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

to come outside.”
    Lisa swallowed, visibly shaken.
    A gunshot suddenly echoed from somewhere inside the store.
    “What the hell?!” Lisa shouted, grabbing her shotgun and running out the door behind Rojas, leaving Ed and Brent handcuffed to the shelving.
    “Hey!” Ed screamed to no one.
    Shit!
    More gunshots echoed inside the store, followed by the sound of crashing glass.
    Ed looked down at his cuffed right hand, and pulled as if he’d somehow get loose, despite hours of trying already. Brent frantically tugged at his own cuffs, also without luck. Ed scanned the area searching for anything he could reach with his left hand or feet, but there wasn’t anything that hadn’t been there 10 minutes earlier.
    More automatic gunfire, followed by more shattering glass, then more gunshots again. A man screamed — a quickly fading scream, thick with death and torment, followed by more blasts, rapid fire — the M-16.
    “Shit, they’re inside the store,” Ed said, now looking up at the shelves above him to see if anything was there he could maybe shake down. The only thing he could see above him was more of the same — wrapped pallets of cardboard boxes and neatly stacked cases of soft drinks.
    More gunshots, then another scream. Another Guardsman. Or maybe the same man in even more pain. The scream was chased by the deafening thunder of what sounded like someone throwing cars across the store. Ed could only imagine the hellish chaos on the other side of the warehouse door.
    Soon, he realized with a terrible clarity, he wouldn’t have to imagine it at all.
    As if fate was reading his mind, the door at the front of the stockroom banged open and two of the loping dark aliens crashed through, immediately spotting Ed and Brent — snacks held captive.
    “Fuck!” Brent screamed as he began to pull harder, the cuffs digging deep into his wrists.
    Ed wondered if Brent might pull his own wrist off to get away. Ed began to pull at his own cuffed hand as the aliens stood fully upright, towering in triumph as they approached, as if enjoying the conquest as much as the coming kill.
    Ed met the black glassy eyes of the creature closest to him.
    “Fuck, you things are ugly,” he said as he stopped pulling on his cuff, and instead braced for whatever defensive measure he might be able to make. He had one hand and two feet, and would be damned if he allowed the first, or first five of the fuckers to kill him.
    Brent was tugging hard and screaming, “Oh God! Oh God! I don’t want to die!”
    Ed would have tried to talk him down, but Brent was in a fat panic, and Ed couldn’t afford to pay attention to anything but the approaching threat as it stepped forward, stopping six feet in front of him.
    He thought of Jade back on the island, and hoped like hell that Sullivan would keep her safe. That his counterpart — the other Ed — wouldn’t, or couldn’t, be so cruel as to kill his doppelganger’s daughter.
    The two creatures stood side by side. The one on the left opened its mouth and screamed its unholy shriek, digging into Ed’s skull like razors scraping over his nerves.
    “Come on, you fucker!” Ed growled through gritted teeth, as he squatted, rolling from foot to foot, preparing to move — as much as possible — and kick the fucker as hard as he could.
    The one on the left ran toward him, clawed hand raised, ready to swing down and tear Ed’s face to Big League Chew.
    Ed fell on his side, pushed himself forward as far as he could, then swept his feet out, knocking the alien down, on top of him.
    Ed screamed as he brought his knees up and into the alien’s chest, then head butted the creature as hard as he could in its face. The alien screamed, then slid back as Ed kicked out, hooking the alien by the neck, and yanked it back into the metal shelving beside.
    The creature screamed as Ed twisted his body and kicked it square in the face, his boot pushing through its soft head, and pushing whatever bones it had back into its skull as its body fell into death spasms.
    Brent screamed as the second alien ran toward them.
    Ed’s boot was stuck in the first alien’s face.
    Fuck!
    Ed struggled to pull his foot free, but the creature was charging too fast. He hoped like hell Brent could do something to protect them.
    A gunshot thundered through the warehouse, causing instant pain, and whistling, inside Ed’s eardrums. The alien fell to the floor in front of him, its head caved in, and black goo oozing out onto the