Yesterday's Gone: Season One

by Platt, Sean

  Charlie stared at the shape of her breasts beneath her tee shirt. They were on the small side, but still quite nice. He had resisted the urge to “accidentally” brush against them when they were carrying her to his bed, then again when he was dressing her wounds, even though Bob made some sort of joke about Charlie keeping himself a “little chocolate sex slave.”

  What an asshole.

  As he kept watch over the girl, Bob stayed in the living room drinking his beer. Not Nati-Light, either. He’d looted good shit. Beside him, on the couch, a shotgun. Usually, he’d watch TV as he got good and drunk. Without TV, Charlie wondered what Bob would do for entertainment. He didn’t strike Charlie as much of a reader.

  He hoped Bob didn’t plan to continue using him as a dartboard for his amusement. He didn’t mind pretending to drink and burp to keep Bob in good humor, but he wasn’t Bob’s court jester, and wasn’t willing to play one in front of a girl. But if Charlie’s history with bullies had taught him anything, it was that bullies loved to humiliate others. An audience was just fuel to a fire.

  Bob was originally going to abandon the girl to die in the parking lot, but Charlie begged him to show compassion. They couldn’t just leave someone — especially a girl — behind to die.

  “Well, she’s your responsibility,” Bob said as if she were a stray mutt. “But if she gets outta line, I’m putting her to sleep again and she ain’t waking up.”

  Charlie hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He had no idea what they’d do with the girl once she came to. Obviously, he’d see if she had any friends or family. If not, he’d probably invite her to stay until things got sorted. Whether Bob would go for that was another story.

  He stared as she slept. Her eyes were rolling beneath their lids, deep in dreams. The room grew colder as the sun started to set. He pulled a blanket over her and laid on the floor to rest his eyes.

  **

  “Where am I?” the girl groaned.

  Charlie’s eyes snapped open and he sat up. The room was pitch black. He’d slept too long. Why the hell hadn’t Bob woken him?

  Must be passed out drunk again.

  Charlie fumbled in the dark until his hands found the portable lamp and clicked it on. She was crouched on the bed, ready to pounce but blinded by the light. Charlie pulled the lamp back and lit his face.

  “It’s okay; you were hurt.”

  Her eyes darted to the closed door then back at Charlie, weighing her next move. He stepped between her and the door, praying she wouldn’t run, wake Bob, and end up with a bullet or two making house inside her head.

  “Please, hear me out,” Charlie whispered, “My drunken stepdad thought you were a thief and hit you with the crowbar before seeing you were a girl. I’m so sorry.”

  “A girl can’t be a thief?” she said, eyes blazing, almost challenging him.

  “No, I mean, yeah, they can be, but…”

  “It’s okay,” she said, relaxing a bit and sitting on the bed. “Did you do this?” she asked, running a hand over her bandaged right shoulder.

  “Yeah, though I’m not sure I helped much.”

  She pulled the bandage aside without flinching, then looked at Charlie. “Where am I? How long was I out?”

  “My house; on Charleston Street. We didn’t want to leave you alone. And I’m not sure what time it is, but it’s been at least five or six hours.”

  She closed her eyes and looked like she was going to add an encore to her original fade to black. But she took a deep breath and steadied herself, then opened her eyes again.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, “You okay?”

  “I dunno,” she said. “I have these horrible headaches that make me black out every now and then. Doctors don’t know why. They think it’s probably migraines.”

  “I thought you were in a coma,” Charlie said.

  “Where’s the dude that hit me?”

  “I’m guessing he’s passed out, drunk.”

  “Okay,” she said, standing, flinching a bit as she did. “I need to get out of here before he comes to.”

  “Why?” Charlie asked, “He’s not gonna hurt you again. I told him to back off.”

  She stared at him, “Was that before or after he knocked me out?”

  “After,” Charlie said, looking down, “But you’re safe now.”

  “No, I’m not. And neither are you.”

  “What?” Charlie asked.

  “You’re not safe here. None of us are. We need to get the hell out of here before they come.”

  “Who?”

  “The ones that took everyone away,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We weren’t supposed to survive,” she said, “They’re gonna come back for us. Just like they came for my neighbor.”

  “Wait, you saw them? Who took the people away?”

  “Not when it happened, no. But I saw them today. They attacked my neighbor right in front of me.”

  Her eyes were wet, as if she might cry, but she continued.

  “My neighbor Tom was outside loading his car with supplies. We were gonna drive until we found other survivors. I was in his living room, filling the last of the duffel bags with supplies when I heard him scream. I looked out the window and that’s when I saw them. These… things. They were like people, but like… undone or something. One of them was missing eyes, and the other was missing a mouth. And they just started attacking him, and … one was eating him while the one without a mouth was shoving Tom’s guts all over the front of his face where his mouth should’ve been.”

