Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone)

by Platt, Sean;Wright, David

  “Please, come back,” Luca thought. “Please don’t forget us.”

  “I will. I will find a way,” Will thought back, unsure whether Luca could hear him.

  “OK,’ Luca thought, like a blanket on Will’s uncertainty.

  Will left Luca a final thought: “I’ll meet you in your dreams. Call on me if you need me. You’ll know when the time comes.”

  Luca nodded, and Will winked.

  Linc was next. He pulled Will into a big bear hug. Surprisingly, his eyes were wet too. Guy was a big old teddy bear inside, after all. “You take care of yourself, alright?”

  “You, too,” Will said, eyes meeting Linc’s. “And take care of them like they’re family.”

  “Sure thing,” Linc said, a bit shaken as if Will had called him out on his betrayal. “I will protect them like they’re my own. And if you change your mind and come back, our doors are open,” Linc said with a smile so sincere he must’ve believed the words, and not been part of the plot to have Will exiled.

  John was last in the line. He had a smile on his face that seemed odd, even odder than he normally was.

  “We’re going to miss you,” he said. “Please, feel free to come back, anytime.”

  “OK,” Will said, reaching out to shake the man’s hand.

  Will felt his body go dead cold, as if he’d shaken hands with Death himself. He met John’s eyes and the two exchanged a lingering gaze with equal unease. Will was sure John felt something, same as he did.

  Will could see the pieces in his head, mostly in place. John was not John after all. This was a big development and something the dreams had overlooked.

  Will bid the group a final farewell, eager to put The Sanctuary behind him before John realized he knew what he really was and stopped him. He had to get away and plan. He started the car, heard Luca and Paola call, “Goodbye, Will!”

  He waved as he drove out the gates.

  As Will drove and The Sanctuary grew smaller in his rearview, he knew it wasn’t the last time he’d see the place. It was, after all, where the battle would soon occur. The battle which would result in Luca’s death.

  And try as Will might to find one, there were no loopholes.

  TO BE CONTINUED . . .

  IT’S ALL BEEN BUILDING UP TO THIS

  WE’VE SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST

  THE STUNNING SEASON FINALE OF YESTERDAY’S GONE WITH THE MOST WTF ENDING YET!

  NEXT TUESDAY (FEB. 14, 2012)

  * * * *

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  YESTERDAY’S GONE

  EPISODE 12

  (SIXTH EPISODE OF SEASON TWO)

  “REVOLUTION CALLING”

  Copyright © 2012 by Sean Platt & David Wright. All rights reserved

  Cover copyright © 2012 by David W. Wright

  Edited by Matt Gartland at Winning Edits.

  http://winningedits.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The authors have taken great liberties with locales including the creation of fictional towns.

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  eBook Edition - February 14, 2012

  REVISED: March 25, 2012 to fix typos including instances of incorrect capitalized “Rs”

  Layout and design by Collective Inkwell

  CollectiveInkwell.Com

  Published by Collective Inkwell

  * * * *

  BORICIO WOLFE: PART 1

  1987

  Lauderdale Greens, Florida

  Boricio had been playing Pick Up Sticks with Ricky for about 15 minutes, and had been bored for 14 of them, when he decided he would hurt the kid.

  He wished there were other kids on the street he could play with. It would have been nice if they had cool toys, or more interesting personalities, but he would’ve settled for a pulse. Ricky wasn’t just the most boring boy Boricio had ever met; he was the only other white boy on the block.

  There weren’t many white kids in Boricio’s neighborhood. Weren’t many white adults, either, and Joe didn’t let him play with “the darkies.” The white people had left seemingly overnight, and the property values plunged, effectively turning the neighborhood into a ghetto of peeling paint, broken windows, and endless yards of chain link fencing off lawns of concrete and rust.

  Boricio had seen pictures of the neighborhood from back in the old days. They had a fire safety assembly at school one time, and the fireman showed them slides of life in the city, before the neighborhood went to hell and the smelly rock was sold in the streets. It seemed like everyone on his street was a buyer, even his own mom. Maybe not Ricky’s mom. Boricio had never smelled the smelly rock at Ricky’s. He wrinkled his nose imaging the smell of the smelly rock’s smoke, like cat pee and burning plastic.

  The neighborhood was pretty in the slides from back then. There had been so many trees and green lawns. Most of the trees had been replaced by patches of hard dirt with a few spindly branches sticking out like fingers.

  Boricio’s street had no trashcans. There used to be a few when he was younger, but that was before the Fourth of July that some kids filled a bunch with firecrackers. The bottoms of the plastic bins were blown out and garbage exploded everywhere. The city came out and cleaned up, but hadn’t replaced the cans. So now people just threw their bags out on the curb, which invariably were torn into by stray animals, and nobody cared enough to clean up the resulting messes.

