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

a flock of birds from distant trees. Mary looked again at the fence. Not a single bottle was broken, and she hadn’t woken to the sound of a shot, so Mary figured target practice had only just started.
    Paola didn’t turn her head toward her mother, just pulled the trigger two more times, then wrinkled her nose at the trio of missed shots. Boricio ignored Mary as well. He turned to Paola and said, “You’re giving your shots way too much thought. Don’t blink and don’t think. Just squeeze that fucker like you were popping a zit.”
    Boricio cackled. Mary was still walking from the house. “Don’t speak to my daughter like that,” she said, stopping just three feet from Boricio. “And she’s too young to be out here playing with guns.”
    Boricio laughed again. “Are you kidding, Mary May I?” He looked at her like she was the one who was fat with crazy. “Did you already forget about the early Fourth of July show back at the Sanctu-Fairy Fuck-all? Because if you want your little lamb to go bo-peeping into battle seconds from good and dead, well then, by all means keep on batting your pretty blind eyes.” He shrugged and said, “What’s one more corpse to me? And we’re not playing with guns — I’m teaching her, something your Desmond Do-Right might have thought to do before the figurative shit hit the literal fan.”
    Mary shuddered, remembering the pair of bodies — one a mutated looking thing that had been a man that Boricio had known and the other an apparent victim of said man — they found in the house when they first returned to the compound, and how Boricio dragged them out back like they were soiled laundry waiting for the machine. She still had no idea where they went, or what Boricio had done with them.
    Paola looked back at Boricio, her mouth hanging open in shock at Boricio’s ‘one more corpse’ comment. He grinned, then winked and shook his head with a light smile before turning back to her mother. “I prefer that all my compadres learn to be good little commandoes, and since right now I don’t see anything else pressing on our agenda, I’m not really seeing any reason not to hold a little morning session of Blowing Fuckers Heads’ Off 101.”
    “She’s my daughter,” Mary said. “And that means that I’m the one who gets to decide whether she’s old enough to handle a gun.”
    Boricio shrugged. “You know what?” he said. “You’re right.” He walked over to Paola and held out his hand, nodding at her to hand over the gun. She did.
    Boricio shoved the gun in his pants, then said with a grin, “Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your daughter grow? Like all the whores, on all their fours, lined all nice in a row.”
    He stood a few inches from Mary, while she tried not to cower.
    “Your daughter’s an awful pretty thing, Miss Mary,” Boricio continued. “You really want her out there without a gun? You think monsters are the only thing you’ve gotta worry about? Hell no,” Boricio shook his head, almost snarling, his voice settling somewhere between a growl and a hiss. “You’ve gotta worry about monsters like me , and worse than me, Miss Mary — men who didn’t even wait for the proverbial ‘grass on the field’ to ‘play ball,’ three weeks before Hallo-Fucking-Ween, and sure as the Great Pumpkin’s orange ball sack, ain’t gonna start caring now, ya’ dig?”
    Boricio pulled the gun back out of his pants and offered it to Mary, holding it by the barrel. But Mary kept her hands at her side, ignoring the invitation.
    Boricio said, “You sure you don’t want your baby girl to have this?” He raised his eyebrows. “Seems like you’d at least want to keep her armed against anything like me.”
    “If you so much as look at my daughter with an impure thought, I won’t need a gun to fucking kill you,” Mary said, eyes boring into Boricio’s.
    She grabbed the gun roughly from Boricio, then handed it gently to Paola.
    Boricio smiled a big grin, ignoring her threat.
    “Much better!” Boricio started clapping. “I need Team Boricio fit and ready for a fight if we expect to get our asses up and over to Mordor. Rip Van Creepy ain’t gonna do shit to help us, since unfortunately he’s used the last of his voodoo to bring you all back from Zombie Island, instead of Black Godzilla like I suggested, no offense to any of you estrogen carriers. I’m glad we can get started. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Boricio said, patting his stomach.