STORY EXCERPT

Iran was disappointed. They had meant only to kill off large numbers of Americans and Israelis with the new, hand-spliced, lab-created virus. They hadn’t counted on its letting loose a perfect firestorm of illness that spread worldwide. It killed not only Americans and Israelis but innocent citizens of other nations as well. And then Iran’s allies began falling, and then Iranians themselves.

At first there were news reports, of course, of what the media referred to as “the virus storm,” but as people sickened and died by the hundreds and thousands and worse, the media soon grew shorthanded. There was no one left to broadcast the news at the TV stations or to write the news and print it at the papers. Then the Internet news sites, too, shut down.

Aaron sat in front of his TV, clicking the remote in vain. CNN had been hushed. FOX News had gone silent. MSNBC was a blank. He wondered if he was possibly the only human left alive, and if so, why him? Clearly there was nobody broadcasting the news, or anything else, on TV or on radio. The daily paper had put out its last edition, skimpy and with no ads in it, four days ago. And the Internet was almost as much of a wasteland. Now and again he encountered someone in a chat room, but uniformly they reported being the last person alive in their respective towns…and quite ill themselves. None of them checked in again after that.

Once again, Aaron got in his car and drove up and down the streets of Louisville, fruitlessly searching for signs of life. Once again, he was stymied in his efforts. The stench of putrid corpses was everywhere, but there was no indication of anyone left alive beside himself. He thought of getting in his car and setting out to search elsewhere, but where? What was there, besides desperate hope, to make him think that anyone else was left alive anywhere at all in Kentucky or the United States or the world, for that matter?

And then he struck pay dirt. With nothing else to do, no job to go to anymore, and no open stores to shop in, he thought to mine the Internet for every resource he could. Accessing Yahoo! Groups, he tried to join every group listed there. Many required approval from the group administrators, who were no longer around to give that needed approval, but others were open and could be joined without any barriers. He joined all that he could, regardless of whether he had an interest in the purpose of the group. Knitting. Sheepherding. Whittling. Puns. No matter what the group’s purpose was, he joined, and he posted a notice: “Anyone left alive please contact me.” And he gave both his e-mail address and his phone number.

Somebody did. Keith said he had been concerned that he was the last man alive in the world and was overjoyed to discover Aaron posting to the subsistence farming group. They connected by Internet and then by phone. “I don’t know how long the Internet’s gonna stay functional,” Aaron said, “but you’ve got my phone number. It’s a cell. I don’t have a landline.”

“How long do you think the cellular networks will stay up?” Keith questioned him. “Those may go down, too.”

“Or if the cell network holds, how long till the electricity goes down, and I can’t charge my phone anymore?” Aaron ruminated.

“You don’t have a charger that works off your car battery?”

“Never bought one. I don’t travel that much.”

“Better go get one now.”

“The stores are closed,” Aaron reminded Keith with a loud sigh.

“Dude—break in!”

“That’s stealing.”

“Dude—the owners are dead. Who are you stealing from? Corpses? It’s every man for himself. What are you doing for food?”

“Running low,” Aaron admitted.

“Go break into a supermarket. Some of the meat and produce is too old already, but there’s sure to still be some stuff that’s still good. And canned goods…stock up on canned goods. Even canned potatoes.”

“Canned potatoes? Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Keith said patiently. “Canned potatoes. Get fresh potatoes and store them in a cool, dark place, and get canned potatoes for later on, when the fresh ones are gone.”

“What are you, some kind of agricultural expert?” Aaron chuckled.

“You found me on the subsistence farming list—remember?”

“That’s right,” Aaron said. “I did.”

“Go shopping. It’s kinda late today. It’ll get dark soon. But first thing tomorrow, go load up your car. What size of car have you got? Compact? Sedan?”

“I’ve got a sedan, but my neighbor owned a van, a commercial van, and I’ve got his keys. I suppose…” Aaron trailed off, sounding skeptical. “I dunno. It feels like stealing.”

“Dude, the guy is dead. He’s got no use for it.”

“It’s still illegal and immoral to steal.”

