Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

an hour later, I’d mapped out the next couple days of riding but was still pretty damp.  
    “Hey,” he said, sitting up and stretching.   He looked around and then over at me.   “What the heck happened to you?”
    “I got us some more water.”
    “Did you get it from a drainage ditch?”
    “Ha, ha, very funny.   It rained.   I filled up our water bottles.   Here.”   I handed him a full one.  
    “Awesome.   Thanks.”
    I watched him drink half of it in seconds and made a mental note to be sure to get more in the bucket next time.   I was feeling better and better about going towards the Everglades.   We’d never run out of water or food there.   The key would be figuring out how to catch the food.   I wasn’t even sure if the fish we’d get there were edible.   I wished we had a book about the animals in the swamps - other than just the one we had on snakes.
    “So what’s the plan?” asked Peter, his thirst now satisfied.   He handed me his bottle and I put it back in the trailer.
    “Well, if we move from four in the morning until nine, we’ll be able to get about fifty miles a day.   And we’re about two hundred and fifty miles from where I think we need to be.”
    “So about five days of traveling, you think?”
    “Something like that.   I don’t remember much about the area; I’ve only been there once.   I figure we’ll get down there and stop when we find a place that looks good.   Maybe once we get closer we can go into a tourist shop with some books that have info or a map of the whole place.”
    “The Everglades are pretty big,” said Peter, sounding skeptical.
    “I know.   But we need to find a specific spot.   One that’s hard to reach and has trees to hide a shelter in.”
    “How are we going to get into it if it’s hard to reach?”
    “Boat?” I suggested.
    “I can see you’ve put a lot of time into this plan,” he said sarcastically.
    “Yeah, well, how much time have you put into it, smartass?”
    “None.”   He held up his hand for a high-five.   “You’re right.   I’m sorry.   I appreciate you doing all this for us.”
    I begrudgingly slapped his hand back.   “The plan is flexible.   We’ll just figure it out as we go along.   It’s better that way, anyway - if one of us gets caught, we won’t be able to divulge any secrets.”
    “Since we don’t have any.”
    “Exactly.”   I smiled at my unintentional genius.
    “Let’s just pray we don’t get taken captive, because the only reason someone would do that would be to … well, you know.”
    “Invite you to dinner,” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Do you want to tell me about your sister now?”   I tried not to cringe at the fact that I’d just brought up his sister while we were on the topic of being eaten for dinner, but it was impossible.   Sometimes my mouth got away from me before I could stop it.   “Sorry.   That wasn’t cool.”
    Peter didn’t seem to mind.   His eyes got a far off look to them as he stared off into the distance.   “She was twelve.   Really small for her age, though.   She looked about ten or so.   We used to fight all the time.   She was always getting into my stuff and I hated it.”
    I had no experience with siblings invading my territory, but I could see how it might be irritating.  
    “We were in Sanford, in our house.   We had to bury both of our parents in the back yard.   They died on the same day.”
    “That’s awful,” I said, meaning it.   I had only lost one parent and that was bad enough.
    “My sister and I had a hard time moving them out into the yard.   We couldn’t stop crying, because we kept worrying that we were hurting them.   Isn’t that stupid?   I mean, they were already dead.   We checked their pulses like a hundred times to be sure.”
    I shook my head but said nothing.   Even when bodies were dead, if they belonged to people you loved in life, they seemed sacred.   I was once again reminded of how grateful I was to my father for doing his dying elsewhere.
    Buster went over and sat in Peter’s lap.   Tears were dripping down his cheeks and Buster kept trying to jump up and lick them.   Peter kept him contained by playing with and petting his ears absently as he continued his story.
    “After we got them buried, we stayed in the house, living off the things left in the pantry.   My mom always made spaghetti on Sundays, just like my aunt, so she had about fifty jars of sauce in the garage.