Yesterday's Gone: Seasons 1-6 Complete Saga Read online

  Yesterday’s Gone

  Seasons 1-6 Complete Saga

  Sean Platt

  David W. Wright

  Contents

  Thank You For Reading!

  Season 1

  Season 2

  Season 3

  Season 4

  Season 5

  Season 6

  What to read next

  About the Authors

  Copyright © 2011- 2015 by Sean Platt & David Wright. All rights reserved

  Edited by: Jason Whited jason-whited.com

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The authors have taken great liberties with locales including the creation of fictional towns. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends or blog readers about this book to help us spread the word.

  Thank you for supporting our work. You rock!

  Published by Collective Inkwell

  Visit: CollectiveInkwell.Com

  eBook Edition - May 26, 2015

  V. 1.0

  Layout and design by Collective Inkwell

  CollectiveInkwell.Com

  WARNING: This book is intended for mature audiences. It is a dark book with many disturbing scenes and mature language.

  Thank You For Reading!

  Sean Platt & David W. Wright

  To YOU, the reader.

  Thank you for taking a chance on us.

  Thank you for your support.

  Thank you for the emails.

  Thank you for the reviews.

  Thank you for reading and joining us on this road.

  Season 1

  ::EPISODE 1::

  (FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON ONE)

  “2:15”

  One

  Brent Foster

  Saturday

  Oct. 15, 2011

  Morning

  New York City

  On the day everything changed, Brent Foster’s biggest concern was getting an hour to himself. But hell if he wouldn’t have settled for 15 minutes.

  His head was pounding when he woke, as if he’d spent the night partying rather than staying late at the paper. Fortunately, it was his day off. He glanced at the alarm clock and saw that the blue numbers were black. The fan he used to drown out the sounds of his neighbors and traffic was off, too. The power must’ve gone out.

  Great.

  Judging from the morning sun coming through the opening in the curtains, he figured it was probably 9 a.m. And since he couldn’t hear the sounds of his rambunctious 3-year-old at play, Gina must’ve taken Ben for a walk or play date at the park.

  He smiled. He loved when he had the apartment to himself. Moments alone were so rare these days. He worked under constant deadlines in the newsroom, still always hustling and bustling, even with the layoffs. Then, at home, his son was usually awake and in need of some daddy time.

  “He just wants to spend time with you,” his wife would say, tugging at Brent’s threadbare guilt strings. “You’re always working.”

  Brent wasn’t completely antisocial, even if Gina might argue otherwise; he just needed time to decompress when he woke and when he got home. He was just wired that way. If he didn’t get time, he grew moody and anxious. And he was short with Ben, which carried the rough consequence of feeling shitty for hours, one hour for every second he was uncool to Ben. The last thing he wanted to be was like his own dad, yet some days, he was headed there with a full tank of gas and a brick on the pedal.

  He was in a better mood when he could start the day alone. Today, it seemed, would start just right.

  Brent walked into the living room, popped open the fridge, off but still cold. He grabbed a bottle of water and took a deep swig as his eyes scanned the counter for a note from his wife. She always left a note when she went somewhere. But apparently, not today. Brent took another swig of water and headed down the hall to his son’s room. The door was closed; big, blue wooden letters spelled BEN on the door. Brent peered inside. The bed was unmade, curtains drawn, even though Gina always opened them when Ben first woke. Both pairs of Ben’s sneakers were sitting on top of his blue, wooden toy box that doubled as a bench.

  Brent was confused. Gina wouldn’t take Ben from the apartment without shoes.

  He went back into his room, fished the cell phone from his pants, and glanced at the time” 10:20 a.m. Later than he thought.

  He dialed Gina’s cell and put the phone to his ear.

  No sound on the other line.

  Phones are down, too?

  Brent dialed again, same result.

  Mrs. Goldman.

  They had to be at the apartment across the hall, Mrs. Goldman’s. Her husband had passed away a few months earlier. Gina had started bringing Ben over to keep her company. She loved Ben, and he loved eating her cookies — a perfect match.

  Brent slipped on some sweatpants, then headed across the hall and knocked on the door. The lights in the hall were out, save for four emergency lights spaced every five doors along the ceiling.

  Mrs. Goldman always took forever to answer the door. Brent suspected she was going deaf, even though she had a keen ear for neighborhood gossip. He knocked louder. Still, no answer.

  Mrs. Goldman never went anywhere. Ever. Her only other family was her worthless son, Peter, who never visited. The few times Gina had invited her to the store or for a nice afternoon lunch, Mrs. Goldman declined. She didn’t care much for the city. Was only there because her husband loved it. Now he was gone, and she was happy to spend her days watching TV, reading her mysteries, and playing bridge with some of the other ladies twice a week.

  “Mrs. Goldman,” Brent called, “Are you there?”

  Nothing.

  Weird.

