Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone) (11 page)

Paola looked scared. Mary looked at Will, quietly pleading with him to be quiet.
 

“She’s old enough to know,” he said, “And help us when the time comes. Him, though,” Will pointed out the window at Luca, quickly approaching the van, “I’m not sure where he is right now, other than his own world. So let’s just play it cool, follow John to Nirvana, and see what happens.”
 

Everyone nodded. Luca opened the door, tossed his bag inside, then climbed onto the seat, swinging the door behind him.
 

“I think you might be surprised,” Luca said. “I don’t think we’re driving into a trap at all. I think we’re finally going where we’re supposed to go. I think we’re finally at the beginning.”

Desmond stared at Luca, wondering how the hell he’d heard their conversation from so far away.

* * * *

9 - LUCA HARDING PART 2

The vehicles rolled in a procession down the highway; John’s car led. The van carrying Will, Desmond, Mary, Paola and Luca was in the rear. Everyone else, including Scott, who’d made a full recovery, was somewhere in the middle.
 

Luca felt kinda like a prisoner. They were in the back of a van that had big plates on the side, which Luca thought looked like armor. And the van was being driven by two strangers who both looked to John every time they were about to open their mouths.
 

Desmond looked mad; Mary looked worried; Will was staring out the window.

Paola’s face wasn’t as easy to read. They’d been driving for five or six miles and she hadn’t said a word without prompting, and only delivered one-line answers whenever Luca asked her a question. She looked a little scared, but mostly confused. It probably had something to do with him looking like a grownup.

 
It was like the time when Luca’s dad shaved his mustache. His father had worn a mustache since before he was born, so when Luca ran downstairs one morning last May and saw the fresh pink skin above his dad’s lip, he almost felt like his father was a stranger. Throughout the rest of that day, all of the next, and into most of the following week, Luca had a hard time looking his dad in the eye. It was difficult to find balance between what his brain told him to see what he actually did.
 

Luca figured Paola probably didn’t
want to
ignore him, but didn’t know what else to do. Which is why he wasn’t altogether surprised, though totally happy, when she finally adjusted her seatbelt, turned to her left, and looked Luca in the eye.

“What’s it like,” she said, “you know, aging like that? It’s gotta be weirder than weird, right? Are your insides like your outsides? I mean, you look all grown up, but you must still think like you used to. You would have to.”
 

 
Luca leaned closer to Paola and spoke in a whisper, not wanting Will, Desmond or Mary to hear him, not to mention the two drivers up front, though he was pretty sure everyone could hear every word anyway.

“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “My brain feels really busy. Lots of colors and noise. Like a big bucket of Legos being dumped out and refilled, over and over. They’re all moving around in my head so much that I can’t build anything. It’s just really, really loud, and I can see all the different colors and shapes but I can’t do anything with them because they won’t stop moving. Some of those Legos are the ways I used to think, but now there are a bunch of new Legos. So, I guess I’m supposed to learn how to put the blocks together.” He looked at Paula, then added, “Does that make sense?”

“I guess,” she said, leaning in her seat. After a minute she looked back over.
 

“You talk different now, you know. Not like you used to at all. Well, except using Legos to reference things,” she said with a smile. “But it’s weird because you don’t talk like you’re supposed to, either.”

“How am I supposed to talk?” Luca said, unable to hide his injured expression.

Paola’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t know,” she said. “At least, not exactly. It just seems like you’re not quite...” Paola swallowed, then fell silent, thinking a moment before opening her mouth again. “Remember in school how there were two playgrounds, one for the older kids and one for the younger kids? At least that’s how it was in my school.”

Luca nodded. “Yeah, the kindergartners have their own playground. First, Second, and Third all shared the playground with the swings and slides. Fourth and Fifth got the playground with the tetherball poles and handball courts. We weren’t allowed to play there, and the older graders always kicked us out when we tried. Sixth and Seventh graders went to the middle school next door.

“Okay,” Paola said. “Well, it seems to me like half of you has moved to the bigger playground even though you’re supposed to still be on the smaller one. And you can’t play tetherball or foursquare because you’ve never been on the playground before and no one’s told you the rules.”

Luca felt like he was about to cry. While he’d always been sensitive, he felt especially so with all these new feelings rushing through his head.

Paola touched his shoulder then brushed his arm. It tickled. “Don’t be sad,” she said. The same thing happened to me one time, at least sort of.” She smiled. “Not that I aged overnight like you, or anything. You definitely have me beat there.”

Paola laughed and Luca felt happy enough to copy her smile.

“After my mom and dad first split up, I didn’t see my dad for a long time. I’m pretty sure it was about three months, though it felt like forever. My mom was so mad she didn’t even want to let my dad in the house. One time she locked him outside in his underwear.” Mary turned her head toward the back seat, but Paola just shrugged. “It’s true,” she said.

“Anyway, when he came back home to visit, there was this weird distance between us. And it wasn’t just that he’d been gone, or that he knew he’d ruined things by cheating on my mom.” Mary looked back again, but Paola just glared until she turned back around, then went on. “It was more that I had changed in that time. He didn’t know how to look at me, and in a lot of ways, I wasn’t the little girl from three months earlier. I could tell he wanted to cuddle me, and tickle me, and play with me just like before. But everything felt different to him. And he had missed all the things in between. Not just the school stuff like my fourth grade graduation from lower school and my violin recital. Other stuff, too. Like finding out about Santa Clause and my mom buying me my first training bra.”

Luca could feel himself turning red.

