Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER)

him, and he started coughing up blood then sucking at air and gasping for breath.
    Boricio started to pull away, but couldn’t. His hands were locked onto Luca, as some sorta whatinthefuck kept flowing from Boricio and into Luca — as if the boy were sucking his life from him. Warmth turned to pain and started shooting like a scattergun through all of Boricio’s body, as he clenched his teeth and tried to work up the strength to break the connection.
    Let go!
    Boricio pulled, but felt as if someone had glued his hands to Luca and if he pulled too hard he might rip the kid’s face off. The pain, however, gave him no choice but to keep trying to break free.
    Finally, Boricio was able to wrench himself away. He fell back into the snow writhing in pain.
    Luca rose from the dirt, staring at Will, who was still sitting on the ground from when Boricio knocked him down. He looked at Boricio, then back at Will, his face twisted in confusion.
    “Why?” Luca asked, his voice caught between confusion and anger.
    “I’m sorry,” Will said, wiping a tear. “It was the only way.”
    “Only way for what? ” Luca asked.
    “For that,” Will said, pointing at Boricio, rising to his feet, body feeling like it was on fire.
    “Why you all looking at me like that?” Boricio asked.
    Luca’s eyes were wide, as if he were staring at a two-headed demon sucking on a dick made of fire. Luca opened his mouth, but said nothing.
    “What the fuck you looking at?” Boricio growled.
    “I’m so sorry,” Luca said.
    “Sorry? For what?” Boricio asked, confused, and feeling another new feeling — fear. They were clearly looking at his face.
    What the hell happened to me?
    He reached up to touch his face, but his hands were buzzing, too numbed to know what he was touching. He looked around, then saw the headlights of Will’s car shining on them. He stepped past Will and Luca, moving toward the car as fast as he could despite the 15 bags of fuck all that had slapped him in the face and now seemed to rest on his shoulders.
    Boricio reached the car, driver’s side door still open, then bent to see his reflection in the mirror.
    Oh Fuck.
    He looked like he’d aged a decade, maybe more.
    “What the hell did you do to me?!” Boricio roared, spinning around.
    “I don’t know,” Luca said, surprising Boricio by not stepping back. “I swear.”
    I should shoot this pair of fucks right here, right now, and get the hell out of Dodge.
    But Boricio couldn’t leave.
    Something was holding him here.
    The need to stay with the man-kid sang in the same sweet tune of instinct that had fueled the engine of Boricio’s entire life. He screamed in frustration, grabbed his shotgun off the ground, and pointed it at Will.
    “Talk! Now!”
    Will shook his head, “I don’t know any more than you do. Only what I saw in the…”
    “Yeah, yeah, the fucking dream!” Boricio curled his lip and gritted his teeth. “Then tell me what you saw.”
    Will looked at the ground and swallowed, “Whatever’s in Luca. Whatever makes him special. He transferred that to you. I had to make sure you gave it back.”
    Boricio wanted to shoot the old bastard right there on the spot, just to satisfy the itch. But, again, something inside him kept his finger from squeezing the trigger.
    “Why?” Luca asked. “Wait. Does this mean I can heal people again? Can I—” Luca looked back toward the barn where Linc and Rebecca’s bodies lay in a heap, slaughtered by monsters. Then he looked toward the dungeon where Mary and Paola’s bodies lay on their way to forgotten. Finally, Luca looked past the barn where Desmond’s corpse lay, along with the dozens of others, man and creature alike, littering the Sanctuary like a battlefield.
    Luca swallowed, then whispered. “I can bring them back?”
    Will looked up from the ground after a quarter of eternity spent chewing the question.
    “Yes, you can bring them back. But not all of them. Only three. After that, you’ll have aged to near dying.”
    “Just three?” Luca whispered, eyes on Will.
    “Three,” Will repeated, as he struggled to stand.
    Something looked off about the old man. Then, as Will flinched and fell back a step, Boricio saw the crimson bleeding between his fingers and realized the old fucker had been hiding an injury to his gut.
    Will fell to the ground, gasping for air, about to add one more body to the battlefield.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 3 — Charlie Wilkens Part 1

    Charlie was in a room he