Yesterday's Gone (Season 5): Episodes 25-30 (26 page)

But these guys struck Boricio as Idiot, USA’s bottom rung, so maybe they didn’t think past the longest toe on their ugly bare feet. Or perhaps they never made any official inquiries to let people know they had a gen-yoo-wine serial killer in lockup. 

Maybe they wanted to keep this little treat for themselves.

Which meant he had to keep running.

As Boricio kept moving south, which he judged by the location of moss on the trees, he heard rushing water ahead.

That could be his break, assuming the body of water wasn’t too large to cross. Maybe he could pretend that he had, then double back on the fuckers and go north.

Too soon to tell, so Boricio kept running, trying to lay distance between himself and his hunters. As long as he kept moving, Boricio figured he was likely safe from a bullet. You couldn’t run and quick scope in real life. That was
Call of Duty
bullshit for sure. 

However, if they came to a clearing or a large enough hill where the hunters would have the advantage of stopping and lining up their shots with his movement, he was fucked with a capital F.

The sound of water grew louder as he approached a steep incline that ran as far as Boricio could see in either direction. 

As much as it promised to slow him, he’d have to ascend the steep hill. As he reached the peak, Boricio saw the stream of water rushing downward, heading east through trees so thick he couldn’t tell where the slope leveled off.

Boricio had no idea how steep the hill was, and didn’t have time to worry.

Without thinking twice he jumped into the river, hoping the rapids would carry him down the hill like a giant slide. But the water was moving fast, shoving him underwater as it carried him down the hillside.

The world disappeared under the surface. Boricio ignored the creeping panic, knowing he couldn’t flee the current without a clear head. 

He gasped for the air as he broke the surface, his body bobbing up and down, head going back under water and hitting something hard —
a rock, a log?

Above Boricio, the world went dark light dark light as the canopy of trees thinned and thickened, adding to his confusion. He fought to maintain his senses as pain spread from the side of his head and threatened to overwhelm him. He had to be bleeding.

The river continued to carry Boricio while he gobbled air, gulping as much as he could between dunks, his body rocked up and down, side to side along the river as it wound around the hill and through the woodlands.

Water roared as he continued downstream. Between dunks, Boricio’s eyes caught something he wished he hadn’t seen — a deep drop.

He was rushing toward a waterfall.

Boricio braced himself as he closed in on the drop, hoping that the water was deep, that he wouldn’t hit rocks, and that this was his chance for escape. There was no way in hell the hunters could catch him unless they all jumped in the river, and he doubted they’d do that.

Boricio went under again, then back up, gasping for air as the drop came.

Freedom!

The river below looked deep, with no visible rocks.

Holy shit, this might work!

If I don’t break my neck in the fall.

As he reached the drop, crippling pain splintered his back. Boricio had been shot in the spine.

The drop came, and the world fell out from beneath him.

**

When Boricio came to on the side of the river bank, facedown in the mud, he felt only cold. A deep and bitter chill that bit so hard into Boricio’s bones that it might as well have been freezing him from the inside out.

Boricio could feel nothing else.

His entire body was numb, as if the gunshot weren’t even there.

Did it sever my spine?

He panicked, trying to will his body into motion, and pull himself along the bank to safety.

Oh Fuck. Come on, move!

Boricio stared at his arms, like noodles before him, useless vestiges weighing him down.

From somewhere, a country accent shouted, “There he is!”

Oh shit.

Footsteps drew closer, alongside laughter.

Boricio couldn’t even turn to see his enemy approaching. He was a fucking vegetable, about to be slaughtered by a swarm of cousin fuckers.

No, no, no!

Suddenly his body was flipped over to face the sky, even though he barely felt the hand grabbing his hair and yanking him over.

Guard Tard stood above Boricio, smiling like he’d won the fair’s prize pig and couldn’t wait to get it home and fuck it into a banshee’s squealing.

“I’ll give this to ya, boy, you were a helluva hunt! Right, guys?”

