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

who nodded to confirm the decision.
    Boricio’s heart sank.
    No, they can’t.
    “No!!” he screamed. “No!!”
    “Burn Protocol?” Sullivan asked, seeking a second confirmation.
    Boricio slammed his fists on his cell and screamed for Will, “No, Dad, don’t!!”
    “Yes,” Will said. “Do it! Now!”
    Rose slammed against the glass again, and then something caught her attention, and she looked up at the ceiling.
    Boricio cried out, “No!! Dad!!”
    The flames came on.
    Rose screamed, her shrieks gurgling in the speakers as her black form was engulfed in flames which filled her entire cell.
    Boricio cried out, watching helplessly as Rose writhed in agony.
    Will suddenly reached into his pants and retrieved something from his pocket and then thrust it through the hole in the glass into the fiery cell.
    “What was that?” Keenan asked sharply.
    “The rest of the vials,” Will said. “I’m ending this now.”
    Both Keenan and Sullivan’s mouths were agape.
    Keenan screamed at Will, “Why?!”
    Will got in Keenan’s face and screamed, “We should’ve done this from the start!”
    Rose’s screams died with the flames a moment later.
    In the center of the room, the love of his life, along with the vials, had been reduced to a smoldering pile of ashes.
    Boricio fell to the ground, screaming, his world shattered.
    He noticed Will approaching his cell.
    Boricio looked up at him, barely able to quell the rage simmering inside.
    “I’m sorry, Son,” Will said.
    Boricio slowly stood up and met his father’s red eyes.
    Whatever love and light that the man had ignited in Boricio’s life so many years earlier had been snuffed out and replaced with cold, unending darkness.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 11 — Boricio Bishop

    Somewhere in Alabama
    September 2011
    ONE MONTH BEFORE THE EVENT…

    Fuck Black Island, Boricio thought as he hopped out of the truck that had driven him the last stretch of miles and thanked the man who’d given him a lift.
    Boricio had been gone from New York for two weeks, slowly making his way down south to New Orleans, where he planned to get a job as a chef in a restaurant, and hopefully disappear in his work.
    He would be thrilled if he never thought of Rose again, or if Will could never find him, and he never had to look at the murdering fuck’s face.
    Boricio would happily settle for one of the two.
    He wandered south for several days, alone and desolate, with nothing but the pack on his back, caretaker of the last vial left, which he’d managed to sneak off the island thanks to Luca. Boricio was surprised that Luca had helped him, and was certain that Luca would be in huge trouble. When Boricio asked Luca if there had been another vial, as Will suggested another had been taken, Luca pleaded ignorance — which either meant the boy was lying, which Boricio doubted, or someone else had taken a vial. Boricio wondered for a while, but then stopped caring.
    Not my problem.
    Boricio wasn’t sure why he had taken the last vial, other than he felt he had to protect it. Will wanted to destroy them all. And while the vials had turned Rose into a monster, Boricio knew that they were also capable of incredible good.
    Someday, Boricio would find a way to start a new project. Perhaps he’d go to Black Mountain, which was run by a more daring group of scientists who often found themselves at odds with the Black Island faction.
    But for now, Boricio just wanted to get lost.
    Without a car, he hitched his way south until he found himself in Alabama.
    He was walking along a road in the middle of nowhere, wondering if he’d even see another car to hitch a ride from, or if he should look for someplace to sleep for the night. He had a decent stash of cash to last him a while, so all he needed was to find a hotel.
    Searching the horizon, he looked up and happened to see a sprawling cross standing tall and proud against the bruised purple sky.
    Boricio stared up at the cross feeling an odd sort of promise, an oath strong enough to pull him from the road, through an ornate gate opening, where he met a smiling woman in a long blue dress, and past some houses and through the church’s wide open wooden doors on the rear of the sprawling property.
    Boricio sat in a pew at the back of the church, listening to the pastor as he paced the pulpit, hands raised in the air as he delivered a sermon.
    “Ours is not to question His will. He works in mysterious ways, as the saying goes. Ways that we mere mortals