Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (25 page)

“If you so much as look at my daughter with an impure thought, I won’t need a gun to fucking kill you,” Mary said, eyes boring into Boricio’s.

She grabbed the gun roughly from Boricio, then handed it gently to Paola.

Boricio smiled a big grin, ignoring her threat.

“Much better!” Boricio started clapping. “I need Team Boricio fit and ready for a fight if we expect to get our asses up and over to Mordor. Rip Van Creepy ain’t gonna do shit to help us, since unfortunately he’s used the last of his voodoo to bring you all back from Zombie Island, instead of Black Godzilla like I suggested, no offense to any of you estrogen carriers. I’m glad we can get started. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Boricio said, patting his stomach. “I’m gonna go inside so I can make my morning grunt sculpture.”

Luca looked confused and said, “Huh?”

Paola said, “He means he’s going inside to take a crap.”
 

Luca smiled, then lightly laughed.
 

Mary said, “Paola!”

Boricio grinned, then turned his back to the crew and headed inside, slamming the screen behind him.
 

Once Mary was certain Boricio was inside and halfway to the bathroom, she took Luca gently by the arm and turned him toward her. “Are you still sure about all of this, Luca?”

He nodded. “I already told you,” he said. “Going with Boricio is what we’re supposed to do. If you don’t believe me, you can do whatever you want. I’ll understand. But my answer isn’t going to change.” His voice was ancient, almost stoic. If you’d just met him, you’d never suspect an eight year old was speaking. Mary said nothing, as Luca continued. “I saw Boricio as a boy. Before he was like this — before his stepfather broke him.”
 

He turned to her with swollen eyes. Mary couldn’t tell if they were sad or tired. “But I fixed him, Mary. I promise.”
 

“Life doesn’t work like that, Luca,” Mary shook her head. “I understand how you can
think
you fixed Boricio, but trust me, you didn’t. People can’t be fixed that easily. Believe me, Luca. I’ve wasted a lot of my years, too many actually, trying to fix broken men. But unless a man wants to be fixed, Luca, there’s nothing you can do to change him. And trying is useless.”
 

Mary caught Paola from the corner of her eye, listening in and pretending that she didn’t know her mother was talking about her father.
 

“But that’s just it, Mary,” Luca said.
 

“What?”

“He
did
want to be fixed. And I fixed him.” Luca used the hand that wasn’t holding his cane to point at his head. “From the inside.”

Paola said, “Yeah, Mom, Boricio’s super creepy. No doubt. But we’re better off with than without him. At least for now. I agree with Luca on that. Besides, I have to learn to defend myself.” She paused, then said, “And you.”
 

Mary looked surprised. Paola went on. “You’re gonna be like major pregnant soon, Mom. Who’s gonna defend you then?” Paola’s bottom lip started to tremble. She tried to say something else, but her voice cracked and she seemed as though she could barely swallow. Finally, she shook her head and said, “I can’t stand the thought of not being able to protect you and the baby, Mom. And I shouldn’t have to think about it. There are plenty of guns; why can’t I learn to use them?”

“Because you’re a kid. Kids aren’t supposed to be learning how to use guns and defend their mothers. They’re supposed to be going to school, having crushes on boys, and fighting with their moms — like it used to be,” Mary went from Luca to Paola and pulled her daughter into an embrace.

“That world is gone, Mom. You’re being naive. I need to learn, and Boricio said he would teach me to shoot.”
 

“I can teach you to shoot,” Mary said
 

The screen door slammed and Mary could hear Boricio heading back toward them.
 

“Well, that was fast,” Mary said.
 

Boricio laughed. “I’ve read that issue of
Entertainment Weekly
by the crapper 15,000 goddamned times, and I didn’t give a nugget of fuck about
Breaking Bad
or
The Vampire Diaries
or any of that other crap that got cancelled forever. Besides,” he smiled. “I’m what you might call a prolific shitter. One of the benefits to being full of shit, I guess.”

Mary hated herself for laughing, but she couldn’t help the small giggle that suddenly escaped from her mouth. Fortunately, surrendering to humor seemed to make everything better.
 

Boricio sidled up to her side and said, “Look, I’m sorry if I was stepping on those purty little digits of yours, Miss Mary, but I swear on my fat sack and all the creamy fun inside it, I was just trying to help your little lamb. You and Luca too.”

“You’re a pig, you know that?” Mary said.

Boricio grinned. “You’ve been living high on the hog, sister, but now it’s time to get down with the sows. When the apocalypse comes, you gotta be able to get in the mud.”
 

Mary held her hands in the air. “What does that even mean?”
 

“It means you’re lucky as fuck that you’ve managed to find yourself on Team Boricio.”
 

“Lucky?” Mary snorted. “
Team
Boricio had exactly one player when your last three players were drafted.”
 

Boricio cackled, probably appreciating a woman with balls. “Yeah, but when you’re the Michael Fucking Jordan of murder, it ain’t like you need a full roster.”

“And you’re right,” Mary said. “Paola
should
learn to shoot. But there’s no need to impose target practice on you, especially since you clearly have issues maintaining your patience. So thank you very much for the offer, but
I’d
rather be the one to teach my daughter to shoot.”

Boricio laughed, then kept on laughing for a long minute, sucking for air as his eyes went red, slowly making Mary madder. Finally he said, “
You’re
gonna teach her?”

“You think I can’t shoot?”
 

Boricio answered with another round of laughter.

Mary marched up to Paola, gently pulled the gun from her hand, then aimed at the bottles and fired six shots, evenly spaced, missing the glass every time.

