Todd and I went back decades as friends. He was closer to me than a brother, a fact I knew because I have brothers. If Todd and one of my brothers were drowning and I could only save one of them it would be Todd. We were that close. We were so close that Melinda didn’t even bother covering up when he’d arrived.

Melinda loved Todd nearly as much as she loved me. When Tommy was so sick and I was stuck off buying supplies, Todd stayed with Mel and Annie while Mel nursed Tommy through the fever. When I got home and got caught up with the news we all sat down to the best dinner we’d had in months.

Todd told me that night how he felt. “Derrick I have a confession. I’m in love with your wife.”

I looked at him as I passed him the pipe. The smoke flowed out with my words. “Yeah, a lot of people love her, man,” I smiled at him but I already knew what he meant. He was shaking his head and not smiling. I shook myself mentally, realizing this had become a serious conversation.

“No, Der’, I’m IN love with her ... like you are.”

“Ah ... I ... see.” I said and watched the river ripple past and listened to the forest around us. My best friend was in love with my wife. I looked back at Todd. He reloaded the pipe from his stash and handed it to me, waiting with a match. I put the pipe to my lips and Todd struck the match.

I filled my lungs and passed the pipe. “So ... what do you want to do about it?”

“I don’t know, man. I’ve been going crazy waiting for you to come home. I mean, I’ve always loved her, but now something feels different. It’s more serious to me.

“Staying here helping Mel -- without you here -- was different. I really feel like I got to know her more and ... I like what I learned. It’s deep inside me, man.”

Mel was back by the cabin, relaxing and reading to Tommy in the hammock. Annie was tormenting the chickens. Nobody could hear us. “Yeah, I can see that. It would be easy to feel pretty domestic. So answer my question, Bud. What do you want to do?”

“Nothing! I mean, it’s not like I want to take her away from you. I just had to tell you because I felt guilty about it.”

That idea made me wonder. Could Mel be taken from me? “Have you told her?”

“NO! Jesus Derrick! Why would I do that? I’m not trying to spoil your life. Like I said, I just knew I had to tell you.”

Just then Melinda called over and asked us if we had checked the fish traps. We didn’t talk as we trudged through the brush along the river bank. There were three traps and two of them were empty. The third held four nice trout. We pulled them out, cleaned them and carried the string back to the cabin.

After the kids were asleep the three of us shared a couple of pipes and I watched them interact. Todd chose the tree house for the night and I cuddled with Mel under the quilt she had sewn last winter in the house.

“Honey? Are you still awake?” Mel’s whisper brought me out of my doze.

“Mm ... yeah. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing, but don’t you think Todd is acting weird?”

“No.”

“But he acts like a stranger, kind of, didn’t you notice?”

“Well, he’s just being a friend. You’ve just made another conquest, my love.”

She sat up and looked down at me. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Can’t you tell? I know it’s been a few years since you were ‘on the market’, but think about it. Imagine you are single and Todd was acting the way he did.” I let that sink in a second before adding, “He is trying to keep his feelings in check. I guess he thinks he should keep a distance between him and you. Things will even out in a day or so.”

Melinda returned to her position spooned up against me. I reached over to fondle her offside breast. “I love Todd. You know that, but...” Her words drifted to silence. I could almost hear the wheels turning as I drifted off into dreamland.

The next morning before Todd and I went out to check the traps again Melinda poured us a second cup of coffee. I noticed she had put on her light robe when she rose. Normally she went nude like Todd and I do (except for my belt and bandolier when I go hunting or gathering) unless the weather is inclement. Todd seemed out of sorts. I delayed leaving because I had made the situation worse by telling her. I hoped to fix it but I didn’t know how.

Todd got up and gathered his weapons and gear. I did the same and Melinda hugged Todd out the door before kissing and hugging me. Telling us to be careful, she closed the door behind us.

We worked our way along the river again. The traps were empty so I suggested we do a little hunting. After a sip from the canteen we started away from the water and moved deeper into the forest. The ‘Purge’ left one good thing behind: no bugs! The trade-off seemed to be that it mutated most of the species it hadn’t killed. With no stinging insects now going nude held no danger except from weather and the occasional thorn.

