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

window naked, screaming, though Charlie couldn’t hear her anguished cries from his cell.
    He ran to the glass wall and put his hands across the cold surface, sobbing with relief. She’s alive! Charlie had considered covering his body, but it felt somewhat wrong to do with her standing there so raw and vulnerable. She wasn’t just naked, she was scratched and bruised, with her hair in a storm. Dark circles ringed beneath her hollow red eyes. She looked as if she’d been through hell since he’d seen her, and Charlie felt sick to his stomach that he could do nothing to help. Sick to his stomach that these fuckers had kept her naked in a cage like an animal.
    Charlie vowed to kill every fucker responsible.
    Callie put her hands on her glass wall and wept, her red eyes meeting Charlie’s.
    “I’m going to get us out,” he mouthed slowly, hoping she could read his lips.
    She mouthed something back, but Charlie couldn’t make out the words. He shook his head and shrugged, then mouthed the word, “What?”
    She said something again, but to his frustration, he still couldn’t make it out. Then she stopped talking, her attention turned down the hall, where two men in yellow hazmat suits stepped onto the cell block. A Guardsman in black gear, wearing a black mask and respirator and carrying an assault rifle, followed as the pair of men headed toward them.
    Callie covered her breasts and crotch, and Charlie covered his flaccid penis. The men stopped in front of a cell, two down from Callie’s, where a heavyset nude redheaded woman stood shaking her head.
    The man in black pressed the code on her door, then stepped back and raised the gun as the men in yellow entered.
    The woman screamed, her mouth visibly repeating, “No!” as she backed her body against the wall. The men in yellow grabbed her arms and thrust her through the door before marching her down the hallway. She fell to the floor then held her hands together, as if praying.
    Or maybe she was begging the men not to take her.
    The redhead melted into a puddle, crying and screaming.
    The man in black lifted his gun and held it to the top of her skull, promising what would come if she didn’t obey them.
    The woman kept shaking her head, violently back and forth, faster and faster.
    Where are they trying to take her?
    She must have good reason to fear them. Maybe she’s been taken before. Or maybe she’s seen others taken who haven’t returned.
    What the fuck are these people doing?
    The man in black thrust the gun at the redhead again as the men in yellow waved their hands, instructing her to get up and walk. The woman refused, her head down and shaking as her long, tangled hair waved back and forth in a violent swirl.
    The man in black thrust his gun at the redhead again, but she was no longer looking at him. He fired his rifle. Charlie flinched and closed his eyes. When he opened them, she was on the ground, face first in a spreading pool of blood.
    Charlie backed away from the glass, screaming.
    One of the men in yellow looked down at his clipboard, flipped to the following page, then looked up and down the long rows of cells. He pointed at another cell on Charlie’s row and ordered an old naked black man to be pulled from the cell. The man didn’t resist — as if anyone would after seeing the woman shot dead — walking with his shoulders slumped through the door with the three Guardsmen.
    They left the redhead on the ground, probably as a warning.
    Charlie looked up at Callie, who was staring at the dead woman and crying. The lights dimmed to black again, returning their world to darkness.
    I will kill them all.

    **

    When the lights came back on, two men in yellow hazmat suits were dragging the dead woman from the block, then down the hallway to a door at the end. Then a third man in a yellow came in to mop up the mess.
    Charlie took advantage of the light, and turned his eyes to Callie.
    She came to the glass, still not hiding her body. Nor did Charlie as he splayed his fingers on the window. For a long while, they simply stared at one another as Charlie felt a confused current of mixed emotions.
    He thought he’d never see her again. Though Callie had rejected him before, and though they might never see freedom again, Charlie wanted to tell her that he loved her. He didn’t need her to reciprocate. He just needed her to know because who knew how fleeting life was for them?
    Maybe it wasn’t love.
    Maybe in the real world, they would have