where Brothers Linc and Ed stood guard with their rifles. The
thing
John had sensed stood calm behind the gate; this man who was not quite a man. The voices had said
it
was coming. Was this
it
? Was this the
thing
that would usher in the darkness?

“Hello, brother, my name is John. What brings you to The Sanctuary?”

“God sent me,” the man said. The lie was revolting. But it was a different stench from the delusion the rest of The Sanctuary’s willing prisoners had been telling themselves about a so-called “God” who cared about them. The “man” at the gate held no such illusions. He was smart enough to use God as the golden key to gain access. The question was, why?
 

Was he what
John
had been waiting for? Or was he another obstacle?

Though
John
wasn’t quite ready for someone to jeopardize what he’d so carefully built, perhaps this was exactly how it was supposed to be.
He
never questioned the voices. They’d yet to steer him wrong.

“And who might you be, Brother?”
John
asked.

“The name’s Boricio,” he said with such boldness that it seemed he were waiting for applause.

“Welcome to The Sanctuary, Brother Boricio,” John said, his plastic grin upon his face, then directed the men to let Boricio inside. “You’ve arrived on a rather unfortunate day. We’re having a funeral.”

“That is most unfortunate, indeed,” Boricio agreed without a whiff of agreement, stepping through the gate and into The Sanctuary.
 

John
bristled. Another piece of the puzzle had slid into place, but he had no idea who the piece belonged to.
 

And the voices weren’t telling.
 

* * * *

WILL BISHOP: PART 1

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

November 10, 1995

8:40 p.m.

Will sat behind the counter at Hidden Wonders, one of the last decent bookstores downtown, staring at the calendar on the wall. He couldn’t believe tomorrow was a year to the day since he found the loophole.

For the four months prior, Will had been dreaming of Sam’s accident happening on November 11, last year. He couldn’t tell Sam, of course. For one, Sam would think he was crazy. For two, fate — or whatever it was that pulled the strings, yet also tormented Will with glimpses into the future — didn’t appreciate mortals like Will trying to intervene.

Will spent months searching for a loophole — a way to save Sam, without telling him what was going to happen. According to the dreams, which always had the same ending, no matter how they started, Sam was injured badly in a car accident. He was struck by a drunk driver at 2:15 p.m. on his return trip to the bookstore they owned together. Sam would cross the street three blocks away and , be in the path of an out of control car which drove straight into a restaurant and struck three diners, killing two of them instantly.
 
As a result of the accident, Sam would wind up being a paraplegic, spending the rest of his years in almost constant pain and misery.

Considering Sam never missed a day of work, and would never take time off on a whim, no matter how compelling Will might make the whim sound, he would have to get creative if he expected to get Sam away from the bookstore and into a safe place.
 

Will ran through a hundred ideas, but none seemed like they would work, at least not without raising suspicion. With Sam, suspicion led to reservation, and reservation was often a brick wall between them.
 

He tried to order pizza for lunch, convince Sam to dine in. But Sam was a man of routine and only broke it when forced. He did the same things, day in and day out. Ate at the same diner every day for as long as they’d owned the bookstore. He was obsessive compulsive about everything, and a break in routine was disaster in his personal world. Every day, Sam left Hidden Wonders at 12:30 p.m. on his way to the bank for their daily deposit. He ate lunch at the diner next to the bank, where he scribbled in his notebook, working on a novel he’d been writing every day for as long as they’d known one another.

A rhythm like clockwork.

So Will would have to get creative if he was to successfully meddle with time.

Just before lunch, Will
accidentally
locked Sam in the storage room while he was counting the daily receipts and preparing the deposit. They had two locks on the door, one that locked and opened from the inside and another that locked and opened from the outside. That was how the door had been installed, for reasons only the last tenant knew. It was odd, but nothing Will or Sam ever bothered to change considering the million and one other things that needed their attention. There were always more things to fix than money to fix them. And besides, what were the odds one of them would actually get locked into the room from the outside? While parts of the city had gone to hell, their section of downtown had remained relatively safe.

Will managed to clear the storage room of any screwdrivers or tools Sam could use to open the door ahead of time. Sam didn’t seem savvy enough to know how to use a credit card to slide the lock open, so Will’s plan had a shot of success. Five minutes after Sam went inside, Will locked the door, then broke the key off inside.