Rounding a large boulder, Todd suddenly stopped. Following, I came to a halt as well. He motioned for me to go around the other side of the rock. So I started away. When I reached the other side I could see what had drawn Todd’s attention. A low copse of brush lay about a stone’s throw away. Something was agitating the bushes and then stilling a while before repeating it.

I nodded at Todd and he crept forward. I readied an arrow. After what seemed like forever, the brush suddenly stopped dead. Todd had been sensed or seen. I drew my bow. Todd was by then nearly to the copse. He turned his head slightly and I altered my aim. His hand lanced forward and I saw his biceps tighten. He’d hit something!

He jumped to his feet and levered the spear around. I recognized the rust colored pelt on the mutant pig. As Todd held the spear down, I moved forward. Standing over it, I used my knife to cut its throat. The pig ceased writhing and we set to skinning and gutting it.

A small fire sizzled up a few slices of pork for our lunch. With the flatbread Mel had packed for us we made greasy sandwiches and sipped my homebrewed beer. I looked at Todd and decided to shatter his silence.

“So did you decide what you want to do about your feelings for Mel yet?” He looked at me and I thought he was going to cry.

“Fuck, man! I told you I don’t want to do anything. I just had to tell you.”

“I know what you said. I appreciate your honesty. A lot of guys would have just hit on her for better or worse. She would have sent them packing, in case you were wondering.”

Todd barked a short laugh. “Yeah, I bet they would! She’s so...” He stopped himself with a sudden flush of embarrassment. I smiled.

“Yes she is,” I agreed. “I charged up a pipe and lit it.

Passing it across, I let the smoke drift from my mouth with my words. “You got it bad, my friend. I recognize the symptoms. Been precisely there, done that too, you know?”

He just shook his head and looked away. “Maybe I should leave,” he mumbled.

“No, you shouldn’t ‘just leave’!” I told him.

“Well, for a while then. I can’t stand it this way.”

“Hey, just let it simmer a while, Todd. But it might help you to get away for a while. Maybe you could go and see how high the river is upstream for us. The rains are coming soon and it wouldn’t take much for it to flood us out. That’ll be an overnight trip for you anyway; or take as long as you need. You’ll go nuts unless you can really own the fact that you love Melinda. You told me and I accept it and still want you as a friend. More than a friend, too, you know that.” Todd blushed and glanced at me but ducked away quickly. It seemed as if he was suddenly shy about something. “We can talk more in a couple of days. Just think about this and realize I’m aware of it too: Like I said, a lot of guys would have just hit on her. You are too good a friend. You love her – and me – enough to control your impulses and you waited to tell me. I just want you to know we love you too. Both of us love you, man.” We stood up and hugged before heading back. I was surprised to notice Todd’s dick twitched when we embraced. It twitched against my own cock.

My mind blanked for a second. Then I shook off the feeling.

Suddenly, Todd acted like taking off a couple of days was the best idea he’d heard in months. In fact, since the pig we’d killed was small, he took a haunch of that and the rest of the food and gear we’d brought hunting. He left right then! I took the rest of the animal home and explained to Melinda.

“Shit! Why did this have to happen?” she huffed. I had no explanation she didn’t already understand. She heaved a sigh and went about everything she had to do before bed. I watched her. Standing at the sink she splashed the dishwater around, her gaze fixed on the forest outside the window.

After she was finished at the sink she came to sit with me on the porch. My arm went automatically over her shoulder and she found her favorite snuggle spot under it. I sipped warm beer and she had her home made wine. She didn’t reply when I said, “You know, this doesn’t have to be a bad thing, Mel.” My mind had taken a new path but I had needed to explore it before sharing it.

I thought about the way it was before the ‘Purge’. I was only fifteen when people started dying from the poor air. There were already battles being fought over ‘natural’ water (as if there’s any difference between it and recycled or desalinated water). By the time I graduated from high school the air quality report was an accepted part of daily life. Not a lot of difference between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’.

