Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (43 page)

The Darkness flowed from the old man, into a guard, and then into Charlie.

Oh God.

Charlie’s mind was then a prisoner of the Darkness, walking through the cell, carrying the guard
It
had momentarily possessed to the elevator.
It
pressed the guard’s hand to the touch pad, then set
Itself
free.

The Darkness murdered the first guard it met, ripping the head clean from his body. A second guard charged the Darkness, but
It
opened Charlie’s mouth and spewed out a part of itself into the air, then onto the Guardsman’s face and down his throat, until
It
started to spread inside that man too.
 

Ryan felt a horrible cracking inside his mind, a mental fissure from too many perspectives. He cradled his head in his hands, then dropped to his knees, screaming through the pain of his three sudden perspectives: A terrified Charlie witnessing the horror before him, the Darkness inside Charlie, and the stewing Darkness inside the Guardsman.

The Darkness continued to seep through the halls, in search of an exit.
It
wanted to follow Callie and Boricio so
It
could find someone — a child
It
wanted to kill.
 

As
It
met resistance,
Its
compromised Guardsman trailed beside
It
, shooting anyone trying to stop them. The Darkness and the Guardsman quickly made their way into the civilian sector, where they infected or murdered everyone in sight.

“Oh God,” Ryan cried, helplessly watching from the horror in his mind.
 

He pounded on his cell, screaming for someone to free him so he could help.

“Open the cell! Let me out!”

No one answered.
 

Ryan fell to the floor, screaming and helpless.

* * * *

CHAPTER 5 — Boricio Wolfe Part 1

Dunn, Georgia

March 31, 2012

FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…

Boricio leapt from his bed and threw a wad of covers onto the floor, then bolted to his window, tore a handful of curtains to the side, and peered out and into the empty yard below.

Boricio was certain he’d see something outside, sitting there like danger waiting to hatch. But the yard was empty, unlike Boricio’s overburdened mind.
 

He’d had another beer-battered bullshit of a dream; fucked up beyond all reason, this one with him marching over every end of the impossible. He’d spent his last few hours sleeping lost in a never-ending eternity of demons in hell, and Monopoly games with Rip Van Creepy, except Van Creepy was a little kid again. And the dreams were weirder for how real they seemed, as if he weren’t
just dreaming
— he was seeing something yet to come.

He went into the bathroom, took a shit, then threw on his shoes and returned to the window, shook off the haze of déjà vu and stared outside at all the empty he wasn’t expecting to see.

Boricio wondered why he couldn’t shake the weird feeling. Maybe it was a scent in the air that most of his mind was too stupid to understand but some other part of him picked up on and was filtering forward and telling him, “Hey, pay attention, fucker!”
 

As he’d been telling Paola while trying to show the girl how to shoot straight, some shit you knew faster than you thought. That sorta crazy shit happened in nature all the time. It was people that ignored it. Boricio read about how some botanists at some college infected a group of tobacco plants with a virus. Within days, another group of plants near the infected ones sensed the danger, and produced a chemical in their leaves to protect themselves.

That was crazy shit. And this shit was like that shit, though Boricio didn’t quite know how, or what he was sniffing. Because he didn’t understand the scent in the air, he didn’t know what to do. He took a final look outside before turning from the window.

It was probably just the unease of sleeping without anyone in the house able to stand guard. Boricio hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since back when he was bunking with Charlie and the rest of the boys. If he couldn’t relax enough to get some decent shut eye, it meant he was either always awake, or haunted by nightmares.
 

He was majorly on edge, still a bit drunk from his late night shooting the shit with Mary, and just a little fucking exhausted. Ever since he’d healed Luca and aged a decade, he’d yet to feel the same kind of energy he had just a month ago.

But at least he wasn’t hungover. Boricio didn’t get hangovers. No matter how much he drank, Boricio couldn’t remember a single time where he had felt fucked up the following day. Level of consumption made no matter. Boricio could drink himself anywhere from tipsy to totally fuckered, then wake up the next morning with a fanny cleaver fat enough to fuck the remainder of the day.
 

Frequency of drink didn’t mean dick either. Whether Boricio got himself drunk three times a week or three times in one day, inebriation faded equally fast. He would collapse into bed drunk, then wake eight or so hours later, hungry as fuck. But this morning, Boricio was suffering from a helluva dry mouth, a slight headache that threatened to start pounding, and a flash of irritability at how shit in his head was messier than a murder scene.
 

Boricio grabbed his knife and gun, then shoved them both into his pants before leaving his bedroom and heading downstairs.
 

Boricio could smell the pancakes. They had 800 or so giant bags of pancake mix, and an equal amount of syrup which Charlie and the crew had grabbed up a while ago from a Costco, excited as if they’d hit the lottery. Unfortunately, pancakes didn’t have the protein Boricio was constantly craving, and preferred first thing in the morning. Judging from the speed at which they were shoving forkfuls into their mouths yesterday, Paola and Luca seemed to be loving them like stupid kids usually did.
 

But Boricio was starting to worry about the lack of protein, for him and for all of them. They’d need to make a run soon to find some beef jerky, beans, or start hunting some fresh meat. Too many shitty carbs made you fat, slow, and stupid.

And being fat, slow, and stupid was a one-way ticket to the morgue post-October 15.

Boricio stepped into the large dining room, then looked over at Mary tending to a pancake on the portable stove.

“Morning, Miss Mary,” he said, looking around the dining room, surprised to see he’d beat both Paola and Luca downstairs, despite the pounding in his head. “Where are the Happy Meals?”
 

