Yesterday's Gone: Season One Part 12

"Because you're distraught, and rightfully so, but that van has 100% of our supplies and weapons. Without our gear, we go from bad to worse, fast. Our cargo gives us a better chance of facing whatever's out there. I'm really sorry for what you're going through right now. I can't even imagine, but you've gotta man up. That's all there is to it."

Desmond leaned in and spoke to John in a near whisper. Mary took the cue and led Paola and Jimmy back toward the Suburban. As the kids situated themselves, she watched the exchange between the men, trying to decipher what was being said, via body language alone.

After a few minutes, Desmond put an arm on John's shoulder again, said something, and John met the man's eyes, then nodded. John turned toward the car, and Mary hurried inside, trying to avoid getting caught spying.

John settled into the driver's side and slapped his hand hard against the door. "Well then, let's go."

They drove in relative silence, everyone lost in their own charred dark tumble of thoughts. Paola was likely thinking about her father, wondering if he maybe somehow survived. She'd asked Mary a few times, and each time Mary said they'd have to wait to find out, but he was probably fine. But right now, they had to travel with the others if they wanted to find safety and answers.

Whether Mary believed Ryan was alive, was another story. It wasn't impossible, especially if whatever had happened was only local. He lived a good 80 miles away, so it wasn't as though they could run across the street to check on him. She knew how Paola felt. Despite her many issues with Ryan, she'd rather see him than anyone else in the world.

Mary had no idea what Jimmy was thinking, though he was probably taking a much needed respite from the usual adolescent fantasies that most often painted his brain. John's thoughts were evident by the curl in his lip and the furrow on his brow.

Mary wished she could see Desmond's face. You could tell a lot about a person by watching them drive. So it didn't surprise her that Desmond wanted to drive alone. He was smart and charming, quite a guy really, but not the person she'd expect to lead a ragtag group of survivors to safety at the end of the world. Yet, he seemed well prepared, more than a guy like that should've been really. His level of prep went beyond hobby, bordering on compulsion. Maybe he wasn't really who he said he was, not that he'd ever said much of anything in the first place.

Desmond had tried to tell her how he made his money, on several occasions actually, but his many explanations made almost no sense, at least not to her. He spent all his time online, including a few hours each day on social media websites. She knew many people who spent countless hours on the Internet, but none of them were doing as well as Desmond. They certainly weren't buying shiny new models of precision German engineering every month from their efforts.

And what about the guns - who needed an entire trunk of them? Maybe that's what happened when you got bored with regular toys and had more money than G.o.d, but it still seemed off. Yet, as weird as it was, she trusted Desmond. And she and Paola certainly owed their lives to his fortunate proximity.

Mary tore from her thoughts when Jimmy started wondering out loud about the end of the world. "You think it was aliens?"

"No," John said. He sounded far stronger than he had just 20 minutes before. "There are no ships in the sky or anything like that. It was probably some sort of poison. You watch too many movies."

"Poison doesn't make sense," Jimmy shook his head. "Where did the bodies go? I mean, yeah there were lots in that river, but that can't be all of them. That's probably not even half a town's worth. And poison doesn't make stuff disappear. Look around, man. Everything's just ... gone. Cars, too. Have you noticed how we keep seeing fewer and fewer? Where are they all going? I think they're being moved, just like the bodies in the river."

Paola spoke up from the backseat. A small voice, but in no way timid. "Then that means there are bad guys, probably a lot of them."

"She's right," Jimmy agreed. "Anyone who's moving stuff or making it disappear would have to know what happened. And they would need some crazy technology to make it happen, which is why I'm putting my chips on aliens."

"You're not old enough to lay your chips on anything," John said. "Might be the Army; that wouldn't surprise me at all. And if that's the case, Desmond's leading us down the highway in the worst possible direction."

"It's not the Army." Mary didn't know how she knew, but it felt right and given her instincts, that meant it probably was. Besides, she didn't like what John was insinuating about Desmond's decision, or perhaps his intentions.

"We don't know what's going on." John said. "It's best to be prepared for anything, including an Army that's also an enemy."

"It's a zombie outbreak, or maybe some weird inter-dimensional s.h.i.t. Maybe something's happening to time." Jimmy had three theories in three seconds.

"Maybe it was nature," again from Paola in the back seat.

John took his eyes off the road and moved them to Paola. "What do you mean?"

"Well, maybe the planet is the bad guy, and it's taking itself back from all the people. It's not like the people have been being very nice to it."

Silence filled the car as everyone considered Paola's theory. It was her father speaking, Mary thought, thinking from an angle no one else saw, yet was somehow so tangibly practical. John was something of an environmentalist, or at least the kind who tried, so he seemed to be giving Paola's idea some weight.

A thick silence lingered for a few minutes, interrupted by a slight rattle that sounded like it was coming from under the hood, followed by a heavy blanket of ... atmosphere, or something; a sudden weight - gravity growing thick and fattening the air around them.

"See," Paola said. "The trees are mad."

Something stole the flush from John's face.

"You hear them now, don't you?" Jimmy asked.

