by Platt, Sean
Wimpy Dick looked back at The Captain. He nodded, then Wimpy Dick said, “Where do I go?”
“Over there,” Boricio pointed toward the stairs. “We’re going up, then down the hallway to the second door on the right.”
Brent went up the stairs, then down the hallway to the second door on the right as Boricio followed behind. Callie and Die Hard went next. Fugly Boricio took the rear.
At the top of the stairs Boricio called, “It’s okay, Miss Mary, we’re about to come into the bedroom, but I swear on my you know what that shit is peachy. But keep your guns ready just in case some shit goes down, eh?”
Wimpy Dick looked back at Boricio, then opened the door when he nodded.
Mary and Paola were sitting protectively on either side of Luca, who was still lying on his bed, barely breathing and looking a million years old while doing it. The Captain approached the bed, then stared at Luca for a long while before shaking his head.
“That’s not my brother.”
Boricio said, “I told you he wasn’t from your world.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not what I mean. I felt him, my Luca, here. Here with you. But now I can’t feel him at all.”
“Is that why you look like you just ate shit pie from the serving spoon?”
The Captain stared at old Luca on the bed and said, “I can’t feel my brother anymore, not on that bed or anywhere else. I’m starting to wonder if he’s dead.”
Boricio had a battery of questions to ask Fugly Boricio about that shit, but he never got a chance since the second he said the word dead, Boricio heard the screeching of tires and the death of an engine outside.
“You expecting anyone?” Boricio said to the room.
Die Hard looked bothered, and Wimpy Dick upset. Callie shuffled her feet.
The Captain shook his head as both Boricios went to the window.
Boricio peeled the curtain back and saw a face he never thought he’d see again.
Boricio whooped and hollered and screamed a high-pitched hallelujah which ended in a whistle when he saw Charlie hopping from the driver’s side of another black van.
He turned to Callie. “Looks like your sugar must be extra sweet, seeing as how Charlie came all this way to play the slots.” He turned to The Captain. “Don’t feel bad. She wouldn’t let me taste, neither.”
Boricio whooped and hollered again, then left the group, not worrying if anyone was walking behind him, but hearing the whole crowd of them anyway.
He tore through the hallway, then down the stairs and to the front door, swinging it open as Charlie’s feet hit the front porch.
“Well, hell’s bells, Charlie Cheese Dick,” Boricio said. “Welcome the fuck home!”
* * * *
CHAPTER 10 — Ryan Olson Part 2
Black Mountain, Georgia
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…
“Please, kill me,” Ryan begged Lisa as she aimed the shotgun at his face. “Please. I don’t want to be one of them.”
The shotgun shook in Lisa’s hands, and Ryan could see the emotions spinning like pinwheels in her eyes. She wanted to do it. Wanted to kill him. But a part of her still saw him as human and not one of the monsters which had just butchered the woman and her unborn child.
She pulled the gun away, then sharply spun so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Kill me!” Ryan repeated, now shouting.
“No!” Lisa said, shaking her head and turning back to face him. “You’re not one of them! Boricio said you were different and I believe him. We need to get out of here and save him. And I need your help.”
“No,” Ryan said. “Go alone.” He shook his head. “I can’t help you.”
He was swirling with too many emotions, mostly rage, along with the endless clicking, beeps, and mutant shrieks swimming across the surface of his mind. Beyond the cacophony was something else — a bottomless hunger nothing would sate.
As Ryan looked at Lisa, he began to imagine how easy it would be to bite into her flesh, and taste whatever it was she had inside her.
He shook his head, closing his eyes, trying to drive the sick thoughts from his head before they drove him to action.
It was happening.
He was turning.
As memories of the mutant feasting on the baby ran through his head, Ryan felt another wave of nausea stewing in his guts.
Then he felt something else . . . a sick delight in the sensation of the unborn flesh in his — and the other mutant’s — teeth, ripping the life from its body and gulping it down like milk from a mother’s breast.
“We’ve gotta go,” Lisa said, offering Ryan a hand to help him to his feet. “We need to get out of here while we still can.”
“I can’t go with you,” he said.
“You have to!” Lisa cried. “I can’t stop them alone.”
“I’m . . . changing.”
“What?!” Lisa said, taking a step back.
“It’s happening. I can feel it.”
“No,” Lisa said, shaking her head. “No, you’re just trying to scare me so I’ll shoot you.”
Ryan forced himself to look at her, barely able to control his rising urge to bite her. He could sense her fear which further fueled his hunger.
“Fucking kill me or I will eat you just like he ate her and her baby!” Ryan screamed.
He rose to his feet and started to walk toward her, eyes boring into her, glaring. If she wasn’t going to shoot him, he’d scare her into it. He had to end this now.
He had nothing left.
He was becoming a monster.
Time to die.
Maybe he’d see Mary and Paola in Heaven, assuming Heaven wasn’t as much of a lie as Earth had turned out to be.
He looked into Lisa’s scared eyes and stepped closer, just inches away.
“Do it!” he screamed.
