Apocalypsis: Book 1 (Kahayatle) (6 page)

I shoved him with my arm, causing him to tip over sideways.
 
Then I continued, “Anyway, as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, we have some choices.
 
But regardless of where we go, I think our mode of transportation should be mountain bikes.”

“Why?
 
I mean, why not motor-scooters or something?
 
They’re faster.”

“Too noisy.
 
Yes, we could go faster and farther.
 
But if there are actual … canners or whatever out there, we need to move more quietly.
 
And we need to travel when no one’s out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, between like four in the morning and seven.”

“That’s not a lot of traveling time each day.”

“Better safe than sorry.
 
And maybe there will be places where we can alter those times a bit, like when we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Peter nodded his head.
 
“Okay.
 
I agree to this.
 
So we’re going to travel by bike, with backpacks, hauling all this stuff.”
 
He looked at me.
 
“Where are we going to go?”

My brain was moving a thousand miles an hour, calculating variables and taking everything I could think of into consideration.
 
My dad had told me to go where no one would find me.
 
He said to make myself safe and find a few friends who’d be there to help me re-build and to watch my back.
 

“I think we should go to the mountains,” I said.
 
I could still remember the trip I’d taken with my dad several years before, up to North Carolina.
 
It was on my list of favorite places ever.

“But it snows there.”

“That means there’s water.”

“It also means frostbite and difficulty finding food.”

“Okay, Mr. Voice of Reason, where do you think we should go?”

Peter sighed.
 
“I don’t even want to say it.”

I quickly flashed my fist and forearms out in a move that was part of my basic warm-ups, finishing with a slow drawing out of my arms to the side.
 
“Say it, or suffer my wrath.”

Peter looked at me, completely unimpressed.
 
“What in the hell was that supposed to be?
 
What are you … a Ninja Turtle?”

I shook my head at him with exaggerated disappointment.
 
“I don’t know which is sadder - that you know about Ninja Turtles or that you don’t recognize a lethal weapon when you see it.”

Peter snorted.
 
He sounded like a total girl.
 
“Lethal weapon?
 
Oh, no, whatever am I going to do?” He put his hand to his forehead like he was going to faint, rolled his eyes up into his head, and then fell back into the couch cushions.

I nudged him.
 
“Tell me what you were going to say.”

He didn’t respond.

“Seriously.
 
before I have to show you my stuff.”

He didn’t open his eyes, but he did speak.

“I think we need to go to the Everglades.”

***

At first I was really resistant to the idea, even though I had suggested it as an alternative.
 
I hated mosquitoes, snakes, and gators … and probably about a thousand other nasties that made their homes there.
 
But Peter made a very convincing point: everyone else hated that stuff too.
 

“We need to go somewhere no one else wants to go; a place where life would be too hard for most people.
 
And we need a place that has food and water sources.”

I nodded my head in resignation.
 
“And nothing beats the Everglades for all of the above.”

“Exactly.
 
Sure, the mountains have what we need to survive.
 
But they’re also beautiful, hospitable, and very well-known.
 
That’s where other people will be going.
 
That’s where the canners will be going,” said Peter, shifting his voice lower to finish.
 
“It’ll be their hunting grounds.”

I shivered at the idea of going to live in a place where I would be the prey instead of being the guy at the top of the food chain, hoping in the back of my mind that I would never be okay or blasé about the idea of a person eating another person.
 
I swallowed the sick feeling down, moving my brain to other, less disgusting topics.

“I guess you’re right,”
 
I said, sighing.
 
“I’ll get the map.”
 
I went over to our pile of books as we were talking and pulled out the spiral-bound roadmap book.
 
I sat back down next to Peter and flipped through the pages.
 
“Should we stick to highways or back roads?”

“I have no idea.”

“Okaaaayyy.
 
Through the middle or down the coast?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

I smiled, scanning the pages that showed the roads near my house.
 
“We make quite the team, don’t we?”

I could hear a smile in Peter’s voice when he responded.
 
“The best.”

CHAPTER THREE

PETER AND I TOOK TURNS sleeping and staying awake the first night.
 
It was the first time I’d actually been able to sleep deeply and have a dream I remembered.
 
It was of my dad, telling me how to pack my bag, and me complaining about having to play survivor.
 
It made me both happy and sad, glad to re-live the moment but wishing I had appreciated the time spent with him more.

I woke up to relieve Peter on guard duty and spent the next couple of hours kicking myself mentally for not trying harder with my krav maga training and asking my dad to teach me more things about survival.
 
I should have spent my last few months of his life with him in the library, absorbing information that I could use to rebuild my world into one I could feel happy and safe in.
 
Now that I knew some kids had gone insane - in groups - I didn’t feel comfortable at all in my house and in this neighborhood.
 
Peter and I were way too easy to catch here and then … well … be their next meal.

At four in the morning I nudged Peter awake.
 
“Come on.
 
We need to go see what we can find at the neighbors’ houses for food before we leave.”

“What if someone comes while we’re gone?”

“Only one of us is going at a time.
 
The other stays here and guards the house.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?
 
Being alone?”

“Yes.
 
But we can’t risk leaving our books and things for raiders to take.”

Peter nodded his head slowly, wiping his face and hair with his hands.
 
“Okay.
 
Who’s going out first?”

“I’ll go while you wake up.”
 
I held out my finger as I stood, warning him, “But no going back to sleep.”

