Except for the Black Pieces. Luca was pretty sure the Black Pieces were allowed to say whatever they wanted.
The voices had told Luca a lot, but they hadn’t told him what he should tell the rest of his new family. He didn’t want to tell them anything, really. It would only scare them. And everyone was already scared enough. So he would continue to wait. He could always tell everyone if it looked like they were about to step into any danger. Besides, Will knew everything already.
The Black Pieces returned to the board.
Luca moved the Black Pieces’ Queen into his white rook’s square.
Check.
If Will wanted everyone to know, he would have told them. There was a good reason he hadn’t, Luca was sure. Will had to know that Luca knew, too. He would’ve seen it in the dreams. Hardly a night went by that they didn’t share the same dreams.
Luca moved his king a square to the left, then moved the Black Pieces’ bishop.
Check.
Unless Paola, or anyone in his new family, was in danger, Luca would stay quiet. After all, Will knew the secret, the same secret Black Pieces and The Man both knew.
The secret they said would change everything.
Luca realized he was trapped. He moved his king one final square to the left, two away from one of the Black Pieces’ more aggressive pawns.
Checkmate.
* * * *
6 - BORICIO WOLFE
Dunn, Georgia
March 21
6:29 p.m.
Boricio, Charlie, and Vic roared down the highway in what Charlie had nicknamed “The Boriciomobile” since a few minutes after it was first unveiled by Harry, their resident welder back at the compound.
There couldn't have been too many assholes left breathing who could do what Harry could do. When it came to tricking out cars, the fucker made the impossible possible, and did it with a shit eating grin. He used to have a warehouse-sized garage in Houston, but his last customer picked up their custom Porsche Cayenne - iPad console freshly installed - on October 14. Boricio was happy to make his acquaintance about two months after that. Harry had made it to Alabama with his own pimped out Land Rover, but Boricio wanted something custom and Harry was happy to comply.
Harry got started with a Ford Expedition chassis, then leaned on Boricio’s scribbles and profanity-filled instructions followed by hundreds of hours of welding. Boricio loved Charlie’s nickname, but insisted from day one that Harry was not building the Boricomobile.
Harry was building the first car they’d need; the one that was safe to travel in as a group. Now that it was finished, the real Boriciomobile was under construction – built on the body of a beautiful gloss black BMW Z8 Boricio had brought back from a luxury dealer in Montgomery. Boricio spent a lot of the seconds when he wasn’t lamenting the lack of fresh pink meat to think up new ways to make the Z8 cooler than anything that little bitch, James Bond, had ever driven. But until then, he’d stay slap happy with the current model Boriciomobile.
The Boriciomobile I was bulletproofed from head to toe and outfitted with side mounted machine guns on each side. The car only had four homemade missiles in its rear launcher, but that was all they’d been able to make and enough to demolish anything in their way. And like they were playing an old game of Spy Hunter, the Boriciomobile had a built in oil slick that dropped a thick layer of oil on the road behind the truck, giving any dumb shit dumb enough to follow a detour onto Fuck You Road. The Boriciomobile also had a smoke screen and spiked wheels; the only thing Harry said was a no-go was the caltrops. Boricio insisted Harry figure out a way to make the spiked metal mother fuckers launch from their built-in chamber in the Expedition’s side panel, even though Harry didn’t have the springs he needed. He worked on it for two weeks straight, but Boricio finally listened to reason once Harry told Boricio that, yeah, he could eventually figure it out, but it would delay him getting started on Boricio’s Z8.
Boricio said, “Do the fuckers still drop?”
Harry said, “Yeah. They’ll drop. Tear the tires behind you to shit.”
“Well then,” Boricio winked, slapped Harry on the back, and laughed loudly. “Let’s call this project complete, fully gassed, and ready to drive 95 miles an hour to fuck-all.”
