"My condolences, it must have been pretty lonely up there."
"Indeed it was. But I imagine it was just as lonely down here, and probably a lot more dangerous. Which again brings up the question, how did you manage to survive?"
"Have you ever heard the expression only the paranoid survive?" Amy nodded. "Well I was always sort of a paranoid type. Truth is I am a major germophobe, always was and always have been. Ironically enough I was a White House janitor."
"A janitor doesn't seem like a very good job for a germophobe."
"I can see how you would think that way, but it's actually the perfect job for a germophobe. You see as a janitor I am constantly cleaning everything. The entire day I am wearing gloves and spraying disinfectant on everything. I have my hands constantly in soap and cleaning fluid and I go around making sure everything is sparkling clean and uncontaminated. And if you have obsessive-compulsive disorder and can't stop cleaning being a janitor is actually a pretty good job to harness what would otherwise be a bothersome mental disorder."
Amy nodded again. "I understand. But again it doesn't explain how you managed to survive when everyone else in the world didn't. I mean there are millions upon millions of people with a phobia about germs and who are obsessed with order and cleanliness, but they are all dead, you are not. There must be something special that allowed you to survive."
David nodded. "As soon as the bombardment began and I heard of all these contaminants entering into the atmosphere my paranoia went into overdrive. I became paralyzed with fear and I ended up locking myself deep in a sealed off part of the White House with an air filtration system that made sure nothing came in from outside. No one else was really paranoid about it the way I was and thought it was just a rare astronomical event. But I took to hiding, and I guess my extreme cowardice in this case ended up saving my life. When I came out three days later everyone else was dead. I ended up burying the president's body myself."
"I'm sorry you had to perform such a gruesome task."
"Don't be, I didn't vote for that bastard and my pay at the White House was pretty terrible. I was glad to bury that guy, and now I own all of his stuff, and he had some pretty nice stuff!"
"What about the creatures? How did you manage to survive them?"
"The creatures didn't manifest right away. Apparently whatever killed the human race killed them off in a pretty much immediate span of time, but then the bodies began to putrefy and didn't decompose. One day they just started waking up as these creatures. The bodies sort of covered themselves in a cocoon like material after they died and then when they reemerged they were these bloodthirsty flesh eating creatures. As soon as I realized that I sealed myself off in the White House. I made sure to dispose of as many bodies as possible, which was a pretty big task. When they started coming to life I fled for a while to elsewhere in the city but eventually I came back well-armed and took back the White House. It was pretty epic."
"You must have been the one who was responsible for all of the bullet holes in the movie theater and the pizza place and all of the burning."
"That's right. After securing the White House I would go around during the day looking for enclaves of these creatures and burning down their sleeping spaces. It was a big task but they always keep coming back. I try to keep the population down as much as possible, but I am only one man, and these creatures keep descending upon the city again and again. Luckily it's a very heavily armed city. Speaking of which, do you have any place to stay? I would love for you to join me at the White House. It will be dark soon and then the creatures will descend, so we should get back to the White House as quickly as possible."
"I would love to. I always wanted to see the inside of the White House. I went to go there on a tour in Washington DC when I was a kid but the inside was closed at the time and I was really disappointed that I didn't get to see it, as that was the major part of the tour that I was looking forward to."
"It's a pretty nice house, I do have to say, it sure beats my old apartment by a long stretch. And it is stocked with enough supplies to last us a good long time. It has electricity, running water and plenty of entertainment. The only thing is I will have to spray you down before I let you inside, germs and all that."
"That's fine. And I could use a good shower and bath as I haven't had a proper one since returning to a normal gravity field. The closest thing I have had was skinny dipping in the ocean."
David laughed. "There is a happy image. Shall we go?"
"Let me just get my things and we can drive there."
Amy wasn't sure what to make of David just yet, but it seemed like she could trust him, and if she couldn't there wasn't exactly anyone else left in the world that she could trust, so she would take her chances.
Chapter 16
Amy felt herself to be in Paradise when she felt the hot water against her skin. As the water from the shower hit every inch of her body she felt as though she were shedding her entire skin, and once the tub was full she sat down and began to soak luxuriously as she reflected on the fact that she was now bathing in a bathtub that presidents and first ladies had bathed in throughout the entire nation's history. JFK might very well have been soaking in the same tub while planning the Bay of Pigs invasion.
"How is everything in there?" David asked as he knocked on the door.
"Everything is very relaxing, thank you."
As she continued soaking she felt a little self-conscious knowing that a man she barely knew was not that far away and she was putting a lot of trust in him. But again, she figured if he couldn't trust him who could she trust? For better or worse David might be the last man on earth, so if he wasn't perfect she could live with that. It was just good to know that there were other survivors out there, and that where there was one there could very well be others, almost had to be.
