To Absent Friends

TO ABSENT FRIENDS

By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM

WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM

Cooper struggled through the blizzard snows with a grimness approaching despair. He had to find shelter, and damned soon, or he'd be as dead as...well, as the rest of the world, pretty near. He didn't care to think how much radioactivity was still being blown into the air, into his lungs. He knew he was facing, at best, a death by cancer some time in his fifties, if not sooner, but he was still only in his early twenties and he wanted those three decades, sucky as they were turning out to be! He pulled his ragged trench coat tighter about himself, stuffed with the wads of newspaper in its lining, it was warmer than it had been but still inadequate to the task, as were the woolen cap, the muffler, the gloves, the three pairs of socks on his feet stuffed into his old Army boots. He was still wearing his Army coat as well, underneath the trench coat, not to mention a shirt and undershirt, and two pairs of pants, one pair of jeans and one pair of baggier chinos over that. And will all that, he was still in danger of freezing to death.

He'd hoped to make it to shelter before now, but the road had been singularly empty of anything resembling a house. Or barn, or shed, right now, who the hell felt like being fussy. The trouble with houses, they made a dandy source of easy firewood, especially when you had to cook everything over a fire. Four years post-Armageddon, not many were left that weren't homes to groups that didn't share their limited resources with a vagabond on the tramp, which was what Cooper had been ever since he'd fled his last group, dying out from a cholera epidemic, some virulent strain that was better than 85% fatal. Only three people in the group left on their feet except for him...so he looked things over and took his feet out the door. Not cowardice, simply the realization that if he wanted to live through the winter, he had to get himself in with another group as opposed to starving with whoever managed to survive the epidemic on their supplies depleted by lack of any hunter-gatherers except for him. He'd feared that he'd caught it before he'd gotten away but if so, he hadn't come down so far with anything but what may well be frostbite in his fingers (those damned gloves! Sewn leather, they let air in at every seam on every finger!)

Ahead, there was a light, a golden blob in the distance fogged into a blur by the blowing snow. He staggered toward it with what was the very last of his strength. The light resolved into a window, a real window with glass, and to the right of it was a solid door! He didn't bother with the window, he just went up to the door and pounded on it. God, let them open, let them let him in, let him in, let him in!

He sagged down as the door opened and strong arms pulled him inside into the warmth and the light and that was enough for his exhausted, frozen, worn body. He fell into unconsciousness as his body surrendered its struggle in the encroaching warmth that was seeping in to replace the coldness of his clothing....

He awoke some hours later, to find that the sun (such as it had been all day) had set, leaving the only light in the room the orange glow of the roaring fire. That was what had kept him warm, that and the thick fur covering (a bearskin? Yes!) that lay over his (he checked himself, yep, he was naked!) nude body. He sat up, he wasn't dead at least (unless this group was one that had slipped into cannibalism, like that last one he'd found two weeks ago, and was simply saving him until they needed more meat for their soup), and it was time to say his thank-you and find out where he stood in this new group, whether a new hunter or possible meat for the larder!

A lone man squatted by the fire, tending it, poking it up with a metal rod. The furs he wore told Cooper both that hunting was good hereabouts (Cooper had headed toward the mountains despite oncoming winter for a good reason, they'd suffered less than the plains in the atomic firebombs that had obliterated most of the fertile regions of the U.S.A.) and that this man was a good hunter. The soup-pot on the fire smelled of vegetables. He'd stumbled upon wealth in this new world the bombs had wrought; the only question now was whether he'd get to share in this wealth. He could offer himself, a strong young man well trained in survival techniques and able to fend for himself and others, but this group didn't seem to need that so much. Well, time would tell. "Hello." he said to the man at the fire.

The man turned and said, "Hello, Hugh."

Cooper blinked, this man knew his first name, which he hadn't used since...well, since before the end of the world! "Hello. Who are you?"

The man stood and pulled the shoulder length hair back from his face. "Don't you recognize me, Corporal?"

Cooper hadn't been a corporal since the war, either. But that triggered the appropriate memories about the man's face, even disguised with the mustache and beard. "Sergeant Reid!" He yelped. "Sir! I don't believe it!"

The army base that had been Cooper's home until the war had also been home to Sergeant Mason Reid, and a bomb had enveloped it and most of the town where Cooper had been on A-Day. He had figured that everyone he had known that day had died, God knows his parents in Chicago had been obliterated, as had everything for a hundred miles about, how many bombs had they struck that town with anyhow, it had given Lake Michigan a broad roundish inlet in its place! Cooper had headed west and never looked back. Finding Sergeant Reid here was beyond probable, it was freaking impossible!

