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

appreciating a woman with balls. “Yeah, but when you’re the Michael Fucking Jordan of murder, it ain’t like you need a full roster.”
    “And you’re right,” Mary said. “Paola should learn to shoot. But there’s no need to impose target practice on you, especially since you clearly have issues maintaining your patience. So thank you very much for the offer, but I’d rather be the one to teach my daughter to shoot.”
    Boricio laughed, then kept on laughing for a long minute, sucking for air as his eyes went red, slowly making Mary madder. Finally he said, “ You’re gonna teach her?”
    “You think I can’t shoot?”
    Boricio answered with another round of laughter.
    Mary marched up to Paola, gently pulled the gun from her hand, then aimed at the bottles and fired six shots, evenly spaced, missing the glass every time.
    Boricio’s laughter roared louder than the gunshots as Mary handed the gun back to her daughter.
    Suddenly, the wood beneath the shelf shrieked, then splintered and cracked before collapsing to the ground and spilling shattering glass to the ground.
    Boricio stopped laughing, and a new breed of smile settled on his face. “Well, tickle my pickle, Miss Mary, that is some sharp-as-shit shooting.”
    Mary said, “ Desmond taught me well.”
    Boricio said, “Well, well, it looks like old Desmond Do-Right got two things right then.” He winked and smiled at Mary.
    She wanted to throw up in her mouth for thinking it was almost charming.

    * * * *

Chapter 5 — Teagan McLachlan

    Teagan didn’t want to go back underground.
    She had been beneath the earth since October, until a week ago when Ed finally decided it was safe for them to live above ground. She wasn’t sure why it hadn’t been safe before, and for all that time, but suspected it had something to do with the other Ed, who was now working with the Guardsmen on a secret mission.
    Teagan had lived her entire life sheltered beneath her ultra-conservative parents, dreaming of escape from the trailer park. Then she’d spent the past five months so far underground that she thought she might never see sunlight again. For the first time in forever, Teagan finally felt like an adult. She had a relationship, a child, and most importantly, freedom. And for one glorious week, life felt amazing.
    Ed rushed her outside into the cold night air and then into the waiting truck, where Sullivan was waiting in the driver’s seat. She took one last look back at the garden she’d been watering regularly for exactly one week, and the neat row of plants she nurtured to health beneath the warm sun, and felt it — along with her newfound life — slipping through her fingers.
    Her dirt road street, shared by 11 other homes, was lined with black carts and bobbing lights as Guardsmen with face masks, flashlights, and weapons scrambled from house to house making sure everyone had pulled their shutters down and barred their doors.
    The sirens’ wail was louder outside, turning Becca’s cry into a terrified pitch.
    “We’ve got it, Sir,” one of the Guardsmen said to Ed from behind a speaker’s crackle as they passed on their way to the truck.
    Teagan climbed into the back seat with Becca, then quickly shut the door to muffle the siren and calm her baby. She rocked Becca in her arms, whispering in her ear, “It’s okay, baby. Mommy’s got you. It’s okay.”
    “What’s the status?” Ed asked, climbing into the front seat and slamming the door as Sullivan tore away from their house.
    Teagan looked back to see Guardsmen pulling thick black metal shutters down over their windows and doors, sealing the house from God only knew what.
    “Subjects 7XY and 17Xz were missing from their cells when the guards checked on the hour. Video screens for both cells went black for a one minute period about 10 minutes prior, at the same exact time. They were in their cells one minute. But after the screens went black, they were gone. There’s no registered activity on the security logs or door logins, until they appeared outside the compound about five minutes after they were reported missing. They were last detected on the north side, but could be anywhere by now.”
    “How the hell did this happen?”
    “We think Dr. Williams has something to do with it. He’s not answering his communicator, and people said he was acting weird all day.”
    “Has anyone told Will Bishop?”
    “That’s the other thing,” Sullivan said. “We can’t find him. No