Yesterday's Gone: Season One Part 10

Melora started to say something and then the power went out.

The camera switched to night vision green and showed all three fall to the ground, unconscious. There was some static. Brent watched the screen, waiting for them to move, but they didn't. They were out cold. If he didn't know better, he'd think they dropped dead right there.

"That's it until an hour later, when we woke up," Stan said. "Then we went out and drove around the city to confirm what we thought."

"I drove around the city," Luis corrected him.

"Yes," Stan agreed.

"Okay, so you recorded yourselves 'pa.s.sing out' at the same time; what's that supposed to prove?" Brent asked.

Melora reached into the box and pulled out another recorder. "This is the one we put in an apartment two doors down. One of several we placed in other apartments, I might add. Without anyone's knowledge, of course."

She handed it to Brent, and he pressed play.

2:14 a.m.

The scene was inside someone's bedroom, a king-sized bed. The camera was already on night vision. Next to the bed, Brent saw a clock's face that read 2:10. He could see the shapes of a man and woman in bed, the guy hogging the blankets, the woman curled against him. He could hear one of them snoring.

The alarm clock went black.

"That's the power outage," Melora said.

Brent kept watching.

More static, this time accompanied by a five second burst of a high pitched whistle like a tea kettle if the tea kettle's sound were filtered through a high velocity fan.

And then something came into view of the camera and Brent jumped. The camera fell from his hands.

"What the f.u.c.k was that?!"

Stan, surprisingly agile, grabbed the camera before it hit the ground. He rewound it to where Brent had left off and handed it back.

Something that looked like a dark cloud had formed all at once over the bed, a swirling ma.s.s of slow moving smoky tendrils. Except it moved more like smoke if it were in liquid form. Brent stared in horror as two long tentacles of darkness twisted and snaked down toward the sleeping bodies. Just as one of the tentacles creeped toward the woman's head, the image flickered More static and the high-pitched weird teakettle noise whistled for the longest five seconds of Brent's entire life. The static cleared. When it did, the bed was empty.

The time in the corner read 2:15 a.m.

TO BE CONTINUED...

THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES!.

We hope you enjoyed the first episode of Yesterday's Gone as much as we enjoyed writing it.

If you think this ending was something, wait until you see what happens in future episodes leading up to the craziest WTF ending at the end of the season!

You can find links to all the episodes at http://serializedfiction.com or you can get the full season in one convenient download at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Yesterdays-Gone-Season-One-ebook/dp/B005REXCKE/ ****

EPISODE TWO.

CHARLIE WILKENS.

October 15, 2011 Early evening Jacksonville, Florida It had been two hours, but the girl was still pa.s.sed out in Charlie's bed. He started to wonder if she had fallen into a coma - maybe she'd die.

He'd removed her hoodie when they first got home. She was wearing a charcoal tee underneath and Charlie cut the sleeve from her s.h.i.+rt to dress the wound. It was more bruise than torn flesh, which was good because he didn't think he'd be able to st.i.tch someone. He didn't understand why the girl was still out, but he also wasn't in a hurry for her to wake. Because then he'd have to deal with her reaction to being abducted, which could get violent.

He kept flas.h.i.+ng back to that moment when they'd fallen in the shopping plaza parking lot, and he first realized she was a girl and not some dude looking to jack their truck. Something in her eyes said she wasn't a threat. But what was she doing in the store? The doors were locked when he and Bob arrived, so she must've followed them in for some reason. But why?

If her goal was to take the truck, she could have done that without going into the store. h.e.l.l, she could've taken anything with four wheels; the streets were plenty full. Then again, he guessed she could have entered the store through a side door or service entrance.

He thought of her beautiful eyes again. He only knew a handful of black girls, and none with blue eyes. Bob searched her for ID, but came up empty. While he had thought she was close to his age, closer inspection put her closer to 20.

"Who are you?" Charlie asked, neither expecting, nor getting, a response.

The light outside, bleeding through the thick and slightly-parted curtain, was starting to dim. It would be night soon. It wouldn't be long before they'd have to switch to some of the battery-operated lamps they'd lifted from the store. He wasn't sure what he'd do if she didn't wake soon. If he went to sleep and wasn't awake when she came to, she might freak. He wasn't worried that she'd hurt him, even though it was a distinct possibility. His main concern was that Bob would see her as a threat and put a bullet in her before Charlie could calm the situation.

Charlie stared at the shape of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath her tee s.h.i.+rt. They were on the small side, but still quite nice. He had resisted the urge to "accidentally" brush against them when they were carrying her to his bed, then again when he was dressing her wounds, even though Bob made some sort of joke about Charlie keeping himself a "little chocolate s.e.x slave."

What an a.s.shole.

As he kept watch over the girl, Bob stayed in the living room drinking his beer. Not Nati-Light, either. He'd looted good s.h.i.+t. Beside him, on the couch, a shotgun. Usually, he'd watch TV as he got good and drunk. Without TV, Charlie wondered what Bob would do for entertainment. He didn't strike Charlie as much of a reader.

He hoped Bob didn't plan to continue using him as a dartboard for his amus.e.m.e.nt. He didn't mind pretending to drink and burp to keep Bob in good humor, but he wasn't Bob's court jester, and wasn't willing to play one in front of a girl. But if Charlie's history with bullies had taught him anything, it was that bullies loved to humiliate others. An audience was just fuel to a fire.

Bob was originally going to abandon the girl to die in the parking lot, but Charlie begged him to show compa.s.sion. They couldn't just leave someone - especially a girl - behind to die.

