A rapacious eyed puma in a Volkswagen van that flatulates exhaust pulls over to the side, hazard lights blinking flirtatiously.

"Where you headed?"  The puma asks, whiskers twitching to an old Doors tune on the radio.

"Washington, D.C.," The Last Boy on Earth says.  The puma looks at him with no recognition whatsoever.  "Uh, I mean, the Valley of Fallen Monuments."

"Ohhhh.  Yeah, I'm headed in that direction.  Hop in."  The Last Boy on Earth runs around the front of the van to get in.  He can feel the Puma appraising him through the windshield welted with crushed insects.  As they pull away from the edge of the road where the Last Boy On Earth spent his last three hours, the Last Boy on Earth looks nostalgically in the rearview mirror.  Some vibe between him and the puma makes him know, already, what will happen.  The air is brackish with smoke.

"You're smarter than what I usually see of your kind," the Puma says, licking one paw and rubbing it around the crest of one ear.  "You talk."

"Yes," The Last Boy on Earth says.  "I'm sort of a throwback."

The Puma coughs once, and then again, deep in its throat.  The Last Boy on Earth has no idea if it's from the smoke or perhaps a hairball.  "A throwback?"  The Puma's voice is hoarse.

"Yes," The Last Boy on Earth says.  "It used to be that my kind, humankind, were the masters of the earth.  And animals were pets, were servants, were food."

The Puma's ears flatten back.  "Whatever you've been smoking, I hope you got more to share."

"No, really."

The Puma settles back in its chair and turns up the radio as the DJ comes on.  "And that was the Doors with Light My Fire, here at KENL, the Kennel, and I'm Red Rover with you until 6:00 tonight. After these messages, we've got some great old tunes from the Turtles."

"They were human," The Last Boy on Earth says, not sure why he's pushing the issue.  "The Doors."

The Puma yawns, his mouth suddenly as large as the whole of his face and the Last Boy on Earth shivers, looking at incisors like kitchen knives.  "You're crazy," the Puma says.  "The Doors were lizards.  Why do you think the lead singer calls himself the Lizard King?"

The Last Boy on Earth sighs, giving up, and peers through the bird shit and bug splatter at the road ahead.  The road, once a four lane highway, is now barely two lanes, both cracked all too hell and veined with tall grass.  The Last Boy on Earth can feel the Puma looking at him again; it feels like sunlight on his hot legs, licking up his belly to his chest and down again.  The Last Boy on Earth squirms in his chair.

"Yes," the Puma says, as if he'd been asked a question.  "You're certainly different, all right."

The Last Boy on Earth has done what he's had to do to survive. He's read enough old books to know that humans in the Great Age very rarely slept with animals, and that those who did kept it secret.  But in this age, the animals, although intelligent, are much more likely to be held sway by the considerable compulsions of their hormones.  Most animals will merely hold down a human, biting and humping, and then stop the whole thing as soon as it's started, realizing that it's not worth the effort.  But the Last Boy on Earth, intelligent and muscular from his constant travels, frequently attracts a lot of animals who's interests are far from the caprice of fleeting desire.  He can't forget the months when he woke up in the arms of a powerful tiger master he'd had for several months, feeling safer than he'd ever felt, and he was more than aware that his apprenticeship with Krown, the horse blacksmith, had been more than just a relationship of convenience for either of them.  But the Last Boy on Earth is distressed by the Puma's interest in him, and the knowledge that somewhere down the line, long before the Last Boy on Earth can set eyes on the Great Broken Mother, the Puma will put a fearsome claw, not untenderly, on the boy's smooth thigh and rub it gently upward.  The fact that such a claw could easily pop through the boy's skin and pierce the arteries there adds both to the discomfort and the slight hot feeling in the stomach of the Last Boy on Earth; the promise of a few minutes of dangerous abandonment, when the terrible responsibility on his shoulders could be, for the moment, forgotten.

'Great guns,' the Last Boy on Earth thinks, his breath more shallow with each passing minute, unsure if he dreaded or yearned for that coming weight.  'Surely the teenagers of the Great Age never had to worry about this when they hitchhiked!'