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

things were the aliens, which was the unofficial label that Black Island Research Facility had given the creatures.  
    Some of the carnage came from whatever happened on October 15; some of it was from the nuclear fallout that happened after the nuclear power plant meltdowns that began shortly after Brent arrived at Black Island. The fallout and acid rain dangers had subsided considerably, but there were pockets of the world that would be uninhabitable for centuries due to radiation leaks, which poisoned land and water for miles.  
    They hadn’t found a single soul for months, yet the Black Island Guard continued to send teams into the city once a week in hopes of finding survivors, a hope that dulled by the day.  
    The strange fog which had hovered above the city for several weeks after The Incident had cleared, but the city still seemed off, as if something had permanently shifted the New York he once knew into an alien landscape he could barely fathom. It would be easy to blame it on the city being underwater, submerged up to the second floors of most of the downtown buildings, but that wasn’t it and Brent knew it. There was something else he couldn’t put his finger on. Something else crawling beneath the city’s landscape, like spiders under a rock, which made it far more sinister.  
    “You regret coming?” Michael asked from the seat across from Brent. Michael was one of the first Guardsmen to befriend Brent when he first arrived at the island. Michael was in his mid-40’s, a pudgy police officer from Brooklyn before October 15 and one of the first to get drafted into the Black Island Guard, which now stood 30 strong, including Brent, the latest recruit.  
    “No, I had to see for myself,” Brent said through a lie. He did regret it. Whatever hopes he had that they might find Gina and Ben standing on top of a building, waving for help, were murdered the second he saw the vacuum of life.
    No people, and no red on the chopper’s infrared screens. At least nothing human.  
    This is what was left. Nothing.
    Brent had become almost numb to this new reality without his family, but it didn’t make the realization easier to swallow. It was another nail in two coffins he had tried to bury months earlier.
    “I’m sorry, Brent,” Michael said. “I know how hard it is.”
    “It is what it is,” Brent said, staring out the window. He caught movement out of the corner of his eyes, a pack of aliens scrambling across the rooftops, fleeing the chopper. They moved fast, leaping with almost graceful execution like a herd of gazelle.  
    “You hear that the alien they had in Level Seven is dead?” Michael asked.
    “No. What happened?”
    “Just died. Nobody’s sure why. Pembrook said the scientists want two more caught and brought back. They’re gonna send a unit out tomorrow. Probably gonna send half the squad to make sure there’s not a repeat of last time.”
    “Last time?”
    “Two months ago. We lost four guys on that mission.”
    “I had a friend, Luis, who took down a pack of them in Times Square all by himself,” Brent said with a slight smile. It was the first time he’d spoken of Luis since arriving on the island, but probably the hundredth time he thought of the man who’d saved him more than once, and in more than one way.“He would’ve been one helluva Guardsman.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “He got bit and the Guardsmen killed him on sight.”
    “Shit, I’m sorry.”
    “Like I said, it is what it is.”

    **

    He was an hour late, and the moon was already peeking over the horizon when Brent arrived at Jane’s house for dinner. The house, one of 50 on the island officially known as Black Island and unofficially called New Eden by some, was where the civilians lived. He, however, stayed inside the underground base - a sprawling bunker and laboratory, most of which extended several levels beneath the sea floor -   along with the other Guardsmen, scientists, technicians, and the defacto President, Andre Pembrook..  
    New Eden was, at least as far as Pembroke said, the last place on Earth to have power, water, and enough supplies to last at least a hundred years. Brent wasn’t sure what supplied the power. There were solar panels on the homes and atop the research facility’s ground levels, and rows of them on the East end of the island, but he couldn’t imagine that these alone could supply such an immense operation.
    “Sorry, I’m late,” he said as Jane answered