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

Luca suddenly found himself inside Paola’s head, then deeper into her mind’s twisting tunnels, and finally centered inside the specific memory that allowed him to raise her hand, and the pistol with it, then fire while thinking in less than a blink, landing the first bullet from the freshly loaded gun into the creature’s head.
    The beast may have been a dog when the first bullet tore through its skull, but that first bullet gave birth to the unholy monstrosity that had been inside the dog all along. It came snarling from the dog’s falling skin, stretching its face like putty.
    Paola was still aiming without using the trigger, so Luca kept firing from inside her mind, again and again. Each shot seemed to anger the rabid dog further, but was doing nothing to slow it down. But at least it was off of Boricio, rearing back on it’s hind legs and thrashing wildly through the air, like it was at war with itself, shrieking something that sounded like a dog’s bark and a human’s scream bleeding together.
    The dogs fur came off in chunks revealing dark black skin beneath it that reminded Luca of the monsters. It looked soaking wet, and was getting wetter as the massive dog’s bones seemed to shove themselves against its skin, pushing against it until it started to tear. The dog lifted his nose to the sun and roared, its mouth twisting, knocking teeth from its maw to the ground to make room for more giant teeth which erupted from its jaws like jagged swords.
    Luca continued to empty Paola’s gun, until something inside her shattered and sobbed. Mary and Boricio ran to grab guns of their own from the a bench 50 feet away, where Boricio had been spending each morning showing them how to clean and care for their weapons.
    Mary picked up a pistol, Boricio grabbed two, then they emptied all three of them into the creature until it finally stopped twitching.
    Like the half demon, half dog that it was, the creature bled in a medley of color, though mostly black and green and red, pouring from multiple holes and pooling into a single brew of dark and shiny purple mess.
    Boricio, Mary, and Paola stood around the beast in stunned silence, before they caught one another’s expression and started to cheer.
    “Fuck yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Boricio said high-fiving Paola.
    Luca had returned to his own head, and felt significantly weaker, but he hid the weakness behind a smile. He didn’t want Mary, Paola, and Boricio to worry about him.
    Luca began to wonder just how much longer he’d be with them.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 4 — Other Ed Keenan

    Black Island, New York
    April 2012
    SIX MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…

    Ed and Will were perched on the monastery’s roof, staring down into the darkness. The infected Guardsmen stood in a line in front of the building, but made no attempt to storm inside.
    Holding the line, keeping us here.
    Ed called Sullivan on the radio, updating him on the situation — the infection may have been incubating in people, and could have infiltrated the Facility.
    “Test everyone,” Ed instructed. “Test them and quarantine the uninfected on Level Eight. If we can’t get the situation under control we’ll need to activate a Hard Reset Protocol. Get someone out to the ferry and prepare for an evacuation of everyone up top. No one gets on without being tested. Any infected are to be shot on sight and their bodies burned. Understand?”
    “Yes. On sight?”
    “Yes,” Ed said. “We can’t take any chances.”
    Ed brought him current on everything that had happened, as well as with his theory, that Dr. Williams was somehow communicating with the infected and that the infected were acting on his behalf. Ed ended the call on his radio and turned to Will Bishop, who was still looking down at the Guardsmen on the ground.
    “They’re trying to keep us here,” Ed said.
    “Yes, they appear to be working in concert with Williams,” Bishop said, echoing what Will had just told Sullivan.
    “How long do you think Williams has been infected?” Ed asked.
    “I dunno. You all should’ve fired him the second you knew he helped Boricio. But screw consequences, right? Anything for the sake of science!”
    “It wasn’t my call; you know that,” Ed said, annoyed.
    He was just as pissed as Will that Overseer Washington hadn’t thrown shutters on the project sooner. But arguing about it now, particularly when the Overseer was dead, was pointless. There was a heap of shit they should’ve