"Where else would I go?" Reid smiled at Cooper. Prevailing winds were from the west and I had to avoid the fallout. And mountains were where I could find wildlife and uncontaminated soil both. So here I am, in the northern part of Yellowstone Park."

"We are?" Cooper was surprised, he'd left a village not far from what had been Rapid City, South Dakota only two weeks ago and on foot, he'd covered more ground than he'd thought!

"Yep."

"So...how many of you are here?" Cooper had to know. Too many and he'd be lucky to get some of that soup. On the other hand, this had been parkland before the war, few people before the war, and how many now....

"Just me. And now you." Reid stood up. "If you want to stay, that is."

"Hell, yeah, I want to stay." Cooper said. "Uh, mind sharing some of that stew, I've been low on grub for a week now." His last meal had been a rabbit he'd caught two days before, his stomach was growling.

"All you want." Reid told him. "You feel up to getting up?"

"Yeah, only.... I seem to be naked."

"Got your clothes washed and they're drying now, be ready by morning. Bring the bearskin with you. Warmer by the fire."

"Thanks." Cooper got to his feet best he could and wrapped the skin around his loins, held it that way until he got to the other stool by the fire. A second stool, it was so newly made that Reid must have crafted it while he had been asleep, to give him a place to sit. He sat and felt warm, warm enough to let the skin drape down to only cover his legs, extended his hands out to feel the fire. So long, it had been so long, since the fire that had warmed him had been anything more than a small pile of embers left over from cooking. Reid handed him a bowl of soup and he dug in. "Nice." He said after a few hungry spoonfuls had filled his stomach to where he could remember his manners and not wolf down the rest of it. "You been here alone very long?"

"Five or six months." Reid said. "A young couple lived with me for two years, but they left me last summer, heading south. Been alone since then."

"Too bad." The weather about Yellowstone wasn't exactly balmy, Cooper could sympathize with the pair who had left. He would have done the same, only it wasn't likely to be any better southward. Mexico might not have been plastered as badly as the U.S.A. but they'd taken their share and what was left wasn't that fertile, he'd chosen to stick around a section of land that may be snowbound five months out of the year, but more than made up for that lack the other seven. And with Reid here to help him.... "Well, it's you and me now and I'll do my part, don't worry."

"We'll have to hunt when the weather lets us." Reid told him. "I've only laid in provisions for one here, and that includes firewood and furniture. I made that stool for you...."

"I noticed."

"But there's only the one bed, the one you were in."

Cooper started to say that it was okay, he could sleep on the floor, no problem. But then he caught a look at Reid's face.

There's a worse fate than being hungry or being cold or being thirsty, one that will drive a person to travel even in a land where you never knew if the very ground you trod on and the air you breathed carried the seeds of your death.

Being all alone. Never anyone to talk to, to be with. To touch. Lack of human contact could drive a person more than mad, more so in this mostly dead world than it had been in the days when mankind had been plentiful and you had to struggle to get time alone. Now, being alone was worse, it meant you were on your own resources, nobody to help you if you got in trouble, nobody to tend you if you fell ill. A few hardy, asocial hermits might manage that existence, but a man who joins the military joins a team, wants...needs the others in his life.

So instead of volunteering to take the floor, he said instead, "That's okay. We can share for a while, if you're willing."

"We need to. Gets cold nights, and that bearskin you got on is my primary blanket."

"That's what we'll do then." Cooper said.

That seemed to galvanize Reid, he got to his feet and said, "We should have a drink to celebrate." He went to a cabinet and opened a door on it.

"You have booze?" Cooper expected maybe raw rotgut, but Reid brought out an actual bottle of brandy! It was more than half full, and precious beyond price.

He took the glass filled an inch full of the wonderful amber fluid with trembling fingers and waited for Reid to pour another for himself. They touched glasses and when Reid didn't make a toast, Cooper said, "To absent friends."

"To absent friends. And friendships renewed." Reid concluded.

After more than two years without any alcohol at all, the small amount made an impact on his system, a broad swath of warmth all the way down.

Maybe the alcohol went to Cooper's head as well, it was certainly making him feel a bit woozy. Maybe he, too, was feeling the pinch of loneliness that makes men turn to other men. Maybe it was gratitude and the remembrance of the life he'd once had, before the world went to Hell.

But when Reid's arm went around his bare shoulders, he didn't pull away. And when Reid leaned in closer, Cooper leaned toward Reid and the other arm came around toward him, he turned to make it a full embrace.