John nodded. He could hear the trees, at least until they fell silent a moment later. The dense cl.u.s.ters started to thin. They pa.s.sed a patch of twisting blackened branches, then the green was suddenly, shockingly all gone.

Everything grew darker over the next few miles: the sky, the surroundings, the ground. The entire drive had seen the five of them sailing through the great big empty, but the long miles were nothing compared to the rather abrupt dead man's walk now surrounding them.

There was nothing - no trees, no cars, no people, no houses. Nothing but ashen ground and empty air. Corpses would've been a welcome sight over this. At least it would've been something.

Everyone in the car was wondering the same thing: Was Missouri gone forever, and was this the tundra of their new dead world?

They drove for another few minutes in awed, toxic silence, wondering where everything had gone. Then they drove right into the answer. No words could describe the devastation before them. Storm, squall, tempest, tsunami - none would do.

If the world had ended, it looked as though they'd surely found the center.

LUCA HARDING.

October 17, 2011 morning Somewhere in California Luca woke up mostly happy, though he still felt slightly scared. The itchy burny was gone. It started to fade when he woke up and now almost felt nice. Warm all over, like being by the fire naked.

The invisible fire kept him from getting tired. It was his third day walking, yet Luca could still have easily played a full game of soccer, or several. He saw another dead dog on the side of the road and his sad spiders started to crawl.

Luca shuddered, but didn't stop his stride, or even slow. He missed his family, and the world. But he would find everyone soon. Probably as soon as he found the man who made the lobster tacos. Luca had been thinking about him a lot lately. Whenever he went to sleep, usually after he was finished talking to the Indian.

Luca didn't remember what the man who made the lobster tacos looked like, so his brain made up a brand new face. Now he was tall, taller than most people, but not quite as tall as his dad. The lobster man was older than his dad, though. His skinny body swam inside an extra large lime colored tee shirt. It billowed beneath his blue ap.r.o.n as it battled the beach wind that whipped around them.

The taco man looked happy enough to play the good guy in a cartoon, and his smile was so nice it made Luca feel like he'd find his mom and dad as soon as he finished eating his taco.

The spiders weren't there because he missed his mom and dad, even though he did. They were there because so many of the animals had started to disappear. There had been hundreds, and though there were just as many now, the ones on the side of the road weren't moving. And when they stopped moving, they got bugs all over their faces. Dog Vader, or Kick (as he preferred to be called even though Dog Vader was a much cooler name), was okay, but a lot of the other animals weren't. And the bad numbers were getting too high to count.

Luca could've kept walking through the night last night, but the dark was terrible scary to walk in, especially when the animals didn't move. Luca would walk until he could't take it anymore, then he would stop on the beach side of the highway and sleep in the sand. The other side was too close to the terrible scary - the only thing that made Luca feel like he might never see his family again.

I don't like the terrible scary. If Mom and Dad and Anna aren't coming back, then they might be hiding deep inside the terrible scary. Animals stop moving forever once the bugs are on their faces. If Mom and Dad and Anna are deep inside the terrible scary, they'll probably have bugs on their faces too.

Sleeping wasn't too bad, though. Because that's where he got to see his new friend. It only took seconds last night before he was out and talking to Dog Vader, who once again looked like an Indian. He wasn't really an Indian; Luca knew that was un-possible. Dogs didn't just turn into people. But talking to the Indian in his dream was the only way he could understand stuff, since Luca couldn't speak barky, which is why Luca always wondered if he could really trust the husky's thoughts in the daylight.

"Why are all the animals dying?" he asked.

The Indian had grown more outlandish each time Luca napped. He now wore a giant headdress, earrings that hung half as low as a hula-hoop, and a necklace made from what looked like the teeth of a sabertooth tiger. He also held in his lap a giant red plastic pipe with a white ring around the top.

The Indian took a giant puff, then said, "They are not dying."

Luca thought about the animals, both dead and alive, and how they all looked so strange. Like they weren't really there, even though they were - equally un-possible.

Luca wished the Indian wouldn't use so much of the confusing talk. He was trying to think of a different way to ask the same question when a second ring of smoke curled through the air, followed by, "Dying closes a circle. The animals still move in a line."

More confusing talk. Luca didn't care about shapes. He knew the animals were dying, plus he could see pieces of their realness missing. He wished the Indian would just tell him why, but sometimes he liked to answer questions Luca didn't even ask.

"Where did the rainbows go?" Luca tried a totally different question, hoping the Indian wouldn't use confusing talk in his answer.

"They are there," he said, "but you don't need them like you did."

Luca would have asked another question but was suddenly eating a lobster taco and staring at the one smile that swore everything would be okay. He swallowed his taco and closed his eyes, then opened them to a beautiful sky that was the exact same blue as the bubblegum ice cream he wasn't allowed to try until he turned 10. Because bubblegum ice cream was two digits worth of sweet, at least according to his dad.

He rubbed his eyes and felt the invisible fire on his body. He was safe, even though the animals were all dying.

When Dad goes to the store and then comes back, that's a circle. When Mom says, "Let's go to the store together," we are moving in a line.

