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

beat to hell.”
    His eyes returned to the window, then Boricio suddenly broke into a grin as the passenger door opened and Callie stepped out. He turned to Mary and said, “Holy fuck yeah, I know her.”
    Boricio was smiling, though it faded like a hot fog when he saw the ugly mother fucker, bald as an 8-ball, and wearing Bluebeard’s eye patch, climb from the driver’s side. Something about the way the asshole was walking, gave Boricio the same wretched sense of deja vu he’d felt when waking that morning, then again a minute before.
    This shit isn’t right.
    Two fresh fuckers — a guy who looked like former military and then a pasty faced soft guy who looked to be in his early thirties — joined the party.
    Boricio didn’t know who the three fuckers with Callie were. He only knew that he wanted to murder the Jolly Roger before he had the chance to open his big ugly mouth. Something about the man made Boricio immediately angry. But something else about him made Boricio almost want to run and hide, something no man had ever made him want to do before.
    Fucking Luca broke me. And now he’s gonna die before he can fix me!
    It was good to see Callie, but if she was a hostage, and those men meant to harm her, or him, or anyone on Team Boricio, well then they had minutes to live, whether Boricio was frightened or not.
    He closed the curtains and turned to Mary.
    “I need you to stay upstairs,” he said. “You know the drill; don’t come down for dick.” He looked from Paola to Mary, all four eyes on his, then over to Luca, who was finally starting to lightly snore — a good sign, even though he still lay there looking mostly dead. “Go to my room and get my shotgun, get Little Lamb her peashooter, then both of you stay in here with Luca. I want all three of you in the same place. Got it?”
    “Got it,” Mary said. “What are you going to do?”
    “I’m gonna take my two friends Peacemaker and Snaggletooth, then go downstairs and see what needs to be seen.” Boricio lifted his shirt and showed Mary his pistol and sheathed knife pressed against the tan canvas of his tight abs.
    “Okay,” Mary said, swallowing. Paola trembled beside her.
    Boricio nodded again, left the room, then ran down the hallway to the stairs, leapt them in a trio of strides, and jumped past the bottom four, quickly eclipsing the distance between living room and front door.
    Boricio could see the three fuckers and Callie out the window, but mostly as blurs and shapes. His hand was a foot from the knob before he saw the shit that soured his throat and held his breath hostage.
    No.
    No fucking way.
    It isn’t possible.
    Boricio had seen plenty of beer-battered bullshit, and about a billion pounds of goddamn impossible since he woke up too fucking early on October 15, lucky to wake up at all, wondering if the woman he cut had disappeared like all the rest of the planet’s fuck-all.
    This was something different.
    This changed the meaning of the goddamn word impossible.
    Boricio swung the front door and stared into the eye of the bald scarred man; a horrible man with an intelligent stare.
    The man who looked exactly like him, but fugly.
    Like the man’s looks, his voice was Boricio’s, even though it wasn’t quite.
    Boricio tore his eyes from Fugly, then turned them to Callie who seemed shockingly calm, especially since she was standing right beside the impossible, and even tilting her head so she could see it from all sides.
    “Good morning, Boricio,” said the fugly fucker who couldn’t possibly exist. “We’ve come for Luca.”

    ****

CHAPTER 6 — Boricio Bishop Part 1

    Kingsland, Alabama
    October 13, 2011
    TWO DAYS BEFORE THE EVENT…

    The dreams were getting worse.
    Boricio woke with his nose curling at the scent of Jack soaked into his collar. He swung his feet to the floor, rose from bed, then went to the motel window and stared outside at the empty parking lot, and the few beat to hell cars, including an ancient Chevy.
    Boricio’s dreams, as they had been for the last month, were a special sort of bullshit, and worse for their razored edge of reality.
    He went to the bathroom, took a shit, then put on his shoes and collapsed back onto the mattress, wondering if today would be the day he’d finally get the fuck out of Dodge. New Orleans was about seven hours away. If he left this morning, he could be there by the end of the day and starting his new life tomorrow.
    Boricio was sick of dreaming about Rose, sick