Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

with me.”
    “Ew.   Like I’d flirt with a girl.”
    I chuckled and kept pedaling.   I was damn glad I’d taken Peter in too, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.   It was more fun to let him stew and wonder.   He made me wish I hadn’t been an only child.   I never realized teasing could be this much fun.
    ***
    It was starting to get hot outside; and hot in Central Florida is its own kind of special misery.   Pretty soon we were going to be sweating so much, we’d be unable to keep up with it and fully hydrate ourselves with the few bottles of water we had.
    “We need to find somewhere to stop,” I said over my shoulder.
    Peter was pumping away at his pedals, his face looking too red for my comfort.
    “Good.   I’m planning on dropping dead in the first spot of shade we see … it was nice … knowing you,” he huffed out.
    “Come on,” I said, smiling at his morbid humor.   “Don’t be such a wuss.”   All morning long he’d been giving out these one liners that had me laughing.   He was good company.   “There’s an exit ramp just up there.   We can stay under the overpass.”   I checked Buster and he seemed happy, his chin hanging over the edge of the trailer and his ears flicking forward and back from time to time as he caught sounds coming from birds or the wind in power lines or palms.   We had rigged a tarp to give him shelter from the sun.   Peter had been afraid Buster would get a sunburn - I was just worried about him having a sun stroke.   I refused to let Peter put any of our sunscreen on the dog, though.   We had to conserve it for ourselves.   Buster was just going to have to deal.
    We got off the highway that seemed to stretch out forever in front of us and turned around to go under the overpass.   The temperature was markedly cooler there in the shade, and the steep, ramped edges gave me a sense of security.   If someone wanted to come get us, it was going to be an uphill battle - literally.  
    We perched the bikes up there on their sides along with the trailer.   I wedged the bike pedal making contact with the ramped surface into a small hole, keeping the trailer from being able to drag the bike down to the bottom.
    “Now what?” asked Peter.
    “Now we cover ourselves.   Or our bikes anyway.”
    “What do you mean?” he asked, sitting down and taking a swig from his water bottle.   We had three that were full of drinkable water.   The other one we planned to use for cooking only.
    “Just watch and learn.” I went into one of the backpacks and pulled the large tarp from inside.   One side of the tarp was a dull gray and the other various shades of green.   I opened it up and put it on top of our bikes and most of the trailer, green side down.   I pointed to the corner nearest Peter.   “Put your foot on that side.”
    He did as instructed.
    I walked down the ramp with Buster following me.   He looked so funny walking down at such a steep incline, I felt sorry for him, so I picked him up to carry him the rest of the way down.   He had looked like he was afraid he was going to tumble ass over teakettle as my grandma used to say, but it hadn’t stopped him from going with me anyway.   He was nothing if not loyal.
    Once we got to the bottom, I put him back on his feet and went in search of some rocks.   I found four pretty decent sized ones and returned to Peter, leaning into the slope to make my climb with the extra weight easier.   Buster was much happier going uphill than he had been going down.
    I stretched the tarp back out and placed rocks down on the corners to hold it in place.
    “Voilà,” I said when I finished.   “Done.   Now no one will see us hanging out up here.”
    Peter looked down at his red t-shirt.   “Uhhhh, yeah.”
    “Oh, right.   Hold on a sec.”   I lifted up the tarp to reach into the backpack one more time.   I had seen this t-shirt on the floor in the army-navy store, so I had shoved it in the bag for later.   I pulled it out and threw it to him.   “Put this one on.   Take the other one off.   We’ll use it for … bullfighting or something later.”
    Peter slowly opened up the camouflage shirt, his eyes taking in the printed slogan on the front of it.
    “No way.   I am not wearing this.”
    I frowned at him.   “Listen, life isn’t a fashion show anymore.   You can’t afford to be picky.   Just put it on.   You’re going to call attention to us with that friggin siren of a shirt