NOT WITH A WHIMPER
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM
The metal skeleton made up his mind for him. A huge metal box of girders, the walls all gone, the wires a memory, the people who had been there less than that.
He was in a town. Definitely a town, for the first time in nearly a year. Not just a building or two, but an actual town. How big a town? No way to tell now, he'd had enough trouble, what with the moss and vines and overgrowth and even small trees distorting the rubble, to even figure out this much!
He sighed. Nature was taking over everything again. Maybe that was why it had all happened, to let the animals recover and the lands wash themselves clean and the oceans purge themselves.
Why it had happened was his favorite way of wasting time while his legs pumped up and down, carrying him along, when nothing much was going on. He'd been working as a plumber for God's sake, on the day it had all begun. Down inside some old lady's cellar working on her hot water heater, surrounded by her shelves of preserves, when the entire damned world went ka-blooey!
Whatever had happened had trapped him inside that small space, a four foot by ten foot square of cement. He'd had air (or he wouldn't be here now!) from somewhere, and he'd had food and liquid (if a sticky sort) with the preserves the old lady had put up. And he had had his tool box, which held a small saw and a hammer. He began to work on the blockage, working to clear the rubble away, to free himself when it became clear nobody was coming by to free him.
Getting out of there took him nearly a month, near as he could tell. During most of that time, he had listened to the sounds from outside. The first day had been non-stop explosions, small and large, near and far. Sounded like a fucking battle going on outside. The next days were nearly as bad, but it had slowed down a little at a time, until, about the mid-point, they had nearly stopped altogether. He'd heard a few gunshots one day, a couple of men shouting another day, and after two days of silence, had heard a child crying forlornly for hours and hours. The child had stopped, and had not resumed. That had been his last human sound.
But that last week, he'd heard nothing but the sounds of animals. A cat meowing. A dog barking. Birds singing. That had been the sounds to which he had broken out and viewed the new world.
Desolation, as far as he could see. Everything that had once been a fair-sized town was now piles of rubble. Some of it was smoking, but that was it. And the only people around him were dead, and had been for some time. Bloating, decaying bodies, they stank like hell!
He had stayed around only long enough to forage through the ruins of the nearby Kwik-Stop, gathered up enough food to live on, and got the heck out of there! He wasn't sure what had killed everyone for one thing, and for another, dead people carry disease and he wasn't up to burying them all.
Thus had started his new life. A lonely one. Whatever had destroyed the towns and killed the people hadn't even scratched anything else. He foraged in the remains of houses and stores for what he needed, hunted and fished for fresh food, scavenged for everything else.
It had been eight years now. He had spent the last four of those traveling. Was he the last man on Earth? It was beginning to look that way. He hadn't even seen signs of anyone living past those few weeks. What had happened? What the fuck had happened?
What had happened to the world?
He still didn't have an answer to that. And from the looks of things, he never would, he'd just live out the rest of his life alone, grow old, and die. Like the poem said, the end of the human race would be not with a bang, but a whimper.
And he got to do the whimper.
It had been so long, that when the voice called to him, at first, he didn't understand it.
"Ho, there!" came the call again.
Jeff's head went up like a dog questing after pheasant. "Hello!"
"Stay where you are!" came the call. "You are trespassing on the territory of the Pacific States of America."
Pacific States of America? Shit, he had stumbled over an entire nation of people! He knew they had to be out here somewhere, he knew it!
"Lay down your weapons and advance slowly with your hands up." came the instruction.
Jeff put down his rifle as ordered and did as ordered.
"State your name, and your intention in visiting our country."
Jeff began to have some second thoughts. Saying he was a lone straggler was asking them to turn him into their slave or lock him away or just plain kill him. "My name is... I am Major Jeffrey McDonald from the Confederation of Midwestern America." If he had never heard of the Pacific States, odds were they wouldn't find it odd to not have heard of a Confederation a thousand miles away. "We learned of your existence and I was sent here as an emissary to learn more about you and to discuss setting up trade." That ought to get the politicians interested in him. From there, he could bluff his way into a comfortable existence in the Pacific States of America's capital city, while they waited for the rest of his people to show up...which they never would, of course.