She looked up. “Well, good morning. I’m surprised to see you walking.”
 

Mary smiled, and Boricio was surprised to find himself liking it, and without a dirty thought to chase it.
 

“Paola’s been up for a while,” Mary said. “She went upstairs to wake Luca, since he’s still sleeping. I’m surprised you guys didn’t cross one another in the hall. Want a pancake?” She lifted the pancake with a fork, then set it on a wide plate and held it out for Boricio.
 

It was the light brown color of a beautiful woman; Boricio couldn’t have cooked it better himself. He raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Thanks,” he said, taking the plate and wishing the hammers would stop slamming nails into his skull.
 

Paola came running downstairs, then spilled into the dining room. “Mom,” she cried, her voice slightly high and flying way too fast to not have trouble chasing behind it.

“What is it, Honey?” Mary moved her eyes from the frying batter to Paola.
 

“It’s Luca. He’s not waking up. And there’s nothing I can do. I keep calling him and shaking him and I even punched him in the arm once I worked up the courage to do it, but nothing is working.”

“Is he breathing?” Mary asked.
 

“I . . . I think so.”
 

“What do you mean, ‘you
think
so’?” Boricio said, his mouth full of pancake. “Fuckers either suck air or don’t. There ain’t no in-between when it comes to breathing. Is Rip Van Creepy sucking air or not?”

Paola said, “I guess so, but not very much.”
 

Well, FUCK!
 

Boricio dropped his plate onto the counter, then bolted up the stairs and charged into Luca’s room.
 

The man-kid had to be okay. It wasn’t even that Boricio cared, necessarily; it was that the old fucker was stringing the shit of their world together. He couldn't explain it, even to himself, but Boricio somehow knew that without Luca, things would take a sharp detour into Fuckedsville.

“Hey buddy,” Boricio yelled, a foot into his room. “Time to stop dreaming about the
Golden Girls
. Wake up and I promise we’ll find you some granny porn, so you can tug your raisin.”

One look at Luca, and Boricio understood why Paola wasn’t sure if he was breathing. He looked damned close to dead.

Boricio dropped to a knee and started to shake Luca.

“Is he okay?” Mary asked, suddenly in the room even though Boricio hadn’t heard her come in.

Before Boricio could answer, the sound of an engine roared from the front yard, then up into the room, bringing Boricio another sting of déjà vu.
 

Engines meant enemies and enemies meant fights. Fights likely meant death. Even if that death was dealt to someone other than Boricio, it was an inconvenience to his morning quiet.
 

Boricio leapt from the bedside and was at the window in a second, peeling the curtains aside. He turned to the girls. “A black van. Looks like it’s been beat to hell.”

His eyes returned to the window, then Boricio suddenly broke into a grin as the passenger door opened and Callie stepped out. He turned to Mary and said, “Holy fuck yeah, I know her.”
 

Boricio was smiling, though it faded like a hot fog when he saw the ugly mother fucker, bald as an 8-ball, and wearing Bluebeard’s eye patch, climb from the driver’s side. Something about the way the asshole was walking, gave Boricio the same wretched sense of déjà vu he’d felt when waking that morning, then again a minute before.

This shit isn’t right.
 

Two fresh fuckers — a guy who looked like former military and then a pasty faced soft guy who looked to be in his early thirties — joined the party.
 

Boricio didn’t know who the three fuckers with Callie were. He only knew that he wanted to murder the Jolly Roger before he had the chance to open his big ugly mouth. Something about the man made Boricio immediately angry. But something else about him made Boricio
almost
want to run and hide, something no man had ever made him want to do before.
 

Fucking Luca broke me. And now he’s gonna die before he can fix me!

It was good to see Callie, but if she was a hostage, and those men meant to harm her, or him, or anyone on Team Boricio, well then they had minutes to live, whether Boricio was frightened or not.
 

He closed the curtains and turned to Mary.
 

“I need you to stay upstairs,” he said. “You know the drill; don’t come down for dick.” He looked from Paola to Mary, all four eyes on his, then over to Luca, who was finally starting to lightly snore — a good sign, even though he still lay there looking mostly dead. “Go to my room and get my shotgun, get Little Lamb her peashooter, then both of you stay in here with Luca. I want all three of you in the same place. Got it?”

“Got it,” Mary said. “What are you going to do?”
 

“I’m gonna take my two friends Peacemaker and Snaggletooth, then go downstairs and see what needs to be seen.” Boricio lifted his shirt and showed Mary his pistol and sheathed knife pressed against the tan canvas of his tight abs.

“Okay,” Mary said, swallowing. Paola trembled beside her.
 

Boricio nodded again, left the room, then ran down the hallway to the stairs, leapt them in a trio of strides, and jumped past the bottom four, quickly eclipsing the distance between living room and front door.
 

Boricio could see the three fuckers and Callie out the window, but mostly as blurs and shapes. His hand was a foot from the knob before he saw the shit that soured his throat and held his breath hostage.

No.

No fucking way.

It isn’t possible.

Boricio had seen plenty of beer-battered bullshit, and about a billion pounds of goddamn impossible since he woke up too fucking early on October 15, lucky to wake up at all, wondering if the woman he cut had disappeared like all the rest of the planet’s fuck-all.
 

This was something different.
 

This changed the meaning of the goddamn word impossible.
 

Boricio swung the front door and stared into the eye of the bald scarred man; a horrible man with an intelligent stare.