The men shouted unintelligibly together as they circled Boricio’s body. He opened his mouth to say something and was horrified when no words would come.

Am I Silent Fucking Bob? 

“Well,” Guard Tard said, kneeling down, pulling a blade from his belt, “should we gut him and let him bleed out slow, or put a bullet in his head?”

Guard Tard ran the blade over Boricio’s stomach, but Boricio felt only the faintest trace. Hell, he could’ve stabbed him already and Boricio might not have felt it.

He couldn’t believe that
this
was how it would end. He thought of Rose, wishing he’d taken her offer. If only to see her again, spend a few minutes together, even if an alien was pulling the strings. There had to be some part of his Morning Rose still inside, some part he could spend a few final moments enjoying. Anything was better than this.

Boricio thought back on how many lives he’d ended. How many he’d hunted without mercy. 

Perhaps this was fitting.

But fuck it if it felt right.

Luca fixed me! That was the old Boricio! I ain’t killed anyone undeserving since.

If there was a God, which Boricio thought as likely as MC Hammer having another hit, then He was surely laughing now. Fix him up enough to make him care, then kill him for his sins.

“I got an idea,” Guard Tard said, “how about we all shoot him at once. Sort of a twenty-one gun salute, minus some guns.”

Boricio recognized some of the hillbillies as pigs from the prison. Others were maybe friends or coworkers from different shifts. Each seemed to like the idea. They gathered around Boricio, all taking aim with their rifles.

Guard Tard said, “Any last words?” 

Boricio tried to open his mouth, but couldn’t feel his lips to know if he had managed to open his mouth. 

He wanted to say
Fuck you, cunt
and go out in style, but couldn’t say shit and might have been drooling for all he knew. 

“No?” Guard Tard laughed. “All righty then, on the count of three.”

“One … ”

Boricio closed his eyes, refusing to give them the pleasure of being the last thing he saw.

He remembered the first time he’d seen Rose on Paddock Island, on a Sunday morning at a restaurant called Schooner or Later.

Wait, no, that’s not how we met. We met at that bar. It was night.

Yet he was seeing her clear as day, in a memory that felt as real as any.

And then he realized. It wasn’t his memory. He was somehow remembering something that happened to that other Boricio — Boricio Bishop. 

What the fuck? How can I have his memories?

“Two … ” 

Memories flooded, none of them his. The old man, Will, who had adopted the other Boricio, along with the other Luca. 

Then he heard the boy’s voice:
Do you want to live, Boricio?

Boricio opened his eyes and saw every gun aimed at his body. The hunters appeared frozen, a collective second from squeezing the trigger.

“Do you want to live?” Luca repeated, his voice coming from Guard Tard’s tobacco stained mouth.

Lightning flashed across the sky, and rain fell, though Boricio could barely feel it pelting his body.

Boricio tried to say yes that he wanted to leave, but his mouth refused to move.

Damn it, work!

“It’s OK,” Luca said. “I heard you think it.”

Guard Tard raised his rifle and shot one of the hunters in the head.

None of the hunters reacted, all still frozen, even as the rain fell fast around them to prove that time still poured into the future.

Guard Tard shot the rest of the men. When his rifle was empty of ammo, he reached for a pistol and finished them off.

As corpses rained around him, Guard Tard bent over and gathered Boricio into his arms.

I can’t feel anything!

“It’s OK,” Luca said from the man’s mouth. “We’ll fix you up.”

The Boy Wonder carried Boricio out of the woods.

* * * *

CHAPTER 11 — BRENT FOSTER

As the wind picked up and cold rain began to pelt them, Brent was starting to wonder if searching the island’s west side was a waste of time. There was nothing out here but too many trees. And no sign of Paola.

But given that nobody else was searching this area, Brent decided this was the best place to look. If someone had taken Paola and was lying low, what better place to do so than in the middle of the dark woods?

Their narrow dirt path seemed to be thinning, bringing the swaying skeletal branches closer to their bodies. Flashlights battled the surrounding blackness, but did little to pierce it. The icy rain only made visibility worse.