Dog Vader wasn't around when he woke this morning, but Luca wasn't worried. They always managed to find each other. Luca began to wonder where the husky had gone when he realized he hadn't seen him in a whole lot of hours. It had to be close to lunch time, but Luca didn't want to stop just yet and eat any of the food in his backpack.

He had to be getting close to Mexico because Luca saw one of those signs with the family running across the street. That meant they weren't too much farther from the man with the lobster tacos.

Luca pa.s.sed a cat with bugs on its face and felt an ouchy inside, but his attention wasn't on the cat for long. He heard the husky's unmistakable whine and saw Dog Vader a few yards up the road, nudging his nose against something on the ground.

Luca was standing beside the dog, just as a man was starting to wake up. He opened his eyes slowly, then smiled, leaping to his feet at the site of Luca.

"It's you!"

Luca took a big step back. He was NEVER supposed to talk to strangers. NO, NO, GIJoe. But this was definitely an emergency, even if he wasn't bleeding or vomiting. He needed help, and how else was he supposed to get it if he couldn't ask? But there was a big problem. The man didn't look like just any old stranger.

He's a jumbo stranger. If I talk to him, he might take me far, far away. He might even make me live inside the terrible scary, since that's where he probably lives himself.

The man kept jumping up and down. "It's you, it's you, HA, it's finally you!" Luca looked past the scary white hair and fixed his gaze on the man's smile. It made Luca feel safe, just like the man's large lime-green tee shirt. The memory of lobster lingered on his tongue and Luca took a small step toward the tall man.

Dog Vader whined. The stranger cleared his throat and ran his hands through a thick carpet's worth of hair. "I didn't mean to startle you," he said. "It's just so great to see someone else. Are you alone?"

Luca thought he should say probably no, but lying made his tummy feel terrible. "Yes."

The tall man looked disappointed, though not at all surprised. He held his hand out to Luca. "I'm Will, Will Sparks."

Luca took his hand. "Luca, Luca Harding."

"Where're you from, Luca?"

"Las Orillas."

Will looked impressed. "You walked down here yourself?"

"Yeah, most of the way. I drove a little but I had to stop because I didn't like it when I crashed the car."

"Had a fender bender, eh? Well, looks like you made it out okay."

Luca didn't want to tell him about the invisible magic that made him better. He wondered where Will was from. He looked a-lot-of homeless. More than just the few days' worth since everyone went away. He also looked a little like Santa Claus, if he were skinnier and his beard was less bushy.

"Did you drive down here?" Luca asked.

"Nope. I live here."

"Where?"

"Wherever I can."

"You ARE homeless!"

Will laughed. "Well, you don't have to sound so happy about it! Yeah, I'm homeless. And apparently now so are you. But I have the edge since I've been doing it for a while. So I say we stick together. Strength in numbers and all that. What do you think?"

His hair is scary but his smile is from the man with the tacos.

"You recognize me, don't you Luca?"

The boy nodded.

"Well, I'd like to tell you a story."

Will sat and crossed his legs. "You're a smart kid, Luca. And if we're gonna travel together, I figure we've gotta start out right."

Luca sat in front of him with his hands in his lap.

Will said, "I've been waiting for you. And I mean you specifically, not just anyone. And I haven't been waiting just three days. It's been nearly a year. That's why I came down here to live in the first place."

Will rubbed his temples, chewed his lip, lowered his voice, then dropped to one knee and looked Luca in the eye. "The world is gone, Luca. And it's never coming back. I've known this was going to happen for a while. Told everyone I could, too. But that only made me lose everything I had, including a world's worth of friends and colleagues, each one thinking I was batty. Of course, I'm the one who ended up with the beachfront property."

Will winked at Luca and leaned in closer. "You see, I've been having dreams since forever. Bigger than big dreams, really. You know, like a Beatles song. You do know the Beatles, right?"

Luca nodded.

"Well, these dreams are all packed with color. More color than what seems possible to see normally, even when your eyes are wide open. Crazy colors too. But even though they're all out of this world, the rest of the dream feels just as real as the school year. Well Luca, in one of those dreams, several actually, I've been spending some time with you. Though I must say you look a lot different in person."

"What do I look like in the dream?"

Will studied Luca for a moment, "Different, that's all. But your colors, they're exactly the same."

"What do you mean my colors?"

"Everyone is made up of sound and color. Sometimes I can hear people's sounds, but not all the time. But I can always see the colors."

"What do my colors look like?"

Will's smile was all over his face. "They're the most amazing colors I've ever seen! The sort of colors that might just make everything okay."

Will started to laugh so hard he came a little close to crying. His laughter slowed, then eventually stopped. He stood and said, "Come on; there's a ton to tell you. We'll get caught up on the way."

"I'm supposed to go there," Luca pointed toward Mexico.

"Nope," Will shook his head, "You were just supposed to meet me. And now you have. It's time to head east, and we're not gonna want to waste a lot of time. Are you ready?"

Luca nodded. "Do you have a car Mr. Sparks?"