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

then started freeing the prisoners, one by one. Desmond wasn’t sure what Luca had done to switch Boricio to their sides, nor did he have time to ask or figure it out.  
    He raced to Mary and Paola.
    There’s a chance!  
    Desmond dropped to the ground, feeling for a pulse in Mary and Paola and finding nothing. Both were dead. He looked up at Luca, heart brimming with hope.  
    “Luca, can you save them?” Desmond pleaded.
    Luca kneeled down in the pool of blood, eyes tearing, as he closed them and placed his hands on Mary and Paola’s hands.
    The room grew silent and heavy with expectation as they watched Luca attempt to work his miracles again.
    Outside, the world continued to erupt in chaos.  
    Boricio stood at the top of the stairs, “Don’t worry; I got the door.”
    Desmond turned back to Luca, whose eyes were squinting tight, as he appeared to be trying hard to focus.
    Please, God, if you’re up there, please, please, save them. They don’t deserve this.
    Luca’s eyes squeezed tighter, his hands now shaking on the women.
    Desmond’s breath was caught in his throat, along with his heart, watching anxiously, waiting for the moment the boy would do what he’d done three time before.
    But nothing was happening.
    Linc glanced at Desmond, fear in his eyes, then back down to Luca.
    While Luca had brought three people back from the brink, never had he brought someone back from death.
    Perhaps some miracles were too great for whatever was working through him.
    Desmond’s heart turned to lead and he swallowed. The minutes were stretching, and Luca collapsed in tears.
    “They’re not answering,” he cried out, and looked up, grief-stricken, “I’m so sorry, Desmond. I can’t.”
    Desmond fell to the ground, his world shattered.
    Chaos continued to reign outside. Screaming, gunfire, and the sound of monsters. All hell was breaking loose.
    But nothing would compare to the hell Desmond would rain upon Brother Rei.  
    Desmond stood up, and ascended the stairs, taking a gun from Boricio, and walking out into the night of death.

    * * * *

BRENT FOSTER: PART 2

    After nightfall, Ed spotted the aliens, seven of them, leaving the hotel in a pack. They mulled about, looking around the cars, then headed toward the underpass running beneath the highway.
    “That all of them?” Brent whispered.
    “I think so,” Ed said, fishing a pair of mini binoculars from his tactical jacket, then training them on the group.
    “Whatchya lookin’ at?” Brent asked.
    “I thought I saw something different about one of them… oh Jesus.”
    “What is it?”
    Ed handed him the binoculars. Brent focussed on the pack of aliens. One was indeed different, and by different, Ed had meant nearly human in form. Its skin wasn’t like the infected but rather exactly like the aliens’ – dark, wet, and lit from within.
    “Is it human? You ever seen anything like that?” Brent asked, handing the binoculars back to Ed.
    “I dunno if it’s human. And no, that’s a first, that I’ve seen anyway. It’s like some sort of alien-human hybrid, but it’s a more severe transformation . . . an almost total transformation.”
    “Could it be what happens if the infected progress all the way?”
    “I don’t think so. The scientists have had infected for long periods of time, studying them, and I’ve not heard of anything like this. Of course, they don’t tell me everything, so who knows?”
    “An evolutionary step,” Brent pondered. “How?”
    “I don’t even want to say what I’m thinking,” Ed said, slipping his binoculars away as the aliens vanished beneath the highway, and hopefully kept going right on down the road and far from the hotel.
    “You’re thinking Black Mountain, aren’t you? Experiments?”
    Ed looked at Brent. His grim expression was all the confirmation Brent needed.
    “Do you think they’re experimenting on people?” Brent asked.
    “If they are still operational, then I have no doubt they would experiment on people, infected and uninfected alike. After all, our own scientists are looking to cure whatever this is, and kill an unknown enemy.”
    Brent thought back on all the stories he’d read as a teenager: “scientific” experiments by Nazis, vivisections on humans by Japan’s Unit 731, and even his own government’s radiation, toxins, and disease “research” on unwitting victims. As long as there was an enemy, or underclass to exploit, there would be scientists willing to treat humans as