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

squares dimly across the floor’s center. Dust floated along motes of light, suspended in space and barely moving. Everything else was dark.
    Ed swung the rifle’s light around the room. It had been awhile since he’d been to the monastery, but the layout was easy enough to remember. One main chamber, leading to a pair of doors and a stairway on the left. Both doors were open.
    Ed made his way through the room, stepping over debris along the ancient stone floor. Apparently, renovations had only extended to the building’s outside.
    He stayed on the room’s far right, sweeping his light over doors as he passed. He looked out the two large windows on the rear wall and saw the moon peering through the forest about 50 yards away.
    Ed stepped toward the second of the two rooms with its door half ajar, where any of the people he was searching for could easily be hiding. As he approached, his boot cracked something on the ground — a pane of dusty glass, crunching with an echo across the old building with its high ceilings.
    He paused, waiting to see if the sound would draw someone from hiding, but was greeted with nothing but silence.
    Ed pushed the door the rest of the way open, wondering if someone had set the glass there as an alarm. Given the layer of dust on the glass, and lack of clean spots outside of his boot print, it seemed unlikely.
    He opened the door to a sudden voice.
    “Don’t shoot.”
    Ed’s light found Will, sitting perfectly still in the darkness on an old wooden chair as if he were waiting to see a doctor.
    “Sir, what are you doing here?” Ed said, moving his light from Will’s face to the floor.
    “Waiting,” he said, his voice eerily calm as if he were talking in his sleep and responding to someone Ed couldn’t see.
    Ed brought the light up again, just enough to see Will’s dark, open, and oversized pupils.
    “Waiting for who?” Ed asked, thinking he probably shouldn’t bother. The old man had been growing progressively worse since the previous fall. Some said he was senile, but Ed didn’t think that was it. Well, not completely, anyway. He was more likely mourning all that he had lost, and what had happened on October 15.
    “For Luca and Boricio. They’re coming back.”
    Ed closed his eyes, feeling a cool blade of sadness cut through him. He didn’t have the heart to correct Will. “Come on sir; it’s not safe here,” he said. “There’s been a breach. Two of the infected have escaped and Dr. Williams is nowhere to be found.”
    Something snapped Will from his daze. He cocked his head and looked at Ed quizzically. “Escaped? How?”
    “We believe Dr. Williams had something to do with it, though we’re not sure why.”
    “Oh my.” Will said. “That’s not good. Not good at all.”
    “How long have you been here, Mr. Bishop? Have you seen anyone else?”
    “All day. Waiting,” Will said, starting to get that glassy look in his eyes again.
    “Did you see anybody else?”
    “No,” Will said, meeting Ed’s eyes. “Nobody else.”
    “Come on, let me bring you back to the Facility so I can get back out and find them.”
    Will rattled his head as if trying to shake himself from a fugue, then stood. His bones creaked and Ed wondered how long the man had been sitting in the chair.
    “Did Dr. Williams tell you to meet him here?”
    “No,” Will said. “Why do you ask?”
    “Just curious why you came out here of all places.”
    “The dreams told me to come here tonight. What time is it?”
    “Oh-two hundred,” Ed said, glancing at his watch.
    “Oh, they’re gonna be here soon!”
    “What?”
    “Yes, they’re coming at 2:15.”
    Ed stared at Will, staring absentmindedly back, smiling like the senile man many thought he’d become. It was obvious to Ed that Will was confused. Even if he had dreamed of 2:15, it wasn’t psychic phenomena. Yes, the man was gifted, but this was more likely a blend of dream and memory, twisting itself into rambling prophecy.
    The smile on Will’s face said it all: the fragile old man needed his dream to come true. And it would break his heart when it didn’t. What could Ed do, though? No way would he get the old man to go with him until he saw that his dream was just a dream and nothing more.
    “I can’t wait to see them,” Will said, turning from Ed and returning to his chair.
    Ed was going to resist, but decided it wasn’t worth it. What was five more minutes? “At least let’s wait out there,” Ed said as he picked