The power went out exactly three weeks after the plague escaped the underground testing facility in Texas.  For Paul and Stephanie, this was the beginning of a rapid decline.

“What the hell are you doing, Steph?!”

“I’m sorry--what’d I do this time!”

“You’re supposed to skin the animal first, damn it.  Smell that burning nasty smell?”

“Yeah… I thought it was just--”

“That’s the hair being cooked.  Shit, do you know how to do anything?!”

When the power went out, the non-perishables were toast, and they had to resort to hunting and gathering.  It took Paul almost three days to coach Stephanie through shooting a firearm.  Fortunately in the weeks following the decline of man, the woodland population has increased exponentially and they’ve gotten dumber.  It didn’t take too long before they ran into a deer dumb enough to approach them.  Boom.  Right between the eyes.  But Paul had always done all the cooking, and this was a new challenge for Steph.

“I… I’m sorry, I just thought--I mean, in the movies they never--”

“This is real life, Steph!  This isn’t a movie!”

“But--”

“Save it.  Shit, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into.  We need to--Damn it, Steph!  Stop turning the deer over the fire!!”

“Huh--oh God!  Sorry!”

Stephanie removed the deer from its position above the flames, the hairs still on fire.  She stared at the burning carcass for a few seconds before Paul finally shouted for her to pat out the flames.  After a moment of protesting, she did as she was told.

It went like this for many days.  The sad truth is that Stephanie was not an independent person--she always had someone to look out for her, be it a parent, boyfriend, or simply a close friend.  So in this new world--where she was one of the few able bodied individuals still around--where she must look out for others instead of the reverse, she was lost.  From attempting to use appliances that had long since stopped working thanks to the lack of electricity, i.e. the fridge, and her seeming lack of ability to do anything, Paul seemed to simply turn into an angry midget.  Things were not looking up.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The cataclysmic explosion that would pit these young lovers against one another came in the form of a bumbling accident and a hot temper.  The two fused and erupted like a hydrogen bomb.

Paul had been taking a shower in the sink, same as every day.  However, Steph hadn’t noticed this.  She was eating dinner.  Paul wasn’t dining with her so she did what she often did when alone: Zoned out and thought.  She thought of many things.  How the rest of the world was faring, why she seemed to be the only one in town normal sized and alive.  What kind of virus could do these things.  Whether this should even be physically possible.  Above all she thought about the rest of the world.  What would happen to civilization.  So lost in thought was she that when it came time to put her plate up, she scraped her scraps into the sink and turned on the garbage disposal.

It rained leftover food scraps on Paul, who had just been finishing his shower.  He was covered in tomato sauce and messed up noodles.  And to boot, the water sent a current down towards the grinding metal blades below.  Paul tried to grab on to anything he could, anything at all, but the surface was too slick.  There was little to no friction on the inside of the sink.

“Steph!  Stephanie, turn off the disposal,” he shouted, trying in vain to be heard over the loud grinding noise coming from the drain.  He managed to grab hold of a chunk of meatball.  Once a baseball superstar in high school, he aimed for Steph’s eye and fired away.  He tossed the meathunk, hitting Steph square in the pupil.  She shrieked as she rubbed at her eye.  Then she caught a glimpse of a pink fleshy thing in the sink.

She gasped.  “Paul!”

With lightning speed, she reached in and yanked Paul out of the sink, just as he was hitting the disposal blades.  His heel got nicked.  He wouldn’t be walking for a while.

“Good God,” he shouted.  “What the hell is wrong with you Steph!  You almost killed me--I mean, does it really take all that much focus to notice your boyfriend bathing in the God damned sink!!”

“Paul, I--”

“No, no fucking excuses!  Fuck… I’m bleeding.  Well, don’t just stand there and watch, get me some cloth or something.”

“Oh, right.”

“I swear, you’re worthless sometimes!  You burn all our food, you almost kill me, what kind of cruel God grants immunity to the one doomed to die of starvation and--”

A lesson most people learn very quickly: Do not anger a woman who holds you in the palm of her hand.  Paul felt himself falling.  Paul and Stephanie were both strong Christians.  Steph had kept her faith in the weeks following the outbreak--after all, she was alive and well, and so was her boyfriend.  Paul however had grown increasingly cynical and borderline blasphemous.  He could bitch and piss and moan at Steph all he wanted, but when she heard him insult God, it was time to fall.  Paul fell all the way from Steph’s bosom to her knees before she extended a hand to catch him.

“That was a warning,” she said angrily.  “And you know, you could show some more appreciation.  I’m doing my best.”

“Wow, shows what kind of girl I decided to shack up with.”

“Fuck you!  At least I’m trying--left to your own, you wouldn’t survive for five minutes!  You’re too small to pull off any surviving!  You can’t kill anything, you can’t travel anywhere, you can’t even satisfy a woman!”

“Oooh… that was a cheap shot.  Low, low, low, low, low.  Well, you know what, you wouldn’t survive on your own either.  You’d live off reheated TV Dinners for a while, but sooner or later you’ll either run out or they’ll expire.  You’d die.”

“Of what!”

“… I just explained it.  You’d starve to death, or die of stupidity.”

“Die of stupidity?”

“You know, doing stupid shit that common sense would tell most people is a bad idea and then getting injured and infected because we no longer have medical facilities.”

“Shut up!  I am not stupid!  I’m very smart!”

“Yeah, I’m sure math, English, and US History are going to do you wonders in this brave new world.  You can survive in a classroom, but if tossed into the real world, you’re doomed to failure.  Darwin was right.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“No, you may not like what I have to say, but you need to hear it!”

“Shut up,” she shouted, this time letting Paul fall all the way to the ground.

“Sunuvabitch,” he shouted as he hit the ground.  His leg broke--hell, it didn’t just break, it shattered.

“You have ten seconds to get out of my sights.  If you’re still there, I’m smashing you.”

“My leg’s broke, I can’t go anywhere!”

“Ten… nine… eight…”

Paul took a commando crawling position and immediately began doing a soldiers crawl towards a space behind the kitchen counter.

“Seven… six… five… four… three…”

Almost there.  A few more feet.  Paul stood up and hopped towards the crack.

“Two… one.”

Stephanie’s foot came down outside the crack leading behind the kitchen counter.  It smashed the spot Paul had been standing on only a few milliseconds beforehand.  Paul sat there, clutching his broken leg and watching blood trickle from his other foot.  All in all it was a sucky day.  He was no more than an intruder in his own home.  An unwanted rodent.  A pest control problem.  And he knew they had Raid in the garage.  Hopefully Stephanie would remain blissfully unaware of that fact.