Yesterday's Gone: Season One

the world.
    The door to the apartment was unlocked just as he left it. He could almost smell her as he crossed the apartment toward the bathroom where his first surprise was waiting. Boricio had left precisely one body in the bathtub with all its limbs in place. He’d even left the head on since an extra body was all the cops needed to open-and-shut his ritual into an easy-to-swallow murder-suicide.  
    The punk ass dude had bled out, coating the tub in a thick mottle of red, but his body was gone and the gallons of blood looked like they’d been replaced with fresh water.  
    The fuck is this?
    And she was missing too.  
    The bed was rumpled from where she’d been taking her final nap, but the buckets of blood that were beneath her when Boricio closed the door three hours earlier, now looked suspiciously like bleach stains. Same for the drops leading from bed to bathroom. The white against the brown of the hard wood was clear, even with only one light working.  
    Someone turned the world inside-fucking-out...
    Boricio tore through the apartment, trying to pull sense from the impossible. He wasn’t worried about getting caught at all. It hadn’t happened in 20 years and sure as shit wasn’t about to happen an hour into the Apocalypse, but he wasn’t a guy to flip a bitch on Answer Road.  
    After 15 minutes, Boricio couldn’t find a single thing, except for the panty drawer he’d rifled through 73 times before.  
    Those aren’t her panties. Ain’t a single pair in that drawer was ever worn.  
    Thing about beer-battered bullshit is it doesn’t taste different until you spit it out, so Boricio threw a final scowl around the room, then headed for the door, pausing at the threshold. He could swear he felt faster, stronger. And not just like he usually did after a good kill and a great night’s sleep.  
    Like a few lines of coke gone permanent. Must be the adrenaline. Feels good. Could get used to this shit in a hurry.  
    Boricio bounded down the stairs and kicked the door with a giggle. Maybe it was the end of the world, and maybe that shit wasn’t too bad. Humanity was mostly made of assholes anyway, and that was scientific fucking fact.  
    Boricio was practically skipping across the street, but broke into a full run when he saw the police cruiser sitting in the ghost lot of a usually hopping Circle K.  
    The meek don’t inherit shit. Earth belongs to the wolves.

    **

EDWARD KEENAN

    Darkness bathed every block.  
    Not a single light or car on the street. Nor a single person in sight.  
    The shit was downright spooky. He followed the streets until they led him out of the neighborhood and into town, wherever the hell he was. He didn’t think to look at an address while in the house. That was the second mistake he’d made this evening. He’d have to stay sharp if he planned to get back home. He was about to lean over, open the glove compartment, and dig out whatever paperwork was in there, when he saw the glow of lights from a gas station’s lit canopy ahead.
    Excited, he floored the gas, and raced to the station. A red Honda was parked at the pump and a blue Mazda was parked in a space at the back of the store.
    The gas station was in the lot of a small shopping plaza, which had gone completely dark. As he got closer to the gas station, he looked inside the store. It was lit, but dimly. Backup lighting, no doubt.
    Ed parked behind the Honda, hopped out of the SUV, and went inside the store, which was haunted by the same vacant feeling of the oddly abandoned house.  
    “Hello?” No cashier at the register; no one in the store. He walked toward s the walk-in cooler, which was muted from its usual hum, and peered inside the window. Nobody in there , either.
    He headed to the back of the store, checked the bathrooms and a back storage room, doubling as an office. He saw a closed-circuit TV, its broadcast dark. He was about to leave the back room when he spotted something on the desk — a phone! And not one of those wireless fuckers, but a landline.
    His heart leaped in his chest. He raised the receiver to his ear, heart beating faster and excited fingers ready to dance the 11 digits on their way to Xavier.
    Except he heard no dial tone.
    He clicked the disconnect a few times, nothing in return. The line was as dead as the lights. It didn’t make sense. Even during a total power outage, phone lines had enough power to make calls. Perhaps, he considered, the phone company’s power was out?