Mark Tufo - The End ....

"Got a big pot in there or something?" I asked, not really all that interested in checking out the menu just yet.

"No water?" Tracy asked getting right to the root of the matter.

I shook my head as she handed me a good size container.

I went outside and stuffed that thing full. BT looked like he wanted to hit me as I started to crowd out his burgeoning fire with my giant snow-filled pot. I think the only thing that held him up was the miserable expression on my face. The snow took somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-hour to melt. I know this because I did one Mississippi, two Mississippi etc for the whole time. It was this monotonous obsessive compulsive counting that let me stay sane those last few agonizing moments.

The water had barely let go of its previous frozen state when I grabbed the pot and headed back upstairs. As it was there were still chunks of ice floating around, but it didn't matter at this point. I found what looked like lumpy homemade soap up in the master bathroom. I was so distressed I didn't even think about whose body this may have last touched. Oh, I didn't mention that small tidbit? I used to have to have my own dedicated soap bar or I'd rather forego cleansing. The motel had those small individual ones so I had been alright. Didn't matter a lick this time though. I grabbed a small towel out of the closet, soaked it in ice water, lathered it up with soap and proceeded to rub my skin to a nice shiny red rawness.

Three blood soaked towels later, I felt better, not clean mind you, but better. The bathroom floor looked like Lizzie Borden had lived here. If someone stumbled across this place after us they would have grim visions of what must have happened here. I found a belt, drilled a new fastening hole into it and cinched up my pants. I would have to go commando from here on out, I would never be 'cured' enough to put on someone else's briefs. There was a nice warm red wool plaid shirt to go along with my country-faded blue jeans, I was even able to snag a nice comfortable pair of socks. No fashion show trophies for me, but I was warm and functionality is the cornerstone of survivalism.

When I came back downstairs, BT was melting another big pot of snow, some for drinking and cooking with and some if folks wanted to clean up a bit. It must have been sometime around noon judging by the sun. BT's fire had the room not balmy but homey. Almost everyone had eaten at least one or two cans of fruit. Nearly sated belly, a warm fire and a place to rest my ass, it all spelled a recipe for some much needed shut-eye. The finished can of sweetened pears fell out of my hand as I nodded off into the netherworld.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - JOURNAL ENTRY 22 -

The fire was a glowing ember when I awoke. The room was near to stifling, at some point I had pushed the blanket completely off of me and onto Carol. Night had descended and poetically I'd like to say so had my spirits, but in actuality they had been rising since I had been able to scrape myself clean. We were close to Maine. I could almost taste it. My previous dire predictions of what remained there now seemed ill conceived. My family was there, they were a huge factor in my Armageddon paranoia. Compared to them I was the sane one. (I know, scary thought, right!?) We would get there, bloody, beaten and bruised, but not defeated.

I headed into the kitchen to look out the window, not much good that did me. A zombie could have been on the other side of the glass looking in and I wouldn't have been able to see it on this cloudy moonless night. I shuddered and stepped back, pissed off that I was giving myself the frights. 'Shits not bad enough, Talbot, you have to go and make stuff up?' My self-chastisement over, I opened the fridge, forgetting my wife's earlier warning. The waft of stale moldy food almost knocked me on my ass. That was, of course, until I saw the telltale glint of fire embers bouncing off the glistening bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Farmer Powell may have been a religious man; thank God he wasn't abstemious too. I joyfully wrapped my hand around the cold bottle, trying to figure out why the makers of PBR wasted glass on the internal contents. I didn't waste another moment dwelling on PBR's manufacturing idiosyncrasies as I twisted the cap off and drank greedily.

I could tell BT was shuffling around in the other room by his grunting and groaning. He was stoking the dying fire. A minute or two later the living room began to dance in the light of the reinvigorated blaze.

BT came into the kitchen shortly thereafter. "You found beer?" he asked, looking longingly at my bottle of beer.

"Barely." I motioned to the fridge. A good friend would have got up and got his buddy with the healing broken leg a brew, but I wanted him to experience the wonderful odor that came from the tainted appliance much like I had.

I laughed when he nearly swooned from the pungulence. (Yes I made this word up, somehow seems right.) I'll give him credit though, he hung tough and grabbed a beer before he slammed the door shut and scrambled backwards.

"You knew, right?" he asked, sitting down at the table and taking a safe breath.

I nodded as I took another gulp.

"Thanks for the warning." he said acerbically as he twisted his cap off.

"Any time. I'm going to have to get Travis up soon."

BT looked at me questioningly as he took his own pull from the beer bottle.

"I'm almost out," I said, as I shook my bottle "and I'm not opening that fridge again."

"You're not a nice man, Mike," BT said and we both laughed. His face grew more serious. "Mike, I've got to admit this is the worst I've felt since we locked those doors at Safeway a few months back."

"I think a lot had to do with losing that base. We had it pretty good for a while. Someone else was protecting us. We got to pretend we were once again living our normal lives. And now…."

"We're back in the thick of the shit," he finished solemnly.

"Yeah it's definitely much, much better being in the tapered thinner ends of the shit."

BT looked like he wanted to say something more but in the end he just nodded in agreement and drank another swig.

"Speaking of shit."

"Here we go," BT said as he shook his head.

"Why are shits tapered at the end?" I asked him.

"Please tell me this is a joke."

"So your asshole doesn't slam shut," I finished smiling.

BT had beer shooting out his nose he was laughing so violently. "You're a dick," he said, getting up to get the dishtowel hanging on the oven door handle.

Travis came into the kitchen. "Everything alright?" he asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

"Well, now that you ask. I sure could use a beer," I told him, pointing towards the fridge.

"You have no bounds, Mike," BT said as he wiped his face dry with his sleeve. "I'll get them Travis. Your dad's setting you up."

I feigned innocence, it was a pose I had adopted entirely too many times over the years. Its effectiveness had dwindled to less than zero.

"Something going to pop out?" Travis asked, intrigued.

"Something like that. Hold your breath," BT said as he slid his chair over to get a couple more brewskis.

"Dad?" Travis asked.

I nodded to BT. He grabbed an extra beer. Guy code is pretty funny. We sometimes can get a lot accomplished with very little verbiage. With one word I ascertained that my son was asking permission to drink a previously restricted beverage, and with only a head nod to BT he realized that I had answered my son's question in the affirmative and he was now fulfilling the order. I guess if someone really wants to go back to the beginning of early man, this type of communication was an evolutionary necessity. When men were hunting prey that was more dangerous than them, they had to get across as much meaning as possible without any verbal communication so as not to alert their intended dinner. I didn't have a problem giving my underage son a beer. Societal laws were now a thing of the past. Life expectancy had gone from somewhere around 79 to most likely somewhere in the 20's. I wanted my son to enjoy as much as life still had to offer at this point, and if part of that involved a so-called 'illegal' beer, so be it. Of all the things I was going to lose sleep over, this wasn't going to be one of them. That was, of course, unless Tracy found out about it, and then she'd make sure I would.