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you."
    Sam choked with emotion, couldn't speak, and only stared at his little girl, so grown up like the teenager she had been before the end.
    "Don't worry about any silly calendar or dates," she laughed, "you got somewhere you gotta be or something? Tickets for a concert or baseball game?"
    "No," he finally got out around tears, "but I won't even be able to remember your birthday, or my wedding anniversary, or Thanksgiving for God's sake!"
    Rachel shook her head, "Well I guess you'll just have to remember all those things every day."
    Sam felt his daughter leaving him and refused to look away as she simply faded before his eyes, incredibly patting Molly on the head at the end. She had loved dogs so.
    "Yes, indeed," he said. "Why not?"
    He went to a grocery store and he was able to find canned turkey, cranberry sauce, boxed stuffing, gravy in a jar, and even some powdered mashed potatoes. After getting his food and cooking supplies, he turned back towards the river, back tracking until he found a scenic park overlooking a bend in the slowly moving water.
    It was only a little after noon, but they were done for the day. It was a holiday, no more traveling on Thanksgiving he decided. Sam prepared his feast on one of the grills and then ate with relish until he was near bursting, even letting the dogs have their fill.
    Sam spent the rest of the afternoon listening to James Brown on the SUV's CD player while he fired arrows down the length of the river until they were all gone.
    It was one of the best days he'd had in a long time.
    *******
    He had just recently discovered audio books and couldn't understand why he hadn't thought of them earlier. Nothing made the monotony of driving fade like a fascinating tale. He also yearned for the sound of another human voice and forgot for a while that he was alone. Whenever he exhausted his supply of audio-books he would stop at another library and pick out more. Sam learned about the Peloponnesian War, how to make his love life more satisfying, how to enhance his memory, listened to a biography of Adolf Rupp, and dozens of works of fiction.
    They continued northeast for several more weeks hitting the sea and then having to bounce back into the interior in order to proceed north and avoid the large coastal cities. Some of these cities actually appeared to still have fires going. Or maybe they were new fires like the dairy barn, he thought.
    Georgia gave way to South Carolina which gave way to North Carolina. The days were getting much longer and hotter. All of nature seemed to rejoice in the end of winter and not notice the absence of mankind.
    Sam decided to visit the Outer Banks in North Carolina. He knew he would be in bad shape if a storm caught him, but the weather was calm and he'd learned how to read a pocket barometer and spot the signs of impending bad weather.
    Although he had traveled this coastline before, he was surprised at how much had changed. Many of the piers and houses near the water were now gone. Thick piles of blown sand covered parts of numerous roads causing detours. Sam even saw a gigantic cruise ship turned nearly on its side at rest not far out from shore. It hadn't been there a year ago and must have been totally adrift for years in the ocean before currents and waves washed it up on the coast. He thought about taking a boat out to explore the ship, but dismissed the idea after imagining all the confined bodies aboard.
    Sam loved beach bars and the ocean, one of the reasons he stayed near the water as much as possible. He allowed himself to stop at a beach bar around noon each day, but limited himself to two drinks, presuming the bar's alcohol supply hadn't been looted completely. He never visited these bars in the evening because the temptation was too great to have more than his two drinks and then be unprepared for the night.
    There were fewer bodies near the ocean and Sam supposed it was because they had either been washed out to sea or covered by blowing