“Stop!” Brent said, looking like he might vomit.
Ed smiled. Good, now I can eat in peace.
He shoved a meatball into his mouth, as Brent dipped his uneaten forkful of pasta back into the can.
**
Sleep took them by 10 p.m. Ed didn’t bother structuring night shifts as he didn’t anticipate any problems, none at least that he couldn’t handle with an open bag of ammunition at his bedside.
Once asleep, he dreamed he was in a field of tall grass that stretched to forever. The voice he’d been dreaming of was back. Brent was also there, walking beside him, looking down at a map.
“You’re close,” the voice said.
“Who’s that?” Brent asked.
“You can hear it?” Ed said, surprised.
“Yeah, who is that?”
“If you can hear it, you don’t need to ask,” Ed said, not intending to be cryptic, though it wasn’t like he was the one choosing his words. The voice was speaking through him.
Brent looked back down at his map. “I see it here.”
Ed stared at the map too, which looked like one of those old treasure maps you used to see in movies and comic books, with a big red “X.”
“Uh-oh,” Brent said. “It knows we’re here.”
Ed looked at him, confused. Was the voice now speaking through Brent? Who, or what, was “it?”
Overhead, the sky grew instantly black, darkness spreading like spilled ink in clear water, canvassing the world. Wind and rain were on sudden assault everywhere around them, whipping the long blades of grass against their faces in stinging lashes. The wind howled like a scattered pack of wounded animals, crying at once from every direction.
Ed closed his eyes, lifting an arm to cover his face, pushing through the grass.
“Keep going!” he shouted to Brent, as they pushed blindly into the thrashing sea.
The assault ended as suddenly as it began, though the darkness still churned overhead. When Ed gazed around, Brent was gone. He turned, searching, and called out, “Brent!”
And then he heard the sound of a child singing. He couldn’t tell if the voice was that of a boy or girl. The melody sounded like a religious hymn, though he couldn’t make out the words.
He continued forward until he spotted a church steeple peeking over the grass.
“Brent?!”
Nothing but the child’s singing, coming from the church. He was close enough to determine the tune – Jesus Loves Me – but was still too far to decipher the words.
He raced forward and came out into a clearing in front of a church, standing before a barracks-neat row of three houses in the background. In front of the church were six giant wooden crosses. The child, in a white robe, was knelt down singing in front of one of the crosses.
Oh my god, someone’s nailed to it.
Ed moved closer as the child’s singing continued.
“The Darkness loves me! This I know,
for The Prophet tells me so.”
His slowed his gate as he locked onto the bulging dead eyes of the man on the cross.
Brent.
Brent had been crucified, nailed in place through his hands and shins. His limp mouth hung agape, tongue savagely removed. Dried blood has pooled in the stubble upon his chin. He smelled of death. A crude mark had been etched into the flesh of his chest. Ed stepped closer to make it out. It was a number, 9.
“Little ones to Him belong;
They are weak but He is strong.”
And then the singing stopped.
* * * *
LUCA HARDING: PART 1
Kingsland, Alabama
The Sanctuary
March 24
11:07 a.m.
Everything had been weird since yesterday.
Mary, Will, and Desmond weren’t talking with the others too much. They seemed angry at Rebecca’s mom and The Prophet.
Luca wanted to be angry at the people for punishing Rebecca, cutting all her hair off and making her cry. And he was angry, at first. But then he began to pick up on all the feelings of the people like radio signals and realized that things weren’t as simple as he’d first thought.
When he focused in these frequencies, he learned that some of the people were mad at Rebecca and Carl, but most were afraid for them. That meant they were acting out of fear, not anger. And while Rebecca’s mom, Sarah, seemed angriest of all, she wasn’t really. She was actually the most afraid, convinced her daughter was going to hell and thus doing what she believed was right. Luca’s radar was intercepting more than just sensory feelings, though. He was sometimes catching snippets of actual dialogue. At first, he thought he was overhearing bits of conversations. But no one was ever talking. That could only mean one of two things:
I’m hearing their inner-thoughts, or maybe the voices that normally speak to me are now communicating via other people’s voices in some attempt to trick me.