Peter slowly got on his feet.
 
“No, I won’t.
 
I’m gonna go … pee.”

“Out in the back yard.
 
Far right corner.
 
I have a hole in the ground.
 
Just move the board away from it first, please.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to start at the corner there, across the street and to the right, and I’ll do the first five houses in a row, going that way.”

“Okay.
 
Just wait for me to come back, first.”

I busied myself with checking my gun and finding more bullets to put in my pocket.
 
I had several boxes of them, but I’d spread them out all over the house, thinking at the time I’d done it that if someone came breaking in, I’d be prepared for a re-load no matter where I was.

Peter came back inside and picked up his gun.
 
“Ready whenever you are.”

“I’m taking a potty break and then leaving from the side yard, so just watch for me out the front window.
 
Don’t come out though, no matter what, okay?”

“What if someone comes after you?”

“Warn me by ringing that bell on my front porch.”

“Bell?
 
Where?”

I brought him to the front door and opened it a crack, showing him the brass decorative bell that had hung in the same place for as long as we’d owned the house.
 

“What should I ring it with?”

“I don’t know.
 
Your gun?
 
A pan?
 
Something metal.”

He stepped out on the front porch and raised his gun, ready to bring it crashing down, but I reached out and grabbed his elbow to stop him.
 

“What the hell are you doing?” I whisper-yelled.

“Testing it,” he said, innocently.

“Oh, so you can wake up the raiders and let them know we’re open for business?”

Peter grimaced and then whispered, “Oh.
 
Yeah.
 
That was dumb.”

I shook my head.
 
“Get back inside, ding-a-ling.”

After taking a pee break and brushing my teeth with the tiniest speck of toothpaste I could manage, I left the house, sticking to the edges of abandoned cars and bushes as much as possible.
 
I made it over to the Brown’s place without being seen.

I went through their house and the four next to it, checking every cupboard and under every bed and couch I could find.
 
I even went up into their attics, already stiflingly hot.
 
They would have been impossible to go in later in the day when the raiders were normally active, so there was a chance I could find something there that had not yet been discovered.

When I returned to my house a little over an hour later, I had less than half a backpack full of stuff.

“What’d you get?” asked Peter, his eyes gleaming.
 
I couldn’t blame him for his excitement - it was kind of like a treasure hunt.
 
Except for the danger of possibly being discovered and attacked, it was fun.
 

“Well, I got a camping lantern, the oil kind - found it up in an attic.
 
There’s lots of oil in it still, plus there was an extra can too.”

“Cool.”

“I got four cans of mini-ham from the back corner of a cupboard someone had missed.”

“Nice,” he said, turning one of the cans around to read the ingredients.

I shook my head silently -
as if ingredients even matter anymore.

“Don’t shake your head at me,” he said.

“Why not?
 
You’re being goofy.”

“How do you know it wasn’t some weird bio-engineered food that killed all the adults off?”

“Because we ate the same things as them and we’re all still here, maybe?” I said in a way that suggested he was the dummy, not me.

“Maybe it’s an ingredient that kids are resistant to but adults aren’t.”

“Whatever.
 
It’s only a few cans and we’re not likely to find many more of them.
 
Even Costco and Walmart have been cleaned out at this point.”

“How do you know?”

I shrugged.
 
“I don’t.
 
It’s just an educated guess.
 
If I lived closer to one, it’s where I would have gone first.”

“What else did you get?”

I pulled out a bag of rice and a box of spaghetti.
 
“This is it.”

Peter smiled.
 
“A spaghetti dinner.”

“I’m so sick of pasta I could puke,” I grumbled.

“Well, that’s too bad.
 
It’s good carbs for when we’re riding bikes, and it’s easy to make.
 
If we could ever figure out how to make flour, we’d be able to make pasta ourselves.
 
Or something that looked kind of like it.”

“I prefer tortillas.”

“Whatever.
 
We’ll worry about that when we get settled.
 
Now it’s my turn to go out.”
 
Peter stood up straighter and tucked his gun down the front of his baggy pants.
 
The huge handle hanging over the edge was the only thing keeping it from falling down his pant leg; but it was so heavy, it was pulling his pants down partway.

“You need a holster.
 
Start with the house just on the west side of this one, plus the four next ones.
 
The guy two doors down was a cop.
 
Maybe he has a holster in his bedroom somewhere.”

“Okay.
 
Who else lived in those houses?
 
Maybe I can focus on finding certain things.”

“I don’t know.
 
An old man lived next to him.
 
I never talked to him.
 
He was a little strange.
 
The others?
 
I have no clue.
 
I wasn’t the most social of neighbors.
 
Neither was my dad.”

Peter said nothing until he got to the front door.
 
“I bet you wish you were more social back then, when you had neighbors to be social with.”
 
And then he walked out.

I thought about what he said, moving towards my kitchen window to watch him walk over to the next door neighbor’s house.
 
He wasn’t trying at all not to be seen.
 
That gun was giving him a false sense of security.
 
I was going to have to remedy that when he got back.

As I waited for him to return, I tried to decide if I was feeling regret over not being more social in the past.
 
Would my outcome be any different now if I’d been friendlier to the neighbors?
 
If I’d gone down and talked to the crazy old guy who was always out in his yard, talking to his fluffy, white toy poodle, Buster, all the time?
 
No.
 
They would have been just more people to say goodbye to.