Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone)

beyond the thick hotel curtains.
    “Hope you like canned pasta,” Ed mused, opening a duffel bag and tossing Brent a can of spaghetti and meatballs.  
    “You didn’t bring a hotplate or anything?” Brent asked.
    “We don’t want to cook anything; that would attract attention.”
    “Ah,” Brent said, pulling the tab on his can. Ed handed him a plastic fork, and they dug into their dinners.
    “Not exactly Jane’s cooking, but surprisingly not horrible.” Brent said.
    Ed sat on the floor, scooping food from his can, ignoring Brent’s many attempts to start a conversation. He never understood why people wanted to talk while they were eating. He put up with it from his family, since he figured that’s what he was expected to do. But that didn’t mean he’d put up with other people doing it. People talking during dinner may as well have been fingernails on a chalkboard.
    “What’s the worst thing you ever had to eat?” Brent continued, deaf and blind to Ed’s uncommunicative posture.
    “I ate a spider once, does that count?” Ed said, hoping to end the conversation.
    “What the hell?” Brent said, nearly spitting out his food. “Really?”
    Ed couldn’t help but laugh.
    “You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. It wasn’t terrible. They’re not as bad as people say. Well, until I realized it was pregnant. Oh, what a mess that was. Little baby spiders spilling out all over the place. Kinda looked like wet, dark pieces of pasta, actually.”
    “Stop!” Brent said, looking like he might vomit.
    Ed smiled. Good, now I can eat in peace.
    He shoved a meatball into his mouth, as Brent dipped his uneaten forkful of pasta back into the can.

    **

    Sleep took them by 10 p.m. Ed didn’t bother structuring night shifts as he didn’t anticipate any problems, none at least that he couldn’t handle with an open bag of ammunition at his bedside.  
    Once asleep, he dreamed he was in a field of tall grass that stretched to forever. The voice he’d been dreaming of was back. Brent was also there, walking beside him, looking down at a map.
    “You’re close,” the voice said.
    “Who’s that?” Brent asked.
    “You can hear it?” Ed said, surprised.
    “Yeah, who is that?”
    “If you can hear it, you don’t need to ask,” Ed said, not intending to be cryptic, though it wasn’t like he was the one choosing his words. The voice was speaking through him.
    Brent looked back down at his map. “I see it here.”
    Ed stared at the map too, which looked like one of those old treasure maps you used to see in movies and comic books, with a big red “X.”
    “Uh-oh,” Brent said. “It knows we’re here.”
    Ed looked at him, confused. Was the voice now speaking through Brent? Who, or what, was “it?”
    Overhead, the sky grew instantly black, darkness spreading like spilled ink in clear water, canvassing the world. Wind and rain were on sudden assault everywhere around them, whipping the long blades of grass against their faces in stinging lashes. The wind howled like a scattered pack of wounded animals, crying at once from every direction.
    Ed closed his eyes, lifting an arm to cover his face, pushing through the grass.
    “Keep going!” he shouted to Brent, as they pushed blindly into the thrashing sea.
    The assault ended as suddenly as it began, though the darkness still churned overhead. When Ed gazed around, Brent was gone. He turned, searching, and called out, “Brent!”
    And then he heard the sound of a child singing. He couldn’t tell if the voice was that of a boy or girl. The melody sounded like a religious hymn, though he couldn’t make out the words.
    He continued forward until he spotted a church steeple peeking over the grass.
    “Brent?!”
    Nothing but the child’s singing, coming from the church. He was close enough to determine the tune – Jesus Loves Me – but was still too far to decipher the words.
    He raced forward and came out into a clearing in front of a church, standing before a barracks-neat row of three houses in the background. In front of the church were six giant wooden crosses. The child, in a white robe, was knelt down singing in front of one of the crosses.
    Oh my god, someone’s nailed to it.
    Ed moved closer as the child’s singing continued.  
    “The Darkness loves me! This I know,
    for The Prophet tells me so.”
    His slowed his gate as he locked onto the bulging dead eyes of the man on the cross.
    Brent.
    Brent had been crucified, nailed in place