Yesterday's Gone: Season Six (5 page)

Neither of them spoke, lying in silence together until a scream shattered their moment.

* * * *

CHAPTER 3 — Mary Olson

Mary woke shivering, surrounded by black.

She was cold, confused, unable to remember anything but her name.

Where am I?

Fear was copper on her tongue. She reached into the darkness. Her fingers touched cold, wet grass, and the world was slowly lit as if someone were turning a dimmer above.

She looked up to see the full moon peeking out from behind dark clouds gliding through the sky. The world was bathed in a milky-blue luminescence, revealing something that seemed unreal — two rows of thick, ancient trees on either side, carving a neatly sculpted path of tall grass in front and behind her.

Again, Mary wondered where she was.

She looked ahead and behind, both paths identical, not knowing which way to go.

Her head buzzed, sounds of something she couldn’t quite decipher swirling beneath a high-pitched ringing. She reached up to cover her ears.

Moving hurt.

Her body ached, though she saw no signs of injury.

Mary was wearing jeans and a dark sweater, clothes she couldn’t remember owning.

Confused, she moved forward, her back and legs aching with every step. The ringing in her ears faded, though the whispers — perhaps fragments of memory — remained. She tried to focus but couldn’t make out anything other than a male voice, his words muffled as if underwater.

She continued forward and noticed something ahead: small and red, almost glowing in the grass.

Confused, she picked up her pace then stopped in front of the small glowing object. She bent to retrieve it: a red rose petal, bleeding with a luminous amber light, fading to black as her fingers rubbed the soft, silky texture.
 

The petal blackened, and the rose disintegrated, so fast that Mary feared its undoing would spread to her hand and render her into nothingness.

She was about to turn back and head in the other direction when she saw more petals ahead, all lighting at once, illuminating the path.
 

She had to be dreaming.

Yet this didn’t
feel
like a dream. The cold air pocked her with gooseflesh. The gentle breeze rattled tree limbs. Somewhere in the distance, she heard a new sound —
a train?

Mary kept moving, faster now. Each petal disintegrated when she reached it, charred embers lifting then getting carried off on the wind in every direction.

This must be a dream.

Ahead, the path narrowed until it closed in on itself. A voice called out in the dark.
 

“Mommy?”

Paola?

Mary remembered her daughter, shot dead before her eyes.
 

More memories flooded her mind, but Mary ignored them, clinging to the image of Paola.

Maybe she’s not dead. Maybe she brought me to this place. Maybe there’s some part of her still alive!

Mary shoved herself forward, following the trail of petals into the darkness.

The train raged behind her, so loud they must be sharing a path.

Mary broke into a run, ignoring her aching body and buzzing head, along with the branches scratching and scraping her skin. The path closed in around her.

The train screamed behind her. Then Mary recognized the sound: a tornado, not a train.
 

A flash of memory raced through her mind, too fast to grasp or make sense of before it was gone. Another deadly tornado — on that other world.

She looked back and wished she hadn’t. Everything behind her was coming apart — like the petals — remnants cast in every direction.

The path had sealed ahead of her, giving way to an endless tangle of brambles.
 

The red petals had vanished, but Mary couldn’t turn back. Whatever was ripping the world to pieces was growing closer and louder, eager to catch her. The only way was forward, through the sharp brambles.

“Mommy!” Paola’s voice cried out, scared, from somewhere ahead.

“I’m coming!” Mary screamed.

She closed her eyes and threw her arms forward, pushing the branches aside, suffering cuts like she were barreling through a field of razor wire.

The roar behind her sounded like it was whipping repeatedly at chunks of earth. With the sound, she felt tremors underfoot, convinced that the ground would split open and claim her.
 

The wind assaulted her from all sides, and branches thrashed violently, lashing and lacerating her flesh.

She cried out from the pain.

Mary opened her mouth and felt chunks of the world ripped up and carried away. Clumps of dirt, grass, and rock forced their way down her throat, threatening to choke her as she struggled to spit.

The sound grew louder, swelling with a pressure that supplanted every sense except pain.

With nothing to hold her, Mary was moments from lifting off and getting carried away by the sky.
 

Then it happened.

Mary felt her body lift, slowly at first, then with great speed, racing upward at an angle so fast, she was certain she’d smash into something — if there was anything left of the world — and get splattered by the force in an instant. Just like that, she’d be as undone as the petals and earth.

Mary reached out as if doing so could somehow control her flight, that she could manage and maybe slow her elliptical vortex. Shards of debris lacerated her body for the effort.
 

Her head was thrumming, dizzy. She couldn’t tell which way was up as she spun through the night sky. She wanted to look around, to gather some sense of where she was and where she was going. How near she was to the ground, if there was something she might be able to grab. Maybe she’d see Paola. Could reach her. Be with her again, as impossible as it seemed.

She didn’t dare open her eyes; she’d lose them forever if she tried, and maybe find herself a half mile in the sky. Like in those old Roadrunner cartoons, she’d plummet to nothing the second she saw reality for what it was.

As if reading her mind, the tornado stopped.

So did everything else.

And there was nothing but silence.

Mary fell but never hit the ground.

She found herself standing in the darkness, looking around, amazed by the world — empty except for an impossibly smooth dark soil surface.
 