  Brent didn’t know the other neighbors on his floor, but Gina had recently become friends with a young mother a few doors down. Maybe they went there, Brent figured. He walked toward the end of the hall, but couldn’t remember if the woman lived in number 437 or 439.

  He tried knocking on 437 first.

  No answer.

  He tried a couple more times, then went to 439.

  No response.

  What the hell?

  People were always home, or at least it seemed that way. Brent was never able to sleep in because his neighbors were loud and the walls were thin. He’d wanted to move somewhere quieter for years, somewhere with neighbors who actually left the building every now and then. Brent turned and tried the door across the hall, 440.

  No response.

  What the hell?

  Brent turned around and headed up the hallway, stopping to knock at each door along the way.

  One, two, and then five more doors. Nothing. He continued down the hall, his heart thudding, knocks turning to pounding at each door.

  By the time he reached the end of the hallway, he was hot and sweaty, yelling. “HELLO?! ANYONE?!”

  Nothing but black silence. The darkened hall seemed to constrict as his mind started racing.

  Impossible. There’s no way that nobody’s home. No fucking way. Unless . . .

  Terrorists.

  The word bubbled to the surface as an answer to a question he’d not yet had the courage to ask. They were in New York, so it wasn’t implausible. He raced back to his apartment, door still open, went to the windows and pulled the curtains aside, then looked down on the city streets. The empty city streets.

&n
bsp; Brent was speechless, his heart on pause, eyes swimming in and out of focus.

  “What the fuck?”

  It didn’t add up. If there were an attack, there would be bodies. If there was an evacuation, surely his wife would’ve woken him. Unless maybe it happened while she was out and unable to get back.

  That thought died on the vine when he spotted Gina’s purse and keys on the kitchen table, right where she put them every night before bed, ready for the next morning.

  He looked back down. No people. No cars on the street. Well, none that was moving, anyway. Brent could see a handful that were either in the middle of the street, or had crashed into the cars parked on the opposite side of the street. He could see exhaust from some of the cars, their lights still on.

  It was as if everyone on his block just simultaneously vanished. Everyone except Brent.

  He went to Ben’s room again to get a look from his son’s window, which had a slightly better angle at the cross street. Something sharp stung his foot. He cursed as he stumbled, glancing at the carpet to see a small, blue train.

  Stanley Train, Ben’s favorite toy, which he carried with him everywhere, including to bed. It was there, just setting on the floor. Brent bent and picked it up. Its wide eyes and eternally giant smile stared back at him. Wherever his little boy was, he was without his favorite toy.

  He set the train on Ben’s pillow and returned to his room. He got dressed, then grabbed his keys, wallet, and phone. He shoved everything in his jeans, then went to the kitchen, found the notepad and a pen and left a note for Gina.

  Where did you go? Went outside to look for you. Knocked on doors at our neighbors, nobody’s home. I’ll be back at 1 p.m. If you come home, wait for me.

  Love,

  Brent

  Halfway through the front door, Brent thought of something, then went back to his son’s room, grabbed Stanley Train from the pillow and put it in his pocket.

  Brent took the stairs down to the next floor, and started knocking on those doors, despite not knowing anyone on this floor.

  At the sixth door without any response, he worked up the courage to try a doorknob. Locked.

  Halfway down the hall, he got an idea. He found the fire alarm and pulled it. The alarm blared; a banshee shriek amid the quiet. Brent covered his ears, watching the hall, waiting for people to flee.

  Not a single door opened.

  “Fuck it,” Brent said, and went to apartment 310, tried the knob. It was locked. He backed up a bit, kicked at a spot right below the doorknob and was surprised at how easily the door burst open. Why even have locks?

  “Hello?!” he shouted.

  No response.

  The apartment was as vacant as his own. Pictures on the wall showed a Puerto Rican family of four. Parents with two twin boys, about 10 years old. He was about to leave the apartment, but movement grabbed him. Something just beyond the sheer curtains covering the living room window. He moved closer and saw the slinky silhouette of a cat sunning on the windowsill. How it could relax with the alarm blaring was beyond Brent, but then again, so were most things feline.

  He went to the curtain, pulled it aside, and saw the white, long-haired cat stretched out, face nuzzled against the warm windowsill. As he reached out to pet the cat, it started to roll over to show its belly. As it turned, Brent jumped back.

  The cat’s face had no eyes or mouth.

  Brent fell back two steps, letting the curtain fall into place, his heart racing, half expecting the monstrosity to jump on him or worse. He stared at the curtains, dread creeping up his spine.

  What the hell is that?

  He watched the cat’s silhouette as it lay back down. He worked up the courage to pull the curtain aside again to make sure he’d seen what he thought he’d seen. The cat’s face was turned down, so he had to reach out, hesitantly, again and pet its head to get it to look back up at him. As his fingers touched the cat’s fur, he felt a slight shock, like static electricity. The cat didn’t seem to notice the shock. It began purring in response to the touch, then lifted its chin to meet Brent.

