Mark Tufo - The End Has Come and Gone

“Damn, Mike.”

“That’s what I thought. Mom was bringing him to a familiar place we all had loved when we were kids.”

“That’s not just some elaborate dream, Mike?” Gary asked, his eyes a little wetter than normal.

“I swear to you Gary, it was as real to me as this conversation we’re having now. I glimpsed something that I think very few on this side get to.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“It makes me thrilled, brother, to have proof that there is more to this life, especially now. To know that we have a soul and that when we are gone from here we go into the loving arms of those who have gone before.”

Good Luck!

"Gary, what are you doing?" I asked more peevishly than I should have.

"Reading the paper, did I really need to explain that?" he said as he turned the over-sized page.

Maybe it was the crinkling of the paper, the huge size of the medium or the fact that my friends were stranded on a roof top surrounded by zombies five miles away. But I was pacing around like I had smoked some crack and while I was waiting for it to kick in I had snorted a couple rails of coke.

"You know that paper is over four months old, right?" I stopped my pacing long enough to berate him with that fact.

My brother seemed to gain some sense of enjoyment from my discomfort. He sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the small metal table.

"How the hell can you read that thing anyway? It's too damn big.”

"You know, little brother, not all of us had our noses shoved up the Internet's ass. The cultured prefer the news the old fashioned way.”

"Yeah, stale and irrelevant,” I replied

He smiled and kept on reading. “Wow, this guy took out a full page ad the night the zombies came.”

I finally sat down, I was beginning to wear a groove into the floorboards. “Now I'm not really curious, but since there's nothing else going on, what the hell was so special about this ad?"

"How much do you think it costs to run a full page ad?"

"Really? You're going to make me jump through hoops before you answer me?"

Gary had a look of bemusement on his face.

"Fine, I know a dinky little one inch ad runs about five hundred bucks, so a full page ad...” I stopped to think. “Has to be close to four thousand bucks.”

"Not much return on investment here then.”

"Gary, there's a full rack of papers over there. First, I'm going to grab a paper, find the friggen’ ad you’re talking about, decide for myself what I think about it. Then I'm going to roll it up and beat the living shit out of you with it.”

"Man, I thought they were kidding when they said they put gun powder in the Marines’ eggs. You're a mean man, Mike.”

"That's it,” I said pushing my chair away.

"And absolutely no patience, hold on.”

I stopped.

"It's got a picture of this guy Rodney Carnahan on one knee, and he's holding a small boulder up to the photographer. Then there's a side picture of the bride-to-be, Amber Allaman. And it says and I quote, 'Amber, you came into my life when I needed someone like you the most. You’ve become my best friend and have given me a son who, like his momma, is the light of my world. Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife, Amber Marie Allaman, and not just my baby-momma? Love Rod.' Do you think she got to see it?"

"Man, I hope so,” I said, looking over his shoulder. “Although we don’t really know who this Amber girl is. I mean, sure she's very pretty, but you can't tell from a black and white still picture what's going on in that head of hers. Maybe, just maybe, the zombie-pocalypse saved the rest of Rodney’s life.”

"I'm telling your wife you said that.”

"I'll drive that truck off a bridge with the both if us in it, if I even THINK you'd say anything. Have I made myself clear?"

(Super secret note just for Rodney – Please post the results on my Facebook page!)

(For everyone else, that was exactly what you’re thinking it was!)

Pre-Zombie Apocalypse

A Talbot family get together is rife with one-liners and zingers. If you let your guard down for even a second, or show a moment of weakness, the others will descend on you like a pack of starving wolves on a fallen Caribou. Our family motto has always been “Kick ‘em when they’re down.”

This is just one example. Gary, who is undeniably a great cook, started to describe how awesome his apple pie is. I told him that I’d also been working on my own, and after years of trial and error that I finally thought that I’d gotten it right. So my sister immediately shouts out ‘Pie Off!’ Gary and I thought it was an awesome idea. My daughter Nicole, who is okay in the kitchen, threw her hat in the ring. What the hell, I thought, the more people I beat, the sweeter the victory.

My sister, who can’t make Jell-o, decided that this would be an opportune time to show off her skills (or lack thereof). “I want in too!” she shouted. Now, I don’t know if she was just caught up in the excitement of the moment or what, but I grinned to myself. This was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.

So Gary immediately says, “If it comes out of a box, it doesn’t count.” Many laughs ensued. I took it to another level. “Sis, I could show up with an apple and beat you.” My brothers (and myself) were laughing so hard we had tears coming out of our eyes. My sister was not a happy camper. She told me she hated me. I just laughed harder. I had won that round.

The Blood Locket

“Severed Hand, what do the spirits divine for our hunt?” Chief Running Bear asked.

Severed Hand had spent the majority of the fall day secluded in his tepee with twigs of ash, elderberry bush, and sage smoking on an enclosed fire pit.

“It is not good, Running Bear. I cannot get a clear message from the spirits. I think that you should wait until I have been shown the path,” Severed Hand told his exasperated Chief.

“That is the same message as yesterday and the same as it was the day before. If we wait much longer, the herds will be gone and our clan will suffer greatly come the approaching winter,” the Chief said.

“I fear Running Bear that to leave now would endanger our people even more.”

The Chief snorted in disagreement. He normally deferred to the spiritual leader as long as the Shaman spoke words the Chief wanted to hear. It wasn’t that Chief Running Bear was too egotistical to listen to his advisor and friend, it was that he had sixty people in his clan that looked to him to make it through the harsh winters. If they did not secure at least three bison on this next hunt he would lose a great many people to disease and famine, and he loved them too much to let that happen.

“I will give you until the sun has risen tomorrow, Severed Hand, to coax an answer from the spirits.”

“Chief, you of all people know that it does not work that way. The gods will tell me what they feel I should know when they feel I should know it.”

“As long as it is by tomorrow,” the Chief said, heading back to his tepee. The cold of the night was beginning to seep deep into his bones. ‘A few more seasons and the younger bucks will need to prove who is worthy to lead us,’ the Chief thought. ‘But not yet.’

Severed Hand reentered his smoke filled hut. He sat cross legged on his stack of elk and bison furs breathing deeply of the aromatic smoke, controlling his breaths that he might achieve a state of heavy meditation. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head; his second sight was shrouded in a thin veil of black. A lone crow blacker than the veil stood on the other side, one flat black eye staring at him hungrily. It cawed once and as it jumped into the air and flew away, the veil was parted. The emptiness beyond was too much for the Shaman who passed out. It was several hours later when he awoke. The Chief and twenty of the tribe’s braves were already gone on the hunt.