Evelin was shaking. “I know this will sound crazy, Aaron, but maybe this is that Rapture thing.”
Aaron held her. “Where everyone but us is taken? I can buy alien abductors before I can swallow some religious hocus-pocus. Or, more likely, Mother Nature has finally had enough of us.”
They hurried toward another storefront and, without getting too close, peered into the window. Inside, more clothes without their occupants.
“Holy Christ, Aaron. Maybe we should go hide somewhere. We could walk back to the truck and get the cell phone.”
“I don’t think I want to climb into anything right now. Being out in the open seems the best idea.”
A frantic notion popped into Evelin’s head. “Maybe it’s the cameras in the stores. There are cameras everywhere now. Maybe it’s when people are on camera that something happens?”
“It doesn’t explain all of those people disappearing in their cars,” Aaron said. “Somehow, the environment in enclosed places, manmade places, has turned toxic and is disintegrating living cells, something like that.”
“What are we going to do? What about our families? How can we survive being outside indefinitely?”
“As long as we can find food. But for now, let’s walk toward home. Maybe everything is okay away from here.”
“It has to be,” Evelin said, starting to cry. “It just has to.”
Two years earlier, Aaron sat in a corner booth of the Mountain Man Café and slowly, sadly, all by his lonesome, ground a slab of beef into submission. Happy couples wined and dined. He was a pathetic image—a testament to liaisons gone wrong. Getting over another breakup in a series of breakups left him wondering what exactly the hell he was looking for.
The day after his tough steak with sautéed mushrooms, he contemplated his fizzled summer while browsing at Barb’s Book Bin. Looking through the Mystery/Suspense section, he hoped to find a handful of used books to get him through a solitary autumn, expecting no more thrills than what storybook fantasies might provide.
She was standing at the sales counter with a pile of textbooks, offering them to Barb for some aspiring student. He stood next to the book-bearing woman and tried to act nonchalant with his paltry haul of two beat-up paperbacks.
Aaron listened as the woman talked to Barb. Her melodious voice was soft and kind. She was an attractive creature in her mid-twenties. A heart-shaped face surrounded her blond curls. Her wide eyes were the color of a deep ocean. Her smile revealed perfect teeth.
Her loose, gypsy-like summer dress ended at her curvaceous knees. Her tanned legs ended at sandaled feet. He always noticed women’s feet. Hers sported silver-pink polish on each toe, long and slender like her tapered fingers. They could have been pearls dredged from the ocean’s floor created merely to accentuate each piggy.
His mind searched for something semi-intelligent to say—something that wouldn’t sound like a come-on. Barb took the final book from the woman, a Russian textbook. But before this tantalizing female could get away, he said, “I read War and Peace. Do you think I’m ready for one of your books?”
A broad smile re-carved her features, making her even more fetching. “Into Russian literature, are you?”
In spite of himself, he couldn’t help thinking about the soft, yielding tissue between her legs. “I’m into whatever it takes to buy you a cup of coffee while we discuss famous revolutions, or other things.”
She hadn’t the time just then, but she told him he could Google her, Evelin Benedict, in case his interest lasted beyond the present afternoon. His interest certainly did, but it took him a month to pin down this very busy lady. He finally managed a rendezvous at a Mexican restaurant where he took a table in the establishment’s courtyard. He brought her a long-stemmed rose, which he planted in the dining table’s centerpiece.
They talked for a very long time. She was extraordinarily open, an animal-rights and Greenpeace supporter. They shared an encapsulated version of their life stories—tales of successes and failures. Evelin was too attractive for Aaron to keep his mind totally on social issues. An image of those tree-hugging, animal-loving legs wrapped around his waist was enough to make him squirm with renewed verve in the contemplation of a new and sweet relationship.
After a second lime-wedged Corona, Aaron wanted to be her professor emeritus of love, but he knew if he were to conquer this beauty, it would have to be accomplished in some shared activity that would appeal to her kind, animal-loving nature.