While she was soaking she could still feel a lot of weakness in her bones. A person she really would have loved to have found would be some kind of a doctor. Under normal circumstances after coming back from such a prolonged amount of time in zero gravity she would have had a full medical workup by now. And she was still feeling bouts of weakness, vertigo and lots of dreams where she was floating or falling. She was hoping that this would all wear off over time, but she was in uncharted territory. Although people had spent large amounts of time in space without any immediately deadly results, the fact that she was the record holder and that she might be the one to find a limit to how much humans can endure as far as extended human spaceflight goes, did not put her mind at ease.
Eventually she fell asleep and woke up to the sound of a pounding on her door. "Amy!" David's voice shouted before he came running into the bathroom just as Amy was standing up.
"A little privacy please!" Amy shouted as she pulled the shower curtain in front of her.
"Sorry," David said as he turned his back to her. "But I hadn't heard from you in a while and I was worried that something had happened to you."
"It's okay; it's nice to know that you were concerned. I just became so relaxed that I must have dozed off a bit there. It has been happening to me more and more lately. I think it's just fatigue from being back in a gravity field. After being in zero gravity for over two years the human body can permanently change in a detrimental way. Life in space is not good for the human body."
"I had read about something like that. It makes your bones brittle or something like that?"
"It's more than just bone loss. It also involves muscle loss and lots of physiological changes to my body, and I don't know to what extent. I am actually now the current record holder for the longest time spent by a human being in space and nobody knows what the effects of that are."
"Well there are medical supplies in the building, but unfortunately I am not a doctor and I don't know where exactly you could find one. But I should let you get dressed. Dinner is nearly ready."
Amy decided to get dressed up in style and put on one of the first lady's nicest outfits. The first lady had be
en known to be extravagant, and as much of a tomboy as she was she really felt pretty damn attractive wearing yet another outfit that probably cost more than what the average person would make in a year. And wearing the first lady's jewelry also made her feel rather elegant.
"Well look at you pretty lady," said David as he walked into the room.
"Thank you," said Amy as she blushed a little bit while she pulled out her chair and sat down. "This looks like quite a smorgasbord."
"It's a White House dinner; the president sure knew how to eat. Believe me I know, having to haul his fat ass out of the White House after that the Apocalypse was a pretty exhausting task. I mean I never thought we would have another president as fat as Taft. They probably had to put a new bathtub in for that lard ass as well."
Amy laughed and began eating. "This is delicious. I think this is the first normal meal that I have had since returning to Earth, when you're an astronaut you get used sort of a limited diet."
"All prepackaged food and tang, huh?"
"Our diet is a little bit more varied than just food through a straw and tang, but it is a pretty monotonous diet and virtually no meat."
"Would you like some wine?" David said as he moved the bottle towards her. "This one goes back to the Johnson administration, so it should be rather fine."
"I'll take just a little bit," said Amy as David poured her a glass. "I don't want to make myself tipsy. And with my vertigo and everything I don't want to get carried away with alcohol, as I am still not sure how my body is adjusting."
"I'm sorry again for walking in on you in the bathroom."
"Think nothing of it; I am just glad that you were concerned about me like that."
"Well you are the last woman on earth; you might be my only opportunity for any type of future dating." He laughed after that statement.
Amy laughed back, feeling a little bit awkward. She was not quite used to flirting like that, and having not had any contact with humans in years they probably both had diminished social skills.
"The thing is I find Asian women really attractive," said David as he took a sip of wine. "But I am not really very good with romance and dating and all of that. Don't get me wrong, you've made me feel more alive just being here in the last couple of hours and I have felt uncontrollably horny, but I think we should probably take it slow."
"Yeah, that might be for the best," said Amy as she felt increasingly awkward, as this was a little bit creepy.
"I mean even before all of this happened I was a little bit on the socially awkward side. I had never been married before and truth be told I am still a virgin at the age of 53."
"I didn't realize that you were that old," said Amy as she took a sip of wine. As she was only 34 that was a rather large age gap. "I am only in my 30s."
"I guess that means you are still fertile," he said as he took a big gulp of wine. "I mean unless being in space warped your uterus or something."
"Yeah," Amy said as she took a big gulp of the wine while she was now beginning to feel really uncomfortable.
"I didn't mean to imply that you were a freak or anything because you had been into space. But you were just telling me about how space changes your body. But we might be like the new Adam and Eve. I almost sort of thought that perhaps God had sent you to me so that we could save the human race, crazy isn't it?"
"Under the circumstances maybe not so crazy," said Amy before pausing and thinking maybe she shouldn't give him any hints that she was interested in him because she didn't know how he would react to rejection. But she could sympathize with his situation.
"I'm sorry; I am really not good with these interpersonal situations like this. But don't worry I am not going to pressure you into anything. The truth is that the reason I am a virgin is due to my germ phobia. Although I find you very attractive I don't know if I could even bring myself to have sexual relations with another person. The thought of all those germs and contaminants sort of makes my skin crawl. And I want to emphasize that I don't feel that you are filthy or disgusting or anything like that, but I just have this paranoid phobia about being touched or making contact with other people's bodily fluids, understand what I mean?"
