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

as Boricio and Sullivan fired, picking off as many of the aliens as they could.
    No way in hell we’re gonna be able to kill them all. I hope to Fuck that Luca’s magical potion is there and it works!
    Ryan stood, and was immediately pounced upon by a mutated dog, as large and ugly as the mangy fucker Paola had shot the other morning. Ryan flipped the beast, then gripped its hind legs as he spun the dog on its back, tearing the legs from the dog’s body as it howled and fell to the ground dying.
    “Fuck yeah!” Boricio shouted as he turned and headed into the house.
    Boricio raced up the stairs to find Pirate Boricio, Will, Luca, Mary, and Paola, all standing around the glowing globe, staring inside it as if hypnotized. On the floor, he saw Charlie and Callie both dead, shot in the head.
    His stomach turned, but they didn’t have time for mourning the dead. The aliens were galloping towards the house and nothing short of a miracle would save the day.
    “What the fuck y’all waiting for?” Boricio said, stepping toward the others.
    As he drew closer to the globe, he was suddenly frozen, like the others, imprisoned by the glowing beauty before him.
    “Oh God,” he said, using an expression he didn’t think he’d ever used in his life. “It’s … stunning.”
    Boricio felt the light’s warmth spreading through his body like drugs from the rich fucker’s house, but with none of the murky, trippy confusion.
    The opposite of confusion flooded his mind.
    Clarity.
    Inside that clarity and impossible light, Boricio could feel the others’ thoughts, hundreds of random memories coursing in a current through them all — from Luca petting his cat, to Mary giving birth, to the first time Will danced with a girl — and later, with a man. In those shared memories, Boricio felt something he’d never felt before — love for these strangers — as if they were all bonding through some communal drawing into a well of eternal light.
    Until something dark circled the rim.
    At first, it was a nebulous haze Boricio saw floating around them as they sat transfixed by the light. He could feel Its contempt, Its hate, but he was unable to break from the beauty of the light.
    It circled them.
    It looked down upon them.
    It judged.
    Then It entered Pirate Boricio’s mouth.
    Boricio couldn’t tell if the others could see what was happening, or if it were only him. Suddenly other emotions and memories started seeping into the light, many from Boricio’s personal scrapbook of pain — the time his step-dad killed Boricio’s four-week-old kitten, the time his step-dad punched him so hard they had to keep him home from school with “pneumonia” for a week, the times his step-dad made him—
    Boricio looked up, glaring at the light.
    Why are you pulling this out of me?
    Why are you sharing this?
    As memories spilled like red paint onto a freshly varnished floor, the light grew dimmer.
    The beautiful light was turning black.
    No!
    Another dark memory swallowed the light — this one from Pirate Boricio, sitting helplessly in the cell while Will ordered the execution of Rose.
    They all saw — and felt Boricio Bishop’s pain — as the fire engulfed the cell and destroyed everything.
    The vial was turning black.
    Soon, the Darkness in Pirate Boricio would fulfill its mission.
    Soon, it would corrupt the light.
    Boricio wanted to reach out, but they were all still transfixed, now in anguish as the Darkness unleashed a torrent of miseries upon them, hundreds of thousands of murders from the moment It was first unleashed, as it murdered the world’s men, women, children, and animals, engulfing and ingesting all into Itself.
    “Stop it!” Mary cried out.
    Will was shaking violently.
    Luca sobbed, squeezing his eyes tight, as if he could dim, or unsee, the horrors in his head.
    He couldn’t.
    Boricio wanted to seize the vial, take it, and use it to do whatever would destroy the Darkness across from him, smiling from behind Boricio Bishop’s mask.
    Only Luca can touch It.
    Only Luca is pure enough.
    Boricio wasn’t sure where the thoughts were coming from, until he realized they were bleeding from both Will and Luca; a shared dream or thought, where Luca was the rightful heir to the vial — the child who smothered the Darkness.
    But Luca isn’t touching It!
    He’s frozen like me!
    Then, Boricio knew.
    He had to go into Luca’s head.

    **

    Boricio was no longer in Other Luca’s bedroom.
    He had no idea where he was, but