After morning class, Luca and Scott headed to the church for their construction shifts. They weren’t old or skilled enough to be trusted with the hard work, so they spent most of their time prepping work areas and cleaning up for the men who were building the church. Most of the time, they sat back, watching, and talked to one another. Scott was nice and told funny jokes, though not as funny as Jimmy’s had been.
Scott was like a PG-13 version of Jimmy, which was okay, and he might have seemed funnier if Luca were still eight. But his own thoughts felt more grownup than they used to. Things he once thought were funny he now found silly, even babyish. But his thoughts still didn’t feel as grown up as his outside had become, though he really wasn’t certain what being an adult felt like. Luca felt trapped between child and adult, ping ponging between the two. As weird as it was to him, he was sure it was weirder for those around him. Paola and Scott were still talking to him like he was a little kid, when they talked to him at all.
Scott was telling one of his corny jokes, something about a llama walking into a bar. Even though he wanted to listen, Luca kept sensing his attention pulled toward the Box of Shame.
The box was wooden and shaped like an outhouse Luca once saw outside the Miller’s house back home a year ago. When he asked his dad what is was, he followed the answer by wondering out loud why construction workers would ever want to poop outside. “Because sometimes you just have to go,” his father exclaimed. Luca started telling his mom that if Anna didn’t get out of the bathroom soon, he was gonna use the Miller’s outhouse across the street. Fortunately, it had never come to that, which was a good thing since his dad said that outhouses smelled like the worst parts of the zoo.
The Box of Shame looked just like an outhouse, except there was a huge wooden bar across the door that kept it barred from opening. There were two small holes at the top of the front and one larger hole at the bottom where Luca had seen Rebecca’s mom slide some water in and take a bowl from. Luca assumed the bowl was where the girl was forced to use the bathroom, which made the Box of Shame more like an outhouse than by just its appearance.
“You want to join us later?” Scott asked, “We’re going on a store run, me and a couple of the guys. I bet if I ask, they’d let you go, even though you’re still technically a kid.”
“You?” Luca said, not meaning to sound so surprised, but also slightly annoyed that Scott felt it necessary to again point out that Luca wasn’t yet a man, despite his appearances.
“Yeah, why not me?” Scott said.
“Well, isn’t it dangerous?”
“I can handle myself,” Scott said, sounding offended that Luca would think, let alone suggest, otherwise.
“Yeah, but you’re still healing from the other day,” Luca said, trying to delicately point out that Scott would be dead if Luca hadn’t saved him — exchanging years of his youth to do so — and now he was gonna risk his life again? Had Luca’s sacrifice meant nothing to Scott? For all Luca knew, he’d never get those years back.
Scott stared at the church, like he was searching for a change of
subject. Luca returned his attention to the box and its occupant, locked away in punishment.
“She’ll be okay,” Scott said, catching what held Luca’s attention. “It’s cool outside and they’ve got guards out all hours, so I doubt the monsters will get to her.”
“How many days is she going to be locked in there?” Luca asked.
“A whole week,” Scott said. “I can’t even imagine being locked in a room that long, let alone a box.”
“Me, either,” Luca said. “I bet she’s scared.”
“I’ll bet she won’t run off with a boy again,” Scott said with a laugh.
Luca looked at him, “What? Are you saying she deserves this?”
Scott matched Luca’s sudden flash of intensity with his own look of nervous fear.
“I’m just saying, well, she knew the rules, right? I mean, if they did it to Paola, that would be one thing. We’re new here. But Rebecca’s a religious girl. She’s been here a while. And she knows what’s expected of her. She made her choice.”