They’d been driving all day, searching for the gang of bitches who had robbed Boricio’s boys. Boricio wanted revenge, and hell if he wasn’t happy to get the fuck out of the compound for a hunt. And a group hunt at that! Boricio hadn’t really allowed the rest of the team to see the real him, the one that killed or fucked anything he wanted. The one that would scare the shit out of all of them except maybe Vic. If he ever allowed the fully unfiltered Boricio to be seen, he could have a hard time holding onto them all. And while he had originally intended to fly solo in the post-apocalypse, he was sort of enjoying this new role as leader. Plus, given enough time, they wouldn’t think twice about his predilections. Or so he figured.
Tonight would offer a him the opportunity to kill with unbridled glee and nobody would think twice. They were there for revenge, after all. And in the guise of revenge, Boricio could do whatever the fuck he wanted short of skull fucking a corpse. That might draw some odd looks.
Boricio laughed when they found the truck and motorcycles parked in front of a warehouse, 17 miles east of his compound.
“We’re heeeere,” he said to the passengers and took out his binoculars and surveyed the area.
Shit.
Boricio handed the binoculars back to Charlie. “We need to go.”
“We’re not doing anything?” Charlie said.
“What the fuck?” Vic shouted in the back seat.
“Did you see those fuckers out there? Cocky as a bunch of bayou crocodiles, what with four guards standing in front of the warehouse in broad daylight. Must think themselves the Justice League. We could’ve popped those four fuckers into the ever-after without even getting out of the truck. But we ain’t got no idea what’s waiting inside. And I’d like to know what the hell four guards are waiting for. Makes me think they know something Boricio don’t. If we don’t know what’s in their playbook, we should probably just piss on the pages. So let’s lay out what we do know: dumb shit fuckers usually don’t know how to get four, even when they’ve got two and two staring them in the titties. If we want them drinking, we’ve gotta give ‘em Cinco de Fucking Mayo in their backyard.”
Vic and Charlie nodded. Even if they didn’t know exactly what Boricio meant, and they looked like they didn’t, they’d been with Boricio long enough to follow his lead. Fuck it. They would figure it out one way or another before shots were fired; that was all that mattered.
Vic was a born hunter. Daddy gave him a .22 for his 10th birthday, and the giant fucker had been shooting into the trees ever since. The dude brought down his first deer before he turned 12; the bullet had struck home right between Bambi’s pretty little eyes, he’d said. That made his daddy proud. Unlike the rest of Team Boricio, Vic actually liked his old man, and in a way that made Boricio leave him alone. The other boys would’ve been heckled to death, talking about how they loved their daddies. But when Boricio had asked Vic if he swallowed his daddy’s spunk, or just spit it into a napkin like his baby brother, Vic looked at him with the same brand of boiling rage that washes the face of someone about to put a bitch six feet beneath the daisies.
“How many you think are in there?” Charlie asked.
“You ain’t scared, are ya?” Vic asked, laughing. “Shit, Boricio, maybe you shoulda made Charlie stay home instead of Callie.”
“I’m not scared,” Charlie said, “Just trying to think of the best way to do this.”
“Good point, Charlie Brown, which is exactly why we’re gonna liven this party up a bit,” Boricio said. “And nothing livens a party up like a few dozen uninvited party crashers. And I’ve got just the plan.”
**
An hour later, Boricio and the boys were descending rapidly upon their designated sides of the warehouse, each behind
the wheel of his own steel stallion: an old Honda Prelude, a new Honda Pilot, and a shiny red Dodge Charger Boricio had a hard time not just taking back to the compound.
With all three cars parked, they bolted back to the Boriciomobile, hit the alarms on the keychains, and waited as the sirens wailed.
Two more bikers came outside to investigate the noise. One looked hispanic and the other even darker. A half-black? That surprised Boricio; the group he’d seen on the bikes looked like skinheads who generally didn’t take to partnering up with brown people. Boricio looked through the binoculars. “Two shit smears added to party,” Boricio said. “Looks like we hit our minimum.”
Boricio’s minimum, conveyed to Charlie and repeated to Vic, had been: No less than six dumb fuck bikers before we start shooting, got it?
“Now?” Vic said.
Boricio nodded.