"It is good to learn that others have survived outside of the P.S.A." came the answer. And now the man showed himself. Whatever the nature of his country, this man looked a lot like Jeff. Bedraggled, wearing odds and ends of salvaged materials, he had cut a pair of shoes into something like sandals and bound leggings made from a sweater sleeve above that with a length of cloth. Was that a woman's dress above it, heavily patched, or just some fabric sewn inexpertly together to make a sort of tunic to cover him from neck to mid-thigh? It gave him a vaguely barbarian appearance, that of a Viking warrior or of a Roman soldier minus armor. Above the hodgepodge of clothing was a head of red-brown hair cut poorly by a knife and a beard that no officer of any armed forces would permit on even his kindest day.
He wasn't making such a good impression himself. The man stared at Jeff's feather, he had stuck it in his head scarf when he found it while crossing the desert of Arizona, that head scarf had helped him during more than one dusty, windy day. "What's with the feather?" came the question.
"It's the mark of a Major of the C.M.A. of course." Jeff was glad he remembered the name he'd just made up, enough to turn it into easier-to-remember initials! "Now, can we go to meet with the rest of your people?"
"Not yet." the man said. "Have to be sure you aren't carrying the fever. A straggler brought it in a couple years ago and a lot of people died."
"Can't spare any of those these days." Jeff agreed. God, this guy was real! Another human! He wanted to just reach out and hug this guy and never let him go, ever! He wasn't alone anymore! Just a damned shame he had to pretend and lie. But until he knew more, better to be safe. "So...how did you survive what happened?"
"Had a job as a night watchman." he explained. "My office was down in the basement. By the time I dug myself out, it was all over. How about you?"
"About the same." Jeff said. "So, what do you know about what happened?"
"What do you know?" came the response.
Jeff realized that in an entire "country" of people, someone would know something. "I'm not authorized to reveal that information." he said.
"Neither am I." the man said.
"Can you tell me your name, anyway?" Jeff said, and a plaintive note crept into his voice when he said it.
The man smiled. "Kurt. Kurt Chapman."
"Kurt." Jeff said and that tone held in it wonder. "Kurt."
"Yeah." Kurt said. "And your name is...Major Jeffrey McDonald."
"Call me Jeff."
"Jeff." And Kurt's voice held that same tone of wonder.
Jeff's hand reached up to Kurt's face, noticing that the eyes were a beautiful steel-gray color, not blue like he'd first thought. Gray. "Kurt." he said as his hand touched that face, the hairs of the beard weren't bristly at all, they were too long, they were soft as they could be.
And Kurt's head didn't flinch from the touch, he nuzzled Jeff's palm instead. His eyes closed as his face registered raw ecstasy and then the eyes opened again, and a mist of tears were in them. Or were those in Jeff's own?
"Jeff." Kurt's voice purred at him, and then those strong arms went around Jeff, and his went around Kurt's! They held each other tightly, too tightly for passion, too tightly for affection, this was the simple, raw desire to hold another person, to hold them until the body believe it, that they were real, they were real!
"Oh, God!" Jeff sobbed. "Oh, God!"
"Yeah, man! Yeah, man!" Kurt said in his turn.
"It's been so fucking long, so fucking long!"
"I know, I know, me, too, me, too!"
"All this time, all this time!"
"Alone, all alone, yeah, all this time alone!"
Jeff realized what he'd said to Kurt, and what Kurt had said in return. He didn't quite let go, but his hands were all he held on with now as he pulled back, and Kurt let him go. Maybe he figured it out, too. "You're all alone, too?"
"Yeah." Kurt admitted.
"And all that stuff about the Pacific States of America?"
"A population of one. I've been all over the West Coast." Kurt admitted. "I couldn't find anybody."
"Me, either, I started west from just outside St. Louis, and the Mississippi River." Jeff said. "If there's anybody else left alive in the USA, they've got to be in either New York City or Miami. Or in another country, I guess. If there's anybody else at all to even find."
"Yeah." Kurt's answer said he knew all about it, all the time alone, wondering, worrying, why did it happen, where were all the other people, was he all alone?
No longer. "At least I found you." Jeff said. "Shit, that's a hell of a lot right there."
"You mean I found you." Kurt said.
"We found each other." Jeff compromised.
And he reached up to kiss Kurt.