Reid was breathing hard, his arms were trembling. Maybe it had been longer than five or six months he'd been alone up here. A couple, involved with each other, they'd have made him feel more alone, sometimes, not less. To listen to them making love and him nearby, no chance to even find another woman, and then the winter closing in on him, shutting him away, a winter alone in a cabin like this, he must have felt madness closing in on him...then Cooper had knocked on the door.

Reid's lips were kissing on his neck and the thick thatch of hair on his head and his beard and his mustache made that kiss an enveloping halo upon his cheek, his ear, his shoulders. As Reid moved, the hair stroked Cooper's upper body with silken, sensual motions. As he moved, the motions of his lower body caused the bearskin to start slipping aside. Cooper let it slip, for Reid's mouth was moving over his neck and down onto his chest. When the bearskin slid onto the floor, it left his erection standing prominently, proudly upright and waiting. Reid's hand had been working an advance-guard action down his stomach and when the bearskin went aside, his hand realized that fact and slid down and grasped Cooper's prod firmly, held it in place while his mouth worked its way on down.

When Reid's mouth joined his hand and the moist circle folded itself onto and over Cooper's cockhead, Cooper just let his head roll backwards and moaned. God, it felt so good, it had been so fucking long! The group he'd left, it had been all men but for a few, elderly women and none of them had been available to him even if he had been desperate enough to want to nail one of them anyhow. As a result, he'd embarrassed himself a few times and when the cholera epidemic had come on, it has been easy for him to pack up and leave. And now, now, he had this man, this old friend, this memory of the time before when he'd been so damned lucky and hadn't known it, this man was sucking on his cock, and it was only the first of what would be so many more times together, they'd have the winter together, two men, surviving and thriving in this wilderness that had been fruitful but untapped even before A-Day, and they would never either of them be lonely again!

Reid's mouth was now fully engulfing Cooper's cock, the man had taken all seven and a half inches all the way inside, his lips were kissing Cooper's pubic patch, and Reid's tongue was dancing over the bottom of Cooper's cock with a talent that made Cooper think that Reid had been practicing male-male sex even before A-Day. That didn't make Cooper think less of Reid, hell, if you have to settle into housekeeping with another man including sex, better to do it with a man who knows how to please you! He moaned and Reid slurped up noisily from Cooper's prod, leaving a thick greasy patina of slimy spit behind, with a thick rope of saliva reaching from his lips down to the glans, which broke as Reid rose.

"Aw, man, why'd you stop?" Cooper complained. "You were doing great!"

Reid just smiled and his hands began to undress himself. "Because you're naked and I'm wearing two layers of clothes." he said simply. "You said you were ready to do your part here."

Cooper thought briefly about trying to play an offended straight man, but hell, Reid might toss him back out into the cold, with or without provisions or directions to travel in this always sparsely-populated region. And besides, he wanted to do his part like he'd said. This new atomic-bombed world was no place to be fussy about your sexual partner, if you wanted a sexual partner, you had to take what you could get, and what better than a woman than a big, strong, clean-living, clean-loving man!

So when Reid was down to his undergarments, the man was lucky enough to have a full set of long-johns on under his shirts and pants, Cooper was more than ready to do whatever this man wanted, he took the time it took to unbutton those long row of buttons down his chest to shift to spread out the bearskin rug before the fire, and arrange himself artistically upon it, the enticing male body, and when Reid turned around and Cooper got a look at his body. He'd known in the days before the atomic fires that Reid was a brawny man, but hell, looking at the entire package bare like this.... "Damn!" He breathed huskily. His cock, which had withered with the lack of attention, sprang back to full attention for him.

Every muscle on Reid's body was full, bulbous, distended and glowing, the roaring fire that kept the blizzard outside at bay turned his Caucasian-pale body into a golden idol, carved in the worship of the male form. And this deity, this god, was striding toward him with a raging erection pointing the way!

Cooper just abandoned his elegant pose, rolled onto his back and with spread legs, welcomed Reid down onto his own body. Reid's lips met his and they kissed for the first time. Cooper had never kissed another man but he gave it his all and it wasn't that different from the women he'd kissed in the before time. And when Reid began to work his way down Cooper's body again, Cooper waited eagerly for those lips to again envelope his dong and suck him, this time to completion.

To his surprise, Reid's mouth skirted his manhood entirely and then his legs were hiked up high and Reid was licking at his anus. Cooper wouldn't have wanted to go on that particular expedition, he'd been on the road for weeks with no sanitary facilities, and his toilet paper had been what he could find if he could find it, but Reid didn't flinch at whatever was down there and Cooper held a hope that his body was cleanly enough.