It didn’t take long to switch from paper masks to full face-covering masks with filters. Some days we were told to stay inside with the scrubbers on until there was an ‘all clear’ signal. By the time I turned twenty four the world had changed utterly. Cities were wastelands. Communications were spotty everywhere. But the air was clearing up because the factories, mines and other industries had died along with most of the animals.

All the powerful machinery mankind had developed ground to a crawl and mostly to a complete halt. The infrastructure couldn’t support the population and even more people died. Millions of people died. Cities emptied as food ran out. For some reason when everything started to fall apart was when people started forgetting to dress when they woke up.

The cops tried to keep things under control at first, but ‘indecent exposure’ soon became one of many minor infractions that were ignored in light of more serious crimes. People even mostly stopped complaining about naked people once the novelty wore off. Where once pajamas and an unbelted robe raised eyebrows, and drew complaints, total nudity was virtually ignored.

Oh, there were still the ultra-conservatives, mostly religious folk still flogging the Bible and End of Days crap.

Outside the cities people split into smaller groups or went alone. There were battles between clans and more people died. Melinda and I grabbed the kids and got ready to take off. We had a good cabin on some land that was pretty inaccessible.

It had been in my family for generations, not that land deeds were recognized any more, but we knew the place. It was the best opportunity I knew where maybe we could keep ourselves secure. Survival for real. I had rigged up some solar panels there so we had some power. We had to take turns using anything electric, but it was power. I had some other ideas that I wanted to try too. I knew, too, that the air would be breathable up there.

“What about Todd?” I suddenly asked. Melinda looked at me.

“Go get him,” she said simply.

Of course telling Todd was at the top of my ‘to-do’ list, I just hadn’t done it yet. I hurried to his cold squatter’s apartment and told him what we were doing and invited him to join us. “We’re headed up to the cabin. You’re my best bud, Todd. I don’t want to leave you behind. I’d like you to come along. You’d be a big help too,” I added.

He gathered whatever he couldn’t stand to leave behind and stuffed it all into a leather pack. We went back to my house together. Another hour was spent loading up the wagons and truck. The truck was solar and it wouldn’t be able to manage the more difficult trails later, but we needed it to begin with. The wagons are solar as well, but they have a narrow enough wheel base to track where we’re going. The wagons are four detachable discrete units of articulation. The programming works so that each trailing unit tracks exactly behind the one ahead. The lead unit had a remote and the others could be set to follow the leader. In the AI mode, the entire train can be sent from one ‘known’ place -- a place it had logged in its memory -- to another by itself and will return if instructed to do so.

We still have some of the wonders of our collapsed civilization. But, hell, maybe it’s like some people were saying. Maybe it’s just our country. Maybe it’s just our state, or our county, or city that has collapsed. We really don’t know what’s going on around the world.

But we know better. That would be too much to hope for. No, we watched it all fade. Then we couldn’t watch any more because TV was over. The internet worked for a time until the servers went down. Batteries stopped charging or simply died. Most technology was effectively dead.

After about an hour, we took off our breathing masks. I’d been right about the air. When the going got so bad we had to leave the truck, we cached the things packed in the back of it in the woods. I would bring two wagons back the next day to get the rest of it. The next months were spent settling in. Todd and I got away exploring our little kingdom right away. We set alarms and snares for any human intruders. We set snares and traps for game and fish.

Melinda wove the fish traps from the tough river reeds and we set them in the stream. The kids usually stayed with her but they sometimes went with us. Those days were days off for everybody really.

The kids couldn’t keep up with us if we were traveling our normal speed. So we spent a lot of time near the river meadow, fishing and practicing the bow and spear. Tommy and Annie each had junior sizes of both weapons. The lack of clothing didn’t bother either of them. They’d basically been born to it. Tommy was seven by then and his sister was four.

While we were away with the kids, Melinda told me she spent a lot of time in the warm water of the springs, just relaxing. No kids, no cleaning, no cooking or sewing. After maximum hydration, she might take a nap or take her own ‘nature walk’, usually returning with berries or some other treat for us all.

Once in a while Todd would take off for a few days or a week, bringing back new ‘treasures’ or a new kind of surviving creature we hadn’t yet seen before. That was the way we lived for more than a year. Now Todd has fallen in love with my wife. After thinking about that a while I realized I should have expected it.

