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

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    eBook Edition - January 24, 2012
    REVISED: March 25, 2012 to fix typos including instances of incorrect capitalized “Rs”

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REBECCA SNOW: PART 1

    May 13
    Five months before the world went away . . .

    Rebecca didn’t remember falling asleep, but now her eyes were slowly blinking as she gazed around her room and tried to pull herself from the frayed edges of her expiring dream.  
    The moon hung fat in the window, bathing her room in a milky luminesce. She looked at her alarm clock. 10:14 p.m.
    It was the same dream she’d been having for two weeks now, though this one felt clearer. Usually, Mother was blurred in the dream. This time she was clearer, closer, almost there. She was angry, like she sometimes was in real life, with fire in her eyes and a sting in her slap. Mother didn’t hit her in the dream, but she probably would have if Rebecca hadn’t woke up when she did. The last thing she remembered was Mother’s blur fading as she came closer into view, dragging Alexis behind her, Mother’s long fingers coiled inside her sister’s soft blonde hair.  
    Rebecca had been waking up each morning, remembering the end of the dream with Mother still a blur. And each morning, Rebecca felt a weird sense of dread.
    She shook away the stupid fear that came from the stupid dream, then left the bed to answer the bladder telling her to hit the bathroom. Her small feet hit the wood floor, and carried her from the room and down the hallway to the bathroom. She peed what felt like a gallon, then headed back toward her room, stopping by the blackened crack at Alexis’s room.
    Alexis was 15 years old, three years older than Rebecca, and always in trouble.Rebecca used to hate it when Alexis was in trouble, since sisters were supposed to stick together and all. But Alexis had been getting in an awful lot of trouble lately, pretty much all the time. Mother spent a lot of time yelling at Alexis because Alexis was bad, and did a lot of the bad stuff that girls did when they got older and stopped caring about doing right by God. Rebecca wished Alexis would remember to do right by God more often, but figured it was just as well, since the stuff she did usually made Rebecca look good. Rebecca had been treated like the ugly duckling for most of her life, including by their mother, for her red hair, pale skin, and freckles, while Alexis was treated like the beautiful princess. It was different now, and she enjoyed the positive attention, even if it came at the expense of her sister. Rebecca occasionally felt a tiny twinge of guilt for feeling this way, but it wasn’t like she was forcing Alexis to be bad. Alexis made her choices and if those choices happened to make Rebecca look good in comparison, was that really so bad?
    Rebecca peeked inside her sister’s room. She couldn’t hear or see much of anything. There was a lump beneath the blankets, but Alexis wasn’t snoring. And Alexis always snored. Rebecca sensed something was off, so she widened the crack and crept inside.  
    Alexis had been acting awfully weird all through last night’s dinner, and a few hours before that. Could she be sick, or, oh my gosh!, on drugs? Rebecca took a tentative step forward and perked her ears, but still heard nothing but silence. Weird. Her final few steps toward the bed took nearly a minute, since she was being extra careful not to make a sound. If her sister rolled over and saw her, there would be a huge fight!  
    As she drew closer, she realized that the lump beneath the blanket was too short to be Alexis. With that, she rushed the rest of the distance to the bed and pulled back the covers to give light to the lie that a row of pillows created.
    Alexis was gone.
    Mother was