Tomorrow's Gone Season 2, page 1
Tomorrow’s Gone
Season 2
Sean Platt
David W. Wright
Copyright © 2021 by Sterling & Stone
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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 about it, to help us spread the word.
Thank you for supporting our work.
Contents
Special Offer
Episode 1
1. Arthur
2. Elijah Freeman
3. Boricio Wolfe
4. GENERAL McTAGGART
5. Arthur
6. Boricio Wolfe
7. GENERAL McTAGGART
8. Elijah Freeman
Episode 2
9. Arthur
10. Richmond Freeman
11. Elijah Freeman
12. Boricio Wolfe
13. GENERAL McTAGGART
14. Boricio Wolfe
15. Richmond Freeman
16. Boricio Wolfe
17. Elijah Freeman
18. Elijah Freeman
Episode 3
19. Simone Dubois
20. Boricio Wolfe
21. Yugo
22. Slum Lord
23. Simone Dubois
24. Boricio Wolfe
25. Slum Lord
26. Simone Dubois
Episode 4
27. Elijah Freeman
28. Arthur
29. Boricio Wolfe
30. Slum Lord
31. Elijah Freeman
32. Arthur
33. Boricio Wolfe
34. Yugo
Episode 5
35. Arthur
36. Elijah Freeman
37. Charlotte
38. Yugo
39. Charlotte
40. Slum Lord
41. Emory Gray
42. Richmond Freeman
43. Elijah Freeman
44. Richmond Freeman
45. Emory Gray
46. Elijah Freeman
Episode 6
47. GENERAL McTAGGART
48. Boricio Wolfe
49. Elijah Freeman
50. Slum Lord
51. Arthur
52. Lomax
53. Boricio Wolfe
54. Slum Lord
55. Elijah Freeman
56. Arthur
57. GENERAL McTAGGART
58. Slum Lord
59. Elijah Freeman
60. Sasha
61. Richmond Freeman
62. Emory Gray
63. Boricio Wolfe
64. Sasha
65. Emory Gray
66. Boricio Wolfe
67. Boricio Wolfe
Epilogue
Want more?
A Note from the Authors
About the Authors
To YOU, the reader.
Thank you for your support.
Thank you for the wonderful emails.
Thank you for the thoughtful reviews.
Thank you for reading and loving our stories.
Special Offer
Some doors should never be opened.
Scott Dawson’s life is shattering. His business has failed and his wife disappeared after discovering his infidelity. So when he sees his young daughter in the front yard talking to a man in an expensive suit, Scott’s convinced things can’t get any worse. He has no idea.
Get your FREE copy of Threshold when you sign up to the VIP mailing list.
Click for your Free Download
Episode 1
One
Arthur
It had been so long since Arthur had seen the kid that he was wondering if Seth had vanished into the tree. He paused, suffering an undefined yet unmistakable undercurrent of dread … the certainty that something terrible was about to happen.
And Arthur was never wrong when it came to such things.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. “Seth!”
He’s dead. He’s dead and you killed him. What are you going to tell his parents?
“Shut up,” Arthur spit out, trying to silence the voices from his head before they took hold and sent him off the rails into a spiral of self-doubt and fear.
“I’m almost there,” Seth called out from within the thick cluster of branches and leaves above. He was at least forty feet up, maybe more. Arthur couldn’t see through foliage. Ever since The Event, the woods had thickened, and the trees had grown taller. He could barely see the midday sun through the canopy above.
Arthur exhaled with relief.
He hated having a child do such dangerous things, but the thirteen-year-old was, as he often bragged, a natural climber. He was also the only person Arthur knew able to reach the strange flowers that had suddenly started growing in the tree tops.
And without those flowers, Arthur could not continue his work.
Still, he hated hiring someone else to do such dangerous labor, especially a child. He felt guilty for taking advantage of the impoverished families in The Outer Territories. He would never have done anything like that were it not for the importance of his work … if the fate of the world didn’t hang in the balance.
Bullshit.
You’re a fraud.
Just like the others.
Arthur ignored the ever-changing voices. Most often men, other times women, and of course there were kids. The voice of the gone that he, seemingly alone, was haunted by.
“Got ‘em!” Seth again. “How many should I get?”
“As many as you can. Be careful!”
“Yes, Brother Arthur.”