Charlie was the first to pull the trigger, though only by a half-second. His shot was good, hitting the biker closest to the door directly in the shoulder. He fell back as Charlie’s second bullet tore through the guard’s skull. Vic nailed three in a row, sending the two soldiers on the roof spiraling over the side before training his sights on the ground, clearing the fourth soldier before sending an unnecessary bullet into the fifth Charlie had already finished.
“Well lookie who’s been learning to bulls-eye something besides Callie’s face,” Boricio said, slapping Charlie hard on the back. Charlie grunted and turned to the warehouse.
Boricio had called dibs on “whichever fucker was stupid enough to talk into a walkie talkie.” Vic and Charlie were silent as he took careful aim.
Boricio pulled the trigger and the walkie talkie flew to the concrete, followed a second later by its handler. The scream was deafening as the team leader’s kneecap shattered, pooling the already bloody parking lot with a new, wider river of blood. Boricio pulled the trigger again, turning the guard’s hand into a sloppy slab of meat. Boricio started to laugh. “You see that fucker flapping like his hand was made of fish. That’s what happens to stupid fuckers who start shit they don’t know how to finish.”
Boricio was cut off by the sudden screeching of monsters, clicking in deafening waves surging toward the still screaming cars and crashing through the center gate of the warehouse, which the dead bikers had left open.
“Ramblers, let’s ramble,” Boricio said, pointing to the Boriciomobile.
A whole lot of pants must’ve been meeting a whole lotta shit from behind the warehouse walls, judging by the way the bikers started pouring out the open bay door. And they were armed a lot more elegantly than Boricio expected: Agrams and Bruggers and Hecklers; expensive foreign shit Boricio hadn’t expected to see in the sticks.
Boricio gunned the engine and rolled down the ravine, smashing through the chain link fence surrounding the warehouse before plowing into the warehouse door, which crumpled like a beer can beneath a boot.
“Well, how about that,” Boricio screamed, “they sure don’t build shit like they used to.” Boricio laughed to himself, slapped his knee, then revved the engine in reverse, running down a pair of the monsters, tearing their leather with a sickening THWTHWIIIPSH.
“The fuck you pureed pussy meat waiting for?” Boricio yelled. “Shoot some fuckers!”
Vic and Charlie lowered their windows and fired their guns, barely taking aim. Monsters and soldiers dropped into piles while Boricio continued to laugh, firing the side machine guns until they were empty, then launching a missile into an adjoining garage just because he could. He would’ve sent the missile sailing straight into the warehouse, but he didn’t know if there was a prize inside the box and didn’t want to ruin it if there was.
“Stop!” Charlie yelled, pointing out the window to a huddle of three women and several more children hunched low and moving fast behind the smoke to count. They were headed toward the tree-line. “There are children out there,” he said. “We don’t kill kids. We can’t kill kids.”
“Kids ain’t nothing but future adults waiting for pubes. That makes them early bird fucking specials.”
Charlie said nothing. Boricio ignored the huddle, parked the truck, and jumped from the cabin of the Boriciomobile. The three of them stood, guns raised, waiting for more men to come pouring out of the warehouse, which was now burning. Dark smoke began to billow out and Boricio smiled, “That ought to drive the rats out.”
A figure appeared in the smoke, then rushed out of it and toward them.
It was an eight year old boy, rushing the three of them, waving a Beretta in the air. Boricio, without hesitation, pulled the trigger on his .45 and sent the eight year old into a bloody skid along the cement floor. He turned to Charlie. “See that shit? He was gonna shoot me! There’s your fucking kids for ya.”
Boricio went back to the car, fished out his megaphone, turned it on and spoke into it.
“Bring me One-Eyed Willy or I’m gonna shoot every one of you fuckers in there. And I ain’t gonna save you a trip to the Pearlies just because you ain’t voted or you happen to be wearing a pussy in your panties. My bullets will fuck your shit up with equal opportunity, and that’s as real as the cousins you think about while fucking your brothers.”
Flames licked the warehouse walls, causing many of the monsters to flee the warehouse and run back into the woods.