“So, she deserved to be put in a box and have her hair cut off?” Luca asked, surprised at how accepting Scott was of the punishment, even while the rest of their group was clearly distressed.
“I’m not saying that,” Scott said, laughing nervously.
‘Stop looking at me like that, freak.’
Luca heard the thought in Scott’s head, no different than if the teen had said it.
“Is that how you act to someone who saved your life? Call them a freak?” Luca snapped at Scott.
“What?! I didn’t call you...” Scott froze as realization crept across his face, bleaching his skin along the way.
‘You heard me?’
Luca turned away, suddenly afraid, not wanting to reveal his new gift and accidentally push himself further from the group. Luca walked away, quickly.
Scott either said or thought, ‘What’s going on?’ as Luca picked up his pace and headed toward the Quiet Spot at the back of the property, behind the hangar, where there were two stone benches and a small garden where the grownups liked to sit and talk in whispers and hushes.
As Luca passed the Box of Shame, he heard Rebecca cry.
“Help me,” she said.
Luca couldn’t be sure if she’d spoken the words or thought them. He turned and saw several people, including Scott, watching him. He didn’t dare draw more attention, so he turned back and kept walking, ignoring the girl’s plea. More thoughts flooded his brain from different voices he didn’t recognize, likely coming from the men at the church:
‘What a freak.’
‘I wonder what he’s doing? ‘
‘Definitely weird. I think the Devil’s inside him.’
As he put the corner of the hangar between himself and the crew working on the church, he broke into a run, racing toward the Quiet Spot, eager to have his head to himself. As he rounded the corner, he saw someone else sitting in the Quiet Spot.
John.
“Hello, Luca,” he said. John was sitting on one of the benches, Brother Rei standing beside him, their conversation severed.
Luca froze.
John was definitely different from how he’d been at the Drury Inn, though Luca couldn’t put his finger on exactly what that difference was. It wasn’t like they’d spent that much time together before John left the Drury after Jimmy’s death. Besides, most people had changed in the past few months, even if Luca’s evolution had been the most evident after he saved Paola and Scott.
Even if everyone was different, John’s difference was the only one that felt so wrong.
While the others seemed wary of Luca, John seemed intrigued and not scared in the least. If anything, John made Luca nervous, as did Brother Rei, who looked like a frightful rat with his beady dark eyes, large nose, and almost non-existent chin. “Hello, Brother John and Brother Rei,” Luca said, his eyes finding interest at his feet.
“Everything okay?” John asked.
“Yeah,” Luca said, less than convincingly.
“Have a seat,” John said, waving his hand at the bench beside him.
Luca sat, unable to meet John’s stare. Even though Luca was closer in height to the adults, he still felt like a child and found it hard to look them in the eyes.
“Are you upset about Rebecca?” John asked.
“Yeah,” Luca admitted. He didn’t mind telling John so much, but was a bit nervous to speak in front of Brother Rei.
“Doesn’t seem fair, does it?” John said.
Luca looked up, met John’s eyes. “You feel the same?”
“It doesn’t matter how I feel,” John said. “This is our new home. We must abide by the rules of The Sanctuary and The Prophet.”
Luca nodded slowly, mostly so he wouldn’t get in trouble, then asked, “Why do they call him The Prophet?”
“You haven’t heard the story?” Brother Rei said, as though surprised. “It’s an interesting tale, one of the best. The Prophet was given a vision of what would happen on October 15, years before it came to pass. God spoke to him in his dreams, told him to get his people ready, to prepare them to enter His Kingdom.”
“Do you believe him?” Luca asked, wondering only after if maybe he should’ve kept his mouth shut.
“Didn’t Will say he dreamed of the day, also?” John said.
“Well, yeah.”
“And you believe him, right?” John asked.
“Yes,” Luca said. “That’s how he found me. His dreams.”
“Ah, yes,” John said. “And did Will say that God spoke to him in these dreams?”
“Well, um, no, I don’t think so. I mean, he didn’t mention God.”