  Only this time, the cat had eyes, wide blue ones, and a mouth.

  Brent shook his head, feeling stupid. He continued to pet the cat’s head as the alarm kept ringing.

  “You deaf, kitty?” Brent asked.

  No response. Which was a good thing, or Brent might have just jumped right out the window.

  He glanced out at the street below to see if tenants were pouring from the building’s lower floors because of the fire alarm. If so, he didn’t see anyone.

  As the curtain drifted back into place, he saw movement on the street below.

  He snatched the curtain aside again, and glanced down at the apartment building across the street. A man in a dark sweater, baseball cap, and pants emerged from beneath the green awning and onto the street, looking around. He was too far away to get a good look at, particularly under a baseball cap, but something about his gait suggested he was nervous.

  Brent jumped up, excited, and began smacking the window, yelling, “HEY! HEY!”

  The cat leaped down and scurried out of sight.

  The man on the street didn’t seem to hear Brent. He was walking north along the street, sticking to the sidewalk. Brent stopped trying to get his attention. While the man did glance over at the building a couple of times, likely drawn by the sound of the siren, his attention was mostly on something further down the road that Brent couldn’t see.

  Brent watched, waiting to see where the man would go.

  He seemed to be looking for someone. The man pulled a pair of binoculars out of his jacket and scanned the street in both directions. Then, he raised his binoculars up toward Brent. Brent waved frantically. For a moment, the man paused, and Brent was certain that he’d seen him. But he put the binoculars down and turned quickly to the north side of the street as if he’d heard or seen something.

  The man lifted the binoculars to his eyes and focused to get a better look at whatever had his attention.

  Brent turned, pushing his face against the window, struggling to see whatever the man was now staring at, but the angle was marred. He looked back down at the man, only to see him running as fast as he could in the opposite direction, and back into the apartment building he’d come from.

  Brent pressed his face against the window again, struggling to see what scared the hell out of the guy. Whatever it was, he couldn’t see it.

  Hide, a voice in Brent’s head said. Hide now.

  It’s coming.

  Two

  Mary Olson

  Saturday

  Oct. 15, 2011

  Morning

  Warson Woods, Missouri

  Mary woke up sticky.

  Another dream about Ryan, the sixth one in the last two weeks. Weird. She probably hadn’t thought of him for a month before that. Or longer. Though she couldn’t help but picture her ex from time to time since their daughter was his spitting image — well, a cuter, girly version, anyway.

  Mary turned over and buried her face in the pillow. She hated dreaming about him, and really hated when they were sex dreams.

  He’d never stop being inside her, but he hadn’t actually been there in three years. They’d been divorced for two, but once she found out about Natalie Farmer, the bitch that was 10 years too young and as perky as a sitcom schoolgirl, she couldn’t touch him without a shudder.

  She hated him for the innocence he stole and the lives he abused. But a large part of her could never forget the way he made her feel — the way he made her laugh, the way that, for no reason at all, he used to slip behind her and whisper treasures in her ear. The way he truly seemed to love her and their daughter, Paola. And the way he always reassured her that everything would be okay, even if he only did so in her dreams.

  Mary rarely slept past 7. During the week, Paola had to be at school by 9 and they usually left by 8 because Paola liked to go early. Unlike most 12-year-olds, Paola would wake early even on the weekends. Someti
mes, Paola would join Mary for some early morning yoga before Mary worked a few hours on the greeting cards that paid for the $1.1 million house high on a hill in Warson Woods, just outside St. Louis – no thanks to Ryan.

  A million dollars bought a palace in Warson Woods, the kind of house Mary liked most, even though it made her feel guilty all the time. Her cousin lived outside L.A. He said nothing was for less than $350,000 unless you were willing to settle for bullet holes.

  It was probably thinking about bullet holes that made Mary realize how quiet the house was. More than usual. She sat up in bed. More than quiet – eerie. The trees were swaying, but that was it. No birds chirping. No dogs barking. And no lawnmowers. In Warson Woods, people loved lawns like children, and spoiled them the same, either themselves or through their teams of landscapers. Mary started calling lawnmowers the “Missouri Symphony” the second week she moved in. To not hear lawnmowers on a Saturday morning made her briefly question whether she’d slept straight through to Monday.

  Mary left the bed and padded toward the stairs. She needed coffee. That would help the oddness fade. The hallway was dark. Mary flicked a light but nothing happened. She sighed and kept walking. One million for a house, fine, but everything should work.

  She would have a hard enough time this morning without light, but being without caffeine might make it impossible. So, she wasn’t happy when her new Keurig wouldn’t work either. Maybe there was an outage in the neighborhood? A sudden chill iced her insides. It wasn’t logical, but it came from the place that keeps its eyes peeled for the stuff logical doesn’t.