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

He pointed to the far side of the lot, bordering the gas station on the other side. “There’s some over there, but not nearly as many as there were before.”
    “Are they all inside the store?” Ed asked.
    “Some,” Billy said. “But then a few minutes ago, they started walking toward the gas station and then out into the woods.” Billy pointed out into the darkness.
    Ed swallowed. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.
    Ed looked down at the headlight beams pulling into the parking lot — not a van or a jeep, or something that Black Mountain Guardsmen might be driving. It was a station wagon, maybe 30 years old.
    Everyone on the roof was staring as the wagon came to a full stop and the driver’s side door swung open. An old heavyset man stepped onto the asphalt and cast his eyes across the lot, looking around as if expecting to find someone.
    He raised his head and spotted them on the roof. “You okay?” he called, waving.
    Lisa cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Get help!”
    “What?”
    “Get help!” Lisa repeated. “Get to Black Mountain and tell them to come here.” She pointed toward the highway. “It’s right there, just up Highway 14!”
    The man opened his mouth, probably for a question, but a scream fell out instead. The first alien charged toward him as another six came running at him from behind.
    Rojas was the first to fire, but a second later, Billy, and Brent joined. Lisa didn’t fire her shotgun, and Ed was out of ammo. Ed hoped none of them missed and hit the old man, given how far he was out of ideal range. The creature closest to the old man stopped like a broken toy, then spilled to the asphalt. The old man started running toward the grocery store at the speed of fright as bullets buried themselves in the half-dozen aliens behind him.
    The crew on the roof made a fresh pile of six, but then hell opened its doors and sent a thin line of aliens into the world. A sea of black spilled from the woods and toward the parking lot.
    The old man then did the impossible — stopped running toward the grocery store, and turned back toward the station wagon, quickly closing the distance. He jumped inside the station wagon and slammed the door.
    “What the fuck is he doing?” Lisa said.
    Rojas said, “The aliens have the perimeter. No way he’s getting out of the lot. They’re gonna tear that station wagon to shit.”
    The old man then surprised Ed again as he stepped out of his car and into certain death, slamming the car door behind him. He grinned towards the roof and then held an air horn triumphantly in the air.
    The air horn’s blast bellowed in the air.
    The monsters started shrieking, screaming, and clicking, a few of them falling to the asphalt before scrambling up and running into the woods. To Ed’s open mouthed surprise, the remainder of the aliens in the parking lot joined their brothers, fleeing into the dark woods as if their very survival was buried in the leaves.
    The old man blasted his air horn again and the aliens ran faster. Swarms of aliens flooded from the store, running around and past the old man as if terrified of the mighty air horn, as he blasted it on repeat.
    The scene was almost comical. Their weapons did nothing to scare the aliens, but this old man and a horn was like some kinda Pied Piper herding them away.
    “What the fuck?” Ed said, shaking his head as Lisa whispered the exact thing behind him.
    “You’ve gotta be kidding,” Brent said.
    Lisa said, “A fucking air horn? They’re doing shit all wrong at Mountain.”
    Rojas laughed, but no funny was inside it.
    Ed was still shaking his head as the old man smiled in triumph, standing in the empty parking lot waving his air horn in the air.
    “We’re coming down!” Ed called. The group went downstairs, one by one, Ed in the middle, Lisa in front and Rojas and Billy pulling rear. The stockroom and store looked as if they’d been hit by a tornado. The only thing left of the other two Guardsmen were chunks of flesh and pools of blood.
    Ten feet from the doors screeched a wounded alien stuck underneath a fallen shelf. Rojas fired his rifle into the alien’s head, gritting his teeth and squeezing the trigger like he was waiting for a ding and the prize to follow.
    They crossed the parking lot, approaching the old man. They stopped at their black van. The doors had been torn off and the tires punctured by the aliens.
    The old man said, “You’ll never be driving that thing