Again, Reid's tongue laved his body with saliva, slathering his butthole so that he could feel the thick wetness there. Cooper loved the feel of it so much that when Reid finished and hawked spit onto his palm and conveyed it to his prick, Cooper just moaned and lifted his legs again when Reid lay upon him again, face to face. That hard rod knocking at his nether opening was a welcome visitor, even when it began to push into him.

"Ah-hah-ah-ah, hah-hah!" Coooper breathed as Reid's cock stretched his sphincter wide and gained its initial entrance, the glans' flare a punctuation of friction that excited rather than afflicted him. He'd been so afraid for so long of such an invasion of his body, knowing of so many men who had fallen prey to the lusts of their brawnier enemies, he'd never realized that, in the arms of a man who was kind and gentle and caring and known, this same joining of their bodies would be nothing but unfettered, untarnished delight!

That joy only continued as the shaft pushed into him, spreading his insides as it went, and the pleasure did nothing but grow and grow! Cooper moaned, his arms tightened around Reid's chest and hands clamped onto his back, Cooper's heels found the backs of Reid's knees and locked into place there, and as he did, Reid's dong sunk into his ass to the very base.

"Oh, God, yeah!" Cooper breathed as Reid paused in this position. "Fuck, yeah, I can't believe you did it so fucking easy! Shit, yeah, yeah!"

"Oh, man, I feel like coming right fucking now!" Reid gasped. "I haven't screwed anyone since Bomb Day!"

Cooper was quick enough to recognize another term for A-Day. "I know what you mean." he said. "The only ones I did, I regretted." His face reached up for a kiss from Reid. "But not this one. Not one bit!"

"Oh, God, I need to come but I don't want to."

"Just fuck me slow, man, fuck me slow." Cooper urged him.

Reid did, slow pushes into his body, slow withdrawals that drove Cooper crazier with lust that rapid motions could have. He was moaning from the desire, a low rumbling sound that shook his very body, and after five minutes of this, he was every bit as driven to the edge as Reid must have been.

"Oh, God, finish me now, man, finish me now!" he begged cravenly. "I got to come, man, got to come now, please, finish me, finish me!"

Reid groaned and began to fuck Cooper at a more conventional pace, and the big man proved himself just as vulnerable to the speed as he had said, for he moaned, began to move quick as he could all of a sudden and then he arced his head back and roared out his pleasure! "Ahh-ahh-rahhh-rahhh-RAH-OOOGGGGGUHHHH!"

"Oh, oh, ah, AGH-AH-AH-AH-HAH, GAHHHH!" Cooper joined him in the delight, and as Reid flooded his bowels, Cooper sprayed Reid's stomach and his own with liquid jets of hot spunk, a symphony of male rut, and when Reid stopped and slumped down onto Cooper, only a few dregs of unspent jizz remained in Cooper's prong to drizzle out between their pressed-together bodies.

"Oh, oh, oh, man!" Reid gasped huskily after a moment. "I've been saving up that load for four years or more!"

"I know what you mean." Cooper groaned. "A round with the hand just doesn't do the same thing."

"You'll never have to use your hand again." Reid assured him. "We have a long, cold winter to get through."

"I'm really glad I found your door to knock on." The two men got up and went to the bed they'd share from now on.

"I thought it was Hank and Madeline, that they'd changed their mind and come back." Reid admitted after a pause when they'd settled in. "I opened the door and found you there, I practically shit my pants. They'll come back. They'll have to."

Cooper wondered if he should tell, finally decided. "I wouldn't count on that. You said they'd headed south."

"Yeah."

"Well, our group had some survivors that came out of Phoenix. When the bombs hit Southern California, the fallout all across the Southwestern states was incredibly heavy. They hit more bases in Arizona and New Mexico, too, there was a major air base there, you know. Anyhow, hundreds of miles of dead earth is all that's left across there. If they went into that, well... Some of the radioactivity is going to be around a very long time."

"You think they...."

"Unless they took a Geiger counter that working...."

"They didn't."

"...then they probably walked right into it. Poor bastards." Cooper had had a very good reason for walking straight west when he'd left his former group. It was his only direction other than north and approaching winter had made that impossible.

Reid was quiet, then he got up and took the bottle of brandy again, brought it and the glasses back to bed with him. There was just enough left to fill their glasses with an inch apiece. "I was saving this for them, when they came back." he said. "But we might as well share it instead."

"Yeah." Cooper took his glass, looked at Reid and put out his glass for a toast. "To absent friends."

"To absent friends." Reid said and they drank in silent reverence, a solemn toast to that ill-fated couple, and to all who had gone before. Then, they settled in to sleep in the glow of the dying fire to await the dawning of the new day.

THE END

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