“Interesting,” Brother Rei said, stepping close enough to Luca to keep him uncomfortable. “Will dreamed of this day, yet did nothing to help anyone?”
“I don’t know. I mean, he helped me.”
“And yet God didn’t speak to him?” Brother Rei asked.
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“Well,” Brother Rei said, “If your friend had these visions, and God didn’t provide them, perhaps someone else did. Perhaps the Devil has his ear?”
Luca felt a chill run through him as Brother Rei glared down at him, almost accusingly. Luca looked to John for relief, but John’s face wore a weird smile that seemed inappropriate for the moment.
“How long have you known Will?” Brother Rei asked.
“Will is nice!” Luca cried. “He risked his life to save me, and to save Paola. He didn’t have to do any of the things he’s done.”
“Exactly,” Brother Rei said, and folded his arms across his narrow chest. He looked up at the sky, then back down to Luca. “Makes me wonder what his game is.”
Luca stood. “I have to use the restroom,” he said, not waiting for anyone to give him permission to leave. “I’ll see you around.”
Luca made it six steps when Brother Rei called out, “Brother Luca.”
Luca turned, “Yes?”
Brother Rei looked even more like a rat when he smiled. “Let’s keep this little chat just between the three of us, okay?”
Luca looked at John, who was still wearing the same simple smile, as if he wasn’t really even there. Luca nodded, “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” Brother Rei said. “I’d hate to see you in the box next to the whore.”
* * * *
BORICIO WOLFE: PART 1
Dunn, Georgia
March 24
4:15 a.m.
Boricio woke up in a gummy, groggy, gallon and a half of what-in-the-fuck.
He had busted into another one of them rich bitch homes, and found a handful of pills scattered across the kitchen counter. Since it wasn’t The Matrix, and Boricio didn’t have to pick red or blue, he scooped the entire mess in his pocket, then popped five of each into his mouth, cracked the lid from one of the house’s million bottles of water, and swallowed the pills with a swish.
He had a nice five minutes or so where the world was normal. Then it started
dancing the FuckedUP Boogaloo, studded and sequined in about a thousand fucked up colors. Things went from black to white, to Skittles, then back to black. The resulting drug-induced psychedelic coma had left him out for hours.
He figured it was a night later when he woke, maybe two. Either way, he needed to high-tail his ass back to base. The boys would be waiting on him, he was sure, so was more surprised than a date with a tranny when he arrived to find everyone gone, save for Harry who was in the garage, hunched over the engine of a Green Honda Element they’d picked up recently.
“The fuck you mean ain’t nobody here?” Boricio said. “It’s the middle of the night, where’d they go?”
Harry wiped his brow. “They left a while ago. Haven’t heard a peep since. Sorry, Boss.”
Boricio was furious. He growled, “Stay the fuck put. I’m going out,” then headed back to his car. He turned, and growled, “I mean it. I’m gonna be kill-a-bitch pissed if I have to leave here looking for any more ex-members of Team Boricio.”
“I’m not planning on going nowhere, Boss,” Harry said. He nodded, then got back to the engine work.
Boricio would’ve kicked him hard for ending the conversation early, but figured it wasn’t worth injuring the hand that fed the Boriciomobile. So he muttered something Harry couldn't hear, then headed outside to the Z8. He’d find Charles in Charge, and everyone he was in charge of, and deal with each of them accordingly, saving Callie for last.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, gives Boricio the old adios. I say when it’s sayonara, and there ain’t no one this side of the sun gonna tell me when I’m finished with their sky. Fuck every one of ‘em. I find them and something’s gone wrong that wasn’t none of their fault, well then circle gets the fucking square and we’re even as the number two. But I find out they surrendered their spot on Team Boricio, Boricio will cut their scalps and wear them as a necklace.
Boricio cranked The Mummies and whipped the Z8 to 110 mph.
Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone) Page 29