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

from the top, spilling out and onto the old man’s hand, searing his flesh with an audible sizzle.
    The Prophet screamed, but his voice was drowned by thunder crashing outside, followed by several strobing flashes of light, so bright it seemed like lightning was coming from within the church.
    Boricio screamed as the world started to shimmer around him.
    He fled the church and nearly ran head first into Luca on the other side of the door.
    “What are you doing?” Boricio cried.
    “I came to get you.”
    Boricio had never been so happy to see anyone in his life. He threw his arms around his brother as they both began to disappear.
    Luca was gone, and so was he, but they weren’t gone together.
    For Boricio, everything went black, and he opened his eyes completely alone on a mountain, far above a city below.
    The lights went out all at once as darkness swallowed it all. A second darkness, festering waves of smoke, clouds, or something unlike anything Boricio had ever seen before, spread across the sky, blotting out the moon.
    A pair of gigantic ink-black tornadoes — as wide as half the city at least — then reached down from the sky, twisting in a tango of anger, tearing the world by its roots as it spun, then slamming its plunder into mountainous piles, which were peppered across the thrashed landscape.
    Darkness had come and there wasn’t a damned thing Boricio could do to stop it from consuming the world.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 9 — Boricio Wolfe Part 2

    Dunn, Georgia
    March 31, 2012
    FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…

    Boricio’s bald doppelganger stood on his porch, calmly staring as though he wasn’t a barrel of Mardi Gras beads worth of fucking weird. And with the way Callie was just standing there beside him, it looked like she was agreeing with his side of the story.
    “I’m giving you until the count of pre-cum to tell me what in the beer-battered bullshit is going on.” Boricio turned to Callie and jerked his thumb toward the bald fucker beside her.
    “Captain Copycat can shove the fat of my fuckstick down his throat and suck on it like it was the sweet inside a Slurpee until he swallows my dishonorable discharge.”
    Captain Copycat turned to Callie. “Wow,” he said. “You weren’t kidding.”
    Callie shrugged, then smiled at Boricio.
    Boricio moved his eyes from the Captain to Callie. “You wanna tell me what in the fuck is going on? Or why you brought a chewed-caramel-looking version of Boricio, who talks slow enough to make me think he ain’t learned to swallow fast enough to hurry his sentences, not to mention the two love birds behind you? Because this shit is just weird enough to be one of my fucked up dreams. And if we’re in the middle of one of my fucked-up dreams, well then I’m apt to do all sorts of crazy shit. So tell me, Callie, am I dreaming?”
    Callie didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “Can we come inside?”
    Callie’s calm made Boricio step back from the door. He gestured for the group to come inside without quite knowing why, thinking he would’ve likely killed Callie for the same calm in any one of the sweet minutes before Luca broke him.
    Boricio pulled the gun from his belt and waved the pistol, motioning the four of them toward the table.
    Captain Copycat turned to the love birds behind him and said, “Leave your guns in the van.”
    The one who looked like a sissy didn’t say shit, but the one who looked like he grew up jacking off to Die Hard said, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” then nodded toward Boricio like he was solving a mystery.
    The Captain shook his head. “That’s an order.”
    “So you have your own team too, eh?” Boricio cackled, then plopped into a chair on his side of the table and held his gun on his twin. “My team is named Team Boricio, what’s yours? If you don’t have a name yet, I’d like to suggest Team Twat Waffles, though of course that’s just a suggestion based on a first-blush assessment of your team’s overall potential.”
    Captain Copycat ignored Boricio, lowered himself onto the seat across from him, then looked him in the eyes as if he was no scarier than a scratch.
    No one had ever held Boricio’s eyes like that before.
    “Wanna tell me your name, or should I just keep calling you Captain CumCatcher in my head?”
    The fucker then said the unbelievable.
    “My name is Boricio, like yours.”
    Boricio’s eyes flew to Callie as his fingers tightened around the butt of his gun. “Wanna explain