  She paused, “Did you hear that?”

  Charlie looked around, “What?”

  She leaped on him, falling on top of him. At first he thought she was attacking him, but she was after the lantern. She clicked it off, threw the room into darkness, and slapped a cool hand over his warm mouth.

  “Shhh. Can you here that?”

  He did — a clicking sound, faint, but constant, just outside his bedroom window. He glanced at the curtain, but it was closed, mercifully.

  “They’re here,” she whispered.

  * * * *

  BRENT FOSTER

  October 15, 2011

  afternoon

  New York City

  Brent couldn’t stop watching the video.

  One minute the couple was in bed, sound asleep. The next, an impossible, smoky-looking liquid cloud appeared from nowhere, killed the video and filled the screen with static. And then the sleepers disappeared — vanished, vaporized, gone.

  Stan, as requested, showed him three other videos they’d recorded in their neighbors’ apartments. Each video showed the same song, different tune.

  “What is it?” Brent asked.

  “We have no idea,” Melora said. “Though we suspect it’s extraterrestrial, and that the dreams we’ve shared the past few decades were some sort of alien broadcast meant for us.”

  Brent shook his head, trying to shake the thought of the black liquid cloud hovering above his wife and child, desperately wanting to ignore the lunacy. Yet, without a better explanation for where everyone except them had evaporated to at 2:15 a.m. the night before, he clearly had little choice but to play along.

  “Why us? Why didn’t they take us?” Brent asked. “Why would they take a...” he wanted to finish the sentence, but fell short at the word child, as though murdering the word would take the reality with it. He HAD to believe Gina and Ben were out there, somewhere.

  “There have to be others,” Brent said, glancing at the self-proclaimed 215 Society. “I mean, you all had the dreams, so yeah, you’re still here. But I didn’t. And I’m here, too. So there must be something else which kept me around. Something which may have kept others, too?”

  “You probably don’t remember your dreams,” Melora said, the professor’s tone starting to piss off Brent. “In fact, most people only remember a small percentage of their actual dreams. Isn’t it possible you had the dreams and don’t remember?”

  “Na
h,” Luis said, “He’d have to remember at least one of them, right? Maybe there are others out there like he says. Makes sense.”

  Brent nodded as if endorsement built the road to reality.

  “Even if there are others,” Melora said, in her parochial voice, “it’s safe to assume his family isn’t among them, or else they would have been in his house this morning.”

  Brent stared at her. Her face was blank, clinically detached from her words. He was pretty good at guessing people’s histories, what made them the way they were. Melora, however, was beyond him. He felt like punching some color into the pasty white of her face.

  Brent suddenly remembered seeing one of them on the street. “Wait a second. Was one of you out on the street earlier? Wearing a dark jacket and a hat?”

  “Yeah,” Luis said, “why?”

  “You saw something. I saw you looking north with your binoculars, then you ran. What was it; what did you see?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Luis said, taking a sudden interest in his boots.

  “We may as well tell him,” Melora said, “He’s going to find out sooner or later.”

  Luis shook his head, as if delivering this news was more painful to him than it would be to Brent. The sensitivity seemed a bit odd coming from such a musclebound tough guy.

  “Tell me,” Brent asked more than said.

  “You sure you wanna know? I mean, you might have a wife and child out there and when I tell you this, you’re gonna wanna go after them.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re right on one thing ... we’re not alone. There’s something else out there. These ... things. Not quite human, but not quite anything I’ve ever seen either. Maybe aliens, I dunno. I saw a few of them when I was driving around the city before the sun came up. They look like people, if you stretched them out and burned them black, then dumped them in some kinda gel. And they move all weird and shit. When I drove past, a few of them chased after me. And they were faster than any human I ever saw.”

  “And you saw one out on our street?” Brent asked, shaking his head, as if it would help him digest the impossible.

  “More than one,” Luis said, “A whole mess of ‘em. They looked like they were searching for something or someone. Maybe to come and get the ones that had been left behind.”

  Brent stared at Luis, his mind reeling.

  “I’ve gotta go out there. I will find my family. I feel it in my gut.”

  “That’s hope you’re feeling,” Melora said, “But it’s not informed by fact. And chasing hope is an empty pursuit.”

  Brent glared at her, wondering if it was still never okay to hit a woman, even at the end of the world.

  “So, what? I’m just supposed to give up? Hole away in an apartment and hide day and night while my family might be out there and in danger? Then what? What’s the plan after that, huh?”

