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his
spare time. Photography was his discipline of choice but he also
spent time drawing and painting.
    Between his full time job at the museum and spending
the rest of his time in his loft studio, Tom had enjoyed his life
in New York for the most part. His social life, however, was nearly
non-existent. He preferred to pursue his art with as little
distraction from outside influences as was humanly possible. That
isn’t to say he was a self-ordained monk by any means, but the sum
total of his socializing was limited mostly to the occasional night
out bar hopping with a small circle of coworkers from the museum
and the even rarer one night stand with some girl he’d meet at a
bar. Tom adamantly refused to get involved in any serious
relationships. He had a career to think of first.
    But his life seemed lackluster and he still wasn’t
making a living at what he wanted to do. He had amassed a
considerable body of work after living five years in the city but
had found very few galleries interested in displaying any of it. In
fact, he had only sold one piece of art in all the time he’d been
there—a black and white portrait of one of his coworkers from the
museum.
    The job at the museum became less and less
challenging and more of a grind than anything else as time passed
by. But at least one good thing came out of his employment there:
he had made up his mind to become an art teacher — perhaps to
specialize in art history. He decided to move back to Smithtown and
eventually enrolled at Ohio State University to pursue his MFA. OSU
had an excellent art program and was located only a couple of hours
away in Ohio’s capital and largest city—
    A deer suddenly darted out into the road and Tom
swerved hard to the right to avoid plowing into it. The sudden move
caused the Jeep to spin a full 360 degrees. He watched the white
tail bound into the woods and felt his heart race wildly as he
finally managed to bring the car under control.
    This abrupt reality check made Tom snap out of his
reverie. He had driven over three hours and still hadn’t seen a
single vehicle or a single soul. It had started snowing again and
was becoming more and more difficult to see the road. He decided he
would stop off in Youngstown long enough to eat and wait to see if
the snow was going to let up any.
    Tom pulled off onto the first exit for downtown
Youngstown. Five minutes later, he was driving down one of the main
streets in search of a place with something substantial to eat. He
finally opted for a gas station with a mini mart. He pulled up
beside the entrance, got out and went inside.
    It was at that moment that Tom nearly lost it
completely. He took one look at the deserted store and realized
that it looked just like the one he had been at in Columbus. In a
single sickening moment, he considered the notion of being the last
man on earth. The proverbial Omega Man. Feeling weak in the knees
and beaten down, he leaned over and rested his head on the counter,
feeling tears come to his eyes.
    His family had vanished into thin air along with the
rest of mankind and now here he was in this goddamn deserted mini
mart in Youngstown searching for a decent meal.
    It was as daunting as it was absurd.
    Why had this happened? he thought. And when was it
going to end? Would he ever see Peg and the kids again? As he
thought back to the whole unreal scenario he had left behind in
Columbus, he now found it difficult to believe it had ever
happened.
    But the ten thousand dollar question came down to
this: had he made the right decision traveling to NYC while his
family could at this moment be in harm’s way somewhere back in
Columbus?
    Tom shivered and dashed the impending urge to break
down totally. What sobered him up was the innate desire to live and
a compulsion to find out what was happening. He was only human—what
other options did he have? He could either continue standing there
bawling like a baby until he froze to death or be grateful that he
was still