Yesterday's Gone: Season One

she wanted to be when she got older...”
     
    At this, Luis paused, blinking back the tears.
     
    “It was a magical night. She fell to sleep on my chest. I remembered thinking I had to go to the bathroom, but I passed out. I wasn’t going to meet the others last night, but I was wide awake, and I thought maybe there would be safety in numbers or something, so I brought Gracie over and let her sleep on the couch. She slept the entire time. And then 2:15 hit. I woke up and she was gone.”
     
    “Jesus,” Brent said, not knowing a single word worthy enough to follow, except maybe “Christ.”
     
    “Now here’s the thing I didn’t tell the others,” Luis said, turning to Brent, eyes red. “They’d all been dreaming about the whole world disappearing and the four of our group surviving, right? Well, I had too. Until a few weeks ago when the dreams started to change.”
     
    Brent was only vaguely aware of the white, blurred world outside the car.
     
    “In my dreams, we didn’t survive. Nobody did.”

    ****

 
    MARY OLSON
     

     
    October 15, 2011
     
    afternoon
     
    Somewhere in Missouri
     

     

     
    The huddled survivors shrank from the railing, frozen with fear.  
     
    Mary glanced at Paola, who had left the car despite her mother’s warning. Her daughter shouldn’t have to see this. They should be back home, arguing about her constant attitude and whether or not she could manage three days in a row without losing something new to the growing pile of contraband and consequences Mary had started to stockpile in the basement.  
     
    But Paola had seen it , and was a bleached sheet because of it. So was Jimmy. John had already emptied a few gallons of his home-brewed ralph over the railing and into the river, but his insides must have been bottomless because he was still going strong.  
     
    “They look so neat,” Jimmy said.  
     
    “No,” Desmond was still staring at the bodies, “Not neat; stacked.”
     
    And they did look stacked. The bodies had a barracks-like organization, lined in orderly rows the river’s current had yet to separate. John sent another liquid scream over the railing, but some of the chunky cargo caught wind, flying behind him and into Paola’s hair. Mary drew her daughter closer and pulled her hair into a loose ponytail.  
     
    Everyone waited quietly while John finished throwing up. But it just kept going and going, stripping his organs by the sound of it.  
     
    “She’s dead. Gone and slaughtered. Probably stacked somewhere just like this, maybe in that floating cemetery, or another just as awful.” John’s jaw had hardened.  
     
    He looked more angry than sad, fierce even. Mary always thought John looked a little pretty and on the soft side of masculine, but now he looked mean. Like he could kill, maybe even like he wanted to . She wondered how long it would be before they all turned into the worst type of animals. Only thing separating man from beast was civilization, after all. Once that disappeared, they were little more than talking bears in a Saturday morning cartoon.  
     
    “We’ll find her, man.” It sounded almost sweet, the way Jimmy nearly believed the sound of his voice. “We just have to start looking.”
     
    John probably wouldn’t have yelled at Jimmy, but he couldn’t yell at Paola. She was too young. And someone had to get yelled at after Paola chimed, “It’s okay Mr. Saddler; sometimes you just have to believe.”
     
    John stared at Paola for a long second, then pounced on Jimmy. “I don’t need any goddamn platitudes. We won’t just find her . HOW are we going to find her? At the next rest stop? Don’t you realize what’s happening? Everything is gone and everyone is dead. And we’re next. This probably isn’t just here, it’s probably everywhere.” He reeled around to face Desmond. “You seem to know everything about everything. What do you think? Is this global?”  
     
    Desmond chewed on the answer. “Yeah, I think whatever this is, it’s probably everywhere.”  
     
    Jimmy’s brief spark of hopefulness was gone. Paola’s too. Mary probably would’ve cracked, but she had to keep her fractured psyche fused for her daughter’s sake. John was already well beyond shattered; hollow, not quite there, a bit like the thing they had found twitching on the side of the road.  
     
    “See,” John turned to the rest of them. “We’re all just days from dead, if we’re lucky.”
     
    “That’s not what I