After decades of surviving in the aftermath of the apocalypse and staying hidden from the human predators that wandered the ruined streets of Denver, Howard Kravitz had finally been captured. Ironically the people behind his capture were not one of the many marauding tribes of chem-heads that laid claim to the wasteland, as that would have at least made some kind of sense. No, rather than having lost a fight to a violent gang of thugs, he practically gave himself freely into the hands of a pair of young women, twins he guessed by their identical appearance and mannerisms.

 

The twins were clean, almost sterile, compared to the refuse around them. They wore loose brown robes over loose brown shirts and trousers, with the latter tucked into a pair of grey leather boots. Their clothing covered their bodies loosely. Their heads were encased in grey plastic helmets. What skin he could see through the helmet's face plate was clear and smooth, with no sign of blemish or even aging. They seemed perfect and completely unaffected by the apocalypse that surrounded them.

 

Howard guessed their age to be mid-twenties and noticed they were very much in shape as he eyed them from his hiding spot. He could see their thin attractive curves expressed nicely against their clothing each time a gust of the dry afternoon wind pushed their clothes against their bodies.

 

His mind wandered a moment, and he let it. Why not? It had been over a decade since he interacted with anyone of the opposite sex, and that interaction was with a woman who was as old and grizzled as himself. While he may be an old man, he was still interested in . . . well he was still interested and left it at that.

 

The twins appeared to be scanning for something. Holding some sort of handheld device, they looked like a couple of tourists with cameras as they wandered the streets pointing the thing this way and that. Eventually, they turned and pointed the device in his direction.

 

Howard should have remained hidden. In the wasteland, if something appeared out of the ordinary it was probably dangerous; even so, some instinct prompted him to approach them anyway. He tried to justify this recklessness by convincing himself that his motives were altruistic. The world was a dangerous place and these two seemed unaware of the threat.

 

Yeah, that it, he reasoned, their safety.

 

Regardless of his motive he paid for his choice. After he stepped out of hiding to cautiously approach the twins, there was a blinding flash of light and then there was black.

 

* * *

 

Howard awakened to find himself in the back seat of a moving vehicle. His hands and feet were bound by some sort of force field. The ride was unusually smooth, for which he was grateful because any movement of his head caused a painful throbbing in his skull. He looked outside and noticed the city was no longer visible. He could still see the mountain range off in the distance to his right indicating they were traveling south.

 

Although the twins sat in bucket seats at the front of the vehicle they didn't appear to be operating it. A mop of black hair replaced their helmets, and they had what looked to be data ports connected to the base of their skulls. When the two of them noticed he had regained consciousness, they swiveled their seats around to face him, even as the vehicle continued on its course.

 

“Do you require," one twin said, while the other finished the sentence with, “nourishment?”

 

“Where are you taking me and why?” Howard demanded, ignoring their question.

 

The woman looked at each other for a moment and then back at Howard. One of them said, “We are taking you to the breeding,” while the other finished with, “facility, for use in repopulation.”

 

Howard raised an eyebrow.

 

A few more hours of travel brought the group to an underground facility dug into a mountain. Howard was unbound and dragged from the vehicle by different set of twins, with the pair assuming positions behind him. With a shove to his back, he was escorted inside.

 

He was led through a maze of corridors and was astonished to discover that the twins were not twins at all; they were clones. There were hundreds here, all female with only six base copies that he could count.

 

“So, tell me what my purpose here is again?” Howard asked as they stopped in front of a pair of double doors.

 

“We need your genetic material,” one of the escorts behind him said, with one of the twins in front of him finishing with, “to merge with our own.”

 

Howard couldn’t believe his luck. He was wading through a sea of young women and his purpose here was breeding. They needed his genetic material, his twenty-three chromosomes.

 

He was pushed through the double doors into what could best be described as a processing station. Howard soon realized that his idea of swapping genetic material was far from the reality he was facing. His head was shaved, and he was forced to disrobe and shower. After the shower, his nose was swabbed and blood was drawn; he was then taken to an adjoining room cold, naked, and wet. Howard shivered, but not from the cold.

 

Along the far wall of the room leaned eight clear capsules the size of coffins. The first six were occupied by unconscious men, naked and connected to their capsule with a harness of wires and plastic tubes. The wires attached to sensors around their heads, while tubes were inserted into every possible opening on their bodies. As they entered, the seventh capsule opened with the hiss of pneumatics.

 

Howard snarled and attempted to yank free, but the woman holding him held on with surprising strength and dragged him screaming toward the open capsule.