  “We don’t have one,” Luis said.

  Brent thought the comment almost sounded like a criticism of the group, then Melora threw Luis a dirty look that confirmed it.

  “Listen,” Stan said, trying to make peace, “We’re as much in the dark here as you are. Sure, we have theories and ideas, but we don’t know what’s next, what’s out there, or where anyone went. If you want to check it out, I understand. Really, I do. But I think Melora is right about your family. You saw the video. You saw the people vanish.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t know where they went, right? I mean, when people vanish, they go somewhere, right? You can’t just make matter disappear without a trace. We haven’t found any bodies or mysterious piles of ash or anything, correct?”

  “No,” Melora said. “The beds are all empty. No trace of anything.”

  “So,” Brent continued, his hands were everywhere as he worked through the ideas taking shape in his head. “All we know is that all the people went somewhere. But we don’t know where. Which means they might still be in the city somewhere.”

  “Or in spaceships,” Stan suggested.

  “Maybe,” Brent gave him that, “But if that’s the case, maybe we’ll see them. Or maybe the aliens will come and take us too, and we’ll be reunited. Did any of you lose anyone last night?”

  “I did,” Luis said, “My little girl, Gracie. She’s seven.”

  “And do you really want to sit here and do nothing?”

  Luis looked at the others then shook his head no.

  “You’re talking millions of people,” Melora said, “The odds of millions of people being somewhere in the city ... no. That doesn’t make sense. I’m more inclined to believe they all got called to heaven in a Rapture, than walking around the city or being held somewhere by aliens. And I’m an atheist.”

  “I don’t think they were raptured,” Brent said, “And maybe they are in UFOs, for all we know. But sitting here isn’t going to answer any questions. I’m going out there. And if any of you want to come, I’d love the help. Otherwise, I’m going solo.”

  “What about those things?” Stan asked, his voice shaky, “What do we do if we run into them? How do we fight?”

  “I don’t know,” Brent said, “But I’d rather go down fighting than cower in here waiting to die.” He headed toward the door, then turned back midway and said, “You don’t have to stay here and wait for fate to find you.”

  “I’ll go,” Luis said, “We just need to go to my place and grab some shit.”

  “Anyone else?” Brent asked.

  Stan said nothing, but looked at Melora for direction.

  “There’s nothing out there for me,” she said. “I wish you luck. And when you give up, our door is open to you both. We have enough supplies to last a long while and we’re happy to share with you.”

  “Thank you,” Brent said, “And good luck.”

  “I’ll keep in touch with you all via the two-way radios,” Luis said. “Turn them on every half hour, and I’ll do the same. Anything happens, anything at all, we contact the others.”

  “Good luck,” Stan said, shaking both mens’ hands.

  “Be careful,” Melora said.

  **

  Upstairs, Luis grabbed a black duffel bag full of supplies, most of which were of the shooting variety.

  “You any good with a firearm?” Luis asked as they walked down the stairwell to his car outside.

  “Eh,” a regular gun, maybe, not those submachine guns. “You?”

  Luis smiled, “Those two up there, they say they’ve been preparing for this day, but neither one of ‘em ever really got ready to fight. I did nothing but prepare to fight for the past 10 years. I’m ready for anything and everything, and all of it at once.”

  Brent found himself liking his new friend. A lot.

  **

  The fog had descended, blanketing the street and reducing visibility to less than 20 yards. The New York streets had fallen mute for the first time in centuries. Every step echoed not just off the buildings, but off the fog as well. They climbed into Luis’s car, a black BMW.

  “This should keep us somewhat safe,” he said proudly. “Polycarbonate sandwiched between two panes of glass for the windows, and ballistic steel armor on the body. As close to bulletproof as you can get without being in the belly of a tank.”

  “But,” Brent said, “Can it keep out whatever the fuck was in those videos?”

  “The company I ordered this from was fresh outta alien-proof materials.”

  Brent laughed as Luis put the car in gear and hit the gas.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Gonna look around, see what’s doing. See if we can find our families and wipe that look offa’ Melora’s face.”

  Brent was surprised by how hard he laughed.

  **

  If the streets were eerie when empty, the fog took them close to terrifying. It hung thinner on the ground, giving limited visibility. But above the streets, the fog swirled in thick clouds that seemed to swallow buildings like a sentient being. Though the city had never seemed less populated, nor the str
eets more wide open, Brent felt an intense claustrophobia, as though the fog held unseen mass that might crush them at any moment.

  After minutes of silence, Brent had to fill the cabin with idle chatter to distract his mind from the looming danger above.

  “Is it just you and your daughter?”