  Boricio never really liked Ricky, though he used to like Ricky’s older brother, Julian. Julian was 13, five years older than Boricio. He was nice to Boricio, showed him dirty magazines and let him use his slingshot to shoot at the cans on the lawn and the cats in the alley. He let Boricio hangout with him, whenever he had to watch Ricky anyway. Julian didn’t really like Ricky all that much either, called him a fag all the time.

  He would often disappear, taking different girls into the back of the house and leaving Boricio and Ricky alone, and bored. Granted, it was better than being home and listening to Joe scream at his mom, or worse.

  Boricio couldn't play with Julian anymore since Julian was sent away a few months ago. Ricky didn’t know where he’d been sent to, only that it was for his own good on account of their mom saying Julian was gonna grow up bad if she didn’t do something quick. Julian once told Boricio that his dad left about an hour after Ricky was born. Boricio figured that made the two of them lucky. Boricio’s real dad had left an hour after he’d been born, too. At least their mom never ended up with a Joe.

  Boricio didn’t want to play with Ricky anymore, but he didn’t want to go home. So, Boricio balled up his fist, just like Joe, and clocked Ricky in the left ear as hard as he could. It was mostly out of curiosity, wanting to see what would happen, though a little was from the stuff that comes when your inner hate starts to simmer, but ins
tead of taking his turn.

  Boricio had taken plenty of hits, but had never thrown one, not like Joe gave him, anyway. He wasn’t exactly sure what to do, but figured it couldn’t be too hard since Joe did it all the time. Ricky had the sticks in his hand and his eyes on the pile, so he never saw Boricio’s fist.

  Ricky’s face filled with surprise, the emotion quickly followed by pain, then fear – in an order that fascinated Boricio, even though all three flashed by in less than a second. He used a punch to Ricky’s gut to knock the wind from him, then erupted in laughter as Ricky exploded in tears.

  Ricky doubled over the scattered pile of sticks, clutching his stomach, which made Boricio picture Joe, and the way he smiled down on Boricio when he was doubled over just the same.

  Ricky cried “NO!” as Boricio’s foot landed hard on his face. It was the last intelligible sound he made, everything after that was just screams and cries and sobs and whimpers as Boricio started on Ricky with his fists, then finished with a pile of sticks, grabbing them in handfuls and stabbing them all over Ricky’s twitching body.

  Suddenly, a scream.

  Ricky’s mom, who rushed over to the boy to make sure he was okay. The boy was bloody, but he’d live.

  Then she grabbed Boricio by the back of the neck, dragging him away, as Boricio kicked, swung, and cursed at her, trying to break free.

  But she was holding on to the back of Boricio like he was the buckle of a belt.

  “Let me go, you dumb bitch!” Boricio cried.

  Ricky’s mom didn’t say a word. She dragged him across the yard, and then the street, until he was standing on his bottle-littered porch while Ricky’s mom pounded her tired knuckles on the broken screen.

  Boricio’s mom was at the door a moment later, eyes bloodshot, hair hanging in damp and clumpy ribbons. The smell of cat piss and burning plastic poured from the house.

  Ricky’s mom was screaming so loud, Boricio could barely make out a word she was saying, and wasn’t sure how much his mom would be able to gather. She sure looked like she had a problem standing there listening, though she knew she couldn’t leave.

  “You’re raising a monster!”

  ”He almost killed my son!”

  “How can he do that? They’re friends!”

  “I’m calling CPS immediately!”

  “You all deserve to get locked up!”

  The last thing Ricky’s mom said before throwing Boricio through the doorway and marching back to her house was, “Your boy is broken.”

  Broken? That would explain a lot.

  Boricio’s mom slammed the door and slapped him across the face. “You think I need this shit now?” she yelled, her face as red as her eyes.

  Boricio didn’t cry, but he did fall to the floor and crawl backward toward the kitchen. She was wearing the look that meant his body was gonna hurt real bad, real soon. At least it wasn’t Joe. Joe was worse. Much worse. Most of the time his mom protected Boricio from Joe, kept him safe from the worst of his temper. Kept him out of the dark room, away from the hotplate, safe from the baseball bat. But tonight, Boricio might not be so lucky.

  “Just wait until your father gets home!” his mother screamed, her foot landing smack in the middle of Boricio’s crumpled body. He cried. She said, “You don’t have anything to cry about you crazy cocksucking parasite!” She finished her sentence with a hard kick to her son’s side. Boricio felt like he was bleeding inside instead of out. The doctor had said that was the most dangerous kind.

  His mother kept kicking him and screaming: “You dumb shit, diarrhea for brains, more trouble than you’re worth, stupid sonofabitch! I will NOT be yelled at, and I will NOT be humiliated, and I will NOT be threatened. That dumb bitch outside did all three. Because of you!”

  She stopped kicking and Boricio stayed in a pile crying. She said, “That’s nothing, Bo. You wait until Joe gets home. He’s gonna make sure you’re sorrier than a skinned cat.” Then she left the room, slamming the door so hard that a picture frame hanging in the living room fell and broke. The picture was the last school picture taken of Boricio, way back in kindergarten.