Sam was pissed, especially when Will told him the locksmith said it would be several hours before he could get to the store and free him.

“Can’t you get some pliers and turn it or something?” Sam asked from the other side of the door, sounding desperate, even though he’d only just discovered his predicament.
 

“No, it’s jammed good,” Will said.
 

“Why did you even lock it?!”
 

“I dunno, I saw some shady looking people walking by, like they were casing the place or something, and I wanted to make sure you were secure.”

“Are they still out there?” Sam said, now sounding worried for Will, which turned up the flame under Will’s guilt.

“No, they got on the bus. Just sit tight; the locksmith will probably be here sooner than he said. He wants to under-promise so he can over-deliver. Good business, right?”

“What the hell am I supposed to do until then? I already did the deposits and books.”

“I dunno, maybe you can do some organizing while you’re in there.” Will laughed. Though Sam was obsessive about many things, organization of the storage room wasn’t one of them, a source of minor bickering between them for years.

“Nice try,” Sam said. “I’ll find something to read.
That
shouldn’t be a problem.”

Will laughed, then went back to the counter up front, happy he’d managed to find a loophole, and hoping it would work. His past experiences at finding loopholes had always blown up in his face, though. But the other times, he’d tried direct methods of intervention, trying to tackle a problem head-on. Locking Sam in a room seemed less direct. He wasn’t trying to stop theaccident, but trying to keep Sam from being there. Perhaps fate wouldn’t notice such an indirect method of interference.

Perhaps.

Shortly after two o’ clock, Will heard the sirens of racing ambulances and police cars. Something had happened, right on schedule. And Will was safe and sound.

After 3 p.m., the locksmith freed a grateful Sam from the storage room. The way Sam carried on, and his level of gratitude, you’d think he’d been a prisoner of war and not a man who’d been subject to a minor inconvenience. Will teased him mercilessly, then called Wong’s and had them deliver chicken fried rice and veggies, and convinced Sam to do the deposit later. He could have a late lunch in the storage room, and write in there.

“Fine,” Sam said, reluctantly breaking routine for the first time in years.

Later that day, they heard from one of their customers about a horrible accident two blocks away. A drunk driver had driven straight into the window of Tony’s Pizza just after 2 p.m. He killed two people diners inside the restaurant.
 

“Wow,” Will said to Sam, “You walk by there every day around that time.”

“I know. Some luck I got locked in the back room, eh?”

Will smiled.
Lucky indeed.

Will worried a little that something would happen to Sam in the days or weeks after that. But his fear eventually dimmed when no new dream warnings haunted his sleep. Will had found a loophole. And after that, the prophetic dreams had stopped, and he no longer woke filled with dread. Life had become, for the first time in decades, normal.

But now, a year later, while one stress was gone from his life, another remained – the bookstore.

He needed to convince Sam to sell it while they still could walk away with something other than debt. Will would be 50 next year, and didn’t need this sort of uncertainty hanging like a pregnant cloud above his head.

“We should stop the bleeding now,” he told Sam a hundred times, if not a thousand, after the new cafe/bookstore opened just down the street. The new bookstore was gigantic: two stories with music listening stations, comfy love seats and sofas sprinkled throughout the store. Bookstores were supposed to be intimate, and this new behemoth was as intimate as a whorehouse with its trendy cafe serving overpriced coffee and baked goods while hipster music piped through a premium speaker system, sending subtle messaging to their customers that they were in the perfect place to sit back, relax, and eventually buy anything from the books on the shelves to the boardgames on the end caps.
 

Hidden Wonders was the antithesis of the giant store – a narrow hole in the wall packed to the rafters with an inventory that was half used books, and almost half titles that had never harbored hope of hitting a bestseller’s list. It looked like an old and messy closet compared to these new spacious bookstores. Will knew there was no way in hell they had a chance to compete. He thought people wanted small, intimate, and friendly. But the numbers didn’t lie. People
said
they wanted stores like Hidden Wonders, yet their actions told the truth – they preferred corporate-defined trendy, bargain-priced books, and overpriced snacks. Will found it funny that people balked at paying retail price for a book, something that a writer poured his or her heart and soul into, and which you could only find only in specific shops, yet gladly paid premium prices on coffee, something so readily available and at much cheaper prices.