Yesterday's Gone: Season One

by Platt, Sean

  Ben was sitting up in bed, mouth wide open in full cry.

  “Hey, buddy,” Brent said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I want Daddy,” he said, his voice tired, ragged from crying.

  “I’m here, buddy,” Brent said, “Want me to lay down with you for a few minutes?”

  “Yeah,” Ben said, wiping tears from his cheeks.

  Brent scooted his son over, slid next to him in the bed, put an arm around him, then rubbed his hair, which often soothed the boy to sleep. Ben relaxed almost immediately.

  “Daddy loves you so much,” he said, hugging his son tighter and kissing the back of his head.

  Usually, Ben would ask “how much” and they’d play a game where Brent would hold his hands apart in ever increasing amounts, saying, “this much.”

  Ben fell asleep without response. It never failed to amaze Brent how quickly his son could go from fully alert to fast asleep. Or in the mornings, when he rose at the crack of dawn, from comatose to running around the house at warp speed.

  As Brent lay beside his son, listening to his breathing slow and deep, he was tempted to get up and go back to working on his laptop. That was what he usually did after his son fell asleep, went right back to work.

  But this time, something compelled him to stay.

  As he stared at the back of his son’s head, and his soft round cheeks, he was suddenly overwhelmed with tears. How Ben must feel never seeing his daddy, or being brushed aside when Brent had work to finish? He wondered how much damage he’d already done to his child’s psyche, self-esteem, and overall level of happiness by being such an absent father.

  In that moment, his arm around his son, listening to him sleep, Brent started to see things with a clarity he’d never had.

  Time was flying faster by the day, month, and year. Soon, his son would be older and wouldn’t want hugs from Daddy, and certainly wouldn’t want to snuggle with him in bed. And they’d probably wind up battling in the teen years, if Brent’s relationship with his own father was the normal trajectory for father/son relationships.

  Moments like this, where Brent was everything in his son’s eyes, where Daddy could make everything alright with a hug, would soon be gone and lost forever.

  This was it, now or never.

  He decided to change, to make more of an effort to be home for his family. To live his life to the fullest.

  Of course, that’s not what happened. The next day was the first of several staff meetings announcing deep newsroom cuts. Reporters would need to work harder, better, and more hours per week than ever before. Or they’d find themselves next on the list.

  So Brent kept running on the hamster wheel while another year flew by.

  **

  Brent woke with regret drowning his eyes.

  As he wiped his tears, he looked at the recliner and saw that Luis had fallen asleep, a shotgun in his lap.

  What time is it?

  He glanced at his watch, an old fashioned pocket watch Gina had given him when Ben was born. It was nearing midnight.

  He was wondering if maybe Gina had already tried to get in the apartment, but was unable to.

  As Brent rose from his seat, someone knocked on the door.

  Luis snapped awake, gun ready.

  * * * *

  MARY OLSON

  October 16

  Just after dawn

  Belle Springs, Missouri

  Mary screamed.

  Desmond, John and Jimmy were all awake and by her side in seconds. “What happened to her, do you know?” Desmond asked.

  Mary shook her head, hysterical. She opened her mouth but her tongue was trapped. She tried to push a few words out, but the only things to leave were three long strings of guttural moans, followed by a soul-stripped bellow.

  Desmond tried to calm her, but didn’t have the first clue how. Jimmy stared, his verbal cascade uncharacteristically still. Nothing in his upper-class adolescence had prepared him for an unannounced end of the world, or the bottomless torment of a grieving, panicked mother. John’s three miscarriages in six years of marriage gave him the sharpest tools in the room, but he was still too hazy from liquid poison to pull anyone from the abyss.

  Desmond turned to Jimmy and John.

  “John, I need you to sweep the lobby, everywhere across the common area on the first floor. Jimmy, go outside and look for anything unusual. Check the pool and trash areas. I’ll stay with Mary.” Jimmy nodded and turned toward the door. John was already on his way.

