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

sickening certainty, knowing that they did.
    We’re their food.
    As he tuned his senses through the endless assault of sound and image, Ryan found Charlie and the Guardsman — outside the mountain, roaring down the road in a van.
    “They’re in a van, heading toward wherever Boricio went,” he said.
    “Shit!” Lisa yelled. “Then we’ve gotta get to the tunnel and get the fuck outta here now!”
    “Why? Are we going after them?”
    “We have to,” she said. “We’ve gotta warn Boricio and the others. They have no idea that something is coming after them.”
    “You have a radio, don’t you?” Ryan said. “Can’t you call?”
    “I tried, but I’m not getting through. Had problems with reception out there before, too.”
    Ryan looked around, trying to think of what they should do next. Upstairs, one of the mutants seized on someone, sinking its razored teeth into their neck. It was a young boy. Billy. Ryan felt a refreshing surge of energy rush through his body, could taste the blood in his mouth, and feel the beautiful agony of the boy being bitten.
    He closed his eyes, trying to shake the images — and the feelings — from his head.
    “What’s wrong?” Lisa asked.
    “I can feel it …”
    “Feel what?”
    “All of it — all the suffering, all the energy. All of it.”
    “Energy?”
    As his pain started receding, Ryan explained how he could taste the blood, and feel the same energy the creatures felt when they entered someone’s body. Each shell absorbed became part of the collective, adding to their power — magnifying the volume in his head, and moving it from intense to nearly unbearable.
    “I think they got Billy,” he said.
    “Are you sure?” Lisa asked, her face going pale.
    “Yes, I see glimpses of his memories. I see you with him.”
    “Fuck!” she cried out.
    For a moment he thought she might break down right there. He had to get them moving before it became impossible to do so.
    “Let’s go,” he said, taking the lead, and following Charlie’s memory toward the tunnel. They turned down another hall and were close to the tunnel, when Ryan sensed five mutants in the hallway before he could hear them.
    “Wait here,” he said, turning to Lisa and the terrified pregnant woman.
    Ryan went through the door, and immediately sensed how the mutants saw him.
    He was just another one of them — a relieving yet horrifying thought.
    How much longer until I’m exactly like them?
    The group of mutants was made up of two Guardsmen and three civilians, all male. All but one were hybrid mutants like him, slightly more human than alien, though no less deadly. The last one was nearly mutated in full, its skin all black and slippery wet, both hands already twisted to claws, with a wide mouth rowed high and low with razor sharp teeth.
    Ryan sensed something new — they’d picked up on the women outside the hallway. They felt a hunger, an immediate craving, which Ryan felt building inside him as well — like sympathy hunger pains. They started toward him, on their way to the door, moving slowly, as if not quite sure how to regard or navigate past him.
    Ryan had to protect the women.
    He took a swing at the first mutant, his claw slicing through the man’s neck, as a gallon of dark red and almost black blood seemed to pour from him at once.
    One down.
    The other mutants turned on him, shrieking and clawing and charging forward with rage. One of their hands caught his ribs and sliced into his slippery skin.
    Ryan screamed, then twisted from its grip before the clawed blade could do any more damage. He brought his own clawed hand up and through the fucker’s neck, then thrust up and sideways, killing him instantly.
    Each time Ryan killed one of the mutants, he felt sharp pains where he had inflicted the injuries. The pain was so intense it was nearly blinding. It took Ryan a full minute to shake the feeling, though the pain lingered as he allowed the mutant to slip through his still human hand.
    Two down.
    Ryan had no time to celebrate his win. The mutant behind him, fully transformed, with the razored teeth to prove it, roared toward him, snapping its jaw on the way to his shoulder.
    Ryan dropped to the ground and pumped his legs, thrusting them both up, sending the mutant flying into the wall behind them. Ryan leapt on top of its body, savagely swinging his gnarled claw, tearing into the mutant’s guts, driven by a blend of human rage and alien instincts.
    Three down.
    Wait, where