Max was lingering in the remaining wisps of a dream. He and Tul were playing a video game but the game made no sense to Max so he kept losing. Finally, a laughing Tul crawled off his gaming chair to straddle Max's lap and kiss the pout off his face.

"Better?" Tul asked with that wonderful crooked grin of his.

"Mmm hmm." Max hummed with a smile in return. 

Suddenly, Tul wasn't in his lap anymore. All Max could see was his face.

"Stay- Max! -tay!  Coming! I'm - " Max's eyes opened to the bedroom ceiling. Now he was awake. Without question.

A grunt and he slowly sat up rubbing his face as his head replayed the last call with Tul over and over for his emotional inconvenience. It was a garbled mess filled with static. He knew there were missing words. A lot of them but he was counting on Tul to be, well, Tul. Sensible and smart with a gift for seeing solid solutions.

"Damn, that was a lot of Ss." He grumbled to himself. It was true though. Tul would know the cabin was safer than the cities. Max held on to the faith that Tul was alive and would do his damnedest to get there. 

Now he just had to wait. And there lay the the rub. Max was a man of action. Knowing Tul was out there, possibly alone, in a world that had decided there were no rules? It was eating him up knowing he couldn't help.

"Time to make the donuts." he muttered. His lips twitched into a smile of their own volition. It was a line out of an old commercial he and Tul had seen on YouTube. For some reason, it had struck them both as hysterically funny. They'd laughed until they cried.  Now, just saying the line pulled up his mood.

The morning was gorgeous as Max wandered off the deck to empty his full bladder. A few very satisfying moments later, he was back inside starting an old coffee pot on his stove. Wash up, dress and the coffee was ready.

Today, the coffee was trying to eat it's way out of the cup. Yesterday, it looked like tea it was so weak. A moment's longing glance at his top of the line coffee maker sitting uselessly on the counter and he returned to the deck.

The power had died 16 days ago. So he was trying to learn to make coffee the old fashioned way but he seemed incapable of hitting a decent middle ground. No pun intended.

He leaned against the railing and looked at his cabin. Max had bought the cabin and it's 15 acres with his bonus from Together With Me. Money well spent. He and Tul had spent time there just hiding from their fame. Taking a week to just be themselves without worries about paparazzi or scandal.  For Max though, his cabin was his reset button. The entertainment industry lived by the phrase 'Hurry up and wait.' It was hard on him and over time it would build up until he needed to let go. So about once a year, Max would disappear to his cabin. He'd hike, swim in the small very cold river near by and just let the silence sooth his soul.

He'd arrived at the cabin and gotten stuck there. Yay, martial law. Why they declared martial law was obvious but it didn't make Max any happier. His family was in a safe little community away from the population centers so he thought he could sneak up to the cabin for just a few days. Hit the reset. His mom and little brother were staying with his uncle. Mom had always been close to her brother and he knew she felt safer at his uncle's home. He also knew his uncle would do anything to take care of them. He'd been on the mountain two days when the true death toll numbers were leaked and all hell broke lose.

He'd come close to getting himself shot as he screamed at a Sargeant who refused to let him leave town. The screaming hadn't turned the rifles on him but reving his engine to run the barricade had. The Sargeant understood his panic. Everyone had someone they cared about in this mess but he wouldn't disobey his orders either.

Max had been surprised at how large the end of  a gun got when it was pointed at you. M4 barrels were suddenly cannon-sized. The hair on his neck was standing up. Max swallowed hard as the Sargeant leaned toward his window.

"This fight you can't win and you're no use to anyone dead. If you love them, wait. All this will end soon one way or another." he said softly through his ventilator hood. "Do you understand?"

Max had torn his eyes off the guns and looked at the man who was trying to save his life. He nodded. Jerky, staccato motions.

"Yeah, I-I get it." Another hard swallow.

"Go home." He slapped the top of the car causing Max to damn near jump out of his skin. " Turn it around! Let's go! Let's go!" the man had bellowed and Max had complied.

Max was painfully aware of the guns following him as he u-turned to head back to the cabin. As the adrenaline began to wear off, he started shaking badly. He pulled off the road trying to just breath. He had been one calm Sargeant away from death and he knew it. It took him 30 minutes to calm down enough to keep driving.

Max hadn't left the mountain since that day. He'd chopped wood, cleared land for the garden he knew they would need now and every day at 1 pm he stood on the out cropping a mile below his cabin. It was the best place to get a signal. He'd wait 30 minutes or so for any kind of signal or message. A text, a call - anything. Nothing since Tul's last call.

Today had been no different than the 18 days preceeding it. Max slowly walked back to the cabin. His food was getting low. While the stores had been ransacked, maybe there would be something left. People's houses? A lot of the houses in the town below were empty.  They had belonged to those who died of DV. Maybe they had usable items and food?

Mentally, all he could see were the guns pointed at him. "That won't put food on the table, Max. Time to toughen up. How are you going to feed Tul when he gets here?" and that turned the tide. Max could be brave for Tul. Face his fear and be smart about it. Time to think, make lists of things he should be looking for.

"Putting toilet paper on the top of that list." he muttered as he slowly wound his way back up to the cabin.