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

to calm down and wonder if perhaps he’d been too forceful. He didn’t want to appear as a threat that may go off the reservation. He needed to play the good boy or Black Island Research would do what governments do with any threat – eliminate him.
    Finally, Sullivan looked down to his tablet, turned it on, navigated to a file on the desktop, and handed it to Brent.
    “Please press play, Mr. Foster,” Sullivan said, frost upon his words.
    Brent took the tablet, which showed the frozen image of a woman in a chamber just like, if not the very same as, the one his family was in. She was clearly infected: eyes big and black, skin deteriorated significantly. She stood alone in the center of the room, the video shot from outside the observation window. Brent pressed a white triangle over the image bringing the video to life.
    A figure in full white protective gear entered the chamber through one of the two doors on the far wall.
    “Unlike the others, subject 10-0014 appears to be non-violent on Day Five,” a woman’s voice said. Judging from the echo, it was the voice of the woman in the white gear. The infected woman stood still, watching as the suited scientist moved closer.
    “She seems to be responding positively to treatment with HZVT-816 Variant C. We’ve now given her 6 cc doses, spaced 12 hours apart. Her skin shows signs of minor healing; pigmentation seems to be returning to her body. I will now take a closer look at the subject’s eyes.”
    As the scientist stepped closer to the infected, Brent’s heart felt like it pounded twice as fast, doubling its beat in anticipation and dread of what was to come. Surely, there had to be a reason Sullivan was showing him this video. Was it to foster hope, or crush it?
    The scientist turned on a flashlight and raised it to the infected woman’s eye. The infected woman recoiled, mouth opened wide and jaw unhinged, and released an unholy shriek that echoed in the chamber and crackled on the tablet speakers.  
    The infected woman’s hands seized the scientist by the helmet, pulling it closer. The scientist screamed, dropping the flashlight. Dozens of slippery black tendrils shot from the infected woman’s mouth and pierced the faceplate of the scientist’s helmet, goring through the thick plastic as blood splattered the insides and the scientist’s screams ended in a choking gurgle.
    A siren sounded in the video as the chamber suddenly erupted in bright flames from above, engulfing the entire screen.
    Sullivan reached out and took the tablet from Brent, hit stop on the video, then spoke. “Burn Protocol. It’s what we do when infection threatens to break free from the chambers. It’s the only way to ensure that what we put inside doesn’t get outside.”
    Brent stared in numb disbelief, “Why are you showing me this?”
    “I need to disabuse you of the notion that the subjects in there are your family. The scientist in that video was named Lenora Paulson. The subject was her sister, Frankie. Like you, Lenora made the mistake of thinking her sister was still human. She thought that because the infected hadn’t deteriorated at the same rate, wasn’t aggressive, and still seemed to recognize Lenora, leading her to believe that perhaps she wasn’t lost. Lenora thought if she tried hard enough, she could cure her. As you can see, these infected, no matter how they appear, are no longer human. Your wife and child died. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can begin to live again.”

    * * * *

2 - RYAN OLSON: PART 1

    Brookdale, Tennessee
    February 17
    morning

    He dreamed of Mary again, waking up with a hard-on for the third morning in a row.  
    Ryan’s hands wrapped around his cock and he started to tug, imagining the swell of Mary’s breasts and the blush of her nipples against the snow of her skin.  
    Fuck, I love her tits.  
    Ryan yanked faster.
    Outside, a scream shattered the silence . . . and drained his erection. A gunshot followed, cracking the morning like thunder.  
    Ryan bolted up in bed, then ran to the window. He was was on the 7th floor of an abandoned apartment. He stuck to apartments since they were easier to barricade, and preferred the upper floors because they gave him more leverage if the world went even further to hell down on the ground. The creatures didn’t like to climb the fire escape ladders that were on many of the buildings, nor did they seem to have the patience or intellect to figure out how to move intricate