Mary kissed Desmond on the cheek, then turned back to Paola. “What really did it,” she said, “Was when he saw the stack of books on your nightstand. In his eyes, you’d gone from
Harry Potter
to
Twilight
overnight. That made him lose it.” She turned to Luca. “Luca, you’re unbelievably special, and we all owe you a debt we can never repay. We may not understand what’s happening to you, but we all know we owe you. Everything will be okay, and your insides and outsides will match soon enough.”

 
Mary patted Luca on the knee and smiled. He smiled back.
 

The rest of the trip was mostly silent, though the air between Luca and Paola quickly thawed. They started exchanging stories and jokes like they had for the last three months, though there was a crackling current that had never been there before; a current which excited Luca.

The winter trees started fading from the landscape and the passengers saw the first blossoms of pink and green dotting some of the branches outside the window. The driver turned to the passengers and said, “We’re almost here. Another 10 minutes, maybe.”

Exactly 10 minutes later, the line of cars drove through a guarded gate, then into a compound that made the house they’d come from look like Anna’s
My Little Pony
Show Stable. There was a large farm, though Luca couldn't tell what they were growing, and a silo like the one back home. There were a couple of other buildings, too. A large one that looked like a garage, and another one that had a whole bunch of wires on top, along with something that looked like a flying saucer. Just past the gate, there were three large houses in a row, three stories each. A high brick wall that made Luca think of Humpty Dumpty encircled what the others had called “the compound.”

John’s car drove into the large garage and all the cars followed. Luca felt butterflies flutter inside him as John stepped from his car and the other men followed. Luca looked up at the seat in front of him. Desmond’s face was mad, Mary’s was still worried. Luca took Paola’s hand, then followed Desmond and Mary from the car.

They were met by a large group of strange looking people on the other side of the garage. The group looked nothing like the soldiers. Paola leaned into Luca’s ear and whispered, “I didn’t know the special place was
Little House on the Prairie
.”
 

There were four men and one boy, dressed in dark suits with hooks instead of buttons. Their pants had suspenders, like clowns, except not funny, just black. All their shirts were pretty colors. Light pastels that looked like Easter. Their boots were brown and scuffed, and their hats had wide brims, made of black felt. The men all had beards, but no mustaches, and their hair was long enough to brush the base of their necks. The boy’s hair wasn’t quite as long, but looked like it was cut with a bowl on top.

There were two women as well, probably a mom and a daughter. They both wore long hair parted down the middle. The mom wore it in a tight bun, the girl in pigtails. Their dresses were solid blue and fell all the way to their ankles, and their shoes were a shiny black.
 

They stood in a semi-circle and said, “We’re well met to know you,” one at a time.

John met them on the other side of the strangers. In a soft voice, he turned to his old friends from the Drury and said, “This is home now. You’ll be safe here.” He gestured toward the house in the middle. “Come inside, there’s someone I want you all to meet. The man who saved my life, the man who helped me finally find the inner peace I’ve been seeking for so long.”

Luca could feel Desmond getting angrier, but he followed him, just like Desmond followed John. As they approached the house, an old man stepped outside, then climbed down the front porch stairs, each step creaking loudly beneath his weight. The man wore a long, ivory colored robe. Something terrible must have happened to him because the skin on his neck was bright red and really wrinkled. It looked like leftover ham. A mask covered the left side of his face.
 

 
“This,” John said, “my friends, is The Prophet.”

* * * *

10 - BRENT FOSTER PART 2

Black Island Research Facility,

March 21

“Rise and shine, sleepy head,” Michael teased, standing in the threshold of Brent’s dorm-sized room.
 

“Fuck, what time is it?” Brent said, turning and looking at the clock. 5:15 a.m. His head was pounding. He’d been up too late, and drank a few too many beers in the dining hall when he got back from Jane’s. Today was supposed to be his day off.

“Early, but the guys are getting ready early and a spot’s opened up.”

“Huh? A spot for what?”

“We’re going into the city on an extraction run. Sanchez is sick and I vouched for you.”

“Extraction?”

“I don’t know all the details, but they sent a team in last week to followup on leads. Supposedly there was an infected sighting.”

“I thought you all shot the infected on sight.”

“Change in protocol, or so say the scientists. They want us to catch some live ones for observation. Only problem is, we haven’t seen too many, not in a while. Most everything we’ve spotted was either a full-on alien or an infected who was already dead. At any rate, a couple of our guys managed to trap one of the infected in an apartment building and need us to extract them.”

“So, we’re gonna fly back with one of those things?”

“We’re bringing a second chopper with a cage, so
we
won’t be. The good news is you get to meet Ed.”

“Who’s Ed?” Brent asked.

“Commander Edward Keenan, one of the best we’ve got. He came on a bit after I got here, but shit if he ain’t the toughest son of a bitch I’ve seen. Dude is ALL business, and unlike some of the other captains I’ve seen in my years, actually gets out in the field and gets his hands dirty.”

“Sounds like fun,” Brent said as he sat up, his head still adjusting to the light that Michael turned on.

“He’s not a ball-buster or anything. Barely talks at all, in fact. But hell if you can’t learn something just by being next to the guy.”

“What time we leaving?” Brent asked, not wanting to let Michael down.

“Oh six hundred sharp. So grab a shower and get dressed and ready.”

“Yeah,” Brent said, as he stumbled off to the shower, hoping he’d make it through the day on little sleep.

**

They flew a Blackhawk, with four Guardsmen and two pilots, into the city. A second chopper, another Blackhawk with the cage, followed with six more Guardsmen, including pilots.

Captain Keenan was in charge of the mission, though he’d yet to say a word to the men, preferring stolid silence the entire flight. Keenan looked around 40 with a nearly shaved head and beard stubble. He appeared tough and fit, but world-weary and just as likely to take a long nap as he was to jump into a firefight.