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

second he thinks you’re slowing him down.” She held the old child’s eyes, begging him to believe her. “That won’t take long to happen in your condition, and we would never, ever do that to you. Please,” she said. “Come with me and Paola.”
    Luca shook his head. “I can’t, Mary. I’m supposed to go with Boricio.” Then he repeated, “He will protect us. I know it.”
    Mary looked into Luca’s sad, empty eyes, bleached from their blinking youth. “There’s nothing I can say to convince you, is there?”
    Luca shook his head.
    And that was that.
    Mary could never let the 90-year-old boy who had saved her life ride into the sunset with a repugnant creature like Boricio by himself. But just because Mary had managed to avoid making the wrong decision, didn’t mean she made the right one.
    She hated how Boricio looked at her, with what seemed like a sour brew of perversion and hate. He hadn’t been much better when dealing with Paola. He wasn’t rude, exactly, nor had he ogled her. As foul as Boricio was, he was probably smart enough to understand that the wrong string of words, or perhaps the wrong look, would send Mary into a fury that was sure to end with one of them dead. But Boricio clearly didn’t want a kid around, and made no effort to shade his impatience.
    Luca knew Mary was upset, and was trying to sooth her in the only way he knew how. On the ride to Boricio’s compound, Luca leaned into her ear with a whispered promise that everything would be okay. Mary was doing the right thing. Luca needed Boricio around, and that meant they all did. Something had happened inside The Hole, and whatever that something was, it had altered things between the two men, and led Luca to trust the monster with a line of reasoning that had nothing to do with logic.
    Even if Luca weren’t anywhere near eight years old — and Mary had to believe his mind was mostly stunted — he couldn’t possibly have the lifetime’s worth of experience one earned from decades worth of navigating the best and worst of humanity.
    Mary had known plenty of raging assholes and con-men, from the days before she went freelance with her cards, where everyone in the copywriting offices carried a penis and the asshole personality to prove it, to the marketing department, where no one ever spoke without seeming as though they were pulling a long con.
    A large part of Mary felt as though Boricio was playing the long con on Luca, getting on his good side so he could somehow screw the ancient child somewhere down the road. She had no idea how or why, or what Luca could possibly offer a monster like that, but then again she had no idea what they had exchanged inside their minds.
    Mary was here now, and there was no turning back. She couldn’t imagine getting a decent night’s sleep until they were finally far away from Boricio and again on their own. Even then, without Desmond, Mary didn’t imagine she’d ever find a peaceful night’s sleep again.
    Resting well with one eye open was impossible, and there was no way in hell Mary trusted the predator not to sneak into her room, or her daughter’s, which was why she and Paola were sharing one room, and why Mary slept with a loaded gun under her pillow — just in case.
    She glanced over at Paola, as she had every few minutes since she set her cheek to the pillow, and continued to do until finally falling asleep, probably sometime between two and three in the morning.

    **

    Mary woke up several hours later to an especially bright morning sun beating its way through the blinds. She rubbed her eyes, then looked over to the empty spot in her bed, where Paola had been. Her heart instantly sank to the pit of her stomach as a flashback of the Drury Inn and all that happened there flooded her morning with acid.
    Gun in hand and no shoes on her feet, Mary bolted outside to find her daughter.
    Everyone but Mary was standing in a semicircle in back of the house. Paola and Luca were side by side, with Luca leaning on a cane, while Boricio stood by himself slightly to the side. Paola was holding a pistol and looking toward a row of bottles, lined on a precarious looking shelf that Mary imagined Boricio had set on the top of a wooden fence post which neatly divided the spacious back yard from the forest beyond.
    “Paola!” Mary screamed. “What in the world do you think you’re doing?”
    The girl’s finger pulled the trigger and thunder crashed through the early morning quiet, sending