That evening as we sat together on the porch, Mel sipped her wine and looked up at me. “What’s got you so deep in thought tonight?”

“Oh, I’m just thinking about Todd.”

“What about him?”

“I’m pondering his feelings for you. How do you feel about it? You had some time to think about it without me around.” Mel sipped again. Then she asked me to load a pipe. I did and we smoked it.

“I’m not sure. I mean, like I said, I love him like you do. I’m flattered he thinks so much of me that...” She sighed. “Then I think about what you said about imagining if I was single. God, I guess if I didn’t have you and the kids, I’d give Todd a serious tumble. He’s a nice guy, he’s smart, he’s clean and he’s pretty hot, if you want to know the truth.” I had to smile. She was clearly embarrassed. Or, maybe it was something other than embarrassment. She hesitated and added in a lower voice, “His cock looks nice too.”

“Hmm... ‘methinks the Lady hath hot panties for our friend’,” I joked. Melinda elbowed me – hard. “Hey! I’m kidding!”

“Yeah, well...” she replied. “Besides, I haven’t seen a pair of panties for at least six months.”

“Okay. That’s enough. Sorry I made light of it. The way things are now, this could be a potentially serious situation,” I said. I tipped my beer up and left the residue in the jar. I used Mason jars for my beer and was careful when I ‘bottled’ it. “And, like I said, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.” I offered more wine as I went to get another jar. She accepted.

When I got back she had loaded the pipe again and we lit it off. Five minutes later it was out. We smoked another pipe.

Neither of us spoke for all that time. I decided to give things a little push. “It’s serious because – quite honestly – we need Todd. At least we need somebody to help me do a lot of things. I don’t know anybody else I would trust to fill that role. But more importantly, he’s a friend! He’s even really family now! All we have for sure are the five of us. We have to exist out here. We might meet other people sometime, but for now it’s just us.”

“I know, but where are you going with this?”

“Todd is talking about taking off for good. I don’t want that! It would make everything harder. And, hell, I’d miss him, too.”

She agreed sincerely and then she shut up again for a little while. After a couple of minutes she stood up and said she needed to check the fish traps. I would have offered to help but I needed to watch the kids. She also obviously wanted to go alone anyway. I made sure she took a good knife and a spear with her.

The kids snored peacefully. I watched them a while and thought more about what I wanted in all this. I didn’t have much objection to the need to hunt and fish for our food and husbanding our primitive (compared to our former house) shelter. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but that’s just the way it is now. I dream about reaching a place where we can live quietly, raise some more kinds of crops and some kind of animals (though I don’t recognize some of the wildlife I’ve seen).

I want to live there and love my wife and family. And, as I told Melinda, Todd is a part of that family now. As long as we’re here, we can hope another woman wanders along, but, like I said, this place is safe because it isn’t near any common trails or what’s left of the roads. So a herd of nomadic females dropping by was about as likely as waking up to find out the whole Apocalypse was a bad dream.

In a few years Annie will hit puberty and she’ll need a man. Todd could be that man, but that wouldn’t be for at least eleven years or more, and he’s more than twenty years older than her too.

As near as I could tell it was early October then, despite the heat and the lushness of the forests. The climate is definitely fucked up. If we were to leave here I would want to wait until spring. My reason is that I would like go north, up into Canada, or what’s left of it. The air is supposed to be better and the game larger and more plentiful. And perhaps in our travels we would encounter a stray woman or two for Todd.

But until then, we were the three musketeers. And I hated seeing Todd in such need for love to be returned to him. Not to mention horniness. Oops! I just mentioned it.

It wasn’t only Todd who was horny either. I knew I was and Mel told me she was, “ ... leaving snail trails...” in her wake. With the kids it had become difficult even at home. Here, in our primitive state, we could still discreetly manage, but then there’s Todd. He slept many nights in my old tree house a football field away through the trees. Otherwise he slept in the hammock right outside.