  Mary tried to catch her breath, fighting against the 900-pound weight that sat in her stomach and plugged her throat.

  She’d been in the wooly midst of a wonderful dream, where everything was okay — before her fate collided with an unimaginable future where her life’s work went from giving the country’s lovers the right words to say when they didn’t have their own, to keeping her daughter from the edge of oblivion. Life’s work that lasted all of a day before driving Mary to failure.

  No. She couldn't, wouldn’t allow that to happen.

  “She’s gone...” Two words, but the ending of the second was swallowed by a wave of heaving, shattered sobs.

  “We will find her,” Desmond said in a soothing whisper. “She couldn’t have gone far. We just have to start looking.”

  “You don’t understand,” Mary cried. “I can’t feel her anywhere. Not at all. It’s like she’s gone gone. No thoughts, no energy, nothing. It’s like…” Mary fell into another pit of hysterics.

  I have to stop. Paola needs me. She’s in danger every second it takes me to get myself together. And if I don’t stop freaking out, things will get worse.

  Get it together, Mary. Now.

  If she’s dead, you killed her.

  99...98...97...96...95...

  Mary blended the rhythm of her breathing with the numbers in her head, slowly aligning her internal chaos with the new impossible reality.

  84...83...82....81...80...

  She took a long breath, then looked Desmond in the eye. “What do you think we should do?”

  Relief colored his face. Desmond pulled Mary into a sudden, surprising embrace, held her for a short moment, then pushed her softly away. “We’re going to find her and everything will be okay,” he said, holding her eyes. “But we’ve gotta be smart right now, and make sure we’re not letting fear drive the bus. Okay?”

  Mary nodded, then collapsed into a minute-long fit of coughing.

  John and Jimmy were back, standing a few feet away while waiting for their cue. “John, I want you to comb every corner of the first floor offices. Bathrooms, office stalls, under the cushions, everywhere. Leave nothing out.” He turned to Jimmy. “I need you to check the rooms.”

  “I already did,” he said. “Twice, she’s not in her room, or any of ours.”

  “No,” Desmond said. “I want you to check every room on the first floor. The locks are off so the doors should open. If they don’t open, make a list of rooms we need to check. We’ll go back and kick those doors in one by one.”

  “Mary,” his face softened, “You should check the restaurant area. Go through the dining room and kitchen. Maybe Paola got hungry, went to find something to eat and fell asleep. She was awfully tired, and the kitchen is the one area on the first floor where she might not have been able to hear us, even with all the screaming.”

  “I’ll check the exits, inside and outside and we’ll all meet back here as soon as we can.”

  More words weren’t needed. The men went off, each hunter going to gather on his own, hoping he’d be the one to return a happy girl to her panicked mother and likely praying he wouldn’t find something that would haunt her forever.

  Mary examined the dining area. The end of the world must have happened pretty early in the morning, because the entire first floor of the hotel had few signs of life. Tables were cleared, chairs pushed in, and not a single item of clothing draped the furniture. She turned around and gave the dining area a final glance, waved to John who caug
ht her eye from the other side of the lobby, then pushed the kitchen doors open to a powerful gust of her daughter’s emotional scent.

  She inched through the kitchen. Paola had been here. Mary took another step and was nearly knocked sideways by a powerful, unexpected wave of emotion featuring her ex-husband.

  Her throat closed and her head pounded. Her knees started to shake.

  Why do I feel Ryan in here? I can almost hear his voice and smell the sweat on his collar. But that’s not possible.

  A lone butcher knife resting on the counter sent an arctic chill through Mary. She picked it up, the chill grew colder. Paola had held the knife, maybe for a while.

  She shuddered, tossed the butcher knife on the counter with an angry clatter, then traded the cool, stale air of the kitchen for the crisp early morning Missouri air.

  Desmond was also outside, 30 feet away, inspecting an exit. “Any luck?” he called.

