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

Imaginary Boricio, who was staring at the still-sleeping Callie in the next cell.
    “I’ll help you under one condition,” Charlie said.
    “What is it?”
    “Nothing happens to her. No tests. No infection. Nothing.”
    Boricio looked over at Callie, then back at Charlie. “Deal.”
    “I can trust you?” Charlie asked.
    “Yes. But can I trust you?” Boricio asked.
    “Yes.”
    “I’d like to believe you, Charlie. But I am having one problem.”
    Charlie felt a knot in his gut as if the carpet — or illusion — of safety were about to be pulled from under him.
    “What’s that?”
    “I’m wondering why you didn’t tell me about the other Boricio — the one standing beside you.”

    * * * *

CHAPTER 4 — Mary Olson

    Dunn, Georgia
    Boricio’s Compound
    March 29
    sometime after midnight…

    Midnight was made for regret.
    Even before the world had whispered itself to nothing, it was always in the bony middle of midnight when Mary found herself hating every wrong turn she’d ever made. Tonight it seemed especially easy to hate her latest — agreeing to stay at Boricio’s compound despite every alarm bell inside her ringing in unison.
    It was another mistake; turning her back on her instincts, just like she had ignored them when surrendering to Desmond and Will by agreeing to stay at the Sanctuary.
    Staying at The Prophet’s compound was the worst decision Mary had ever made, and she paid for that poor decision with her life, and the lives of her children, both Paola and the new life inside her. Luca had somehow brought them both back, but Desmond wasn’t so lucky. Desmond, the father of the baby growing inside her, was dead and he was never coming back.
    Now, following Boricio to his compound was another massive mistake, and Mary knew it. The man was clearly some sort of monster. Coming with him was like agreeing to load Paola into a Volkswagen Beetle, then drive it at 90 into a tall brick wall.
    Boricio was obviously a man who hadn’t been truly loved a day in his life. All humans were capable of atrocity. It was simply a matter of falling into a sequence of events that would drive them from timidity to terror. When violent instincts weren’t properly channeled, they easily erupt. Most violence was the result of a mind fooling itself into believing internal pain came from something, or someone, else — a someone or something that deserved to be punished. And typically these people were able to cast anyone into the role of that someone who deserved their wrath.
    Mary came up with this theory on Boricio while still standing in the ashes of The Sanctuary and deciding what to do and where to go. She should have listened to her whisper. She would have, too, except Luca had just aged what looked like a thousand years to save her and her children; and she couldn’t tell him no.
    Luca insisted that Boricio was there to protect them, and that he would do what he was supposed to, whenever it was time to do it. Mary was used to the mystical I know what I know because I saw it in my dreams, science-fiction weirdness by now, but she didn’t buy the balderdash for Boricio, at least not enough to keep herself from sleeping fitfully through the night.
    Mary could eventually forgive what Boricio had done to Desmond, and could even forgive that he had helped the crazy cultists holding them prisoner. If that was what Luca wanted, it was the least she could do. But even if she could forgive, Luca couldn’t ask her to forget what Boricio had done. Forgetting was impossible. Her Desmond was dead. How could she be expected to simply forget someone who had become so much of her light in such a bleak world?
    Luca said the boy inside Boricio was broken, at least until Luca had fixed him. But she didn’t believe that Luca had “fixed” Boricio at all. Once broken, one could never truly be fixed, Mary believed.
    When Mary pulled Luca aside to plead with him privately, and maybe convince him that he’d be better off going with her and Paola alone, the ancient child refused, insisting over and over that Boricio was no longer broken. He said it would take time for his healing to “show up.” Even if that were true, and Mary wasn’t convinced it was, Luca clearly didn’t seem to understand the danger Boricio posed until then.
    “Luca, we’ll take care of you,” Mary said. “Boricio won’t.” She squeezed his hands. “And you’re in no shape to survive out there on your own. That man will leave you the