Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) Read Free Page B

so sorry,” Luca said.
    “Sorry? For what?” Boricio asked, confused, and feeling another new feeling — fear. They were clearly looking at his face.
    What the hell happened to me?
    He reached up to touch his face, but his hands were buzzing, too numbed to know what he was touching. He looked around, then saw the headlights of Will’s car shining on them. He stepped past Will and Luca, moving toward the car as fast as he could despite the 15 bags of fuck all that had slapped him in the face and now seemed to rest on his shoulders.
    Boricio reached the car, driver’s side door still open, then bent to see his reflection in the mirror.
    Oh Fuck.
    He looked like he’d aged a decade, maybe more.
    “What the hell did you do to me?!” Boricio roared, spinning around.
    “I don’t know,” Luca said, surprising Boricio by not stepping back. “I swear.”
    I should shoot this pair of fucks right here, right now, and get the hell out of Dodge.
    But Boricio couldn’t leave.
    Something was holding him here.
    The need to stay with the man-kid sang in the same sweet tune of instinct that had fueled the engine of Boricio’s entire life. He screamed in frustration, grabbed his shotgun off the ground, and pointed it at Will.
    “Talk! Now!”
    Will shook his head, “I don’t know any more than you do. Only what I saw in the…”
    “Yeah, yeah, the fucking dream!” Boricio curled his lip and gritted his teeth. “Then tell me what you saw.”
    Will looked at the ground and swallowed, “Whatever’s in Luca. Whatever makes him special. He transferred that to you. I had to make sure you gave it back.”
    Boricio wanted to shoot the old bastard right there on the spot, just to satisfy the itch. But, again, something inside him kept his finger from squeezing the trigger.
    “Why?” Luca asked. “Wait. Does this mean I can heal people again? Can I—” Luca looked back toward the barn where Linc and Rebecca’s bodies lay in a heap, slaughtered by monsters. Then he looked toward the dungeon where Mary and Paola’s bodies lay on their way to forgotten. Finally, Luca looked past the barn where Desmond’s corpse lay, along with the dozens of others, man and creature alike, littering the Sanctuary like a battlefield.
    Luca swallowed, then whispered. “I can bring them back?”
    Will looked up from the ground after a quarter of eternity spent chewing the question.
    “Yes, you can bring them back. But not all of them. Only three. After that, you’ll have aged to near dying.”
    “Just three?” Luca whispered, eyes on Will.
    “Three,” Will repeated, as he struggled to stand.
    Something looked off about the old man. Then, as Will flinched and fell back a step, Boricio saw the crimson bleeding between his fingers and realized the old fucker had been hiding an injury to his gut.
    Will fell to the ground, gasping for air, about to add one more body to the battlefield.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 3 — Charlie Wilkens Part 1

    Charlie was in a room he didn’t recognize, and without any memory of how he got there, or where he’d been before he woke handcuffed to a table. Three of the walls were gray concrete, just like the floor. The fourth mirrored, like he’d seen in interrogation rooms on TV and in the movies. The room was empty, except for the chair he was sitting in and the table his right hand was cuffed to a metal bar on top of the table which seemed built expressly for the purpose of handcuffing.
    A bare light bulb hung limp from a chain, flickering on and off above him with an intermittent buzzing sound.
    Where the hell am I?
    Charlie stared at his reflection. He looked like he’d aged five years or more in the last five months. He looked down at the cuffs, so sturdy, shiny silver, and official looking. He wondered if they belonged to a cop and whether he’d been arrested for something.
    For what, though? And are cops really on duty at the end of the world?
    It wasn’t as if any law was left in the land, let alone officers