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

His nipple had been cut off. Long wounds stretched from the man’s wrists to his armpits where Charlie had cut him several times. Blood soaked the bed beneath him. Two pens had been jabbed into each of the man’s ribcages and left there.
    Boricio looked at the comforter and up to Charlie, “May I?”
    “Yes,” Charlie said.
    Boricio pulled the covers off Bob and beheld Charlie’s masterstroke, the thing of beauty that assured Boricio that Charlie was a certifiably in-the-closet 48-karat crazy ass motherfucker.  
    A pulpy stump sat in the middle of Bob’s bloodied pubic forest where his cock had been.  
    Boricio looked up at Charlie and applauded, “Bravo, sir!”
    Charlie looked like he was either about to burst out laughing or crying; Boricio wasn’t sure which. His face looked queasy.  
    “Where did you . . .” Boricio had started to ask, then realized the reason that Bob’s mouth was so puffy. “Oh. Wow. You made him eat his dick! That is . . .” Boricio said, pretending to wipe tears of joy from his eyes, “ That, my boy, is a thing of fucking beauty!”
    And then Charlie went and did something that shocked even Boricio; he sprayed his masterpiece with lighter fluid, lit a match, and set the fucker on fire.  
    “Don’t you want to show the others?” Boricio had asked. “This is something to brag about!”
    “No,” Charlie said, “You’re the only one who will know what I did here.”
    The way Charlie had said it was weird, and Boricio still hadn’t figured out why the boy had shown him and nobody else. But he’d certainly earned himself a roster spot, and a top slot at that, on Team Boricio. If that meant Boricio would have to lay off Callie, then that’s just what he’d have to do, for now, at least.  
    But he would need to fuck something. And soon.

    **

    Boricio had driven about 10 miles when he saw the impossible. The sudden shock caused the Z8 to suddenly fishtail. He quickly regained control, with a little help from some precision German engineering, then slapped the windshield and screamed, “That’s some beer battered bullshit!”. He threw the BMW into reverse and tore back to where he’d seen the ghost.  
    But she was gone.  
    The woman.
    The Christmas gift he’d killed on October 14, and the very fucking one he saw at The Prophet’s compound less than a week later. She was standing on the side of the road as if waiting for someone to pick her up. If it wasn’t her, then the end of the world had just shit a Montezuma’s Revenge worth of crazy on his face.  
    Fuck.  
    Boricio didn’t like driving in the dark down Crazy Road.  
    But he kept driving, turning down every street and into every nearby neighborhood, searching for a trace of the woman or some clue to prove he wasn’t going loco. Sick of the shit in his head, Boricio turned on the CD player to The Mummy’s, a band Adam liked – catchy swamp rock with every song hosting a double entendre.  
    A half hour later, Boricio was bobbing his head back and forth and mouthing the words in an attempt to stay awake. He’d been feeling tired a lot lately. He wasn’t sure if he was getting bored from the changes to his lifestyle or if he was coming down with something. He rarely got sick, so the idea of catching something now didn’t bother him too much. But there was only so much you could do when you were feeling dead-ass tired.  
    He pulled to the side of the road, killed the engine and stepped from the BMW, feeling like he’d walked right off the map.  
    Boricio had no idea when he’d lost the highway; maybe it was a mile back, maybe it was ten. He had no idea where he was, and with the pitch black surrounding him, no clue how to figure it out. The GPS wasn’t working, and there weren't any maps in the glovebox. Boricio had been back and forth across the country, from Timbuktu to Fuck Your Mother, and his sense of direction was usually dead on. But right now he was a toddler in the mall and all the mommies were looking identical below the waist.
    Boricio got back in the Z8 and leaned back to catch some shut eye.
    He slept for a few minutes, maybe, when the shriek of a monster woke him.   Life burst back into his eyes has his hand shot for his gun on pure reflex. But the threat was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t sure if the monster was in his dreams or nearby, but he was too damned tired to stick around and find out. He revved the engine, then roared onto the road, swinging a left at the first