Boricio’s laughter roared louder than the gunshots as Mary handed the gun back to her daughter.
 

Suddenly, the wood beneath the shelf shrieked, then splintered and cracked before collapsing to the ground and spilling shattering glass to the ground.
 

Boricio stopped laughing, and a new breed of smile settled on his face. “Well, tickle my pickle, Miss Mary, that is some sharp as shit shooting.”
 

Mary said, “
Desmond
taught me well.”
 

Boricio said, “Well, well, it looks like old Desmond Do-Right got two things right then.” He winked and smiled at Mary.
 

She wanted to throw up in her mouth for thinking it was almost charming.
 

* * * *

Chapter 5 — Teagan McLachlan

Teagan didn’t want to go back underground.
 

She had been beneath the earth since October, until a week ago when Ed finally decided it was safe for them to live above ground. She wasn’t sure why it hadn’t been safe before, and for all that time, but suspected it had something to do with the other Ed, who was now working with the Guardsmen on a secret mission.
 

Teagan had lived her entire life sheltered beneath her ultra-conservative parents, dreaming of escape from the trailer park. Then she’d spent the past five months so far underground that she thought she might never see sunlight again. For the first time in forever, Teagan finally felt like an adult. She had a relationship, a child, and most importantly, freedom. And for one glorious week, life felt amazing.

Ed rushed her outside into the cold night air and then into the waiting truck, where Sullivan was waiting in the driver’s seat. She took one last look back at the garden she’d been watering regularly for exactly one week, and the neat row of plants she nurtured to health beneath the warm sun, and felt it — along with her newfound life — slipping through her fingers.

Her dirt road street, shared by 11 other homes, was lined with black carts and bobbing lights as Guardsmen with face masks, flashlights, and weapons scrambled from house to house making sure everyone had pulled their shutters down and barred their doors.
 

The sirens’ wail was louder outside, turning Becca’s cry into a terrified pitch.

“We’ve got it, Sir,” one of the Guardsmen said to Ed from behind a speaker’s crackle as they passed on their way to the truck.

Teagan climbed into the back seat with Becca, then quickly shut the door to muffle the siren and calm her baby. She rocked Becca in her arms, whispering in her ear, “It’s okay, baby. Mommy’s got you. It’s okay.”

“What’s the status?” Ed asked, climbing into the front seat and slamming the door as Sullivan tore away from their house.
 

Teagan looked back to see Guardsmen pulling thick black metal shutters down over their windows and doors, sealing the house from God only knew what.

“Subjects 7XY and 17Xz were missing from their cells when the guards checked on the hour. Video screens for both cells went black for a one minute period about 10 minutes prior, at the same exact time. They were in their cells one minute. But after the screens went black, they were gone. There’s no registered activity on the security logs or door logins, until they appeared outside the compound about five minutes after they were reported missing. They were last detected on the north side, but could be anywhere by now.”

“How the hell did this happen?”

“We think Dr. Williams has something to do with it. He’s not answering his communicator, and people said he was acting weird all day.”

“Has anyone told Will Bishop?”

“That’s the other thing,” Sullivan said. “We can’t find him. No one has seen him all day or night. Not that that’s unusual, given the circumstances, but when I phoned him to report what happened, there wasn’t any answer. I went to his house and he was gone.”

“And surveillance?”

“You know he disabled his surveillance a while ago.”

“Oh yeah,” Ed said.

Teagan wanted to lean forward and ask what was happening, but figured it would be better to keep quiet, concentrate on making sure Becca stayed in her silence as she tried piecing the puzzle together from the relative safety of the back seat. Plus, Ed seemed visibly shaken by what Sullivan was saying. Asking him questions he probably wasn’t prepared to answer was sure to only make things worse.
 

They passed another road where a second row of houses was being shuttered. From what Teagan could tell, nobody else was being brought to the Facility, which meant the others were expected to ride out the mystery threat from inside their shuttered houses.

“Where’s the sphere?” Ed said.

Sullivan reached into the glove compartment, keeping one hand on the wheel as he navigated the quiet dark dirt road, and retrieved a dark glass orb, about half the size of a tennis ball. The sphere glowed with a red luminescence as it passed from one man’s hand to the next, sending an unexplainable shiver down Teagan’s spine.
 

“What’s that?” she asked as Ed slipped the sphere inside his jacket pocket, as if to shield it from her view immediately.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said, then turned to Sullivan. “I want you to bring them to my room, and station two guards outside until I return. Make sure you’re underground in case I have to use this.”

“OK,” Sullivan said.

“Use what?” Teagan asked again, not liking the finality in Ed’s ‘in case I have to use this’, as though it were the sort of last resort that meant he wouldn’t be coming home.

Teagan met Ed’s eyes, and was about to insist he tell her what the sphere was, but something in his stare begged her not to ask — she wouldn’t like the answer, and he didn’t want to lie.

Ed said to Sullivan, “I’m going to go find Will.”

“What about the doc? What do we do?”

“Shoot him on sight.”

They pulled up to the Facility’s hangar and stopped the truck just past two Guardsmen. Sullivan got out first, then opened Teagan’s door. She climbed from the truck with Becca, who had stopped crying on the ride.
 

Ed kissed Becca on the head and Teagan on the mouth.

“Don’t worry,” he promised, “everything will be fine.”

“Are you sure?”
 

“Yes,” Ed nodded, giving them each one more kiss. “I love you both.”

He climbed back inside the truck, then left Teagan standing beside Sullivan in the hangar’s interior. She couldn’t move as tears began to flood her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Sullivan asked, leading Teagan toward the doors and into the Facility.

“He’s never told me he loved me before,” she said.