Aaron called Evelin the next week. “How about letting me take you to the zoo this weekend?” he asked her.
She accepted. On a Saturday afternoon, they walked their legs off for most of the day, moving from the sleeping big cats, to the monkeys doing nasty things, to the noisy birds, and finally to the playful pachyderms. While taking a break on a park bench, they observed a woman on another bench catching her breath from pushing a stroller through the park. The little boy parked next to her was busily scraping a lollipop on the asphalt. Then he decided to stick it in his ear for safekeeping.
“Oh, Jimmy,” the mother tiredly exclaimed, and removed the sticky earplug.
Deprived of his toy, Jimmy started to bawl. Evelin exhibited an unpleasant expression.
“Don’t like kids?” Aaron asked.
“Of course I do, but I would rather teach them than make my own. I’m not sure I want to bring any into this world, with all the pollution. For now, I’ll settle for baby elephants.”
“At least one of them would have more sense than to stick a sweet treat in its ear.”
She laughed and gave Aaron a look every man wishes for. It was one of not only pleasure but of admiration—the look that said he had been accepted as a good guy. He flattered her back with his lingering eyes and marveled at her down-to-earth humor, and the prospect of a more involved relationship. She seemed to have it all, and in the mind of the beholder, nothing else was necessary.
The next year, Aaron and Evelin were married, just six months before the fateful camping trip. Six months after that they were vagabonds, leaving their hometown because staying would have been unbearable. The event turned out to be more than a local phenomenon. The whole world had gone tilt. In the beginning, the couple camped outdoors in town parks and open places. Everywhere they ventured, including their parents’ homes, they found the same thing. Bodies were not piled up. People had simply vanished inside structures, their clothes and ornaments left behind as if to prove they’d once been here.
Aaron and Evelin spent time speculating on what nature, or God, or aliens had wrought. Disease and viruses and poisoning were ruled out because they were alive. Were they the only two people with some kind of immunity?
“When the end came, it almost seems appropriate to have happened in a way that defies explanation,” Evelin told Aaron during their flight from what had been civilization. “Mankind has abused nature for so long, it must have become too much.”
Those statements were followed by a nostalgic period in which they discussed the things they would never be able to do again. Parents, friends, parties, pecking order, getting ahead—all those things were just vapors, all replaced with the dawning of a pristine world with its centuries of history wiped clean except for the memories of them. Evelin never thought she’d miss food shopping, but she did. Doing a mundane, numbingly normal task would have been therapeutic.
Evelin’s heart was heavy with pondering about the kids she would never have the opportunity to teach. She tried to dwell on more frivolous things. “No more movies,” Evelin said one evening. “Unless we run across a surviving drive-in somewhere.”
“Sorry. You’d have to go into the projection room, and even then, no electricity.”
As they checked off things enjoyed and accepted the present, they soon left the towns behind. They both abhorred the burned-out yards and unchecked weeds coming through the pavement. Home gardens were few and far between and they couldn’t risk going indoors. Aaron even speculated the event might have had something t
o do with being below metal, but such musings soon lost their meaning.
They preferred the countryside. The animals they most often spotted were horses. Those grazing in open fields could manage indefinitely, they supposed. But most pets had met the same fate as people. Those left outdoors, however, had either starved or had had the cunning to head for the hills themselves, which fostered a fear of stray, carnivorous packs. Evelin had considered returning to the zoo and trying to free the animals but, in the end, couldn’t bear the thought of finding all those beautiful creatures lifeless or mad with hunger. Those that survived would be hungry. She and Aaron would be fresh meat. Bad idea.
They passed abandoned vehicles and empty buildings. Wherever people had been, it was the same shit, different day. The multi-colored machines that once prowled the streets were now stilled sentinels of a civilization past. The empty clothes seemed more haunting than if they had contained decaying bodies.
“How could there not have been others camping out somewhere and figuring it wasn’t safe to go inside?” was Evelin’s standard mantra.
