Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER)

floated down toward the slot at the bottom of the door.
    “What the fuck is that shit?!” Imaginary Boricio said.
    The Guardsman stared, seemingly unable to move away, as the black thing floated through the slot and then up until it was standing in front of him. The darkness started to swirl within itself, gathering mass, then suddenly thrust itself through the man’s glass mask and into the Guardsman’s helmet as he swiped helplessly with his hands at his headgear, falling to the ground.
    “What the fuck?!” Imaginary Boricio screamed, running to Charlie’s cell door. “What the fuck is that shit?”
    The black thing forced itself into the man’s mouth until it had completely disappeared inside him, leaving the Guardsman lying like an empty pile on the ground.
    Charlie looked over in the cell beside his just as the old man fell to the floor, so hard the fall must’ve shattered the back of his skull. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling as a sea of blood pooled from under his head.
    Charlie looked around the cell block, and saw that everyone else was doing exactly as he was — staring in wide-eyed shock at the pair of fallen bodies.
    Then one of the bodies stood — the Guardsman.
    Charlie stared, wondering what had happened to the man. His helmet’s glass mask was shattered, and his eyes were vacant as if he’d suffered a concussion.
    Where did the dark thing go?
    “I thought it went inside him!” Boricio said. “What the fuck?”
    The Guardsman turned to Charlie’s cell, removed his glove from his hand, then put it on the pad next to Charlie’s cell.
    “Is he letting us out?” Imaginary Boricio asked.
    The Guardsman’s eyes went black. Charlie’s heart started beating at triple its usual speed.
    “Fuck, it’s in him! And now it’s coming in here!” Boricio yelled.
    The glass door slid open and Charlie fell three steps back, unsure of what in the hell he was dealing with, preparing for anything. He had to get past the Guardsman and alert someone.
    The Guardsman went from slowly shambling toward Charlie to suddenly jumping at him. The man, impossibly strong, lifted Charlie from the floor, then shoved him hard against the glass wall behind him.
    “Fuck!” Charlie screamed, trying to kick out, or summon whatever the hell it was inside him that had turned him into Super Charlie when he took the guards out his first day on the block.
    The Guardsman, seemingly possessed, clutched Charlie’s neck, his fingers squeezing tighter into him as he moved in closer, opening his mouth impossibly wide.
    Oh God, no!
    A dark bulb, like a rotten fetus, pushed itself from the Guardsman’s mouth, a solid-looking form at first until it went flimsy and began inching toward Charlie’s open mouth, which the Guardsman’s fingers had roughly plied wide.
    Charlie tried to bite down, to chomp off the man’s fingers, but it was too late — the darkness was forcing its way into his mouth, with the taste of bitter chemicals and promised death.
    Charlie choked, spitting the chunks of black and bile that felt like they were boiling his throat. When he stopped spitting, he had to gasp for air. That’s when the blackness infiltrated the rest of him, pouring into his body all at once.
    Charlie felt It inside him immediately.
    He was merely a passenger in his own flesh.
    It had taken over.
    And It was going to break out of Black Mountain.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 10 — Boricio Bishop

    Black Island Research Facility
    September 2011
    ONE MONTH BEFORE THE EVENT…

    When Boricio woke up, someone in a yellow hazmat suit was entering Rose’s cell. Rose was lying on the mattress, still asleep. At least, Boricio hoped she was only sleeping.
    Boricio leaped to his feet and pounded on the glass wall of his cell, seeing a group of three men standing in a semi-circle outside of Rose’s cell. The group included Will, Ed Keenan, and Sullivan — they were keeping this experiment on the down-low, apparently.
    Will turned to Boricio and walked over, and touched a panel beside the door. A radio crackled to life in the cell, “Yes, son?”
    “What’s going on?” he asked. “What are they doing with Rose?”
    “Dr. Williams created a new serum, using a different vial. To see if we can cure her.”
    Boricio gasped, tears flooding his eyes, surprised that Will had agreed to do what he said he wouldn’t.
    “Thank you, Dad,” Boricio said.
    “Don’t thank me yet. I have no idea if it will work,” Will said before he returned