Yesterday's Gone: Season One

room, smashing his TV along the way.
     
    “What the hell?” Brent said, unable to make sense of the scene.
     
    Luis pushed past Brent, gun raised, and stepped into the hall. “Stand back,” he said to Brent.
     
    “Be careful,” Brent pleaded, getting his own gun ready.
     
    Luis pushed open the first door, the bathroom, then headed to the master bedroom with the fluid movement of a well-trained SWAT officer. He left the bedroom, still intact, then headed toward Ben’s room. Brent rushed to Luis’s side and stepped in front of him, “Wait,” he said, “I’ll go.”
     
    Brent pushed the door open with the gun, and prayed his son wouldn’t run out.
     
    He’d never been so glad not to see his family.
     
    “Whatever was here is gone,” Luis said.
     
    As if on cue, his radio beeped.
     
    “Yeah?” Luis asked.
     
    “Wh... where are you?” Stan asked, his voice at a whisper, packed with fear.
     
    “Across the street, why?”
     
    “They’re in here.”
     
    “ Who’s in there?”
     
    “The creatures. I heard them in the hallway, making this godawful sound.”
     
    “You have the guns, right?” Luis asked.
     
    “Yes,” Stan said, “Can you see anything outside?”
     
    Luis and Brent rushed to the window in Ben’s room and were met with wisps of white fog brushing the window panes.
     
    “Can’t see shit in this fog,” Luis said.
     
    “How many are there?”
     
    “I dunno, sounds like a lot,” Melora said.
     
    “Wait, wait,” Stand whispered loudly, “I think they might be leaving. Hold on, I’m gonna try and look through the peephole.”
     
    “No,” Luis said, “Just stay put. Do NOT make a sound.”
     
    Too late, no answer.  
     
    Brent and Luis listened as silence seemed to stretch to eternity. Brent was pretty sure he could hear Melora’s breathing over the light static.
     
    And then all hell broke loose.
     
    “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” Stan screamed, as something pounded like thunder.
     
    Melora screamed.
     
    Stan’s next scream was followed by the sound of ripping flesh and a rising chorus of “Click, click, click, click” sounds.  
     
    “Stan!” Luis yelled into the radio.
     
    “They’re eating him!” Melora screamed, but from a distance, as if she’d dropped the radio and was running into a room.
     
    She fired two shots, three, and then screamed.
     
    More flesh ripping, followed by what sounded like the splashing of blood and Melora’s gurgling death cries.
     
    Then nothing but silence, except for the clicking, like animals celebrating a kill.  
     
    Brent’s heart felt like it missed every other beat as the drama played out over the radio, just a couple hundred yards and another world away.
     
    “Stan!” Luis screamed, and suddenly the clicking stopped.
     
    Brent’s eyes shot wide open, waiting for what would come next over the radio as if he would see, not hear it. But they were met with silence.
     
    They heard us!
     
    And then footsteps.
     
    Then the sound of a hand fumbling with the radio, followed by a ragged racket of breathing as it pulled the radio closer to its mouth.
     
    Brent stared at Luis, as both men waited for the next sound.
     
    “Click, click, click, click,” from one, at first, and then many.
     

     
    ****

 
    MARY OLSON
     

     

     
    It looked more like demolition than disaster.  
     
    The debris was centralized in a towering core, piled skyscraper-high in the center of the blackened tundra. Power lines, cars, splintered lumber, slabs of concrete, even cracked airplanes, and what looked like an entire freeway were laying in massive oversized chunks.  
     
    Mary’s voice was a prisoner in her throat. Jimmy’s, as usual, wasn’t. “Holy shit balls, this is some Roland Emmerich shit right here.”  
     
    “Who?” It was amazing Paola cared.  
     
    “He’s a shit director,” Jimmy said laughing. “Crap movies, but cool looking most of the time. Aliens must’ve been looking at his storyboards.”  
     
    John turned and glared at him, then pulled to the side of the road. All four survivors stepped from the SUV, wordless. Desmond was already out of the van.
     
    The destruction gathered in the middle made no sense. It was as though the area had somehow imploded and exploded at the same time. Impossible, sure, but the reality was giving them the stink eye all the same.  
     
    It looked like the world had exploded before a massive tornado came and picked everything up then deposited it in a