Where’s all the debris?

Where’s Paola?

“Paola?”

Mary was filled with an ominous chill while standing among the nothing. The world was wrong, and she was desperate to know why.

She saw movement in the distance — a tree. One sole tree, giant, with hundreds of skeletal branches dotted by surreal, luminous red roses. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Something hit her head, hard.
 

Mary reached up, feeling a giant knot rising under her scalp, certain she was bleeding.

What the hell hit me?

She looked down and saw a small rock.

Where did that come from?

Another fell, maybe six feet away.

And then another.

Mary looked up. Her heart stopped as she saw that everything the cyclone had ripped from the ground was hundreds of feet above in one giant mass, falling fast.

She screamed, then ran.

Mary didn’t get far before the earth fell and buried her alive.

And now she was farther from Paola.

Mary woke to a muffled sound, a familiar voice saying her name.

She remembered the Black Guardsmen raiding their hiding spot. The bomb going off.

She opened her eyes, surprised to be alive.

Luca’s face swam into focus. Behind him, light seeped through an apartment window.

She still couldn’t get used to seeing him so old, now looking like he was in his late fifties. The healing had taken its toll. And he’d just used it to bring her back, just when she’d been so close to being with Paola again.
 

She sat up, surprised that her body no longer hurt. Even her headache was gone. But there was still a pain deep in her soul, an ache that even Luca couldn’t heal.

She looked up at him then at Boricio, Ed, and Jake Barrow all standing and waiting for her to return like Lazarus.

Mary looked at Luca again. Poor Luca. He looked like he’d aged five years, if not more, his hair gone completely gray, the lines in his face a bit deeper.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“What?” he asked, his kind eyes wide and confused.

“Why did you bring me back?”

Luca stared at her, as if he couldn’t believe her question.

“Are you okay?” Boricio asked.

“No!” she shouted, getting to her feet.

Dizziness overwhelmed Mary and sent her stumbling forward.

Boricio and Ed reached out to break her fall.

Mary found her feet then swiped at their hands, eager to be away from them.

“Leave me alone!” She turned around, finding the unfamiliar apartment’s front door. She opened it then rushed through and into the hallway.

“Mary!” Boricio cried out.

Mary kept running.

* * * *

CHAPTER 4 — Boricio Wolfe

Boricio and Keenan traded looks of confusion as Mary left the apartment.

“What the hell?” Boricio said to himself.
 

Luca, surprisingly, had the only response. “It’s Paola.”

“What?” Boricio asked.

“Mary heard her while she was dying and didn’t want to come back.”

Boricio wanted to ask what in the devil’s dick that even meant, but he knew he didn’t have long if he wanted to catch up with Mary. They were in a new apartment, one she hadn’t been to before, surrounded by unfamiliar territory until they could reconnect with others in The Resistance.
 

He raced out the door and into the hallway, hoping she would just be outside, pissed, maybe sucking on a nicotine titty.

But she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

“Fuck!” Boricio turned back to the apartment. “Keenan, Barrow, I need some help!”
 

Three seconds later, Boricio was directing Barrow to start searching apartments on this floor, Keenan to head upstairs. He’d take the bottom floor.
 

“Wait for me!” Luca called out, grabbing his machete and strapping it to his belt.

“Dude, you stay put.” Protecting Luca was their prime fucking directive. He wasn’t just a healer. Luca was connected to the aliens, could warn his friends when he felt them near, and had thus far shielded them from discovery. Without Luca, they wouldn’t have had any of their successes killing squads of Guardsmen, sabotaging known alien outposts in The City, or finding new people for The Resistance.

“I might be able to find her.” Luca tapped his head with his index finger.

“Ah, right, I forgot.” Boricio hadn’t forgotten but knew Luca’s skills were declining. Moving them from one world to another, and healing all the people he’d been healing, had beaten his body like a drum, turning him into an antique over the last several years. Additionally, the boy-turned-old-man seemed to look older every morning he woke up.
 

But fuck it, he was out here. May as well use his powers. “Okay, put that detector to work.”

Luca closed his eyes and focused. He looked down. “She’s downstairs. Heading for the street.”

“Try and keep up.” Boricio bolted toward the stairs and took them two then three at a time, six flights to the bottom.
 

The old kid couldn’t keep up, but Boricio figured if he were fast enough, he’d end the search before Luca made it downstairs anyway.

Boricio raced out into the street, into the bright morning light, and looked around, searching for any sign of Miss Mary Quite Contrary. The street was lined with apartment buildings, many climbing ten stories or higher. She could easily squirrel away in any one, which was why they’d picked Las Orillas to hide in.

Mary appeared in the doorway of an apartment building just up the road. Boricio sighed with relief.
 

She started walking toward him, her eyes on the ground, avoiding his gaze. She reached him and stopped, still not looking up.

“What’s wrong, Mary?”

“Nothing.” She looked up and met Boricio’s eyes, not a trace of tears or any expression.

“You storm out like a redneck at a gay pride parade and expect me to buy ‘nothin’? Come the fuck on, Mary. Boricio knows when there’s bullshit in his burrito.”

Boricio heard Luca on the radio behind him, telling the others that they’d found Mary.
 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Mary said, “okay?”