Lisa stepped back and lifted the shotgun, aiming it at him, crying, “Please, don’t make me.”
“Do it! Do it! Do it!” he goaded her.
“Are you sure?” she cried, shotgun shaking in her hands.
“Please,” he begged. “Please.”
He closed his eyes, bracing for the bullet. As Ryan waited for death, he drew more thoughts from the mutants, the infected, Charlie, and the Darkness swirling inside him.
He saw that the Darkness was walking up to a house.
Is this where Boricio is?
The door opened.
Ryan saw the other Boricio answering the door, a wide smile of recognition on his face. Beyond Boricio, he saw another familiar face — Mary!
And there, beside her . . .
Paola!
They’re alive!
They’re here and alive!
Ryan couldn’t die now.
He had to get to them.
He had to protect them.
He had to say something to stop Lisa before she shot him.
He opened his mouth and cried, “Nooo!”
He was too late.
The gun thundered before the world went silent.
TO BE CONTINUED…
YESTERDAY’S GONE
EPISODE 18
“Hard Reset Protocol”
* * * *
CHAPTER 1 — Luca Harding
Saturday
October 15, 2011
morning
Las Orillas, California
Luca’s skin was burning. He opened his eyes and put an end to the dream where Mommy was making eggs on his arms.
The sun was brighter than it should have been. Light poured through the window like buckets splashing against the glass.
Luca turned to look at his Cars alarm clock, but it was off.
He didn’t like the feeling in his arms, tingly bad and kind of burny. Luca wanted to scratch his skin, but stopped himself because Mommy said that scratching always made things worse.
The itchy burny would probably go away if he ignored it.
Luca pulle
d off the covers and got out of bed, then went number one in the bathroom. His toothbrush was on the counter when he went pee, but was gone by the time he flushed the toilet.
Just like his Cars alarm clock when he went back inside his room.
The house was too quiet.
Luca went to the closet, peeled off his Lego pajamas, pulled on his jeans and his favorite Star Wars tee shirt — the one that said “I had friends on that Death Star” that his dad bought because he thought it was funny.
Luca dropped his Lego pajamas on the floor only a second before, but they were already gone, just like his Cars alarm clock and everything else in the room — the bed, the desk, his toys, all of it gone. His room was completely empty, the walls were now white instead of blue, and there was a different carpet on the floor which smelled new.
He went to the window because he wanted to see the rainbow he thought would be there. But there wasn’t a rainbow.
There’s supposed to be a rainbow.
This wasn’t right.
Nothing was.
Luca couldn’t hear his mom or his dad, or his sister, Anna. He felt like he’d been in this feeling before, too. But the house was even emptier than it had been the last time. It felt like his family had moved away in the middle of the night and sold the house.
Luca blinked, and wanted to cry. He hated that everything was different.
He went to his window again and saw a sign in the front yard which read, “FOR SALE.”
Oh my God, they did sell the house! They moved away without me!
Luca ran to the kitchen, looking for the phone so he could call his Mom’s cell phone. He had to get a hold of her and tell her to come back. She forgot him. The phone was gone though. The kitchen was just as empty as every other room. He tensed as something flashed at the corner of his eyes. Luca expected to see his cat, Lucky, but Lucky wasn’t there. He saw a dog instead.
And suddenly memories began to come forth.
“Dog Vader!” Luca cried, happy to see his old friend.
The dog sat on its haunches for several seconds before he opened his slobbery jaw and said, “I never liked that name, you know.” Dog Vader made a low rumbling growl to let Luca know he was only joking.
“Do you still want me to call you Kick?”
Dog Vader said, “It doesn’t matter what you call me, so long as you listen to what I say.” Dog Vader was using his Serious Voice. But Luca didn’t want to hear the Serious Voice, at least not inside his too-empty house. “Can we go outside?” Luca asked, then said, “Aren’t we supposed to get the bathtub car and follow the rainbow?”
“There are no more rainbows, Luca,” Dog Vader shook his snout back and forth. “And there aren’t any rainbows like before.”
Dog Vader went from his haunches to all fours, then trotted toward the front door where he waited for Luca to open it. They stepped into the bright light outside together. And just as Dog Vader said, there were no rainbows.
“Where did they go?” Luca whispered, realizing that he didn’t feel the itchy burny anymore either. “Where’s my family?”
“They were never here. On this world, they died two years ago. Everything you saw was a lie,” Dog Vader said. “But a necessary lie. A good one.” Dog Vader’s snout suddenly shortened and his shoulders started to grow as he lost all his fur. “A lie without cause is a lie without effect.” He went from all fours back to his haunches, until he was suddenly standing on two human feet.
Dog Vader was no longer a dog. He was the tall Indian, towering over Luca, with a giant flowing headdress and a long plastic pipe.
“You lied to yourself,” the Indian said.
Luca slowly shook his head, trying to understand.
“You have stolen from you, Luca. The YOU from the other Earth lost his mother and father, so he decided to steal yours. Then some part of you, maybe some parts of him, made you believe the lie when you arrived here. You saw things as you wanted to see them — as you needed to see them — in order to cope. I was here to help you find Will. I made the rainbows, and then led you to him.” The Indian looked down, then gently set his palm on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Luca” he said. “Don’t cry. There are ways to make everything right.”