"Yes, I think I do. When we launched stuff into space everything has to be sterile, and although I don't share your extreme phobia of germs, I can understand why something like that could bother you. I was always actually something of a tomboy so I was never bothered by getting down and dirty, and my mother would often yell at me because I would come home filthy after a day out playing."
"Thank you for understanding. I feel that I have probably made a fool of myself. I mean saying how we are the next Adam and Eve."
"No, it's an apt comparison; we might very well be the last man and woman on Earth. But it's true that I am not quite ready to get pregnant or anything like that, and I don't know how space has changed my body. And given the lack of medical supplies or access to a doctor pregnancy could very well be fatal."
"Well still, I was probably out of line. I mean I have only known you a couple of hours and here I am already talking about repopulating the human race."
Amy laughed as she remembered the joke that Anatoly had made. "You wouldn't have been the first one to suggest such a thing."
"What do you mean?"
"It's an inside joke between me and Anatoly."
"Oh, okay," said David as he took another sip of wine. "But anyway, I don't know if this counts as a first date or anything, but I am more than willing to keep things platonic for now. It's just nice to have another person around."
"Same here," said Amy as she raised her wine glass and they clinked glasses together before taking another sip. "To the future of the human race."
"To the future of the human race!" He paused for a moment and scratched his head. "Even if you decide not to date me, I still extend my offer to make you the first lady of the United States. It's not like you have any competition for the role."
"Well thank you, I would be honored. After all I am dressed for the part," said Amy as she stood up and twirled around.
"Indeed you are. But I have probably been rude throughout this entire thing. I never even asked you; did you have anyone special that you were involved with before the pandemic began?"
"Actually this is going to sound really crazy, but I was actually married to an African-American man named David."
"Get out of town! Are you serious? You're not just screwing around with me?"
Amy nodded. "I am not. We were engaged and had planned to marry when I returned to the Earth."
"And here I am being a total jerk and hitting on a woman who is engaged. Your fiancé might still be out there somewhere."
"Unfortunately I found him, and I had to put him down."
"I'm sorry. Was he one of the creatures?" Amy nodded. "Again I am so sorry."
"Don't be, it wasn't your fault. But it is an amazing coincidence that you are named David. Do you think it would be okay if I perhaps saw your face?"
"Okay, but only for a moment," said David as he took off his mask to reveal that he had a large black beard with little bits of gray hairs visible here and there. But he only kept it down for a moment before wrapping himself back up. "I'm sorry it had to be so brief, but you know about my germ phobia. I didn't even want to take it off long enough to inhale."
"I am sure that whatever is in the atmosphere must be gone by now. I was worried about that when I first came down to the Earth, but if it was still in the atmosphere we would both be dead right now. So whatever it was it must be something that was only lethal for a brief amount of time."
"That might very well be true, but I still can't take any chances. I didn't survive this long by being careless."
"I understand."
"What do you think caused all of this? I mean you were up in space at the time this was happening, did you see anything interesting?"
Amy took another sip of her wine. "You may say that. As improbable as it seems all the data we collected on th
e space station suggested that this was a directed attack by another intelligence in the universe. You heard that right, I'm talking about aliens."
"Aliens!"
"We monitored the explosions in the atmosphere. They were the result of the bombardment from space by a bunch of spheres that seemed to be intelligently designed, and designed specifically to disperse throughout the atmosphere. It was a biological warfare attack."
"But I haven't seen any signs of aliens in all of this time."
"I have speculated that perhaps this was an advanced invasion force. First they hit us with the biological weapon which then leads to the creation of these creatures. This is all for some type of invasion that will come about later on when the main ships get here. Again it's all speculation, but it's reasonable to assume that whoever sent this our way is obviously not benevolently inclined towards us."
"But you really think it's aliens?"
"Skepticism is understandable, but as a scientist I have to look at the hard facts and data, and that is what everything suggests. Who did this or why is uncertain, but that it was intelligently controlled seems pretty much certain."
"Wow, that's a lot to take in. But what do you think their plan could be?"
"Have you ever heard of the theory of panspermia?"
"No, what is that?"
"It's a theory of colonization across space. The idea is rather than sending themselves across space aliens would send biological material across space to seed other worlds with life. That might be what we are seeing here. In essence the creatures might very well be the aliens."
"Incubating within our own bodies?"
Amy nodded. "Again it is just a theory, but it's as good a theory as any in light of all the available evidence."
"Well, damn."
"My thoughts exactly." Amy stretched her arms and began yawning.
"Getting tired?"
Amy nodded again. "I think it might be the wine. I am not used to eating and drinking this well. My body is simply not used to it."
"And you still have that space fatigue you were talking about."
The Last of the Living Page 8