Yesterday's Gone: Season One

beat-to-shit clock with the three missing Romans — 2:17 am.  
    Fuck that.  
    Boricio hit the bottom stair and opened the door. He could smell the beer-battered bullshit before it was halfway open. Yup , the restaurant was dead. The restaurant hadn’t been empty once in the four months he lived upstairs, but Boricio could see through the glass: No cooks, no customers, no servers. He walked outside into the night.
    And on the corner, Lucy was gone, which was equally weird. Lucy was never gone. Fucking mystery when she slept; stood on the corner day in, day out, except if cops were on the beat or she was filling the mayonnaise jar. Even then, she was only gone for five to nine minutes at a time. Lucy had a way of taking guys into the room and giving them more than they expected in less than a quarter of the time.
    Like his apartment, the motel across the street was dark. But the humming light from the restaurant’s sign (which was lit) illuminated the split crack of Room #112. Boricio crossed the street, then opened the door the rest of the way to a whole mess of what-the-fuck?  
    The room was neat. Ready for the next 5–9 minutes neat anyway. And the air was so cold, it wasn’t like Lucy had stepped out so much as she’d never even been there. Boricio had smelled that room most days ending in Y for four months straight and it had never smelled like that.  
    The motel room was dead. Just like the alley. And the stairwell. And his fucking apartment. And just like that, the restaurant sign went dark, the humming ceased, leaving everything quiet. Like no animals or insects quiet. The kinda quiet you sometimes got right before a hurricane, but even quieter.
    A flirt’s worth of fear fluttered through Boricio’s body. It almost made him smile; it’d been so long since he’d felt it, but his beading temple kept the grimace fixed. Boricio stepped back into the alley, drawing a deep breath and inhaling a perfumed gust from the Mississippi.  
    The river.  
    Fuck yeah, that’s where he’d go. Something had happened and he’d missed it. People were evacuating and would have to meet in one place. The river made sense. Besides, if it really was the end of the world, the Mississippi would look him in the eye and tell him the truth.  
    Boricio crossed the street, hopped in his 10-year-old, 2 - ton Ford, then gunned the engine and tore into the street with a roar thundering over dead earth. He was only a half mile from the river but didn’t even make it a block before braking hard enough to burn his nostrils with the scent of burned rubber.  
    FUCK.  
    Maybe the world had been shingled in shit and maybe it hadn’t, but a sudden memory from his previous night’s adventure filled Boricio’s brain with a planet and a half’s worth of fuck this!  
    The world had disappeared. The thought of her disappearing, despite the neat slit that ran beneath her chin from ear to ear, was about as much as Boricio could take. He flipped the pickup in a U and sent it flying toward the Village de L’Est where that little bitch Brianna had kept her tidy apartment, at least until he’d made her breathing impossible.  
    He’d see if the body was still there. If so, he’d deal with it.  
    Him, too.  

    **

    Boricio coated the back of his hand with brow sweat and pushed the pickup harder. Less than a mile to go.  
    Fucking bitch. I wanted to wait until Christmas. She was my present. And if it wasn’t for that ancient fuck, or the punk ass with the pink glasses, I would’ve. Still, she’d been yummier’n a Hurricane and a heap of hot wings. Didn’t even scream. Not once. Just wheezed at the end a little, like a dying vacuum cleaner.  
    Boricio broke into a cracked laugh at the memory.  
    Punk ass with the sunglasses, though, he cried like a stuck pig. Would’ve died fast no matter, but the squealing made it easy. She was worth savoring every second. Too bad about the rush. Happy fucking Halloween.  
    Now I need something new for Christmas.
    Boricio rounded the corner at Dauphine and killed the engine at the second curb so he could walk the rest of the way. Like always. Just in case.   From a block back, he knew everything he needed to, but kept on going anyway. The old man, same fucker who had been sitting on the stoop since early September when Boricio first started scoping the place, was gone. He’d been half the reason Boricio had to hurry his Christmas, and now he wasn’t even around to celebrate the end of