Yesterday's Gone: Season One

bigger loser than me.”
    Boricio shook his head, then looked in the mirror at Charlie. “How about you, Charlie Brown? When’s the first time you got to bumpin’ uglies?”
    “I’m still a virgin,” Charlie said, slightly red-faced. “I used to really like this one girl named Josie, but ever since she started hanging out with Shayanne and the rest of the Bitch Clique, she started giving me the ugly eye. But fuck her, anyway. Like Adam, my step-dad rarely let me leave the house without a detailed explanation, so I didn’t have much of an opportunity.”
    Boricio erupted into laughter. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s it. Couldn't be cuz you’re gangly as a fucking Gomer and it looks like you wash your face in fried chicken!” Boricio tilted the rearview and met Charlie’s eyes. “You know I’m just fucking with you, right? This is how Team Boricio bonds, bitch! Now, since you ain’t gonna tell any tall tales about twat, why don’t you spin us a story or two about what a fucker your old man is.”
    “Nah,” Charlie said. “Nobody wants to hear that.”
    “Yeah we do,” Adam said, probably wanting to change the conversation to something less embarrassing for both of them.  
    “Bob wasn’t nearly as bad as Adam’s dad; mostly he just liked to humiliate me as often as he could. Called me Nancy, Mary, even Melinda — any girl’s name he could think of, really. Anything he could do to bring me down a peg while elevating himself. When he wasn’t calling me a girl, he’d call me gay, faggot, and other shit like that.”
    “And your mom let him talk like that to you?” Boricio asked.
    “No, he usually wore his nicest face around my mom. She knew he gave me a hard time, but not the extent of it. And to make matters worse, he’d convinced her it was for my own good. Like he was doing me some kind of fucking favor! And though he didn’t really smack me around, except for a few occasions, there was this one time he scared the shit out of me. My mom was out with her girlfriend Colleen, all day for a mid-life makeover as Colleen called it, and Bob told me that if I didn’t scrub the trash cans inside-out, which he’d promised my mom he would do while she was gone, he would take me out to the woods and do what he should have done the day he met my mom. He said ‘ain't nobody gonna hear you scream out there,’ so yeah, he never put my hand in a garbage disposal or nothing, but he was a Grade-A fucker for sure.”  
    Charlie collapsed to the back of his seat.
    “Funny thing is, I think I would’ve been able to tolerate Bob if he hadn’t been such an asshole to my mom. But he treated her like total shit, always tearing her down and making her feel small. She used to be fun, before Bob. You can call me a pussy, but she was probably my best friend before she met him. And over time, he sucked her dry, took her joy and turned it into fear and emotional slavery.”
    The truck was quiet for nearly a full minute, when Boricio glanced in the rearview and said, “Pussy.”
    Charlie closed his eyes and then burst into laughter. Adam joined and the three of them laughed for about half a mile. Ahead, was a gas station. Lights out, nobody home. Boricio parked, then turned back to Charlie and Adam.
    “Most of the world’s fuckers are dead,” he said. “But, Charlie, it looks like you got yourself a raw deal with your personal fucker making it through the apocalypse and then taking your bitch on top of it. How would you feel about the three of us gentlemen paying a friendly visit to dear Ole’ Bob?”

    * * * *

LUIS TORRES

    October 17
    6:40 a.m.
    East Hampton, New York

    Brent, Jane, and Emily stared out the window as the ferry’s lights sliced through the morning fog. The ferry wasn’t supposed to resume until 8 a.m. but the clock read 6:40 a.m.
    “It’s time to go,” Brent said, turning to Luis.
    “I dunno,” he said, “Something’s weird. Ferry wasn’t supposed to show until eight.”
    “Maybe they’re early,” Brent said, “Or maybe eight is the departure time, but they board early.”
    No, something was wrong. Luis felt it in his gut.
    “I dunno,” Luis said. “I say we wait a bit.”
    “What are you talking about?” Brent said. “You think aliens commandeered a ferry?”
    “No, it’s not that,” Luis said, now literally feeling something in his gut. Sharp pain pierced his stomach, causing him to double over. He felt like he had the worst case of food poisoning ever.
    “You