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

at a door with no knob. Above the door, a speaker.
    The other side of the glass offered nothing but darkness. Bright lights burned in a ring around his ceiling, turning the three windowed walls into mirrors reflecting the truth — Charlie was a caged animal on full display for his unseen watchers.
    Charlie sat on the bed, placing the pillow over his crotch. He’d never felt particularly comfortable about the size of his penis, particularly when flaccid, where it seemed more like a turtle head peeking from a shell than any sort of useable cock. He wanted to get up and run, but his birthday suit made him vulnerable enough to feel almost grateful for waiting.
    How did I get here? Where am I?
    He remembered what the men in black had said after waving the blue light over him.
    Infected.
    He looked down at his arms and chest, pale beneath the harsh lights above. He wasn’t sure what the signs of infection were, but he felt no different. And his skin was its normal pasty shade of pale.
    They must have it wrong. Besides, when would he have been infected? How would he have been infected?
    Charlie thought back to the monstrosity in the back of the truck. Then to the bald fucker who had tracked him and Adam to Boricio’s compound, the one who had turned monster. Charlie didn’t want to become one of those things. He would rather die.
    They had to be making a mistake.
    Yes, that’s it. They made an error. Like when the light beeped on the kid, then it didn’t. I need another test.
    I feel perfectly fine.
    Thinking of the kid, and how they’d shot him even though he wasn’t infected, sent a chill through Charlie’s already icy body.
    What kind of fuckers do that? What do they want? Are they looking for infected people, and fuck the rest? And if so, why? They starting a zoo? Or some kinda freak show carnival?
    And if these are the same people who took Callie, is she infected too? Is she in a cell just like me?
    As Charlie sat on the bed with the pillow still covering his lap, certainty spread through his body. He was being watched.
    Though he couldn’t see anything beyond his reflection, Charlie was suddenly certain that someone was standing on the other side of the glass; he could feel them as sure as he felt the flow of cold air creating goosebumps across his naked flesh.
    He looked down, feeling even more exposed, shifted on the bed, then stared up at the holes in the ceiling again, wondering their purpose.
    Is that where the air is flowing from? No, that’s the black grid above the toilet. So what are the holes for? Gas, like the Nazis used to gas the Jews in World War II?
    Movement pulled Charlie’s eyes to the other side of the glass and straightened his back. He pinched his eyes, but saw only his reflection staring back.
    “Well, ain’t this some beer-battered bullshit?” a voice said, surprising Charlie.
    He nearly leapt off the mattress before realizing the voice had come from Boricio who was sitting beside him, also naked, though no pillow covered what looked more like an anaconda than a cock. Unlike the dream he’d had in the truck, this Boricio wasn’t neatly dressed. His hair was long and his face unshaven. Boricio’s appearance, along with the mirrored walls, made Charlie hopeful that this was just another dream. If so, perhaps the truck, Adam’s death, and all of that had been a dream as well. Maybe he’d wake up on the road next to the van they stopped to investigate.
    “Is this a dream?” Charlie asked.
    “Sorry, Charlie Brown,” Boricio said. “This shit’s as real as it gets.”
    Charlie wasn’t sure he trusted Boricio’s assessment. Dreaming up a lie was easy to do. So was dreaming of Boricio to substantiate the lie.
    “Are you really here?” Charlie asked.
    “Nope,” Boricio shook his head. “I’m in your noggin, though that don’t make me a molecule less real.”
    “What the hell does that mean? You’re either here or you’re not.”
    Boricio turned and smiled, “Open your mind and think outside the box, Chuckie Fuck Stick. Your head has room for a little hippie bullshit. This is some to be or not to be shit here. Do you think you’re going insane in the membrane, insane in the brain?”
    Oh fuck, I’m losing my mind!
    “And Bingo was his name-O,” Boricio sang.
    “Wait, you heard me thinking?”
    “Yeah, and you might wanna stop talking out loud, because they’re listening, and nothing makes you look crazy quite like a fucker talking to himself.”
    Charlie