He’d already told the people in the village that he was an ex-monk and requested that they call him by his given name, Arthur, rather than Brother Arthur, but still he did not correct the child. Arthur had eschewed the standard robes for regular clothes, but the tattoos still covered his arms, legs, and neck. His body itself was a uniform, and people still came to him for spiritual guidance. If Arthur could help a few people find peace in a world with so little good, what harm was there in offering it? He didn’t need to believe in the Gods any longer in order to offer solace.
He waited impatiently, eager to start experimenting with these new flowers. The first batch they’d gotten last week had only given him glimpses of what he sought. But these blooms were different, more vibrant, with brighter shades of purple and pink. Perhaps The Messenger would be better able to communicate with him when he took these.
They were unique. These flowers weren’t in The Ruins. These new blossoms were a good ten miles outside the border of that alien-altered landscape. These flowers had also called to him, announcing themselves to Arthur in his dreams. He’d long ago learned to never ignore the portents, no matter how they arrived. And lastly, Arthur was sure that he was the only one who knew of their existence.
If he could divine their secrets before his ex-brethren, perhaps Arthur could undo the damage the Order of the Ancients continued to propagate in the name of their false religion. Maybe he could finally remember what had happened to him during The Event, and maybe then he would understand why he’d been spared when everyone else around him had vanished.
“Coming down!” Seth called.
The leaves rustled and branches bent to make room for the boy. A scrawny kid, his backpack full of flowers appearing comically large on his back.
Arthur watched as he descended the tree, naturally as a monkey might. Not that he’d ever seen one in real life. He’d never even been to a zoo before the world was mostly removed by The Ruins.
His hand went to the blade in his waistband as Arthur heard movement behind him. He turned, readying himself for attack, either wolf, bear, or bandit.
But looking around, he saw nothing. And Arthur’s reliable instincts sensed no one nearby, despite the feeling that something was wrong.
A yelp from above, then he looked up to see Seth lose his footing and slip, spilling backwards, and plummeting toward the ground.
Instincts thrust him forward, and Arthur caught the boy before his head hit the ground. Seth gasped as he landed, then looked at him in wide-eyed surprise.
“Are you okay?” Arthur asked.
“Yeah … thank you.”
Arthur set him down, surprised he could catch the kid. Perhaps his gifts were deeper than he’d suspected. Maybe he could climb the trees himself if he’d tried. Adrenaline coursed through him and left the taste of copper on his tongue. He wondered if whatever muscles his scrawny five-foot-ten frame could be said to have would feel the strain later.
Seth set the bag on the ground and unzipped it to reveal at least twenty flowers, large petals shimmering in pink as if dusted with metallic paint. Arthur marveled at the bounty, thanking Seth for netting such a harvest.
But then that sense of overwhelming dread again. Something he couldn’t pinpoint, despite its talons sinking into his anxiety.
Something is coming.
Arthur remembered thinking that exact thought fourteen years ago or so — right before the world had vanished. The night he’d lost her. He’d only been twenty, and she’d been his first and only love.
A loud hum shook the ground. The sound was all too familiar.
<
br /> Was the world about to end again?
Seth looked at him, wide-eyed and afraid. “What is that?”
The hum grew louder, the ground now rumbling, the trees shaking, twisting and creaking, branches snapping as if the forest around them was about to be shredded by some invisible pressure. The trees were bending toward them, as if a wave was coming from The Ruins in the east and surging their way.
The purple mist was swirling … and, for the first time since The Event it was now moving forward. This wasn’t a Ruin Storm — the boundaries of The Ruins were expanding.
Arthur glimpsed figures moving with the border: Lost Ones, looking to claim new victims. He was immune to their deadly gaze, but Seth was not.
Arthur spun around, afraid the kid had already locked eyes with one.
Seth was squinting, trying to figure out what he was seeing.
“Don’t look at them!” Arthur grabbed Seth, turned him around, and pointed west. “We’ve gotta get back to the village. Run!”
Seth obeyed and Arthur followed.
They took the most direct route through the woods, meaning they were both covered in lacerations from branches by the time they made it back to the village. Though the wall of violet was not too far behind them, the hum and rumble had not yet reached the village, meaning its inhabitants likely had no idea what was coming.
The village was like most of the non-Coalition city villages that had cropped up in the Outer Territories. The enclave was called Welcome, a few square blocks of an old neighborhood, walled-off from bandits, but perhaps a bit too welcoming when it came to strangers.
Arthur searched for the guard who should’ve been stationed in the tower over the main gate, but he wasn’t there. Probably Willie, that lazy bastard.
“Open the gates!”
