Yesterday's Gone: Season One

middle key, because it was the one that worked in the small Porsche that looked like a bathtub. Luca knew it, just as he knew what was in the box as soon as the cat told him.

    **

    Even though they were supposed to have sticks in the middle like his mom’s car, the coach’s Porsche didn’t. That was because it was a model car for grown-ups. And it wasn’t as old as it looked. Coach said it was a replica. It had a Volkswagen engine and an auto something transmission. He said that even though it was all sizzle and no steak, he loved driving it just the same.
    Luca opened the door, sat behind the wheel, turned the engine, and scooted down until his foot was on the brake. He put the car in drive and moved his foot to the gas. The Porsche lurched forward and threw Luca against the seat. He had to scurry down to hit the brake before the car rolled too far.    
    He tried a few versions of the same thing several times before realizing that though he was big enough to ride in the Porsche, he wasn’t yet tall enough to drive it.
    He returned to the house and ran upstairs to Matthew’s room. Matthew had more Legos than anyone Luca knew. He pulled the largest bucket from Lego Island, the one with all the odds and ends and oversized pieces. For five minutes, he didn’t think about burny skin or white spots in the sky or rainbows. For five minutes, he did nothing but stack legos, wearing a rare smile for that morning, on a face that usually looked naked without one.  
    Once he had created two neat cubes about 15 bricks high, Luca went to Matthew’s closet and grabbed a pair of shoes, size 12, same as him. He used duct tape from the garage to tape the two cubes to the bottom of Matthew’s shoes. He put them on and smiled.
    Luca climbed into the car and drove toward the end of the smaller rainbow at a comfortable 20 mph. He was a robot, with super cool handmade ninja robot feet.

    **

    He drove slow but exactly where the rainbow told him, winding down the hill until he hit a mostly empty Pacific Coast Highway where he made a left. Luca wove through the occasionally idle traffic as if playing a slowed down PS3 game with his daddy.  
    He had driven for three hours and 41 miles when he noticed the animals. At first, it was just a cat or two, then three. The math got harder as he drove, and by the third hour Luca was noticing all sorts of animals trotting along both sides of the highway.  
    Like animals that aren’t really animals anymore.
    BAM!!!
    Luca was lost in thought when he smashed the back of a pitch-black truck dead on the highway. Luca hadn’t seen a car for two miles, just long enough to send his attention elsewhere.  
    The empty hood of the bathtub crinkled like paper and threw Luca back hard against his seat and out cold on impact. The last thing he sensed as he slipped into darkness was the fire, not on his skin, but starting in the back of the car.

    **

BORICIO WOLFE

    Saturday
    October 15, 2011
    1:17 a.m.
    New Orleans, Louisiana  

    There were no explosions. No crashing concrete, crackling electricity, or menacing reverb to blanket the city. No screams. Just that hollow pause that sits in the seconds between ignition and detonation.  
    Except this one came and never left.  
    Boricio woke a second after It started, wide awake even though he’d been tangled in a fat thick of sleep — the kind you get after a night spent doing all the things he’d just finished doing. He wasn’t sure how he knew the end had begun. He just knew.
    His feet hit the floor and felt colder than they should have. That didn’t bother him. At least not like the air. Stale. Though he could still smell the restaurant below, there were no sounds. And there were always fucking sounds.  
    This is some beer - battered bullshit.
    Boricio looked around the loft — nothing out of place, at least not that he could put his finger on. Just the smell that didn’t smell right and the crazy feeling of empty that seemed to swallow the entire apartment like the fat lips on a French Quarter whore.  
    And the crazy as a cat on crack dream.
    Boricio looked outside. Sky wasn’t right.  
    He opened the window, and yup , same beer-battered bullshit outside, but stronger. He didn’t bother to shut the window, heading outside and grabbing a beer from the fridge on the way out instead. The fridge was still cold, though it’d gone as dark as the always-blinking alarm. Boricio stepped into the hallway and grabbed the time from the