Yesterday's Gone: Season One

the creature screamed louder and lifted its arms.  
    Gunshots thundered through the apartment as the first creature, to his right, fell to the ground. In his blurred vision, Ed made out Ken, standing, holding the gun Ed had dropped. Ken turned to fire at the second creature as Ed unloaded his clip.
    “Die, you fucker!” Ken screamed as he fired shot after shot until the creature dropped. The gun went empty, but Ken’s arm kept shaking as his finger kept squeezing the trigger.
    “You got ‘em,” Ed said, standing. “Thank you.”
    He reached out and took the gun from Ken, who was in shock and crying.  
    “It’s okay,” Ed said. “They’re gone.”
    That’s when Ed saw Ken’s shoulder, bloodied beneath his shirt. “Are you hurt badly?”
    “It bit me,” Ken said, his voice shaking, “It fucking bit me! It was gonna eat me.”
    “You’re safe now,” Ed said, “Come on, let’s get back to the girls and get the hell out of here.”
    Ed retrieved fresh clips from his back pockets and loaded them into the guns. He would need more ammo soon, especially if they were going to run into more aliens.
    When they returned to 410, Jade and Teagan were terrified, “Oh my God, what happened?” Jade said, running to Ken.
    “He got bit,” Ed said, “We need to get out of here. Now.”
    “Are you okay?” Jade asked them both.
    “Yeah,” Ed said, “Ken really saved my ass back there.” May as well throw in a good word for the kid, Ed thought. Maybe Ken wasn’t as weak as he seemed. Ed wasn’t sure if the kid were gay, but if he wasn’t, he just proved himself worthy of Jade’s attention. “We need to leave right now, though. God only knows how many more of those things are lurking outside.”
    Ed went to the window to see if any more aliens were in the parking lot.
    That’s when he saw them. Not monsters, but two black vans in the parking lot that hadn't been there before.
    The window in front of him shattered and something stung him in the chest. He glanced down to see he’d been hit with some sort of dart. Jade, Teagan, and even Ken screamed as a second dart crashed through the window. Ed turned to see them looking at him, horror in their eyes.
    Then he fell.

    * * * *

JOHN LARSON

    After he got good and drunk and spilled his secrets to Desmond, a guy he didn’t even particularly like, John slunk off to his hotel room. What alcohol didn’t help, he hoped sleep would.

    He was snoring in seconds, and stayed that way until he shot straight up in bed, wide-awake and ravenously hungry. The room was dark, save for a soft white glow coming through his frosted window.
    John swung his feet to the carpet and rubbed his eyes.  
    What time is it?  
    Hard to tell since the world was quiet and a working clock wasn’t in the room.
    The air felt liquid, like a dream. Or maybe he was still heavily intoxicated.  
    He was drawn to the window. The parking lot and trees looked beautiful in the moon’s luminescence, reminding him of an illustration from a childhood book his mother used to read him. He couldn’t remember the name of the book, but he remembered the picture, a house underneath a smiling moon. And the sky was a beautiful shade of dark violet he’d never seen in nature ... until now. He remembered staring at the picture as a child and thinking how cozy the house looked, how safe, cool, and inviting. Countless times, he wished he could have jumped into the pages of the book.
      And that’s just how the world outside the hotel now looked. Safe, cool, and inviting.
    The bleakers were lined up, standing in a wide arc. The one at the front was motioning for him to come outside. The creature’s movement was so slow John felt as if he were watching time lapse photography.
    What’s the harm, it’s not like the creatures can hurt me in a dream.  
    He opened his window and jumped, landing three feet from the head bleaker. It took a step back, as did the bleakers behind it, parting as though John were a king walking a red carpet. Their eyes, so big and black seemed not scary as they had before, but rather curious.
    “John!” called Jenny’s voice in the distance.  
    Jenny?!  
    His heart sped up as he searched the night for her.
    He stepped past the head bleaker and the rest crowded the empty space behind him, as though sending him off and wishing him well.  
    “John!” Same voice, more urgent.  
    He crossed the edge of the parking lot, jogged across the street, then broke into a full run