Mark Tufo: The End Has Come and Gone

Three days later and even with strict rationing he was down to one 7 Up. The previous night he had stripped most of the bluish-green mold from the mystery meat sandwich. His stomach had cramped something fierce but it was worth it. The 7 Up and ketchup soup just wasn’t cutting it anymore. He didn’t dare drink any of the tap water until he was sure that wasn’t the agent that had caused this epidemic or whatever it was. Hunger and depression was making him lethargic, and leaving the couch was becoming increasingly difficult.

He was like the frog put in a slowly boiling pot of water; he would never leave this apartment. Starving to death was a slow painful process and was worlds better than the alternative. If not for the smell of smoke that was exactly what would have happened. Fire was the mitigating factor. Pete could think of no worse way to die except for maybe having rats eat his eyeballs while he was strapped to a table, but that was a completely different nightmare. Pete did not want to burn, charred blistering skin peeling back from his hands and face as lava hot smoke burned through his chest, exploding his lungs and torching his throat. The fluid in his eyes would sizzle and explode, his mouth forever pulled back in a smile of death like the victims of Pompeii .

He peeked out the window, the first time in a while he had cared enough to bother. Two streets away, in the general direction of where Susan Payne had lived (the first girl he had ever kissed), the sky was completely enshrouded in thick black smoke. Fine filaments of the sooty substance w ere bleeding through under his door and even around the uneven edges of the duct tape. He momentarily considered throwing up another layer of tape and sticking a towel under the door, but to what end? All that would accomplish would be allowing the fire time to catch up and roast him alive instead of suffocating him to death. Neither way was a savory means to his end.

The fire storm had one benefit, the things that were human once wanted as little to do with the fire as any other living creature. Squirrels, cats, dogs, and what he would come to know as zombies all made hasty retreats in the opposite direction from the impending doom.

“Now or never Pete,” he told himself, taking one last glance over at his parents’ home. He absently wiped a tear away from his eye. The fire had jumped to the street parallel to his own. He could see the flames as they licked the edges of the homes. God had turned his back on man, hell had been unleashed on earth, the proof was now devouring the Almstead house. The fire was a vengeance, a scouring of all that was wrong with the world.

Pete walked slowly through his apartment taking mental images of a home he would never return to, then left with nothing more than the clothes he was wearing. He ran to the driveway to get the white van his father used for his in-town delivery service. He went directly to the back of the van, feeling around the juncture where the bumper met the frame until he found what he was looking for, the spare key. His mother had made Pete’s dad get the magnetic contraption after his dad had called the locksmith for the third time in three months because he had once again locked the keys in the van. Funnier still was that in the twelve months since he had the spare key attached to the bottom of the van, he had never again locked his keys in the car.

Pete adjusted the captain’s chair and turned the ignition over. His heart skipped a beat when he peered into the kitchen window and saw his mother staring back at him. He threw the van into reverse heedless of whatever might be behind him. He nearly took out the privacy fence that encased his parents’ yard. He never took his eyes off that window as he stopped and then placed the car into drive; his mother’s gaze never wavered as her milky white eyes followed his treacherous departure.

CHAPTER THREE – BT

BT watched as Mike rolled down the gravel driveway. Surrounded by people, BT had never felt more alone. He draped his huge arm around Nicole as they walked back up into the house.

Nicole was crying, partly from hormones run amok, mostly from watching her family drive away. “Will we ever see them again BT?” she managed to ask through her sobs.

“We’d better, because I don’t know how long I can survive your aunt’s cooking,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. It worked for a moment, and she silently thanked him for it.

Carol had stayed in the kitchen opting not to watch the departure. BT came over to see how she was doing.

“Was it wrong of me to not see them off?” she asked the big man. She never gave him an opportunity to respond before she started talking again. “It just felt like that would have been too final, do you know what I’m saying?” BT nodded because that was exactly how it felt. He didn’t tell her that it felt that way no matter where you stood. That wouldn’t have helped. Carol then did something unexpected, she turned and gripped him hard in a bear hug, her hands not making it halfway across his broad back. BT was not used to being thrust into the mode of comforting people, not many people looked to a 6’8” 350 pound bear of a man for solace, it just didn’t happen.

“There, there,” he said, patting her back gently. He thought that he had seen this technique once in a movie and it had seemed to work. He looked more like a person who doesn’t like dogs and taps the tops of their heads gingerly, hoping they’ll go away.

Tony Talbot took this opportune time to enter the kitchen. BT wouldn’t swear to it, but Tony and Carol had seemed to hit it off. Maybe not romantically, not yet anyway, but there was something to be said about being around someone your own age. They had an uncanny ability to ease the mind of the other, shared experiences possibly or maybe even shared worries, didn’t matter. Whatever it was they each found peace in the contact. BT was grateful when Carol broke the hug and acknowledged Tony’s entrance.

BT left the kitchen to go to the living room that overlooked the now empty driveway. Ron, Mike’s older brother, stood looking out as if expecting guests.

“How’s the leg?” Ron asked without turning around.

“Feels better,” BT said aloud. But he thought to himself ‘it hurts a lot’ was only shades better than ‘hurts like hell,’ or maybe it was the other way around.

“When are you planning on leaving?” Ron asked, now looking directly at the big man.

“A day or two at the most.”

“How are you planning on following him?”

“Just follow in the wake of destruction, it’s usually pretty cut and dried with Mike. He doesn’t leave much to chance when he goes somewhere.” “A shortwave radio transceiver might make your life a little easier.”

“How many of those things do you have?”

“Five, I bought three and convinced the store owner to throw in two for free. Didn’t think I was actually going to need all of them but it’s nice to be prepared.” “You sound like Mike, or does he sound like you?” BT asked with a grin.

Ron laughed. “Let’s get you some supplies.”

BT followed slowly behind Ron as they descended into the basement. Ron entered into a room that housed the water heater and furnace. Behind those fixtures was another door. Ron opened that and flipped on a light switch.

BT could not believe what he was seeing. It was a huge room that dwarfed the size of the house it sat under. Metal shelves were lined with canned goods, bags of rice, coffee, flour, sugar, fuel, candles and every other imaginable necessity that people waiting out Armageddon might or might not need.