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

pulled his shirt over this face and dove behind a foodstuff display stand.
    After a few moments reprieve, he pulled his shirt down and looked around, searching for Callie. But shrapnel found his eyes again instantly, stinging his sight and sending him to the ground, wiping his lenses through his shirt as another explosion of glass triggered behind him. Shards of glass and wind lashed his back, and threw him forward into an overturned shopping cart, knocking the wind from his body. Charlie gulped at the air, trying to catch his breath, crawling over the cart and along the ground, body soaked in rain and blood and wracked in pain as if a hundred hammers and knives had struck him.
    The storm howled louder as torrents swept into the store with the force of thunder. His eyes closed, he could only hear the damage, but it sounded like the world was being ripped apart. Shopping carts clanged into shelving; shelves fell like dominoes; objects slammed into the front of the store, and all about the interior walls. Charlie felt like he was the unwitting passenger in a hellish amusement park ride, locked into a death chamber where he couldn’t see where the danger was coming from because it was coming from everywhere . He cried out for Callie, but his cry was more of an animalistic wail than an assembly of words.
    Please, make it stop!
    He stopped in his tracks and balled up on the ground, trying to shrink his moving target. The wind and water, however, had other plans and propelled him forward, sliding him into the dark rain of debris at the velocity of a steep water slide. He didn’t travel far before colliding with something hard, banging his shoulder and hip into an eruption of pain.
    He choked on a scream as his shirt slid from his face and water went into his open mouth. The wind and clicking grew louder as another sound emerged from the chaos.  
    Metal crunching.
    Charlie wiped at his eyes, spit out the water, and felt himself slipping again, carried by the wind and river of water now pouring into the store. The sound of metal crunching amplified. He closed his eyes as he tumbled and slid deeper into the store, slamming into overturned shelves and clothing racks, each banging and bruising him, until he stopped with a hard thud, slamming back first into a solid structure midway through the store, a wall, door, or, maybe a changing room station.
    The chaos crescendoed: the storm at its most violent, the whistle of wind at its most menacing, the clicking of godknowswhat terrors close at hand, and the sound of crunching metal deafening. He held tight to the wall and door behind him, and managed to stand and look up, searching for the source of the crunching metal.  
    That’s when he saw it, dark tendrils of storm cloud that looked so solid they could be the curling fingers of some ungodly tornado beast, reaching into a tear in the roof and peeling back the top of the store like the tin of a sardine can.
    As the roof tore away in chunks of charred sky, the swirling darkness gathered the debris into itself, feeding itself. Charlie stared in horror as the dark storm sucked items up from the store and swallowed them upward into itself like some kind of unholy vacuum from hell.
    “Callie!!” screamed Charlie.
    More debris slammed his body from all sides, making his struggle to hold onto the door with one hand while pulling his drenched shirt over his face with the other near-impossible. The moment his shirt was over his face, his fingers were yanked from the door. He flew backward and slammed headfirst into something solid and unmoving.
    The last thing he felt was his body flying up and into the terrible storm.

    **

    Charlie woke up choking, gasping for air, face down in a cold puddle of mud. He turned over, afraid to open his eyes and see whatever was left of the store and his companions.  
    He was soaked to the bone, battered, and his mouth filled with the copper of blood. Around him was nothing but silence, save for a gentle breeze, which seemed a comical cousin to the hell they’d just faced.
    There was a comfort in the darkness of keeping his eyes closed. Something urged him to just go to sleep . . . surrender .
    No more pain.  
    No more suffering.  
    No more bullying, ever again.  
    No more life in a world of monsters.  
    Just let go and succumb to the everlasting peace.
    The peace seemed so real in his head that a smile cracked his face. His first genuine smile in as long as he could remember. His body felt as