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The Last Couple
Michael Hanning
The last man on Earth technically wasn’t a man. A mess of scrap metal, twisted wiring and broken circuit boards, he was the size of a city block and vaguely resembled a big rusty amoeba. He had accordingly named himself Rusty - The Last Man On Earth!
The Last Man didn’t walk on legs as those before him had. A fleet of tank treads supported his massive bulk, bringing his max speed to two miles per hour. Cornering was a ponderous affair that took an entire day. He didn’t eat as men before him had as Rusty had nothing really akin to a head, let alone a mouth. Hundreds of Grab-Arms would snatch at salvage as Rusty roamed deserted cities, pulling in junk machinery and anything that could be dismantled and burned as fuel. Everything disappeared to his innards, a mysteriously creaking mess of half-broken machines that now served as organs. He didn’t think on it much, but then he really didn’t think like men used to either. In his darkest deepest innards sat a broken eMac that did all the thinking for him. All total, his claims to humanity only came to two things:
1. No one was left to challenge that assertion
2. A few meters ahead of the brain, a pickled human heart was hooked up to a few tubes. Rusty had forgotten where the tubes went, but he believed it technically made him a cyborg.
It would have been a lonely life for anyone else, but Rusty had never known the company of fellow men. He had awoken to a world decimated by biological warfare, and besides, there was the Last Woman on Earth to keep him company. An ancient periscope on his left flank detected her coming over the horizon just now.
The Last Woman on Earth landed on Rusty’s side and began having at his armor with her acid stingers. Thousands of pin-prick holes bled through his armor, sizzling and burning all the way. Mutant wasps disengaged and rose to the sky as one, narrowly escaping the scalding jets of steam Rusty shot from his sides. As one they began flying in a large circle, the buzz and they generated slowly becoming a howl. From the howl came a voice like the wind being tortured to death.
“RUUUUUUUUUSTY!” the Last Woman on Earth screamed, “WHY DON’T YOU EVER TAKE OUT THE TRASH?”
From the top of Rusty’s junk pile a telephone pole slowly rose, a dozen megaphones attached. Their combined volume was a concussive force that killed wasps within a dozen yards in every direction. “DAMMIT, WOMAN!” he shouted, “I’M WATCHING THE GAME!”
Rusty angled towards a row of skyscrapers, hoping to cover at least one of his sides from the wasps. They knew they would face his new defense if they came too close, but if the year’s harvest was good, the drones could be expendable. The Hive-mind that believed itself the Last Woman on Earth was more than willing to make sacrifices if that meant getting in a few digs against Rusty.
“YOU NEVER DO WORK AROUND THE HOOOOOOUSE!” she screamed. Some of the drones dropped to the ground and picked up stones and bits of rubble, preparing for a kamikaze impact.
“BECAUSE I WORK FOR A LIVING! LET ME WATCH THE GAAAAME!” Rusty shouted, weapons bristling.
It was unfortunate, but the last living man and woman on Earth knew everything about martial bliss from reruns of TV sitcoms. And so their marriage continued, happy among the ruins of a dead Earth.