Something reached out in the darkness and scratched at Brent’s face.

He threw an arm up in defense, the one with the heavy flashlight, relieved to just see a branch and not something alien reaching out to grab him.

Brent shoved the branch aside and turned his face downward, covering it with an arm.

“Careful of the branches, nearly poked my eyes out.” Brent turned back to Jade who had been walking beside him but was now behind as the dwindling path left little room for more than congestion.

“OK,” Jade shouted over the howling wind.

They walked a bit farther, and Brent figured they had to be close to the shore, even though he saw no sign of the sea or lights from the mainland beyond. 

How big
is
this damned island?

It, like its counterpart on the other world, seemed so small on the ferry ride over. But the island felt like Dr. Who’s TARDIS upon arrival, deceptively larger than it seemed. That wasn’t even counting the sprawling research facility that descended God knew how many levels underground.

The path abruptly ended. 

Brent ran his light over the thick wall of trees ahead and around, searching for a fork in the path he might have missed. But it seemed to end, as if unfinished. 

“Shit, that was a waste of time.” Brent turned back to Jade and shined his light at her waist so he could see her face without turning her temporarily blind. “Think we should turn back?”

She pushed strands of wet purple hair from her eyes and looked around, flashing her beam into the woods ahead. “There!” Her eyes widened. “What’s that?”

Brent turned toward her discovery. In the distance, light grabbed what looked to be some sort of barely visible structure. 

“What is it?” she asked.

“Hell if I know.”

“Let’s go.” Jade pushed past Brent and marched into the woods, fearless like her father.

Brent followed, burying a creeping unease, a whisper inside him somehow (illogically) certain that they were tromping toward their deaths. 

While Jade was only about ten years younger than Brent, and not at all a child, he couldn’t help but feel some sense of obligation to look out for her, to protect her from harm. Ed had asked him to do just that.

Don’t let my daughter get into any shit.

Ed may as well have asked Brent to keep the sun from shining in their sky.

Jade was fiercely independent, living as if she had something to prove. It was in her stature, in the way she took to their survival and gun training, and, like her father, in her eyes.

When Brent first heard that Paola was missing, from one of the Guardsmen on the radio, he went to Jade and Teagan’s cabin, hoping they would look after Ben while he helped Mary search for her daughter. Jade had insisted on coming, even though Brent had argued otherwise.

She refused his feeble attempts to stop her, and insisted that four eyes were better than two.

Brent surrendered. Jade wasn’t his daughter, and it wasn’t his place to order her around. Trying made him feel like a jerk.

Now, as they were out in the woods on “monster island” and inching toward some decrepit lair, Brent wished he’d told Jade to stay behind. Ed would kill him if something happened to his daughter, if the aliens didn’t end him first.

They drew nearer to the small clearing, and the structure sharpened into view. Jade stopped in her tracks, clicking her light off. Brent killed his, too. He stared ahead at the back side of an ancient-looking, two-story wooden house, half swallowed by wild weeds and vegetation.

Brent’s heart raced as he considered his next move. Something felt wrong.

Wind whistled louder, and rain pounded harder, now stinging Brent’s face and eyes.

He leaned in close, putting his mouth next to Jade’s ear and doing his best not to shout. “Let’s look around the front.”

They stayed in the trees, navigating in the inky-black darkness, slowly making their way toward the home’s front.

Light flickered from behind a sheer curtain in an upstairs window.

Someone’s in there!

Brent wiped wet hair from his eyes and looked at Jade to see that she’d noticed the window as well. She drew the gun from her holster, ready to race inside.

“Wait.” Brent put his hand out to stop her from moving forward. “We should call this in.”

“
Call it in?
If someone is in there with Paola, then every second counts.”

Brent argued. “If they wanted to kill her, I think they would’ve done it already.” 

“There are things worse than death,” Jade said, her eyes firm.

Brent wasn’t sure if she meant the girl was in danger of sexual assault or alien infection. Either way, he thought it would be best if they waited for backup.