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

toys.
    Boricio had to take a step back and look away.
    No , he shook his head. This can’t be happening.
    He was actually feeling sympathy for the child turned old man. Feeling pain for what Luca was going through, and how he’d selflessly sacrificed his youth to save the others. He’d always been able to recognize emotions, sure as the smell of shit on a toddler. But this was the first time he’d ever felt a response to anyone’s pain.
    As Boricio fought the tears welling up in his eyes, he cursed Luca for “fixing” him.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 7 — Will Bishop

    This wasn’t an ordinary dream, Will realized as he drifted above the balcony, floating like a disembodied ghost, watching Mary and John in discussion below.
    Mary was frantically yelling at John, telling him something was wrong. Brother Rei was planning something big. But John didn’t seem too concerned.
    This is how the end began.
    Though Will hadn’t been there, he’d seen enough in his visions to know that this was the spark that lit the fuse that ended in the wholesale destruction of nearly everyone at the Sanctuary.
    Will watched as Brother Rei stepped forward from the house and onto the balcony, put the gun to John’s head and fired. The shot was thunder, cracking the night into two ugly halves. John remained standing, half his face missing, before his body finally fell to the ground.
    Mary screamed before being rushed from the balcony and into the house by Rei’s men as the courtyard below erupted in chaos.
    Will tried to follow them inside, but his body didn’t move. He was meant to stay — to see something else. He floated in the moment’s confusion, looking around as people ran below, screaming.
    What am I supposed to be seeing?
    Then he saw it — the dark shape flowing from John’s corpse. The darkness, the thing he’d been seeing in his dreams ever since the day his Air Force unit had found the thing they shouldn’t have found.
    The darkness oozed from John’s body, rising like twisting vines of liquid smoke as it floated into the house. Will followed, also floating, watching as the darkness flowed above one of the Brother’s, who took a shot but did no damage, then entered the mouth of the man standing outside a doorway, it’s entire mass flowing through the man’s throat until it vanished entirely into him.
    The man then turned, opened the door, entered the bedroom, and looked down at The Prophet, lying in his bed. The man’s mouth opened. The darkness slipped out and then into The Prophet, taking command of his brain, along with his breath.
    Will woke with a start, lying in the back seat of the car alone, cold and shaking. The orange glow from the burning buildings bled through the snow covered windows in spattered speckles and dancing dots, painting the car’s interior with a lightly smeared tangerine hue. He looked down to see that his wound had grown worse, blood now staining the entire front of his shirt in soaking wet crimson.
    A gallon of blood must have fled his body. The pain in his gut had receded to a dull ache, and he could feel the Grim Reaper creeping as sure as he’d felt him in the hospital room a decade back when he came to claim Sam.
    No loopholes.
    And fuck you, Reaper.
    A shadow draped the car as someone approached from the front.
    Will had hoped to die before Luca’s return. Will couldn’t stand to see him as a man older than himself. Nor could he stand to see the boy come to the realization that Will had lied, and would indeed die. That would shatter what was left of Will’s heart.
    But the shadow carried only one body behind it.
    The Prophet. The darkness. It has returned.
    I have to warn them.
    Will swallowed the phlegm in his throat as the shadow drew closer, then leaned over and into the front seat, desperately trying to reach the horn on the steering wheel.
    The seat bit into his gut, and the dull pain turned as sharp and sudden as the flat of a cold blade.
    Will screamed, then fell back against his seat, unable to reach the horn. The pain was overpowering. He struggled to gain enough strength to try a second time as the figure outside the car drew closer and its shadow grew large on the windshield.
    The footsteps outside were a few feet away.
    Oh God.
    Will leaned forward again, and the pain stabbed harder into him.
    The shadow grew smaller as the person on the other side approached the door. Shadow met form on the other side of the window, as a figure reached for the door handle.
    Will