  Mary shook her head.

  “Let’s head back inside,” Desmond said, walking toward her. “I don’t think Paola is in the hotel, but we need to know for sure before we split up and look out here.”

  Mary felt like she was on the edge, about to fall.

  Demond said, “It’s going to be okay.”

  Mary nodded.

  Inside, everyone echoed the same report — they’d all seen more of the same — nothing.

  “There are five floors in the hotel,” Desmond said. “John, you take the second. Mary takes the third. And I’ll take four and five. Jimmy stays down here in case Paola slips in or out. When we’re done, we meet back here. If we find nothing, then we clear out immediately.”

  Desmond handed each of them a flashlight.

  They headed up the stairwell, which was dimly lit by emergency lights just as the hallways were. Mary got off on the 3rd floor, and started with the first door on the right. Desmond was right. It was smart to search the hotel first, but hard to do when every molecule inside her wanted to run from the hotel on a hunt to pick up Paola’s scent and trail. Because if there was one thing Mary knew in this moment full of unknowns, it was this — her daughter was not in the Drury.

  All the rooms in the first and second hallways were vacant, as were most of the rooms in the third. Then she opened the door to something so terrifying it managed to nudge a new thought in front of her missing daughter.

  Lying on the floor in the middle of two Queen-sized beds was another of the charred-looking creatures they’d found twitching on the side of the road the day before. Though it looked different — the creature from the day before had been mostly still, quietly vibrating until Desmond and a pair of bullets stopped it forever.

  This one was alive, animated, waiting.

  Mary had no time to measure the differences between the nightmares before the one at her feet was off the floor and lurching toward her. She screamed, then ran, but not before kicking the creature in its torso, knocking a piece of its flesh to the floor where it splattered in wet chunks.

  Mary slammed the door behind her and screamed, hoping she’d draw attention from the others. The creature hit the door with a hard thud, then wailed in what sounded like a cruel attempt at human agony.

  It’s in pain.

  The thought gave Mary a chill. What if the creatures are victims, fallout from whatever atrocity had obliterated the world? Not that it mattered. Sympathy wouldn’t keep her or Paola alive, and though she felt certain the creature had nothing to do with her daughter’s disappearance, it was a threat.

  Mary opened the door to the stairwell and took the stairs two at a time. She could hear the creature behind her on the other side of the stairwell door. She had a daughter to find and a team to protect; she couldn’t very well lead the creature to them, which is exactly what she’d be doing if she ran to the ground floor.

  The door opened one flight above and the creature writhed into the stairwell. It looked down, saw Mary, then stepped on the first step. She opened the door to the second floor, ran into the hallway, and slammed the door behind her.

  “John!” she yelled. No answer, the floor felt empty. Mary ducked into the first door across from the stairwell — a moderately-sized supply closet with shelves stocked full with tiny soaps, shampoos, and conditioners. But unless she planned on stabbing the creature with a sewing kit, nothing was useful as a weapon.

  Three rolling carts were there, however, each fully stocked for a fresh day of cleanup. Mary stepped inside, flicked off her flashlight, and shoved the closest cart against the door.

  Just in time.

  THUD...THUD...THUD...

  The creature threw its body repeatedly against the door, pushing the cart, and Mary, back.

  THUD...THUD...THUD...

  The door inched open, edging the supply cart forward and spilling a seam of warm light into the dark supply room. Mary fell back against the rear wall of the supply closet, and pressed her legs against the cart closest to her, attempting to leverage them against the door to keep the monster out.

  She closed her eyes and thought of Paola.

  If you’re dead it’s all my fault.

  THUD...THUD...THUD...

  The door opened and closed again, pushing the carts forward before Mary kicked them back, forcing the door shut again.

  THUD...THUD... And then nothing.

  For a moment, silence filled the air as Mary dared to hope the monster went on its way. She held her breath, trying to listen beyond the sound of her thumping heart.