Luca wiped his right cheek, then swiped at the other one. “How?” he asked, looking up at the Indian.
“You must go to Black Island. There is a vial in the moon in the bedroom of the boy who stole your life. In that vial is something which can either be very good or very bad. YOU have to open it, Luca. You do, before anyone else finds it.”
“I can’t do that,” Luca shook his head. “I’m not strong, or brave. I know I look like an old man, but I’m only a boy inside.”
“You aren’t only a boy,” the Indian said. “You never were. You are pure, Luca. Even when walking through the mind of another, you’ve never done so with dirty feet. And yes, you are brave, my boy, for it is only the courage to continue that counts, and you’ve never failed to set one foot firmly in front of the other no matter how scared you were. You are the only one who can balance the world against the Black Pieces.”
“The Black Pieces?”
“Yes,” the Indian nodded. “The Black Pieces, The Darkness, The Void, The Oblivion, The Wicked Iniquity of Nothing, and The Limbo — it has more names across more universes than there are grains on your beaches or stars in your sky. The Black Pieces,” the Indian continued, “are the opposite of me.”
“So, what are you?”
“We, The Darkness and Us, started out the same. We are Light. We are Life, Creation, and We are the Infinite Possibility of All. But we can also be tainted and turned into The Darkness. It destroyed one realm we lived in. So our children sent us out in vials, in hopes that we might be found and bring Light back into being.”
Luca shuddered. His itchy burny was back, even if it was only in his mind. He was confused. He’d heard people say the monstrous things that had been attacking them were aliens. But the Indian was describing it so differently. Like they were these forces, rather than actual physical alien beings.
“Why can’t you fight the Black Pieces?”
The Indian shocked Luca with a long fit of laughter before he said, “I can fight the Black Pieces, and I do.” He looked down at Luca, his hand still resting on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m fighting The Black Pieces right now by standing here speaking with you. However, I am but a part, a small part against the many. We need to find the vial to become stronger — to multiply as The Darkness has.”
The Indian dropped to his knee, then set his pipe on the porch and held Luca’s eyes. “You will do something about it, Luca. Because you are strong, and because you are brave, even if you do not yet see it. But I am spread too thin to win this war. I am not really here,” the Indian waved his hands up and down his body. “At least not like you see me. No more than the rainbows in the sky which led you to a father from another world. I am but a residual of the Light passed from the Luca of one world to the Luca in another. I am inside you, but I’m not strong enough alone.” He pat Luca on the back. “I need, we need to get the vial.”
“Or what?”
“Or the world will be plunged forever into Darkness. And I, and all the people you know here, will be consumed by, and become part of, the Darkness.”
Luca had a million more questions that he wanted to ask, but then the Indian said, “Not now. Now is time to wake up.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 2 — Boricio Bishop Part 1
Dunn, Georgia
Boricio’s Compound
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…
Boricio Bishop ran his hands over his bald head as he watched Charlie appear in the doorway.
Every part of Bishop bristled as his doppelganger, Asshole Boricio, welcomed Charlie like his long lost brother.
Something’s wrong. How the hell did he get out of his cell?
Did he escape?
If so, how many bodies did he
leave behind?
Boricio felt a sudden danger he couldn't define, as though it singed his skin with its flames, though he wasn’t sure where the fire was. He had to be careful how he handled the Charlie situation. This other Boricio was a loose canon, and while Boricio had been able to handle nearly any situation life threw his way, he wasn’t sure he could handle the him from another world — the him who seemed all id, no restraint. Asshole Boricio had never been adopted by Will, and had falsely learned that destroying everything around him was the best way to understand himself better.
He wouldn’t think twice about getting down and bloody to protect his own.
“Well,” the Asshole Boricio said, “get the fuck in here and make yourself at home!”
Charlie smiled, sort of, then stepped inside the house, casting his eyes across the room as though he were taking it all in for the first time, almost with the same look as if he were observing a huddle of strangers he’d never seen before.
He barely glanced at Callie, which struck Boricio as bizarre, especially after what he’d seen passing between the two of them on the cell monitors the night before.
Asshole Boricio led Charlie to the dining room table, then pulled out a chair and gestured for him to sit. “I imagine you couldn’t find any open drive-thrus on your way over here, Chucky Fuck Stick, so you want one of Miss Mary’s pancakes to powder your gut?” He nodded toward Mary, standing by the bottom stair, shoulders tensed and arms wrapped around her daughter. “They’re not as good as Boricio’s World Famous Flapjacks, which I’m sure you’re a lucky enough fucker to remember, but they’ll do for short notice, I suppose.”
Something about the asshole’s pride in his pancakes forced Boricio into the twitch of a grin. He swallowed his smile and said, “What in the hell are you doing here, Charlie? You’re infected. And how did you get out of your cell? How did you leave Black Mountain? How did you find us?”