So, no extra women around and Todd in dire need ... What to do? I faced the fact that the bottom line I was approaching was whether I could share Melinda with Todd. Bluntly, if Melinda agrees, will Todd make love to her or just fuck her? But if Todd is in love with her he will make love to her. Will he be better than I am? Can Todd make her come harder than I do? His dick is a little bigger than mine, at least when it’s soft; I haven’t seen it erect since we were kids.

Does any of that matter if people love each other? I got hard thinking about watching the two of them together. I thought briefly of my hug with Todd but chalked it up to his general horniness.

I let the kids sleep and took my erection out to the porch. My imagination was free-wheeling by then and my horniness increased. I watched Melinda as she gracefully worked her way back to the house, my heart full of hope (and my hand wrapped around a stiff dick!).

Her hair was damp and she was wet and chilled from the river. “I slipped! I gotta get dry!” She handed me a stringer of six trout and a crawdad. I cheered quietly. She rejoined me after she got warmer. I was salting thein fish. The crawfish was still healthy and she had placed it in a nice ‘jail jar’ without a lid. I’ll take him back to the river and anchor him. He’d keep until we find more or until we decide to split him as an appetizer. Or until Annie adopts him.

I wrapped Mel in my arms and she sighed again. Her head turned so she could look into my eyes. “If you want me to do it I’ll fuck Todd once in a while,” she said.

I frowned at her. “Wait a second honey,” I said. “First of all, it isn’t about me at all really. This is something you and Todd need to deal with first. I’m tangential in the situation. Todd confessed his feelings to me and I accept and understand them. After all, I know how easy you are to fall in love with.” I kissed her. “I told you because it wasn’t fair that you didn’t know. If you were ignorant of his feelings you might do something – flirting or (since we’re all usually naked) accidentally tempting him with your body. I didn’t want to see him hurt or you to feel guilty later when you did find out how he felt.” I got more beer and she followed me in for her wine.

“The question is – and I want you to be completely honest – do YOU want to, not ‘fuck’, but ‘make love’ with Todd; take him as a lover? Remember, he doesn’t just want to jump your bones, he’s IN LOVE with you. He isn’t after a one night stand with you. It would be more like him becoming a second husband.”

She continued to hold my eyes but her face turned as red as an apple. She just sat there breathing and looking at me. I finished my beer and she tipped up her jar. When I returned with two more beers and sat again she looked at me. Looking away she said, “Yes, I think making love with Todd would be ... well, a lot of things: fun, hot, naughty (even if you do know about it), and every other way to say it. I understand what he means to us, to the kids and especially to you. I think he loves you more than he could love me.”

“Well, no, but, yeah, I said I love Todd. He’s even told me loves me. It’s just that. That’s all. We’re brothers.” I admit I had begun to wonder about that too. I knew there was something there, but I couldn’t look at it yet.

She was quiet and got that thoughtful tilt to her head for a second and then she took my hand, slipping it between her legs with a grin. Her honey was leaking profusely. She kissed me and said, “I don’t want to do it unless you’re there too. I don’t think I could anyway.”

“You want a threesome?”

“Yup. Them’s my rules and it’s my pussy so I get to make ‘em!” She pulled me to my feet and led me to the old couch out in the yard by the hammock where the kids wouldn’t hear us. We fucked ... Hard! Then we made slow love with a lot of kissing and whispered teasing about threesomes.

My lips were around her nipple when she murmured in my ear, “I can’t wait to watch you suck his cock after he comes in me. It’ll be all gooey with his come and mine...”

“WHAT? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Hey, Buster! If you can share me then I want to share you too. You and Todd love each other! I think you need to explore that.”

“Well, I’m all for sharing, but it would be appropriate for you to share me with another woman, not with the guy I’m sharing you with!”

“You mean, ‘the guy with whom I’m sharing you’.”

“Yeah, okay, my grammar goes to shit when I’m shocked.”

“Derrick, calm down. Come here again.” For some reason I was hard again. She mounted me and had no trouble sticking me back inside herself. She sat up and gave me a crisp kiss, without tongue. “You were going soft but now you’re hard as ever.” She winked at me and started moving on me. She didn’t go up and down as much as back and forth and side to side. “Look, haven’t you ever been curious about what it would be like? To suck a cock, I mean?”

