Looking down on the barren land the only thing to draw your eye from the rubble and debris is the hard line of the recently exposed concrete and steel bunker. What was once a lush, fertile land has been laid to waste; it's only living inhabitant a plague of mutated cockroaches. The green grass and stout oaks are now gone having become fodder for the overwhelming number of the ravenous bugs. So too are the people that once lived and prospered here. Gone, all gone.
While the ever hungry creatures crawl over and under the bunker, inside are two remaining survivors, their fate in this new world all but determined. For six months they have remained locked inside a single room measuring ten feet wide, forty feet long, and eight feet high. On the one end is a steel door designed to withstand the impact of a nuclear explosion. The seal that was meant to secure its inhabitants from nuclear fallout mostly devoured by the insatiable appetite of the mutated cockroaches. It is fortunate for the two people locked inside the bunker that the creatures have grown too large to slip through the crevice.
With their backs up against the rear wall, a dirty and stained mattress cushioning them from the hard concrete floor, sits a young boy, barely thirteen years of age. Sitting next to him is a woman, the boy's former school teacher. She is roughly forty-five years of age, but looks much older, her scraggly hair prematurely greyed in the last few months.
Both of the inhabitants appear malnutritioned, having been forced to ration the food and water. They were trapped within the bunker when the others went out in search of the supplies, having assumed that the war was over. No one could have predicted that of all the things to survive the holocaust, it would be cockroaches; a super intelligent, hyper-resourceful, new giant breed of bug.
Now their supplies are running low and it's almost as if the bugs can sense their desperation. They have water enough to last well beyond the dwindling food supply, but only because they never bathed beyond basic sanitation. Yet, they exchanged bouts of diarrhea on a regular basis.
With their backs up against the concrete wall, they can hear the scraping sounds of the cockroaches eating away at the seals of the door. But they are not concerned about the cockroaches, the creatures have been eating away at the seals for months. What they are concerned about is the lack of food. They have known for months that eventually the food would run out, and yet, in the backs of their minds, they tried convincing themselves that the cockroaches would starve out before them.
Moving slowly, a habit they had both developed in their quest to conserve energy, the boy turns his head toward the woman and thinks long and hard, a swelling in his torn and dirty jeans matching his thoughts.
Without turning her head, the woman asks, "What are you thinking, Tommy?"
"I read in one of those old people's magazines one time that people who have sex live longer."