Before it had happened, before the endless days of being and living alone, he wouldn't have thought about kissing another man. He had dated women, slept with more than a few of them, even lived with a couple of them, once for six months, once for three. He was even thinking it was time to pick one and settle down...and then it happened. The world blew up and didn't take him along with it. Leaving him all alone...except now there was Kurt.
Men in prisons had sex with each other. Men marooned on desert island had sex with each other. It happened, when men were cut off from women, they would turn to each other.
And the privation those men in jail or on that island suffered, it wasn't a speck on the isolation of years Jeff had been through. And Kurt, he supposed.
So he kissed Kurt and Kurt kissed him right back. Their hands tightened around each other again, and this time, the desire was to do more than just hold the other. Kurt's hands went down to Jeff's buttocks and cupped them and pulled him hard against Kurt's body and Jeff felt the hard shaft under that thick woolen tunic stab at him, slide over his trousers and seek out its partner beneath to beg it to come out and join the fun.
Jeff groaned and reached between them and under that tunic, to find the cock and balls unencumbered under the shift. Cotton was so quick to decompose, especially with wear, Jeff had spent many months without underwear himself before chance would let him happen upon a pair that either had avoided the depredations of insects or had remained safe within its plastic wrapping. Those were the best, but with the destruction, they were hard to come by. All too often, he would find a clothing shop, and find that a multitude of moths and beetles had beat him to it. This past couple of years, he was having increasing trouble staying clothed, another few years, it would be animal furs or nothing.
So Jeff had nothing to prevent him from grabbing that impudent dong and fondle the turgid shaft, and Kurt groaned with an ecstasy that made Jeff think for a second that he was going to shoot then and there!
Not that he would blame Kurt if he did. Finding another human being alive was all the sexual stimulation you needed. He had tried to comfort himself with pictures and magazines after the destruction, but they hadn't done anything but remind him how alone he was. His masturbation fantasies had been confined for years to what he'd do when he found someone at last. Now, he had found someone, and it was young and handsome and strong and eager. Hell, yeah, he'd take it. Let this stud shoot that come all over his hand, he'd lift his hand up and lick it off if he did!
But Kurt fought off the passion, fumbled for his tunic fastening. He'd put a small tie at the throat and undid it so he could pull the entire thing off his head more easily. He had somehow made this thing himself, might have even woven the cloth for himself! It had a rough feel to it.
Kurt threw the tunic to one side and was now bare down to his leggings. Now his hands turned to Jeff, the shirt he almost ripped off Jeff, and then the trousers, which were too large around for Jeff, he undid the belt and the pants sagged down.
"Shit, you have underwear?" Kurt marveled.
"My last pair." Jeff gasped.
"Take them off." Kurt said.
Jeff understood, the material was getting worn, and was none too clean, either. He released Kurt and put his hands to his waist, and shucked the feeble elastic down his hips.
When he did, Kurt was on his knees and Jeff found his newly freed pud being sucked into Kurt's hungry maw with a powerful suction, Kurt wasn't adept but he was eager, he was starved for it, he was practically pulling it out by the roots! Jeff moaned and his fingers wove their way into the thatch of red hair on Kurt's head and Jeff hunched at Kurt's mouth roughly, his desire driving that dong deeper into the depths of Kurt's throat, and Jeff groaned and humped his red-haired new-found lover, companion, fellow traveler, another HUMAN!
"Here, here, wait." Kurt said to him as he held Jeff's dong and bodily forced Jeff to stop ramming that horny dick into him. "You were about to cream, man."
"I know, I know." Jeff grunted. "It's like I got eight years worth of jizz stored up here and I got to get it out of me, now, here, now!" And he hunched again at Kurt, only this time Kurt's hand rode with him, denying him the pleasure.
"You ready to stick this in me proper?" Kurt asked him.
Jeff looked down at Kurt through a haze of lust, red-rimmed and fringed with violence, and the sense of what he had said got through that minefield somehow and reached his cognition. He nodded, his throat too constricted to speak for him.
Kurt knelt down on all fours and said, "Now push it in gentle, it's been eight years since I.... Ughhhhh!"
Jeff had nearly pounced on Kurt, he got his prick up against Kurt's asshole and he shoved it into the man. Kurt howled as Jeff crammed it into him, but he didn't fight Jeff off, and only a fight would have slowed Jeff down. As it was, Kurt just yowled like an alley cat as Jeff worked that stiff pud into him, and he yelped as Jeff got it in deep, and then began to pull it out again.