“You’re running shy on time,” Boricio said. “There’s only one way out that ain’t got monsters waiting, and that’s the front door. And I’m gonna shoot every last one of you fuckers unless you send One-Eye out. You got to the count of three! One . . . Two . . .”
A bald guy in his late 40‘s, with an eyepatch, came out of the smoke, hesitantly.
“And circle gets the square!” Boricio said, smiling.
One-Eyed Willy stood in front of Boricio, shaking. Boricio kicked his feet from under him, sending the bald man to his knees. Vic and Charlie tied the man’s ankles and arms while Boricio sang nursery rhymes, starting with Itsy Bitsy Spider.
Boricio threw One-Eyed Willy into the back of the van while flames spread and smoke billowed out of the warehouse.
“Okay, we got what we came for,” Boricio said into the megaphone, “Olly-olly oxen free, you can all come out now. If I see any guns, I’m gonna assume you’re hostile and will shoot you. So come out, with your hands up, if you want to live.”
Men, women, and children poured from the warehouse, hands up.
Boricio, Charlie, and Vic kept their guns aimed and ready.
“Is that everyone?” Boricio asked, speaking through the megaphone at the 25 or so people in front of them.
A chorus of heads nodded yes.
“Good,” Boricio said, and turned to Vic and Charlie with a smile.
“Kill the men.”
Boricio and Vic opened fire as the women and children screamed, helpless.
A woman scooped up a young girl and headed to the tree-line. Vic trained his rifle on them and took aim.
Charlie stepped in front of the rifle, “What the fuck?!”
“Outta my way, boy!” Vic screeched.
Charlie stepped aside. As Vic took aim, Charlie pressed his pistol against Vic’s head. “Let them go.”
With all the men now dead, Boricio turned his attention to the scene brewing between Charlie and Vic and smiled.
Boy had balls; was just takin’ a bit longer for them drop was all.
Vic’s eyes were bulging, rage coursing through him as he glared at Charlie. “You best put that fucking gun down.”
“Now, now,” Boricio said, “Can’t Daddy leave you two alone for a second?”
“You said just the men,” Charlie said, looking back at the woman and child running into the woods. “He’s trying to shoot them.”
“Let ‘em go, Vic. They won’t last five minutes once they run into monsters, anyway.”
Vic smiled at that, and Charlie swallowed, putting his gun down.
Vic refused to break Charlie’s stare.
“Come on, boys, we’ve gotta head
back home,” Boricio said, putting an arm around Charlie’s neck and leading him back to the truck. Vic sat in the back with the prisoner and Charlie took the passenger seat up front. As they drove away, Charlie stared into the rearview as fire engulfed the warehouse.
**
Back at the compound, Boricio marched One-Eyed Willy into the kitchen at gunpoint where Adam, Harry, and Callie were sitting at the table, drinking.
Boricio dropped the man down in a chair and then went to the butcher block, retrieved a large knife and slid it across the table to Adam.
“Give him a second smile, right there below his chin.”
The bald man’s eye widened and he cried out something incoherent behind the rag stuffed in his mouth and taped over.
Adam’s lip quivered, then he shrunk back. “I can’t do that Mr. Boricio,” he said.
“Do you think this fucking summer camp, boy? This is Camp Boricio and fun time is over. You created this problem. You end it. I’m getting a bit goddamned sick and tired of having to be the only one around here with the guts to do what needs to be done.”
One-Eyed Willy started to cry.
Adam looked at Callie and Henry who were both staring at the prisoner.
Boricio turned to Charlie who was standing at the entrance of the kitchen.
“Well, if Adam can’t do it, maybe you’ll pull the tampon out long enough to take care of business.”
Vic snorted a laugh. “Yeah, right.”
Charlie stomped over, grabbed the knife from Adam, pulled One-Eyed Willy’s head back, widening his eye into shock, then slit his throat.
Charlie left his hand under the man’s throat as blood pumped out in hot spurts. He glared at Boricio and then at Vic, then shoved the blade deep into the bald man’s skull, and stomped out of the room.
Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone) Page 6