Yesterday's Gone: Season One

an Uzi. Brent fired too, missing more than he hit, but able to keep them away, and even take a few down.
    “Die! Die! Die!” Luis screamed, emptying his clip into four creatures just below them.
    As Luis changed his clip, something dark caught Brent’s eye, moving in from behind, and coming right at Luis. Two creatures, in tandem, no, connected at the hip, were sailing over the cars behind them, barreling toward Luis faster than he could reload.
    Brent fired six shots, the last two hitting the joined monstrosity and sending it to the ground.
    Luis now had two Uzis loaded, and was firing them like a post-apocalyptic Rambo, still screaming.
    Brent loaded fresh clips into his pistols, and stood to join in the firefight, only to find nothing left to shoot.
    Nearly 40 creatures lay in scattered pieces around them. Luis called out, “Any more?!”
    Nothing but silence.
    After a long echo of the same nothing, Brent stared at Luis, somewhere in the middle of admiration and outright hero worship.
    “You are a fuckin’ bad ass!” Brent said laughing.
    Luis’s face, fat with rage just seconds before, melted to a warm smile, “Not a bad shot yourself. For a desk jockey. Come on, let’s get outta here before more of them crawl out of the woodwork.”
    They raced over the last rows of cars and down the road, high with a confidence that could only come from living the action part of a popcorn flick while leaving a trail of dead monsters behind them.  
    As they approached Times Square, the silence was replaced by the sound of birds. Lots of birds. As if the entire city’s avian populace had decided to flock to Times Square. Brent couldn’t see the birds through the fog. Nor could he see the giant advertisements that usually greeted him at the world’s most famous intersection. Without power, commerce was dead, and the giant LCD screens were just one more object barely visible in the fog. Even the solar and wind-powered Ricoh billboard was eerily dark and silent.
    As they reached the corner of 7th Avenue and 42nd Street, the birds grew to a constant loud chorus of chirps, shrieks, and calls.
    Luis, 10 feet ahead of Brent, stopped in his tracks.  
    As Brent picked up his pace, Luis turned, eyes wide, and said, “Go back.”
    “What?” Brent said, not listening, pushing past Luis. And then he saw for himself.
    Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of human corpses were lining the thoroughfare, in 10-foot-high mounds, piled like garbage.
    Brent’s throat ached and his eyes welled. He stood, rooted to the spot, unable, unwilling to register what his eyes were clearly seeing.
    “No,” he cried, “No, no, no.”
    The bodies weren’t rotting, burned, or emaciated, or in any way injured-looking to Brent, other than the torn eyes and flesh from the grazing birds. All were fully dressed, many in pajamas, as if plucked from bed and deposited right in the middle of the road. Dead.
    Luis crouched on one knee, eyes bolted to the mass grave.
    Brent raced forward and into the graveyard.
    “Ben! Gina!” he screamed repeatedly, hoping they might be hiding somewhere amongst the dead.
    His voice bounced off the buildings, bodies, and fog, sounding ever more desperate upon its mocking return.
    He raced through the streets, among the bodies, screaming for his family until his throat was raw.
    They have to be here. Ben spoke to me through Joe. He said Times Square!
    Brent continued calling, running from pile to pile, searching for any signs of life among the rows of bodies. Not caring if he drew the attention of every fucking monster in the city.  
    “Ben!!” he screamed again, this time, crying more than screaming, as he fell to his knees.
    “I’m sorry, man,” Luis said, now crouching next to Brent and putting an arm on his shoulder.
    “They can’t be ...” Brent cried, his entire face hurting so much he thought it might crack open, “They can’t be... dead.”
    Brent’s mind flashed on the moments he’d held his son tight, tucked him in, played with him, read to him, played peek-a-boo. Thought of Ben’s happy face and bright blue eyes. So full of life and innocence. He thought of the train in his pocket that his boy would never play with again.
    They can’t be gone.  
    Brent couldn’t fathom a world where his son and wife were only memory.
    Sudden recall hit Brent like a blade to the gut.
    Last weekend, he was home, dead-ass tired, and just wanting to chill out and watch TV. Ben came in asking him to read him