"Well, she's your responsibility," Bob said as if she were a stray mutt. "But if she gets outta line, I'm putting her to sleep again and she ain't waking up."

Charlie hoped it wouldn't come to that. He had no idea what they'd do with the girl once she came to. Obviously, he'd see if she had any friends or family. If not, he'd probably invite her to stay until things got sorted. Whether Bob would go for that was another story.

He stared as she slept. Her eyes were rolling beneath their lids, deep in dreams. The room grew colder as the sun started to set. He pulled a blanket over her and laid on the floor to rest his eyes.

"Where am I?" the girl groaned.

Charlie's eyes snapped open and he sat up. The room was pitch black. He'd slept too long. Why the h.e.l.l hadn't Bob woken him?

Must be pa.s.sed out drunk again.

Charlie fumbled in the dark until his hands found the portable lamp and clicked it on. She was crouched on the bed, ready to pounce but blinded by the light. Charlie pulled the lamp back and lit his face.

"It's okay; you were hurt."

Her eyes darted to the closed door then back at Charlie, weighing her next move. He stepped between her and the door, praying she wouldn't run, wake Bob, and end up with a bullet or two making house inside her head.

"Please, hear me out," Charlie whispered, "My drunken stepdad thought you were a thief and hit you with the crowbar before seeing you were a girl. I'm so sorry."

"A girl can't be a thief?" she said, eyes blazing, almost challenging him.

"No, I mean, yeah, they can be, but..."

"It's okay," she said, relaxing a bit and sitting on the bed. "Did you do this?" she asked, running a hand over her bandaged right shoulder.

"Yeah, though I'm not sure I helped much."

She pulled the bandage aside without flinching, then looked at Charlie. "Where am I? How long was I out?"

"My house; on Charleston Street. We didn't want to leave you alone. And I'm not sure what time it is, but it's been at least five or six hours."

She closed her eyes and looked like she was going to add an encore to her original fade to black. But she took a deep breath and steadied herself, then opened her eyes again.

"What's wrong?" he asked, "You okay?"

"I dunno," she said. "I have these horrible headaches that make me black out every now and then. Doctors don't know why. They think it's probably migraines."

"I thought you were in a coma," Charlie said.

"Where's the dude that hit me?"

"I'm guessing he's pa.s.sed out, drunk."

"Okay," she said, standing, flinching a bit as she did. "I need to get out of here before he comes to."

"Why?" Charlie asked, "He's not gonna hurt you again. I told him to back off."

She stared at him, "Was that before or after he knocked me out?"

"After," Charlie said, looking down, "But you're safe now."

"No, I'm not. And neither are you."

"What?" Charlie asked.

"You're not safe here. None of us are. We need to get the h.e.l.l out of here before they come."

"Who?"

"The ones that took everyone away," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"We weren't supposed to survive," she said, "They're gonna come back for us. Just like they came for my neighbor."

"Wait, you saw them? Who took the people away?"

"Not when it happened, no. But I saw them today. They attacked my neighbor right in front of me."

Her eyes were wet, as if she might cry, but she continued.

"My neighbor Tom was outside loading his car with supplies. We were gonna drive until we found other survivors. I was in his living room, filling the last of the duffel bags with supplies when I heard him scream. I looked out the window and that's when I saw them. These... things. They were like people, but like... undone or something. One of them was missing eyes, and the other was missing a mouth. And they just started attacking him, and ... one was eating him while the one without a mouth was shoving Tom's guts all over the front of his face where his mouth should've been."

She paused, "Did you hear that?"

Charlie looked around, "What?"

She leaped on him, falling on top of him. At first he thought she was attacking him, but she was after the lantern. She clicked it off, threw the room into darkness, and slapped a cool hand over his warm mouth.

"Shhh. Can you here that?"

He did - a clicking sound, faint, but constant, just outside his bedroom window. He glanced at the curtain, but it was closed, mercifully.

"They're here," she whispered.

BRENT FOSTER.

October 15, 2011 afternoon New York City Brent couldn't stop watching the video.

One minute the couple was in bed, sound asleep. The next, an impossible, smoky-looking liquid cloud appeared from nowhere, killed the video and filled the screen with static. And then the sleepers disappeared - vanished, vaporized, gone.

Stan, as requested, showed him three other videos they'd recorded in their neighbors' apartments. Each video showed the same song, different tune.

"What is it?" Brent asked.

"We have no idea," Melora said. "Though we suspect it's extraterrestrial, and that the dreams we've shared the past few decades were some sort of alien broadcast meant for us."

Brent shook his head, trying to shake the thought of the black liquid cloud hovering above his wife and child, desperately wanting to ignore the lunacy. Yet, without a better explanation for where everyone except them had evaporated to at 2:15 a.m. the night before, he clearly had little choice but to play along.

"Why us? Why didn't they take us?" Brent asked. "Why would they take a..." he wanted to finish the sentence, but fell short at the word child, as though murdering the word would take the reality with it. He HAD to believe Gina and Ben were out there, somewhere.

"There have to be others," Brent said, glancing at the self-proclaimed 215 Society. "I mean, you all had the dreams, so yeah, you're still here. But I didn't. And I'm here, too. So there must be something else which kept me around. Something which may have kept others, too?"

"You probably don't remember your dreams," Melora said, the professor's tone starting to p.i.s.s off Brent. "In fact, most people only remember a small percentage of their actual dreams. Isn't it possible you had the dreams and don't remember?"

"Nah," Luis said, "He'd have to remember at least one of them, right? Maybe there are others out there like he says. Makes sense."

Brent nodded as if endors.e.m.e.nt built the road to reality.