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

his way out. Then he would kill the traitor. Desmond took silent aim at the clicking, no longer worried about his itchy trigger finger, eager to use it in fact, and thankful for the darkness that made accidents easy.  
      John had betrayed him, lured him into a cave to get swallowed by death. He had probably been mocking him with all that insincere hokum about The Prophet and The Word. Desmond didn’t know what kind of mind fuck or game John was playing, but he would pay for it all, and with interest, for this and for leaving them stranded last October.  
    Desmond inched forward, but his foot found a wrong step, followed by a second that made the first look graceful. He fell forward, hard, trying to catch himself with the balls of his palms. He missed, landing with the point of his chin instead. His gun didn’t go off but landed and bounced with a clatter into the darkness and out of sight.
    SHIT!
    Desmond felt around for the gun but found nothing, the ground cold, wet, and sticky to the touch.
    That’s when he stood and the panic got mean.
    Something brushed his arm and the clicking screamed in his ear, like an army of aluminum cockroaches. Piss flooded the front of his pants, rolling down Desmond’s leg. Desmond fell to the ground, searching frantically for the gun. The weird lights beneath the creatures’ skin pulsed and faded, never “on” long enough for Desmond to get a bead on exactly where they were. Desmond wondered if they’d evolved a way to turn their lights off when hunting.
    The clicking intensified, and he felt the thing next to him, surely ready to strike.
    Desmond’s hands were everywhere, but the gun wasn’t. And the clicking was now loud enough to be the last thing he ever heard. Without his gun, Desmond was dead. The clicking promised just seconds of breath. Desmond inhaled and prepared to die, just as invisible hands found him in the darkness.  
    The hand over his mouth made him choke on his panic. He fought hard to keep the whimper inside, and wasn’t sure if John’s sudden whisper in his ear made things worse. “Shh, they’ll hear you,” he said.
    John’s left hand dragged Desmond to the back wall of the cave, slowly, a half step at a time, none of them tentative. John could feel John’s right hand, holding the gun in front of them, sweeping back and forth,   probing the darkness for “demons.” When they reached the wall, John released Desmond and took a step to the side, still silent.  
      Desmond’s heartbeat was thunder in the cave. The clicking grew indecisive, suddenly flying this way and that, in and out of earshot like a bad connection. Just when the clicking sounded like it had receded, it was suddenly on top of them. Desmond lost it and finally screamed. John didn’t. He opened fire, nearly making them deaf five times in short succession.
    Then silence, save for Desmond’s pounding heart, which he swore echoed back to him off the cave walls. John’s flashlight returned from the dead, momentarily blinding Desmond’s sight. He squinted in agony to make sense of the scene. After a few more seconds, his eyes better adjusted, the full carnage came into view: two fallen monsters lay still, their bodies oozing goo and cast in an artificial glow. The lights in their skin pulsed slowly and fading.
    Desmond listened for more clicking, but after hearing nothing but the ringing in his ears for a minute, he exploded at John. “What the hell?!” he shouted.  
    John said nothing, which he was clearly good at. Desmond spotted his gun under the dawn of John’s light, then knelt to retrieve it. “Why didn’t you answer me?”
    “Because I didn’t want to die.” John waited half a minute, maybe he wanted to let it sink in, or maybe he thought Desmond would want a turn to speak. Or maybe he didn’t think he needed to explain himself further. He finally said, “My light died, then I heard the Demons. Soon as I heard their clicking, I closed my mouth so I wouldn't draw any attention. That’s when you started getting loud and moving around and generally letting the Demons know where the party was. Naturally, that’s when they started closing in. I couldn't exactly yell at you to stop moving, so I just kept hoping you would. Only break we got was when you fell, and then only for a moment.”
    John could have mentioned the piss, since there was no hiding the scent of ammonia mingling with the ancient sour inside the cave. Or he could have mentioned Desmond’s