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

me? I see all these memories you have of me. But I’ve never met … Oh. Shit.”
    Hazmat-suit Boricio was staring off into space, looking like he might have just untangled string theory.
    “What?” Imaginary Boricio said. “Spit it out, Fucker!”
    “What?” Charlie asked.
    “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before,” hazmat-suit Boricio shook his head. You’re not from here. You’re from the other Earth. The one where Luca went.” Then, “Holy shit… he did this!”
    “The fuck are you talking about, Willis?!” Imaginary Boricio said.
    Hazmat-suit Boricio either ignored or didn’t hear his imaginary twin. Perhaps he couldn’t read Charlie’s mind when he was deep in thought himself.
    “What are you talking about?” Charlie asked.
    “I want you to tell me everything that’s happened since October 15.”
    “What? Everything?”
    Hazmat-suit Boricio raised his eyebrows. “You got somewhere else to be?”

    Charlie filled him in on everything from the moment he woke up in the basement of the cult compound to the moment he woke up in the glass cell.
    “Where is this other Boricio now?” hazmat-suit Boricio asked.
    “Like I said, we haven’t seen him since we went back to the compound. But he wasn’t there the last time we were.”
    “You think he might be there now?”
    “I dunno,” Charlie said. Then, “When are you gonna tell me what the hell is going on?”
    Imaginary Boricio chimed in, “Yeah, we told you our Iliad and our fucking Odyssey , so start gettin’ chatty, Kathy!”
    “On October 15, so far as we know, almost everyone on this planet died or vanished in an instant. A few were spared, for reasons we still don’t know. But everyone else, dead. At least I thought the people still here had been spared, anyway, but now I’m wondering if he didn’t pull a bunch of you all over somehow.”
    Charlie wasn’t sure he believed a word this Boricio was saying, though he had no reason to doubt him, not with everything else he’d seen. It made a hell of a lot more sense than any theories he’d come up with on his own.
    “How? Why?” were the only words Charlie could think to ask as he continued to process Boricio’s words. “Wait a second. Does this mean my mom is still alive? And that everyone else I know is still alive back on my Earth?”
    “I don’t know,” Boricio said, seeming to marinate in the thought. “I can’t even guess.”
    “So, can I get home?” Charlie asked.
    Boricio said, “No.”
    “Why not?” Charlie said, almost whining.
    “Because you’re infected. If you go over there, this could spread. Then it would wipe out your planet like it did mine.”
    “So what will it take to cure me?” Charlie asked.
    “We’re working on that. With your help, perhaps we can figure this out.”
    Boricio put his hand on the pad outside the door and opened it for Charlie. “You’re not going to do anything stupid again, are you?”
    “No,” Charlie said.
    “Good, I would like to show you something so you can understand what we’re up against.”
    Boricio led Charlie down the hallway and out the door. He watched as they passed two Guardsmen. “Have someone mop up that mess in there, eh?” hazmat-suit Boricio said to the two men, referring to Foster’s corpse.
    Four other doors were on either side of the hall, then another at the end, which looked like an elevator. They turned through the first door to the right, then walked up a steep incline along a narrow but well-lit hallway until they came to another door, to a room which — if Charlie had been charting the course correctly in his head — was directly above, or close to above, his own cell block.
    The room was dark until Boricio said, “Lights.”
    Lights illuminated the cell block. It was smaller than his own, with two glass cells, one of them empty. The other held a mutant, equal parts human and monster — legs were human, one arm a clawed appendage, his torso appeared split almost down the middle between human and black monstrous flesh. His face, however, was entirely human. He opened his eyes, weary, and dull.
    “Hello, Ryan,” Boricio said. “How are you today?”
    “Today’s been a bad one,” Ryan said, his voice full of gravel. “Who’s this?”
    “This is Charlie Wilkens. And he might save your life. Or,” Boricio said as he turned to Charlie, “Ryan might be the end of yours.”

    * * * *

CHAPTER 8 — Mary Olson Part 2

    Mary was shocked.
    Maybe shocked wasn’t enough.