THE LAST MAN: Part Twenty-one

I stand and stretch with a groan. After a piss I look out across the city. The hazy orange sun is glorious and warm. The ruins are lost to the sun’s bright reflection upon the mirror-like sea. The city looks clean and full. Business is brisk, the streets choked with traffic.

“What is your fertility rank?” I ask without looking at her. Desiree’s reflection is vaguely superimposed over the city. The fires burning among the ruins are clearer than I can ever recall.

“I’m viable,” she cocks her head. “Why do you ask?”

I don’t answer right off. Without a word I grab one of the chairs, walk calming across the room and smash the Sentinel by the door. Desiree screams, startled. She covers herself with the sheet and looks at me as if I have gone stark raving mad. Truth be told, I’m not so sure I haven’t.

“What are you doing?” she cries. A body can be Reclaimed for much less. I doubt we will for this, at least not before the trial ends. I have gotten away with so much already. I figure they will repair it soon enough. Kneeling at the bed I take her trembling hands in mine.

“What if you become pregnant?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if it looks like me? Would you be ashamed? Disgusted?”

She thinks a moment. “I don’t know.”

“I’d want it to have a chance.”

“You’re crazy to believe that, you know?”

“If there was some place, somewhere far from Sentinel and the Corporation?”

“No such place exists,” she scoffs.

“If there was?”

“It doesn’t!”

“Can’t you answer the question?” I shake her, growing impatient.

“It’s a ridiculous.”

“Just yes or no?”

“To what?”

I groan loudly and flail with frustration. She really is just impossible. I turn and have a mind to fling the chair across the room. Then she smiles, though it is tinged with spite. She toys with me, which only enrages me more.

“What?” I demand.

“Your temper,” she replies.

“You provoke it,” I laugh. It is impossible to remain mad at her for very long. “I hate you.”

Desiree’s expression softens. Her eyes flash quickly to the shattered Sentinel. Wisps of white smoke trail from the tattered innards.

“Where would we go?”
I pull her quickly from bed and guide her to the window. I lean against her and press a finger to the window. She studies the distant ruins for a time, and her brow furls slightly. She has not noticed them before.

“There?” she asks, perplexed.

“There.”

“The ruins?”

“Things are different there!” My voice rises with emotion.

“Like how?”

“Free,” I say.

“And how do you know that?” she asks, trapping me. I draw away and right the upturned chair. With a wounded sigh I sit.

“Anyway, that’s what I believe.”

“Don’t be a fool!” she laughs. The words crush me. I would die to be anything but a fool in her eyes. I fall into bed, staring at the wall. My chest tightens as tears come to my eyes. It seems an eternity before she comes to me. I refuse to look at her, but she knows only too well the feeble nature of that gesture.

“Don’t be mad,” she says.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“So what if I am?”

She moves onto the bed beside me, nudging me with her hips, and running her hand gently across my back and shoulder. I pull away. Not much, but I so want to punish her for being so cruel. She is first to bridge the chasm, and kisses my shoulder.

“You’re not a fool.”

I turn and melt in her eyes. My fingers brush her soft breast and the rubbery dark nipple. With a shudder Desiree pulls me to her chest.

“They had dreams,” I say, staring past her. There are still tears in my eyes, but not for her comments, but now from a sudden upwelling of passion. It is something pure and clean and not of this world; something that transcends the body. “Things were not always as they are now.”

She does not reply. Instead she nods un-committed and strokes my chest. After all, what was there to say? How does one talk about the past to people who have no history? It is why Section Twenty-one and the Corporation have no fear of me. I am trapped within a truth. I could shout them to the masses in hopes of starting a revolt, but they would prove little more than the ramblings of a madman.

“I wish I could believe like you,” she says to be kind.

“Do you?”

She rises and walks to the window again. I marvel at her waist, the alternating tension and relaxation of the muscles of her back and shoulders, and of the rise and fall of her buttocks when she moves. Desiree remains silhouetted at the window for some time. I can see her face reflected there, and know that it is only a half-hearted gesture.

“I see it,” she says, “the fires. People are moving, though I cannot make out any details. Are they men or women? Maybe there are more like you.”

She turns. I sit, unsure for moment if she is still mocking me. Then I can see that she doesn’t really believe, but that she believes in me.

“I don’t know,” I tell her, “but in when the light is just right I believe that I can actually see them. Sometimes I close my eyes and can almost feel their hands touching me, welcoming me.”

“Hands?”

“Maybe I’ll go there. Maybe I’ll escape and bring you with me.”

She returns to me, and falls into my arms. I kiss her smooth belly and look up between her breasts. I have no idea if she believes anything I have said. I have no evidence, no concrete reason for believing as I do. It is hope and I am bleeding it all over her.