  “Fuuuuck!” his mother screamed.

  The smell of cat piss and burning plastic bled through the crack beneath her door and spread like a fog through the house.

  Boricio thought about leaving since home was the last place in the world he’d want to be when Joe got home. But Boricio had no idea where he could go. He didn’t have any food or money, and the farthest he’d ever been out of the neighborhood was to school a couple of miles away. Leaving the house would be scary, but less scary than whatever his mom would do once she opened the door, and a world better than Joe.

  Boricio cried harder, thinking about what would happen when Joe walked in the door.

  Once he could breathe again, he went to the kitchen and took the four packs of Ramen from the cupboard and put them in his backpack, along with two cans of Shasta, a box of powdered potatoes, and some mustard. He added a change of clothes, then turned on the TV to think. His mom would be in her room for another couple of hours, at least. He had at least six before Joe came home. That gave him at least an hour to think.

  Boricio watched a rerun of Family Ties and wondered how much of it was bullshit. Sure wasn’t like any family he had ever seen. That, and The Cosby Show. French fried fucking lies, as his mom would say.

  Boricio figured that maybe life could be all happy, funny, and loving like it was on TV, if he could get to a place where it still looked like it did in the old days. Maybe if he was lucky, he’d find a family like that one day. Boricio had a few teachers who told him he was smart. The same teachers who stared at him with big, sad eyes when they asked him what was wrong at home. It was the only question he never answered. The teachers were right, Boricio was smart. He wasn’t about to fink on Joe and wind up six feet under.

  Family Ties ended and Boricio stood from the couch, turned off the TV, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and headed toward the door. Halfway there, he turned back and grabbed the White Pages from beneath the phone that had been disconnected three months earlier. Enough people had used the words child, protective, and services together for Boricio to know that maybe someone there could help him.

  He thumbed through the C pages, found what he was looking for, and then tore the page from the book and shoved it in his pack.

  The other side of his mom’s door was still silent. Boricio figured it was now or never, then crept toward the front door. Joe opened it before he could.

  Boricio’s heart nearly exploded in his chest, and the look on his face must’ve been all guilt, because Joe stared at him hard.

  Joe wanted to know where Boricio was headed off to with the backpack, and when he opened it up to a change of clothes and Ramen, plus the paper with hotline numbers for CPS, his eyes went blacker than black, which meant he was about to get meaner than mean.

  Boricio cried, “NO!” then turned and ran as fast as he could. Joe was faster, grabbing Boricio by the neck and throwing him to the floor.

  Boricio’s mom opened her bedroom door and even though she threatened punishment, she begged for Joe to stop.

  But it was too late.

  It was always too late once you let the monster out.

  * * * *

  LUCA HARDING: PART 1

  Kingsland, Alabama

  The Sanctuary

  March 27

  morning

  two days after Will left.

  Luca looked across to Paola, sitting in the back of the room at the desk beside him, obviously uncomfortable in the long, dark blue dress she’d been forced to wear after Mary decided they would stay at The Sanctuary.

  Luca didn’t mind his change in clothes, wearing dark slacks and a long-sleeve light blue shirt with suspenders; it made him feel more like he matched the body life made him wear.

  “This looks like a children’s classroom,” Paola whispered. “I’d rather be washing dishes and cleaning.”

  “It’s a
ll-ages,” Luca said.

  “Shh,” 11-year old Tammy Watson whispered from up front, casting a nasty look back to Paola and Luca, even though the teacher had yet to arrive.

  Paola stuck her tongue out. Tammy’s eyes widened as if Paola had said the F-word.

  Though the classroom was on the bottom floor of the children’s house, the room’s interior looked just like a schoolroom, complete with a chalkboard, chairs with desks attached, and colorful pictures on the wall. There were six kids in the classroom other than Luca and Paola, ranging from ages six to 15. There were 20 chair/desk combos in the room, and though Luca usually sat up front, he followed Paola to the back of the class. It was her first day and he didn’t want her to feel alone.

  “So, what do you do all day? Learn Bible stuff?” Paola whispered.

  “Yeah, and regular math, and English stuff,” Luca said. “It’s not bad.”

  “Ugh, you’re one of those kids who liked school, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, didn’t you?”

  Paola rolled her eyes, “Um, nooo.”

  The teacher, Ms. Autumn, a young brunette with a pretty smile and beautiful blue eyes, arrived just after eight, apologizing for being late.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I was helping Sister Theresa with something. Good morning, class.”

  “Good morning, Ms. Autumn,” the children said in chorus.

  Paola looked at Luca with narrowed eyes, “Oooooh, I see why you like school so much; you have a crush on the teach.”

  Luca went red-faced at the accusation, and was about to deny it when Ms. Autumn said, “Ah, we have a new student, Miss Paola Olson. Say hello to Paola, class.”