Yesterday's Gone: Season Six by Sean Platt, David Wright Page A

were sort of okay, and they could have a chance at not just survival but something resembling a normal life in a solar-powered house and a fully working farm. This was as close to paradise as there was these days. And the group generally got along. What more could you ask for?
    Why risk things? If their relationship went south, it wasn’t like Teagan could move. She’d still have to see him every day.
    Yet the more senseless it seemed to pursue the relationship, the more she wanted him.
    She’d noticed a couple of weeks ago that he tended to wake in the middle of the night and would hang out in the kitchen a bit before returning to his room. Tonight, she’d decided to wait and seduce him.
    Putting the moves on Brent, Teagan felt silly and awkward, afraid he’d laugh at her.
    Then they’d kissed, and everything had changed.
    All her wrong thoughts felt suddenly right. She craved him inside her, even if it meant another child. And despite his awkwardness, he was an animal sexually. Though the event was over way too quickly, she could still feel his lust.
    Now, as she lay with the kids in her bed, she wondered if she was being ridiculous to wish for a family. Wondered why she even wanted to try. It wasn’t as if her parents had been happy or showed her how to be a good parent or partner. Then she thought about him cumming too soon, and inside her.
    Shit.
    Maybe it’s all a disaster waiting to happen.
    Just as she started to feel stupid again, a scream came from downstairs. At first, she thought it was Otis in pain again. But it wasn’t his scream.
    And it wasn’t just one person screaming.
    Teagan heard a sound she’d hoped to go a lifetime without hearing again — the horrible clicking of an alien — downstairs.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 8 — Brent Foster

    The front door to the main house was wide open when they reached it.  
    Brent counted six bodies on the front porch and lawn, eviscerated as they attempted to escape. One of them a child, a small girl named Catherine.
    Brent shook his head and broke into a jog toward the front door, shotgun in hand, eager to find the monster that did this, and even more eager to make sure the others — Ben, Teagan, Becca, and Marina — were safe.
    He crossed the threshold, with Joe and the others behind him, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of more bodies littering the living room.  
    It was a massacre.
    His eyes could hardly move fast enough over the bodies, identifying the dead, praying his own weren’t among them.
    Brent saw movement in the corner of his eyes and raised his gun. He realized it wasn’t an alien before he could fire. It was Marina, sitting at the bottom of the steps, blood soaked from head to toe, clutching a bloody machete.
    Beneath her, on the floor, was the thing that had been Otis, hacked into pieces of flesh, black wet tendrils still flopping reflexively on the wooden floorboards. Otis hadn’t just been hacked, his body had been demolished.  
    Brent tried to imagine that sort of rage coursing through Marina. She’d always seemed so calm and collected. Marina stood, meeting his eyes. She looked like she’d been through hell and back before ending the alien.
    Oh, God, please don’t tell me they’re dead. Please.
    He opened his mouth, but no words could leave it. He couldn’t ask the question out of fear for the answer.
    “They’re okay,” Marina said.  
    “Who?”
    “Your son, Teagan, and Becca.”
    Brent sighed, holding his tears.  
    Behind him, Joe said, “Is anyone else alive?”
    Marina shook her head.
    Joe fell to his knees, sobbing. Though none of the dead were his family, he’d formed strong bonds with most of the people at The Farm.
    Peter and Sammy were silent, staring at the carnage.
    Brent raced upstairs to his bedroom door and found it locked. Chunks of alien flesh sat in black blood all over the floor outside the door and leading down the stairs. The fight had come up here.
    He banged on the door. “Teagan?”  
    Seconds