Two (The Twilight Zone)

Plot

A female soldier (Elizabeth Montgomery) wearing a tattered brown uniform stumbles into a deserted city. She looks into some of the shop windows before spying what was a restaurant. She finds a can of chicken in the kitchen, but before she can open it, a man (Charles Bronson) wearing a worn gray, shield-front uniform tunic walks in. She attacks him. The man knocks her out and begins to ravenously eat the chicken. The man notices a dove, which flies away.

He leaves the restaurant and goes to a newsstand. A copy of the newspaper reveals that the city was evacuated during the war. He returns to the kitchen and wakes the woman by dumping a pot of water on her face. He says there is no reason to fight anymore and that she can have the leftover chicken, but eventually realizes that she cannot understand English and departs. The woman is wary, but eats the chicken. She then follows him into a barber shop and watches as he shaves. He tosses a bar of soap to her, then a towel, which she uses to wash her dirty face. They wander down the street, coming to a movie theater. He stares at a poster for a wartime romance film and turns to smile at her. They find the skeletal remains of soldiers at the theater entrance and snatch nearby rifles, simultaneously aiming at each other.

After a tense moment, the man turns and walks away, slinging his weapon over his shoulder. The woman follows him, and the two walk along the city street. They stop in front of a store with a dress in the broken display window and she mutters, "pryekrasnyy" (прекрасный), the Russian word for "beautiful". He hands the dress to her and tells her to go and put it on. She enters the building, which turns out to be a recruiting office. As she prepares to change into the dress, she notices the jingoistic enlistment posters on the wall. She grabs her rifle (a primitive "blaster"), exits the office and angrily shoots at him twice, but misses. The man gets up, looks at her incredulously, and walks away. As night falls, she returns to the barber shop to sleep in the barber's chair, staring at the dress.

The next morning, the man has changed out of his uniform into a makeshift tuxedo and has found two jars of peaches. He sees the woman waiting, peeking at him from behind a truck in the street below. He yells at her to leave. She emerges from behind the truck wearing the dress. He tosses one of the jars to her and says, "pryekrasnyy". She smiles, and they walk away together.

Music

An abbreviated version of the music for this episode, composed by Nathan Van Cleave, served as the basis for the opening and closing music for the radio drama CBS Radio Mystery Theater.