“It’s a big world,” Aaron offered. “There might be millions somewhere. In India, for instance, half the population lives on the streets. In Africa maybe, but around here everyone must have been indoors or mistakenly run for shelter.”
After abandoning the familiarity of their area, they made their way southward in search of milder climates. They would have used bicycles if it hadn’t been for Aaron’s metal phobia. An eventual beach sounded inviting even though the foraging might not be as good. Besides, what was the hurry, and there was a whacky liberation in having nothing left to lose and no timeframe to adhere to.
In the year that followed, Aaron and Evelin never ran across another living soul. The disappearance of mankind would remain a mystery, but their survival skills soon kicked in. There was no processed food in the great outdoors, but fields had been planted. After living on what crops provided, they learned to set traps because they couldn’t go into a store and pick up a gun and rounds of ammo. “We’ll have to live mostly on love,” Aaron told Evelin at the outset.
They found their shelter from the elements in forests under tree limbs, but never built a structure that would have provided more protection. Nor did they enter a manmade structure of any sort, even those of earth or wood. By the end of the summer, they had truly become a sequel to the Adam and Eve story, but without a pesky snake to complicate things. They hunted together with spears made from scavenged hunting knives and tree branches, and became quite skilled at bringing down small game.
In addition to living on love, they also lived on their cunning, once being attacked by a group of hungry wolves. As terrifying as the experience was, the skills they’d mastered at hunting served them well. And after they’d killed one of the wolves, the rest of the pack sought other prey.
On another occasion, they came upon the remnants of a crashed, mid-sized passenger plane. This was inevitable. With all the air traffic at any given time, thousands of planes must have fallen from the sky. What remained of this one’s burned-out skeletal wingspan reminded them of a pterodactyl. They had no desire to approach the wreckage.
Aaron and Evelin stayed mobile, never entertaining the possibility of farming or even staying in one place. “When you’re on the move, you don’t think so much about your past or your dreams,” Aaron told Evelin. “The key to serenity is to have a goal.” And theirs was to reach the coast.
They fancied the idea of following in the footsteps of the first nomadic Americans, free to go where food led them. There was plenty of fresh fish and water, seasonal nuts, berries, and protein from their acquisitions. And they never took each other for granted, knowing the world could be much lonelier than it presently was.
Clothes worn twenty-four seven didn’t last long. As the weather cooled, they found outdoor fabrics to fashion into warmer protection. But until then, and in the following spring, they wore nothing but boots or tennis shoes picked up where vacated—in doorways where feet had once been.
Outdoor living revealed certain drawbacks, but Evelin came to think of herself as Sheena, queen of the jungle, more than Eve in the Garden of Eden. She was Aaron’s equal in all they did, which included their lovemaking. Both of them let their hair grow long, and their bodies bronzed under the sun. They had grown stronger and healthier through necessity. Their muscles were toned. They’d returned to an athletic form and moved almost catlike on their feet. Their minds were sharp and bright with no smog or pollution to mix with their gray matter. No traffic or loud noises except for those produced by nature. And, in time, most of their regrets fell at their feet like sprinkling summer rain.
Although humans had disappeared in the blink of an eye, it took a year for their absence to become obvious. Electricity had gone quickly, but the inattention to property and roads now showed in definite signs of nature eradicating man’s intrusion. Aaron and Evelin had long since quit looking into windows. It only made them want to risk going inside for canned goods or supplies that would make their lives easier.
Instead, they beheld the mysteries of nature with new awe and wonder. When leaden storm clouds rolled across the sky with thunder rumbling behind them, the couple would hold each other and watch the rain from beneath a tarp carried in their pack. If it was a summer shower, they might bathe each other or make love in it, allowing the rain to temporarily wash away their fear of an uncertain future.
