Yesterday's Gone: Season One

whole lot cooler than he’d been a few hours before. Before he fell down, before he woke to a dog that could talk to his thoughts. Before he woke to a ready-to-go campfire.  
    Luca didn’t get thirsty again. Every time he felt his mouth start to dry, the husky would appear with another bottle of water.  
    “I think I’m going to have to name you,” Luca finally said, drinking water and rubbing the husky on the snout. “How do you like the name, Dog Vader?”  
    The dog whimpered. “It’s good for now.”  
    Luca stroked the Husky’s fur.
    He’d been walking for hours and though he wasn’t really tired; it was probably past middlenight or even next day. So Luca stopped, lay his head on a smooth rock and closed his eyes. It was only a moment before he was in the twitchy part of dreams, where his body moves a little but his brain moves a lot.  
    He opened his eyes and saw an Indian. The kind like in the movies. The kind you’re supposed to call Native Americans. The Indian was sitting on a stump looking at Luca right where Dog Vader had been just a moment before. The man smiled.  
    Luca sat up. “Am I dreaming?” he asked.
    “What do you think?” the Indian spoke, his mouth not moving either. His voice didn’t sound like the deep-voiced Indians from the movies though. It sounded like his own voice, a bit, just like the dog’s had.
    “Yes,” Luca nodded. His floppy hair bounced up and down. “And no.”
    “You are correct,” the Indian smiled.  
    “Are you Dog Vadar?”
    “I am your friend, yes, but I never agreed to that name.”
    “Can I call you Dog Vadar?”
    “No.” The man smiled. “But you may call me something else. What would you like to call me?”
    “Kick.”
    “Kick?”
    “Yes, like sidekick. Like Robin. From Batman and Robin.”
    “Okay. But what makes you think that I’m the sidekick?” The Indian continued to smile.  
    “Because you’re the one following me.”  
    “Then Kick it is,” he said with a laugh.  
    “Where are we going?” Luca asked.
    “There,” Kick pointed toward the far side of the coastline.  
    “Are we almost there?”
    “Almost.”
    Luca believed him. He closed his eyes again and didn’t open them until the bright light and white spots came back and told him to. Of course the rainbow agreed. Kick, if Luca wasn’t crazy, was sitting beside him, awake, snout pointed at the rainbow. Luca got up and followed. So did the countless animals behind him.  
    Luca looked both ways, crossed the street, then ambled over a thin row of rocks separating the road from the sand. He looked at the coastline, then gasped and fell to his knees.  
    Cats, dogs, birds, and plenty of other animals that weren’t fancy enough for the zoo were there. They were everywhere. Maybe 1,000, though Luca was sorta bad at counting when the counting stuff was spread all over the place.  
    Luca turned back toward the highway and followed the rainbow. An army of beasts followed.

    **

BORICIO WOLFE

    Streetlights had flickered the entire way from his apartment to Her Majesty’s , but unlike his apartment and the rest of Crap Alley, currents were crackling at the Circle K. Neon bathed the lot in a cheap glow, which looked especially bright against the backdrop of black.  
    Boricio laughed out loud at the unlocked cop car and held his grin while looking at the shotgun sitting upright in the back seat. Shit sure is easy at the end of the world!   He opened the trunk of the cruiser and headed inside the Circle K for a bit of light early - morning shopping.  
    Beer, chips, protein bars, Excedrin, porn, everything Hostess makes, a few Cup-A-Soups, and some other sundries made it into the surprisingly large trunk. Boricio slammed the trunk shut, then went back in the store to empty the cash register, just in case . He took the snub-nosed revolver from under the counter and tucked it into his waistband next to his .45, also just in case. After a swift kick to a safe that wouldn’t open and a like it fucking matters , Boricio was sitting in the front of a police cruiser for the first time in his life.
    View’s much better from here.
    The few miles to the Mississippi were graveyard quiet, with less than nothing on the radio and the same empty hanging in the air outside. Though Boricio wasn’t sure what he expected to see when he hit the river, it wasn’t anything close to what he actually saw. He figured there’d either be no one or everyone, but a fat river void of