“Who is it?” called a man from the other side, a voice Arthur didn’t recognize at first.
“It’s Art and Seth! We need to evacuate the town. Now!”
The gate rolled open with a heavy metallic groan.
Arthur rushed in to see Kendrick, one of the hunters.
He looked at Arthur, then Seth, then behind them as the rumbling reached the village. His eyes widened in alarm. “Wh-what the hell is that?”
“The Ruins are spreading! We need to get everybody out. Call the guards and move everyone out to the east exit. And hurry!”
Arthur had no idea if the spread would stop, or if this was it — maybe the aliens had finally decided to finish what they started a decade and a half ago.
He rolled the gate closed as Kendrick went to warn the others.
“I’m gonna get my parents!” Seth yelled.
Arthur nodded at him as the gate closed and locked. No more time for words. Then he raced down the street toward his home at the far end of the cul-de-sac.
The bell clanged in the town square and doors swung open to confused citizens streaming outside to witness the commotion.
“East gate! Go!” Arthur yelled, not stopping to explain, needing to get home before The Ruins arrived.
He unlocked his door, raced inside, and frantically stumbled into his bedroom. He yanked the nightstand drawer open and found what he was looking for — the silver engagement ring with the tiny diamonds. It hadn’t been much, but Lia would have cherished it. He clutched it in his hand, squeezing his eyes tight in relief for a beat before shoving the ring into his pocket, deep enough that it couldn’t slip out.
Arthur made his way to the living room where most of his research — several binders of notes and maps, along with books he’d collected over the years from Old City — was sprawled on the coffee table.
He crammed the essentials into his backpack, crushing the tops of the flowers as he did. No time to be gentle, the rumble was settling as the air thickened around them, light lavender now but quickly turning toward the shade of a bruise.
No, no, no!
He hurled his now much heavier pack over his back and raced out the door.
Arthur was too late. Lost Ones had wandered into the village, even though he had closed the gate. No time to wonder how they’d gotten in because his attention was on the young woman fleeing a feral.
He moved to help, but he was too late.
The feral, an old man named Elmer Johnson, was already on top of the woman, ripping her throat out with his teeth.
Panic gripped him, freezing Arthur on the spot as chaos erupted around him — people freshly turned attacking those who had not yet seen the Lost Ones. The anguish of women and children rising in screams up and down this street, mingling with despair from the neighboring ones, all a cacophony of hellish madness — bloodcurdling cries of those trying to fight off and eventually succumbing to their friends, loved ones, and neighbors turned monsters.
Arthur could only seek a place to hide and wait for the bloodshed to finish.
He wanted to save people, but he wasn’t a fighter. And while he was immune to the Lost Ones, he was in no way safe from the freshly turned ferals. They would attack anybody, save for the Lost Ones.
Something was suddenly on him.
He spun around to see Glen, one of his neighbors, wild-eyed and trying to bite at him.
Franco, another neighbor, came up behind Glen, trying to yank him off of Arthur.
Big mistake because Glen spun quickly, mouth on Franco’s throat, clamping down.
Too late for Arthur to help.
He ran to the next house, spying Seth hiding under Mrs. Fenwick’s crawlspace, waving him over.
Arthur turned to make sure Glen was still occupied with Franco, then scurried into the crawlspace, just as Glen screamed like a deflating balloon.
“You okay?”
Seth nodded, afraid to make words.
Arthur whispered. “Your parents?”
“I … don’t know.”
“We’ll find them,” Arthur said, knowing full well that he might be lying. “But let’s sit tight here for now.”
“How long?”
“They’ll calm down eventually … then probably leave.”
Right now there were too many people, and too many monsters. Eventually, the ferals would calm down, becoming Lost Ones, no longer a threat to Arthur.
Arthur’s heart pounded against his chest as cold sweat drenched his clothes. Tears stung his eyes as he watched his friends and neighbors getting mauled and eaten.
Seth had turned away, softly sobbing into the crook of his arm and the cold ground beneath them.
It brought him back to that first day so long ago when he, along with most of the world, lost everyone close to them. Arthur had been on a date in the city. He’d expected that night to change his life, just not in the way it had.
He closed his eyes and cried along with Seth.
And, somehow, fell asleep.
He dreamed of a girl sought by the Ancients and feared by all.
Her name was Emory.
Arthur awoke to a world bathed in purple, but empty. The Lost Ones and the ferals seemed to be gone.
He turned to see if Seth was okay.