They marveled at the spectacle of the star-filled heavens, which glittered from one horizon to the other. Orion, Little Bear, Draco, all vast and beautiful. It gave Evelin a feeling of timelessness, and maybe even immortality—one with the universe. Their distant ancestors had set out in small boats with only the stars to guide them. They too were crossing a new kind of wilderness to an unknown destination.
“Beauty is in the mind of the beholder,” Aaron told Evelin whenever running across some unpleasant reminder of man’s sudden exit that threatened to sweep away their resolve. Oftentimes near towns, pieces of paper and tattered garments would flutter in the wind, having freed themselves from doorways or open cars. “All of this is returning to nature,” he philosophized. “The sky and the water will be clean again.”
“You’ve become as much a nature-lover as I am,” Evelin teased. She was glad for Aaron’s strength. At least one of them saw their glass as half full. He constantly reminded her they had each other. In a land that could be both beautiful and terrifying, they took time to dance among wildflowers, to lie down in grassy meadows, and to hold each other and have sex early and often.
They liked the freedom of nudity. There was an innocent delight in not having to disrobe. For Aaron, it was a hint of wildness in Evelin’s ever present, sleek hips, toned body, and the promise of luxuriant sex. For Evelin, it was the shedding of a lifetime of social mores. Like Aaron, she tried to find positives in a world that seemed to be theirs alone. And, truth be known, their body parts’ swinging freely while walking was a turn-on. They mused over the image they would present if they ever came across anyone else—two naked humans with spears, one with dark hair, the other with fair hair, carrying a rucksack full of dried berries, nuts, and fruit, tethered by a strap between Evelin’s breasts.
Their lovemaking was often frenzied, swimming in kisses with no definable dimension, attacking each other as if their survival had been a mistake. Sometimes when they kissed, Aaron felt Evelin’s warm tears on his face. All his dreams focused on the miracle of their heavy breathing and making the world new. With sex they could suspend the knowledge that everything was lost save their passion and dedication to each other.
Making love any time and any place, as long as it was outdoors, was their gift in this scary, brave new world. They didn’t worry about access to pills or condoms. Their world began and ended with a beautiful encounter, and it might be up to them to repopulate the planet, after all. At night, Evelin nestled into the space between Aaron’s arm and chest.
“When I first realized we were surr
ounded by death, I cursed the world,” he told her. “Then I learned to rejoice when we accomplished some little task.”
She turned her head and kissed his neck. “It doesn’t really matter whether we ever find anyone else, does it? Not really?”
“We always want what we can’t obtain. If suddenly there’s a village, I’ll be the first to run toward it. But I can tell you that for the first time in my life I’m content with who I am and what I have.”
“Me too,” Evelin replied as twinkling stars gathered overhead, their pinpoints of light beaming from suns burned out millions of years before.
Aaron looked into the heavens. “Even when we can’t see the stars, I know they’re there. I think about other surviving humans we haven’t found, feeling their way along, looking for meaning in their forever-altered lives.” He kissed Evelin tenderly and then said, “Here we are on this blue bauble in a sea of night. It still turns as it always has and the universe doesn’t care if its creatures have eyes or wings or dreams. Everything just is.”
It wasn’t often that Aaron waxed poetic, but his attempt seemed apropos. “We can’t lose each other,” Evelin said and wrapped her legs around Aaron.
“We won’t, baby,” he answered before they fell asleep with their separate dreams of the new world order.
Lost in thought while walking, Aaron and Evelin heard something unusual—the clanging of a bell. Following the sound, they approached quietly, knowing if they encountered other survivors it wasn’t a given they would be friendly. The noise came from a large tree near a farmhouse. Cautious inspection revealed a bell hung from a piece of lumber. A tree branch brushed against it every time a strong gust of wind came along.
“A tree house,” Evelin exclaimed. “Let’s check it out.”
Aaron watched as Evelin scampered toward the huge oak and placed her foot on the first two-by-four nailed to its trunk. She started up as nimbly as any kid who ever climbed up to his or her special place.
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