I started hacking and coughing and spitting, as the dust had gotten in my eyes, nose, and mouth. I looked up, and Sam was absolutely covered from head to toe in the grey stuff. It took all my self-control to keep myself from laughing.
She must have been able to tell, because she said, "Don't you start laughing, Benson. You don't look too hot yourself."
I looked around Sam to see Carly's reaction, but she was gone, almost as if she had somehow turned into the dust. I turned around and saw a pile of dust where Spencer had been standing only moments ago, his tissue paper and glue bottles strewn across the floor.
Sam must have noticed the same things that I did. "Spencer and Carly Shay! Whatever prank you are trying to pull, it isn't funny! If you don't come out within the next 45 seconds, Mama is not gonna be happy!"
I had a sinking feeling in my gut that this wasn't just some prank. I ran out of Carly's apartment and into mine. "Mom? Mom!"
There was a pile of gray dust on the floor.
I looked out into the hallway. Two more piles of dust.
I ran for the stairs because I couldn't imagine waiting for an elevator in a moment like this. By now Sam was right on my tail.
"Benson, what's going on? Where has everyone gone? What's up with all this dust everywhere?" She yelled out the questions as our feet pounded down the stairs. I hit the lobby, and another pile of dust was sitting where Lewbert usually manned his post. I rushed out of the doors of the apartment building.
Wrecked cars littered the streets as far as the eye could see in either direction, some smoking while others were outright on fire. A few bicycles were laid on the pavement a few feet from us, but the most shocking thing was the lack of people. At this time of the day, people should be out and about, walking to work, driving home, riding a bike, walking their dog, doing something, but there was no one. Just piles of gray dust.
"Fredward Benson you tell me what is going on right now!"
We were back in my apartment, and I was rifling through some old equipment, looking for my microscope. I thought about her question; how should I answer it without getting my face broken?
"I think the human race has suffered from mass extinction, and you and I are the only survivors."
Her eyes lowered, and for a brief moment I thought she was going to cry.
"So why were we the only survivors?"
Silly me. Samantha Pucket doesn't cry.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." After a few more seconds I found my microscope and plugged it in. It was a bit dusty, but it still worked. I crossed the room to where my mom kept one of her many emergency kits and cracked it open. I dug out two empty syringes and walked back over to where I had set up the microscope.
"I'm hoping that something in our blood can tell us why," I drew some of my blood and dropped a few drops onto a slide. I got the other syringe and waved it and Sam and said, "You're turn!" with a smile.
Sam didn't actually look so great. She was very pale and was sitting down on one of my kitchen chairs.
"Sam, you don't look so great."
"Well Freddork, I'm sure you were born looking worse." I really should have seen that one coming.
"I need to take your blood, Sam." She then muttered something unintelligible.
"What?"
"I said I'm afraid of needles! Okay! Now you know!" She then continued her sulking.
Don't blame me for the next sequence of events. I see an opprotunity; I take it. I knew she wouldn't reject me because she had so willingly thrown herself at me not too long ago. I put the syringe in my back pocket and out of sight. I crossed the room and lifted her face toward mine and kissed her. I could feel her entire mouth go rigid with surprise, but then she kissed me back. I would have sat there kissing her forever; it was the most blissful feeling in the world, but I was on a mission. I took the syringe from my back pocket and opened my eyes. One quick prick later and I pulled away. I let her eyes study my face for a moment, and then i leaned in to kiss the spot on her inner elbow where I had taken the blood.
"See?" I whispered. "That wasn't so bad."
And then she slapped me across the face. Eh, small price for trying to figure out how the world ended.
"Fredwart, how dare you take advantage of me like that just so you can run your little science experiment!"
She continued ranting in the background, but I just dropped some of her blood onto a different slide. I first studied Sam's blood, then mine. Both blood samples had anomalies in them; something about the blood didn't even look human. With Sam still yelling at me about something that I lacked, I dug out some strips to test blood type and put the remainder of the blood that I drew onto them.
"That's impossible," I whispered.
Sam must have noticed that I was actually saying something. "What?"
"These strips are supposed to show you your blood type. When blood comes into contact with it, certain sections will show clumping, or no sections show it. But when both of our blood samples hit the card, it didn't clump. It turned blue."
"So what does that mean, Benson? That we are some kind of mutant freaks?"
"More correctly, you are. You must have mutated to have a completely unique blood type. The only possible way that I must have gotten it is when you kissed me, although I have no idea how swapping spit would have passed on a genetic mutation of the blood..." I looked back at the card with my blood on it, which had been gradually changing back to red. I pulled out another test card and drew more of my blood and dropped it onto the card. This time, it stayed blue.
"So you're saying that I saved your life?"
"Yes," I said, but my mind was whirring rapidly. The blood sample I took before I kissed Sam was now a normal shade of red, but the sample I took after kissing her was still a bright shade of blue. Everything clicked together at once. It was temporary. I was going to have to keep swapping bodily fluids with Sam in order not to explode into a pile of gray dust on the floor.
