Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

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