Mark Tufo: The End Has Come and Gone

We had narrowly escaped death by deaders just a week ago, how far would we have gotten if it had been speeders? As a survivalist I had prepared and trained for the day when the world was going to take a giant shit on itself, but I had no idea how much luck was going to factor into my family’s continued existence. I did not like it. Luck was a fickle bitch.

I finally turned from the gruesomeness; Gary’s retching had subsided slightly. Justin was no longer rubbing his back as the puddle of bile began to spread and he didn’t want to get in the splash zone.

“Big moose,” Gary said from his hunched over position, brown drool hanging in stringy rivulets from his mouth.

“Big moose,” I echoed. “You ready to go?” I asked him.

“Just about,” he answered, immediately followed by his biggest purging thus far.

I popped the hood of the truck to see if the contact with the beast had damaged anything internally. Besides a bumper that would never pass inspection and a hood with a two foot long crease, we were in pretty good shape. Ten minutes later I gave as wide a berth to the carnage in the roadway as the two lanes would allow. It wasn’t near enough. Gary ’s persistent gagging in the back brought me to the edge of my own expulsion. Another ten minutes and I was almost able to convince myself the whole thing was just some elaborate nightmare induced by my sister’s chili. Then I saw the drops of blood on the hood and they sliced effectively through that illusion. Oh yeah, did I express how pissed off Ron was going to be about his truck?

CHAPTER TWO – Mad Jack’s Backstory

Mad Jack aka Peter Pender until recently was a Technical Adviser for the Department of Defense. It was his primary responsibility to view all the aerial photographs and satellite data and determine viable threats from a hundred different rogue countries, and every major terrorist cell on the globe. He was so adept at his job that within three short years he went from an Analyst Assistant I to the Department Head. He had stopped six major attacks on American soil and at least a dozen other minor ones. Unfortunately, nobody had thought to take a picture of a crate filled with flu vaccinations or quite possibly this latest disaster could have been averted.

Peter was not well liked among his peers, shooting stars seldom were, but he was well respected. Peter’s home life revolved around one thing: HALO. His gamertag was Death by Murder667 (he thought he was one better than the devil). Those that had crossed his path on Xbox Live had a 98% mortality rate. He was a legend in the gaming world, a not well liked but well respected gamer. Peter had set up residency in his parents’ home for the first twenty-seven years of his life. The basement was his dominion, and he probably would have spent the next twenty-seven years there also if his father had not gently chided his son that it might be time to fly the coop. Only then could George Pender finally realize his dream of a man cave, resplendent with a six-seat home theater.

Peter traveled almost across the whole Pender backyard before he set up his new domicile in the apartment above the garage. The independence was invigorating. Between work and wreaking ruin on the minions within the HALO universe, Peter had very little time to deal with the fairer sex. It wasn’t that he didn’t think, dream, eat and sleep about them, it was just that they were a mystery that defied explanation. He could glance at a black blurry box the size of a foot locker photographed from 2,400 miles away and let you know with stunning detail the threat level that it imposed. Women he couldn’t decipher with a Cray super computer. HALO was easy in comparison, kill or be killed, no right no wrong, no double meanings, no games. It was straight forward and linear, whereas women were all dangerous curves.

Liver had saved Peter’s life, not directly mind you, but the effect was the same. The day his division was scheduled to receive the flu vaccine, his favorite restaurant Ma’s Grill and Home Cooking (the slogan being ‘the food tastes just as good without all the nagging!’) was having a special on liver and onions. This was hands down his favorite meal on the planet, which confused the hell out of his parents because they had never once made it for him while he was growing up. Ma’s was slow, the smell of the liver keeping her normal customers at bay.

“I thought you guys would be packed,” Peter said excitedly as he placed his order at the counter.

Stan the cashier, a young man doing his best to not let the smell affect him, could only shrug his shoulders in reply.

The only other customers in the restaurant were seated as far away as possible from the grill, although it didn’t help. They were unhappily shoveling their food into their mouths as fast as they could in an attempt to be out and away into the chilly air of Kansas City .

“I thought you said this place was good?” Peter overheard the woman ask her male companion in the booth. “Everything tastes like liver,” she said in distaste, roughly placing her sandwich down on her plate.

To Peter that sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world. “See, that’s what I mean about women, there is just no figuring them out,” he said silently to himself, shaking his head.

Stan had hastened to the back of the store to crack open the door and allow some carbon dioxide from the Fed-Ex truck parked in the alley to enter in. It was heavenly in comparison to the stench of grilled liver. Stan reluctantly closed the door just as a man approached from behind the open door which had effectively blocked Stan’s view. Had Stan been able to see he would have noticed that a fever ravaged man was approaching, red lines radiating out from his scalp and crisscrossing on his sweaty cheeks. Blood and drool combined to flow freely from his mouth; the smell of liver which he had hated his entire life all of a sudden it smelled like sweet ambrosia, and right now he didn’t care if it was off the grill or out of a body. One of his last coherent thoughts was ironically wondering where his last thought had come from.

Peter took his time returning to work, reveling in his great lunch. It wasn’t until he entered the lobby and saw the sign: FLU SHOTS HERE >>> that he realized his mistake.

“Dammit,” he whispered as he ran down the hallway to the conference room that was set up just for this occasion. Peter dreaded being sick, mostly because his mother thought she made the best chicken soup this side of the Mississippi , when in fact she didn’t make the best soup west of her own kitchen. But primarily he hated it because it slowed his reflexes and his HALO kill ratio would take a hit. He skidded to a stop right outside the door just as the nurse was putting the waiver forms back into her bag.

The nurse heard and then saw the man; his features let her know how disappointed he was. “Don’t worry sweetie, we’ll be back tomorrow for the 4th floor, just get in line and we’ll take care of you.” But that was a lie, the nurse did not return the next day, and neither did 90% of his department who had missed work.

“What a weird day,” Peter said to himself as he walked home from the bus stop. The streets of Kansas City looked deserted, barely anyone had showed for work and Ma’s Grill was closed. The bus which was generally standing room only had only one occupant and he was a bum with a bus pass. He was on the bus every day. He just rode it all day long in the winter to stay out of the cold. Peter sometimes wondered why the homeless man didn’t just buy a ticket to Atlanta , seemed like it would have saved him a lot of time. What Peter didn’t know was that the man lived for the here and now. The future was the big unknown, a doctrine that the rest of the surviving human race was to become very familiar with.