I had to be honest. “Of course I’ve wondered about it, and before you ask, I’ve wondered if, instead of one of your dildos sliding into my ass, it was a warm, hard cock attached to a hot guy, since you claim it’s a lot better. But that’s as far as it went, I wondered. It’s just not me.”

She grinned. “Would it have to be a ‘hot guy’ for you to let him fuck your ass? What about a guy you love and who loves you?” I grabbed her ribs and shoved my erection up into her as far as it would go. She gulped but she laughed and with a few gyrations of her hips she had me unloading into her yet again. I knew she’d keep it warm for me to lick out of her later or in the morning. She ‘dismounted’ and sat back beside me on a towel.

“Hell, yeah, he’d have to be hot!” I joked. “He couldn’t have a dick much bigger than mine, though or it would hurt too much.”

“Have you ever seen Todd with a hard on?”

“Yeah, but it was a long time ago. I’m bigger now, so he probably is too.”

“How come you saw?” I grimaced at her.

“Well ... we were measuring, okay?” I shouldn’t have felt embarrassed admitting that to Mel, but I did. My cheeks burned.

“Did you measure each other?”

“No. Todd measured himself and then when I got as hard as I could get, he measured me.”

“How did you get ‘as hard as you could be’? Did you like him touching you?”

“STOP! That’s enough! It was years ago! That’s all I remember. I got myself hard, okay?” I had to calm down. I didn’t understand my anger ... then.

I got up and went inside. The kids needed to be checked anyway. They had wriggled around as usual but they were still breathing and dreaming. I remember how it felt when Todd held me against the ruler. We were twelve years old. It was the first time I knew of that somebody besides me touched it. Of course it felt good, but I was nervous about admitting it out loud.

When I got back to the kitchen Mel had come inside to the table. I passed her to see what we had for a snack. “I’m sorry for prying. It’s none of my business,” she said.

“It’s barely even my business. I haven’t thought about that for years,” I replied. I sat down and scooted close to her.

“It’s one of those memories I don’t waste storage space on. If it disappears entirely it won’t matter. By the way, I honestly can’t remember how big either of us was.” I smiled at her and kissed her.

She took my head in her hands and stared straight into my eyes. “Der’, I seriously want you to think about having a physical relationship with Todd. If I’m going to have one, and you and I have one, you and he should have one too.” Her voice was low because she didn’t want to wake the kids. But its tone was kind of husky and mesmerizing too.

“With three people naked in bed together it will be inevitable that we’ll all be touching each other anyway. A relationship that has me with either you or Todd on a given night seems unbalanced; it’s like a two sided triangle. It needs that third side to be complete.” She made the shape with her hands and lowered it to surround my cock inside it. She scissored her hands together and stroked my length.

I was shaking my head, but she let go of my dick and took hold of my arm and squeezed. “Please, love, open your heart completely. Why should you not be IN love with Todd too?” Then she stood there as my soggy brain understood that she really meant what she was saying. We had never spoken of things like this before. My expression must have changed because she smiled happily and nodded. She continued in the same hypnotic tone of voice.

“I was going to just repress anything I felt for him the way I did with you at first. With you, once I was convinced you were one of the good guys, I let those feelings blossom fully. Now I know enough about Todd to know he also is one of you good guys. And you tell me he is in love with me and then you give me the freedom and even encourage me to examine my heart too. You want me to express my love for him physically; take him inside me intimately. When he comes back ... well, you just wait and see. Just go with the flow, okay? You promise?”

“I promise to let you be as free as you need to be. If you want me to, I will be there to watch you with your new lover. We can call it our second wedding night.”

“No, I don’t just want you watching. You made me look into my heart. When I did, anything I thought about always included you too. Nothing else seemed right. I want you there sharing -- truly sharing in all ways – with both of us. Maybe not the first time; though if you call it our wedding night you absolutely have to join in!

“I told you I’ve imagined it but now I really WANT to see you and Todd make love. You’ve called us the Three Musketeers. That means it’s one for all and all for one, doesn’t it?”