Those bright red noises fed Jeff's brain, he grunt-roared in his turn, his hips were fired by primal, unconscionable lust, he began to fuck Kurt and Kurt keened in his pain and passion while Jeff grumbled in male heat above him.
Jeff shuddered as his passion rose toward its peak, he leaned over and took Kurt's body in his hands, his palms covered and squeezed Kurt's breasts, and Kurt hollered all the louder for the pain in his nipples, and as Kurt's sounds came close to screams, Jeff reached his climax and he roared out a bellowing triumph that drowned out Kurt's sounds entirely.
He ejaculated with a volley of come that lent credence to his claim that he had saved up this load for eight full years, eight lonely years, eight deprived years, all of that ended and his body celebrated by pouring every ounce of juice that lived in his body into that ejaculation, he unleashed a massive volume of spunk that belted its way up into Kurt's body, and more that squelched out around Jeff's cock to drip down onto Kurt's balls and from there onto the grass beneath them. Hot jism flew in every direction, Jeff felt it splatter his own stomach and bright pearls of jizz dotted the dark crevice of Kurt's buttocks.
And Kurt screamed again, this time as his own orgasm struck, his butt clenched onto Jeff's cock with a fury that Kurt hadn't shown before, Jeff was more than caught, he was tortured in the last dregs of his climax by the constriction upon his cock, and his sperm boiled in frustration as it was balked, and more pushed behind it, and some escaped but more was caught yet again, and then the constriction was over, and Jeff moaned and a last gush of his man-juice poured out of him without force, just oozed into Kurt's butt and joined its brethren there, to form a seething pool of male passion that bathed the both of them.
The two men fell in a puddle onto the grass and Jeff could only pant as he feebly held onto Kurt even now, loathe to let this man go for a second now that he had found him, he was no longer alone and he wasn't letting go of it!
"Oh, man, oh, man." Kurt panted.
"Yeah, shit, yeah, shit, yeah." Jeff crooned. "Man, that was good. I've been close to busting a nut for years, shit!"
"God, you fucker, I wanted you to take it easy!" Kurt moaned, but that moan didn't hold pain, only a frustration. "Shit, you practically tore me a new hole!"
"Sorry." Jeff said insincerely. "I got carried away."
"We both did." Kurt agreed. "Too many years all alone. It can get to a guy. I thought for a while I was going crazy. Hell, maybe I did sometimes, how can I tell?"
"Pacific States of America." Jeff reminded him.
"You had the Confederacy of Mid-America." Kurt returned.
"Is that what I called it?"
"Isn't it?"
"I don't remember. Shit." Jeff rolled onto his back and rested the fingers of one hand on his forehead and cheeks, his hand like a huge spider standing there. "You had me worried about what I was getting myself into."
"Well, now you know." Kurt said. "It good enough for you?"
"More than good." Jeff said, grinning and hugging the red-haired man to him. "Though even if you'd been eighty years old, I still would have fucked you. I was ready for anybody."
"I'll try to keep your appetites satisfied." Kurt said. "If you don't mind taking one up the ass now and then yourself."
Jeff hesitated, but only for a second or two. "Yeah, sure." he said. "I guess that's fair if it's going to be only you and me."
"Yeah, you and me." Kurt said. "You make me wonder if there's anyone else left out there. I spent the last eight years searching all of California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Unless I missed someone in the mountains, they're all empty."
"I feel the same way about everything west of the Mississippi and south of St. Louis." Jeff said. "If I missed someone in the desert, maybe, but they would have had to hide. I was figuring on checking out California myself."
"Just a hell of a lot of bones there now." Kurt said. "So now what do we do?"
"The other side of the Mississippi, I guess." Jeff said. "After that, we flip a coin to search Canada or Mexico after that. I think that's about as far as we are going to be able to search."
"Maybe we are the last two left alive." Kurt said.
"Maybe." Jeff allowed. "But one thing's different now."
"What's that?"
"The human race isn't going out with a whimper." Jeff said and kissed his new lover to show what he meant. "We'll go out with a bang."
"Yeah." And Kurt moved to encircle Jeff with his hands. They still had a few hours before they'd have to set up camp for the night.
THE END
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