  And then she heard a terrible clicking sound.

  THUD!

  The door smashed open, the carts rolled forward, banging into Mary, as the creature fell into the supply closet screaming and making that god-awful clicking sound. Its head swung back and forth, as if it were searching for Mary, then froze, its black eyes narrowing on her.

  Fuck.

  She screamed, gripping the handle of the cart closest to her, and thrust the cart forward repeatedly against a second cart, which slammed into the creature.

  The thing screamed, as Mary kept slamming the carts forward, until the creature stopped thrashing and fell forward onto the first cart, injured and squirming.

  Mary gripped the flashlight, and swung down, slamming it into the thing’s skull over and over, warm blood spraying her.

  It screamed. Terror, anger, agony as it pulled back, head half caved in, mouth still intact.

  The creature’s wail sent Mary three steps back, just as a hunk of its face fell to the floor. Mary swallowed the bile in her throat, then launched a second assault at the creature’s head, bashing it repeatedly until the thing stopped screaming, clicking, and squirming and collapsed to the ground.

  Mary didn’t know if the creature was dead, or even if it could die, but it was down for a moment and that was enough. She swallowed again, keeping the bile in her belly, then squeezed past the carts and creature, and out into the hall. She dropped the bloodied light and raced through the stairwell door and down to the lobby where Jimmy, John, and Desmond were standing.

  The terror on her face sent the men to her side in seconds. “You okay?” Jimmy asked.

  Mary swallowed, unable to talk at first, staring back at the stairwell door in shock, and amazed that she’d gotten away.

  “What happened?” John asked, eyes wide and fearful.

  “I just saw another one of those things, you know, like the dead thing we saw on the highway. The thing Desmond shot.” She looked at Desmond with a weak smile, then down at her shaking hands and the front of her shirt, covered in black blood. “I’m fine. I think I killed it.”

  Desmond raced into the stairwell, grabbing a pistol from his waistband.

  “What about Paola? Anyone find anything?” Mary asked.

  Mary could read the NO written on their empty faces. She was right, at least about Paola. No one found a trace. But John had seen one of the twitching creatures lying on the floor in one of the rooms. Almost pissed himself when he saw it, but the beast was either sleeping or dead so he closed the do
or and counted himself lucky.

  “I need to know which rooms the creatures are in,” Desmond said returning to them, “So we can make sure they’re dead. And then we move out and search outside for Paola.”

  “Someone needs to stay here and wait in case she comes back,” Mary said.

  “Mary, I understand how you feel right now,” Desmond said, “but we have to stick together. We can’t afford for our numbers to get split. We’ll be able to help Paola better together, so let’s go outside and look. If we don’t find anything, we’ll come back.”

  “No. Somebody needs to stay here,” she said.

  Jimmy and John seemed willing, but both were looking to Desmond.

  Desmond sighed. “Please, Mary. Let’s stick together and canvas the area. Chances are, she’s close. If not, we’ll be back in a few minutes. It’s what’s best, not just for all of us, but for Paola, too. I promise.”

  “And what if we’re all out there looking for her and she comes back and, whoops, there’s another monster in the hotel and nobody here to protect her?”

  “I’ll stay,” Jimmy offered, “As long as you give me a gun.”

  * * * *

  BORICIO WOLFE

  Somewhere in Alabama

  Boricio gnashed his teeth at the injustice of his blindfolded captivity.

  Unfortunately for his captors, the beast had already freed himself from his chains, breaking out of the plastic restraints which had bound his wrists behind his back. His blood was boiling, kinetic violence waiting to crackle, holding for the time when no movement would be wasted on his return to the rotting corpse of the world outside.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but figured he hadn’t lost more than a day already. Still, that was a day longer than anyone had ever held Boricio. Unfortunately, he would have to lay on the burlap mat a bit longer, until he’d sussed out the situation.