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

it back to Black Island in one piece, but Brent wondered what sort of reception would be waiting.
    Before the trip, Boricio said Black Island might hold the key to them going home. But he said nothing about how that would happen, and Brent was afraid to ask for specifics, in the same way he’d been afraid to ask Ed for particulars when Ed said they might be able to get home somehow.
    Brent was still clinging to the hope that they might get home, and that he would see his wife and son again. He’d not allowed himself more than a few stray thoughts surrounding Ben and Gina during the previous week, particularly when it seemed like they might not make it back to Black Island, let alone home. Now, as they drew closer to Black Island, he found himself daring to hope again.
    He thought of Ben and smiled. He couldn’t wait to see his son again, to hold him in his arms and hug his tiny buddy. He thought of his son’s toy, the Stanley Train that was taken from him by Black Island Guardsmen. He wondered if that toy belonged to the Ben of this world, who was mutated and held in chambers deep in Black Island’s bowels, or if he’d somehow brought it from his own world when he was yanked away.
    Let me make it back, God, and I swear, I’ll quit my job, and never neglect my family again. Please. Just let us make it back.
    Brent felt hypocritical praying to a God who hadn’t earned his faith. If He was real, Brent wondered, did He piss on the prayers of the skeptics, and was he cursing himself by now turning to prayer? As if God somehow would say, “No, you didn’t believe in me before now. Fuck off.”
    Brent wondered what would happen if they actually found a way back to Earth?
    How would they arrive? Would they appear, just like they’d vanished? Would he show up in his bed and scare the hell out of Gina? Or would they be going home through some sort of science-fiction teleportation machine, and wind up on the other Black Island? If so, would that mean they were immediately apprehended by Homeland Security, then held in detention for months on end as suspected terrorists? Or worse, made part of some secret lab experiment, hidden from the rest of the world and kept from their families forever?
    Brent swallowed, feeling anxiety thicken his throat.
    So close, yet so far. And too many unanswered questions.
    Brent hated not knowing, or having control of his own fate.
    Brent was pulled from his thoughts as the van suddenly slowed and Boricio said, “What the hell have we got here?”
    Boricio stopped the van, but left the engine running.
    Brent felt his heartbeat quicken, thinking back to the maze of cars where they’d nearly surrendered their final breaths on their way to Black Mountain. He couldn’t stand the thought of going through that particular Hell again. Everyone, including Ed — now wide awake and obvious about it — moved to the front of the van and stared out the front window.
    The thick lines of trees that had bordered both sides of the highway for nearly every mile of the trip were now gone. In their place, nothing but a half mile or so of dark earth, freshly plowed, as if something, perhaps a super tornado, had stripped the land of everything in sight.
    The road was oddly untouched, but only as a canvas for the horror lining it — hundreds, if not thousands of aliens, standing on either side of the highway, perfectly still, like statues paving the way to Dunn.
    “What the fuck?” Jung said, the word ‘fuck’ sounding unnatural in his accent.
    “Oh Jesus!” Callie cried. “What are they doing?”
    Boricio joked, “Laying out the welcome mat, maybe?” But the only color on his face was the black on his patch.
    “What do we do?” Brent said, his heart beating so loud he felt like it was throwing echoes off the van walls.
    “Drive,” Ed said, his first words all morning.
    “What?” Callie said, shocked he would suggest such a thing.
    “Drive,” he repeated, meeting Boricio’s eye in the mirror.
    Jung said, “I’m not sure about that,” shifting nervously in his seat.
    “He’s right,” Boricio said. “If they wanted to attack us, they would have already.”
    Boricio stepped on the gas before anyone else, or more likely his own instincts, could raise debate.
    The van rolled down the road, slowly at first, maybe 20 miles per hour, as Jung, Ed, and Brent all held their rifles, aimed at the windows and ready to fire. Brent hoped like hell they wouldn’t have occasion to pull the triggers