Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone) (56 page)

Sam’s smile finally stretched itself all the way into a laugh.
 

Will continued.

“Cummings said one of my favorite things ever: ‘To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.’ Buy this book. You will read it often.”

Will handed the book to Sam. Their fingers touched, and Will felt a chill. The good kind, not the creepy kind he got from so many men.
 

Sam led him to the fiction section and picked out a book,
The Sins of the Fathers.
“You’ll love it,” Sam said. “Maybe?”

Will smiled, “Maybe.”

They met for coffee a week later so Sam could rave about cummings. Will read his book cover to cover, then picked up the next in the series. “Pretty damned good,” he said. “I’ve never been much of a fiction guy, save for some old science fiction stuff back when I was young. But I liked it; thank you.”

Will hadn’t thought he’d like crime fiction. And he hadn’t thought he’d like a long-term relationship. He was happily wrong on both accounts.

The coffee turned to dinner, turned to six years later, turned to now — Will standing in the ICU, watching his love leave the world of the living.

He touched Sam’s arm, hesitantly, afraid he might set off alarms, or cause Sam to die on the spot.

Sam’s eyes opened.

Will’s heart swelled.

The dream was wrong! Which means that . . .

No, don’t jinx this.

Sam’s eyes tried to surface through confusion, just like his tongue tried to get itself to talk. Maybe he finally realized that he was hooked to a ventilator; his eyes and tongue stopped trying at the same time.

“You’re in the hospital,” Will said softly, “But I’m here now. So is Trudy.”

Sam’s eyes filled with water. Will hoped he wasn’t feeling much pain.

“Don’t try to talk; you’re hooked up to a ventilator. I should probably get the doctor.”

Sam shook his head no, his eyes now tearing, and he spoke.

“Don’t, Will. I’m dying.”

Except he hadn’t spoken.

He was thinking. And Will was hearing it.

Will was certain he was imagining it, wanting to hear Sam speak to him, but no, Sam’s voice spoke again.

“I’m scared.”

Will turned to him, crying, “I’m scared, too.”

Will turned, and called out, “Nurse! Doctor!” Then Will hit the alarm beside the bed.

The monitor began to beep faster as alarms rang on the machines.

“What’s happening?” Will asked the staff rushing into the room.

“Sir, I’m gonna need you to wait outside,” a surgeon said. One of the nurses stepped in front of Will to push him away.

“Will? What’s happening?” Sam called out in his mind.

And then Will was outside the room, looking in through the window.

That was the last thing Sam would say, if Will had even really heard his thoughts.
 

“Will? What’s happening?”

He died afraid, as his lover was wrestled from him. Inside, Will died that night, too.

He thought he’d found a loophole.
 

He’d saved Sam from one fate only to deliver him to a worse one.

Will walked down the hall and found Trudy, but could not bear to tell her she missed Sam opening his eyes. Fate might be cruel, but Will was not.

* *

The Sanctuary

March 25

7:11 p.m.

The cold night air was as cruel as the goodbyes, freezing Will’s joints even beneath the thick pants and jacket he wore. Will walked to the car, a black Honda which John said was his to keep, along with a bag of supplies.

Will wished they hadn’t been waiting outside by the gate to see him off. Yet, there they were — Mary, Desmond, Paola, Luca, Linc, and even John. Brother Rei kept a respectable distance, surprisingly, back at the porch in front of the main house. He couldn’t tell for certain, but he thought the weasel was smiling.

Desmond was first to say goodbye, reaching out to shake Will’s hand.

“I’m sorry to see you go,” Desmond said, pulling Will into an embrace.

“Luca told me. Don’t worry,” Desmond whispered.

Will pulled away, and Mary came to him, tears in her eyes, “Thank you so much for saving Paola. I will never forget your selflessness and kindness. Or our many weird conversations where I always felt like a kid in grammar school pretending to keep up.”

She laughed through the tears, as did Will.

Paola hugged him, “Goodbye, Mr. Will. Thank you for everything.”

“Anytime, sweetheart. You stay good for your mom, okay?”

She smiled, wiping tears from her eyes.

Luca was next, the closest thing to a son he’d ever have — this child turned teen in the span of months. Tears streamed down Luca’s face, real tears, even though Will told him he’d be back. Maybe Luca knew more than he’d let on. Maybe he’d had the same dreams Will had. Or maybe the boy had read his mind, even though Will thought he’d been able to guard those thoughts.

Will hugged him, hard, both of them crying.

“Thank you,” Luca said, collapsing completely to tears.

“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)

* * * *

WANT A SNEAK PEEK OF NEXT WEEK’S EXCITING EPISODE?

Join
The Goners
, a FREE exclusive newsletter for fans of
Yesterday’s Gone,
and be the first to get sneak peeks, hear about Yesterday’s Gone-related news before anyone else!
 

Visit:

http://serializedfiction.com/be-a-goner

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.
 

Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. You are, of course, free to use short excerpts from the book for the purpose of review. We can’t do much to stop piracy, and we don’t enable digital rights management because we don’t want to restrict your enjoyment of this book or keep you from sharing it with a friend or two. However, we’re indie authors, and put a lot of our time and money into creating what you see here. Therefore, we would appreciate if you paid for your copy, or those you wish to give to others, so we can keep writing books for you.

The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends or blog readers about Yesterday’s Gone, to help us spread the word.

Thank you for supporting our work. You rock!

Visit:
http://SerializedFiction.com
 

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.