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

Callie.”
    She opened her mouth, and at first, could barely speak. Finally, she found her voice, cracked and frightened. “No! You leave! Whatever you are, leave Charlie!”
    “No. I rather like this body. The best I’ve had so far.”
    Callie could almost feel the Evil’s sneer.
    She cried out as she heard footsteps above her, approaching the stairway.
    “This is your final chance not to die,” Charlie said.
    “I’ll shoot you!” she cried.
    “Shoot me and I’ll go inside you. No problem. I haven’t been inside a woman yet. But you won’t stop me from finding it. Ah … what’s this?”
    Callie looked up, certain that he was above her, poised to attack. But he wasn’t. Instead, she heard the sound of something unscrewing. A bright light suddenly illuminated the upper floor and spread to the stairs.
    Oh God, he found it!
    Callie ran up the stairs, forcing herself to ignore every pore in her body, saturated with fear and certainty that she was knee deep in a terrible mistake. She reached the top floor and saw Charlie standing in Luca’s bedroom in front of an open moon globe sitting on his desk.
    The white was blinding, Vegas in one bulb, throwing shadows on the wall behind Charlie who stood over the globe looking down like Golem ready to seize his “precious.”
    Callie raised her gun, shouted “Get back!”
    She fired a warning shot out the window behind him.
    Charlie ignored it.
    As he moved toward the globe, the light began to dim.
    He smiled.
    “Ah, you know I’m here, don’t you? You’re ready to become one with Us .”
    Charlie reached down, his hands inches from the vial.
    Callie fired another shot, missing intentionally for the second time.
    Charlie looked up. This time she had his attention. Her eyes met his — dark and blacker than miles of nothingness.
    “Please,” she cried. “Don’t make me shoot you. Please. Just wait for Luca. He can heal you with the vial. He can save you.”
    Callie wasn’t sure he could, but she had nothing else to try and lure whatever part of Charlie might still be awake inside the monster.
    Charlie stepped toward her. His head lashed violently to the left, then to the right, whipping back and forth so fast, it looked as if he was somehow moving in fast forward.
    Charlie fell to his knees, then buried his now still head in his hands.
    He started to sob, sounding like a scared child.
    Did he get control?
    “Charlie?” she whispered.
    “Callie?” he asked, his voice cracked with fear as he looked up. He sounded more like Charlie than before. The white went back in his eyes as he met her stare, looking up from the floor like a helpless, wounded child.
    “Please, Callie, don’t kill me,” he cried, looking up at her. “I think It’s gone.”
    “Where did It go?” she asked, looking around the room, afraid it might make good on Its threat to go into her.
    “I don’t know,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “But I can’t move.”
    “What’s wrong?” Callie stepped slowly toward him, careful to keep her gun on him, in case he was trying to trick her.
    “I don’t know,” he cried. “I can’t move. And I’m so … so cold.”
    His teeth started to chatter as he trembled. The house was cool, not cold. Something must have been happening inside him. Charlie buried his head in his hands, his entire body shaking. He cried, “Please, help me! Help, Callie!”
    She moved forward, not knowing what to do.
    Every alarm in her head was screaming, It’s a trap! It’s a trap.
    But Callie couldn’t ignore the pain in his voice, or his pleading for help. It was Charlie. He was inside with the Evil. She couldn’t ignore that part of him that was fighting to be free.
    “I love you,” he cried, face still buried in his hands. “Please, just hold me.”
    Callie was inches away when something struck her as odd. Something in the tone of his voice.
    “Say it again.”
    “What?” he cried, still shaking.
    “Say you love me.”
    “I love you,” he said.
    Something was wrong.
    Callie fell back a step.
    He sensed her retreat and leapt to his feet in an instant, wildly swinging his arm and narrowly missing her face.
    Callie screamed, firing two shots in a row, hitting Charlie right in his face.
    He fell to the ground, his face reduced to red and black gore. Callie stepped back, screaming and crying at once, the gun shaking in her hand.
    “Oh God! Oh God!”
    She couldn’t believe she killed Charlie. The boy she’d come to love. The boy who had