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

were the first in the world to notice it, and wanted a medal for coming up with some lame come-on line involving hearts.  
    Perverts were everywhere, and Noella had more or less learned to ignore the bore of their gazes. But this guy wasn’t a pervert. Or at least just a pervert. This guy was terror on two legs.
    Noella’s mind flashed to the recent reports which lit the maudlin smiles of every local TV news anchor for the past several months — 12 murdered or missing girls in the last half year. Unsolved crimes with no suspects or clue what the killer looked like. Another chill shot through her core and something whispered in her mind.
    He looks like this guy right here.
    Noella scanned the counter looking for anything she could use as a weapon. Her eyes settled on the closed drawer where she’d set the knives they used to slice bagels and sandwiches.
    Hurry up, Tony!
    Noella was aware of the murders, as it was impossible to live in the town and not be. This was upstate New York, not exactly a hotbed of crime, let alone serial murders, so corpses left in the streets tended to attract attention. Hardly a day went by in the shop where someone wasn’t talking about their connection, no matter how tangential, to one of the victims. But the murders weren’t anything Noella gave particular attention to, or worried about. Until now.  
    Mets Hat stood silently in front of her, hands in his jacket and anxiety all over his face. The longer he stood there, staring, the more convinced she became that she was staring at the serial killer everyone was looking for.
    Where in the hell are you, Tony? It doesn’t take that long to smoke a cigarette!
    Noella wanted to flee, turn and run as fast as she could, out the back door without so much as a glance behind. But she felt foolish. Her logical side – the side the pills made stronger – whispered: He’s just weird, not a murderer at all. Also, serial killers aren’t usually cute, are they?
    If Noella ran from the store, she may as well draw another bull’s-eye on her head. She didn’t need to give the kids at her school yet another reason to make fun of her. And certainly word would get back to them if she ran out of the shop like a crazy person. So she stayed put, praying to whoever might listen that Tony would return and calm the crumbling walls of resolve around her. She glanced back through the door behind her, and into the storage room where the exit door was propped open.  
    No sign of Tony, yet.
    Come on, man. You smoking the whole pack?
    Noella’s leg began to shake. She had to pee.  
    “Find anything you like?” she asked.
    The man’s eyes looked past her, toward the back room. The side of her brain that the pills couldn’t calm began its chatter again.
    This is it. He’s got a gun in his pocket.  
    Mets Hat turned his head in an odd way, as if he’d heard the voices in her head. Their eyes met again, and the hair on her arms went angry and standing. Noella glanced at the closed drawer with the knives, then down at the panic button on the floor, maybe four feet away,   trying to decide which she should run to first. The knife would help her immediately, if she were able to defend herself. But the button could bring the police, and their guns, eventually.
    He stared at her as though he could read the conversation in her mind and feel the weight of her decision. His eyes went narrow, and Noella felt a sudden tear inside her mind. A violation. She wondered if he was really inside her head, or if it was only the side of her mind that never went quiet or stopped playing tricks.  
    His eyes lit up in a manic glee, which eerily echoed that in the eyes of the man who killed her father 10 years ago tonight. You don’t forget those details, no matter how hard you try.
    This is it.
    He pulled the gun from his pocket before Noella could reach the panic button.
    She screamed as her foot stomped down on the button, anyway.
    “Shut up and give me all the money in your register!” he yelled, pulling a thin canvas bag from inside his jacket, and throwing it into her arms.
    Noella stared at the bag, her mind reeling as a fog of terror swallowed her ability to move.  
    “Open the register!” the man growled, thrusting the gun inches from her face.
    Oh God, he’s not even wearing a mask!   He’s gonna shoot me so there are no witnesses.
    Noella stood, frozen to the spot.
    Move, move, move, just do what he says!
    But she couldn’t. And she became certain that