“This is a new reality. Illegal? Immoral? What Iran did, unleashing that virus, was immoral. Making good use of something that belongs to no one anymore isn’t immoral. It’s saving your ass. As for the legality, have you seen any cops out there? Who’s gonna bust you? Any judges? Any juries? Who’s gonna try you? Even if, hypothetically, a judge turned up somewhere, somehow, do you think they’d convict you under the present circumstances? Dude, it’s save-your-own-skin time. Wake up and smell the coffee. The old rules don’t apply. We’re living in a new world now—and we may be the only two people left alive in it.”

ADULT EXCERPT

Keith’s eyes riveted themselves to Aaron’s upward-jutting, slightly curved dick. Aaron put a hand on it and slowly, temptingly skinned it back and forth, aiming it at Keith as he did. “It’s yours to suck,” Aaron said softly. “Or do whatever you want with it—or with any other part of me.”

Keith grinned and went on undressing without removing his eyes from Aaron’s thick, drooling shaft. By now he had his own dick exposed to Aaron’s gaze, and Aaron could see that it was one of those smooth, fat stalks. Unlike Aaron’s own, which was laced with a network of prominent veins and ridges, Keith’s dick was almost totally devoid of protrusions. And where Aaron’s had a flattish, mushroomy cap, Keith’s had an arrow-shaped, pointy head. But they were alike in two respects—both were fully engorged and quivering, and both were emitting thick strings of cum.

Grabbing Keith by the wrist, Aaron yanked him down onto the bed next to him, then dropped to his knees on the floor and enveloped Keith’s corona in his mouth. Slowly, deliberately, insistently, Aaron began to suck. At first he used just the lightest of suction as he fluttered his tongue across the expanse of Keith’s corona. Then, after a few minutes of inflicting this delightful torture on him, Aaron began sucking harder and moving his mouth down the shaft.

As Keith’s dick started disappearing into Aaron’s mouth, Keith’s body began quivering, shaking, and shivering. Aaron felt it was an emotional reaction to the circumstances as much as it was a physical reaction to the cocksucking, so he put a hand on Keith’s back to steady him. Almost immediately, though, Aaron was impelled to slide that hand down Keith’s back, worm his way under Keith’s seated butt, and squirm his way up into his waiting-to-be-breached pucker. That hole was as tight as a snapped-shut clamshell, and it took great maneuvering on Aaron’s part to force his finger up into the embrace of Keith’s sphincter muscle. It had been much easier to do it on the phone, in fantasy, than it was to accomplish in reality. Keith hadn’t been kidding when he said he was still tight back there.

When Aaron finally felt the humid warmth of Keith’s searing insides, his finger wriggled back and forth to tantalize Keith’s anal walls, and he felt Keith’s dick lurch within his mouth and stiffen. Aaron knew Keith was about to blow his load, and he chuckled at his new lover’s eagerness. Sure enough, Keith’s whole body stiffened, his dick swelled up impossibly larger, and then Aaron felt the pulsations start in Keith’s dick as Aaron’s tongue warmed with Keith’s sudden outpouring. Aaron’s finger, up Keith’s ass, reached for his prostate, encouraging him into an even stronger orgasm.

Keith didn’t say a word, but he emitted some strange and strangled-sounding growls and howls. Then he just sort of slumped as he sat there. Finally he mumbled, “That was wonderful, but you’ve wiped me out. I want to reciprocate, but you have to give me a minute to recover.”

“You don’t need to suck me in return. I have other plans for you. Scrunch up on the bed and swing around,” Aaron urged Keith. “Pull your legs up. You’re going to give me a real welcome.”

Keith opened the night table drawer and snagged a tube of lube, which he proffered to Aaron. Aaron squeezed a dab onto his right forefinger, then pressed the finger to Keith’s asshole and began to lube it up. Working the finger slowly, teasingly in and out of his pucker, Aaron stimulated all the nerves that populated Keith’s rim while greasing him up for his eventual entry.

Keith’s face morphed from displaying eagerness to displaying need, as he became seduced by the good feelings warming his rear end. Aaron continued working his way in and out with his finger, then added a second finger, and then a third. Then he began fucking him harder, slamming the three fingers in and out harder, faster, deeper. At last removing his fingers, Aaron rubbed them across his crown, smearing whatever lube was left on his fingers onto the taut skin and blending the gel with the natural lube that was welling copiously up from the slit in his dick.

Then Aaron positioned his crown at Keith’s entryway and pushed forward. Keith’s sphincter resisted for a minute, barring Aaron from getting inside. Then it relaxed, and Aaron popped within those dank and humid depths.