Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

the rest of the story.   I knew pretty much how it ended and I knew the details were only going to make the knowing worse.   But Peter needed to tell someone, and Buster wasn’t exactly in a position to appreciate its awfulness enough to help Peter feel like he wasn’t alone.
    “What did you see?”
    “Oh, God.   It was awful.   My worst nightmare come to life.   I saw my sister’s head.   On the ground.   They were … they were …”   His shoulders were quaking now, tears and snot dripping off of his face.   “They were cutting her up … and putting her body parts on a big grill!   There was blood everywhere!”
    I felt the vomit coming up again and swallowed three times in quick succession to keep it down.   My salivary glands were working like mad, telling me to get moving, so I wouldn’t barf on my friend.  
    But I couldn’t leave him.   I knew he didn’t want to be alone right now - couldn’t be alone right now.   He’d seen pretty much the most horrific thing I could possibly imagine a person having to endure.   And it had happened to his baby sister.
    I put my arm across this back and pulled him in tight to me.   “Shhhh, I know it’s awful.   I know it’s terrible.   Evil stuff.   Evil.   They’re going to pay.”   I had no idea how that was going to happen, but prayed karma might take care of some of it.
    “Oh, they did.   Believe me.”
    I stopped squeezing him for a minute.   “What’d you do?”
    “I shot four of them.   One right in the face.”
    I hugged him again.   “ Good for you, Peter.   I don’t know how you did that without knocking yourself out, but I wish you’d shot all of them in the face.   In the nuts too.”
    Peter agreed angrily.   “Me too.   I think I got lucky with not hitting myself.   The gun kicked more up instead of back for some reason.   I think Lily’s spirit was there helping me.”
    “I’ll bet she was too.   How’d you get away?”
    “I ran like hell while they all ran around screaming … got back to my house, threw my stuff in a bag and took off on my bike.”
    “And ended up in my back yard.”
    “Yeah.   I ended up in your back yard.”
    “In your Aunt-who-wasn’t-really-an-aunt’s house.”
    He smiled, now a little less angrily.   “Yes.   In my aunt’s house.”
    “The one with the bright red pumps.”
    He giggled and sniffed hard, shoving me off of him.   “Yes, the one with the pumps.”
    I stood up and brushed myself off.   “Well, I wish I could say something to make it better for you, Peter, but I just can’t think of anything.   If I could, I’d go kill them all for you.”
    “I know you would.   And for some strange reason, that makes me feel just a tiny bit better.”   He looked up at me, his eyes all red and puffy but no longer leaking.
    I continued.   “All I know is, they’d better never show their ugly canner faces in my Everglades, or they’re going to go down … and it won’t be pretty.”
    “Yeah,” said Peter.   “Damn straight.”
    “Gator bait.”
    “I like it,” he said.
    “Snakebite victims.”
    “Another good idea,” encouraged Peter.
    “I’m out of good ideas now, though,” I said, smiling at Peter’s slightly uplifted mood.
    “That’s okay, I’m good with those.”   He stood up.   “I’m gonna go pee.”
    “Okay.   Stay out of sight.”
    “Who’s going to see us out here in the middle of nowhere?” he asked.
    I shook my head slowly.   “Do we really want to know the answer to that question?”
    “No,” he agreed, sad once again.   “Probably not.”
    I felt bad about reminding him of our precarious position, but it wouldn’t do to go around with a false sense of security, just because we had a couple of guns and a fuzzy pink watchdog.
    Buster followed along next to Peter, both of them stopping just at the edge of our ramp to pee out into the bushes.   It was comical watching them do it together - Buster with his tiny leg lifted and Peter with his cammo shirt on backwards.   I could read the bright white words on it from here:   Guns don’t kill people.   People kill people.
    ***
    We passed the rest of the day talking about our schools, our friends, and the things we had liked to do before the world started falling apart.   It turned out Peter didn’t have a whole lot of friends, nor did he do much outside of school, other than sing and play video games.   We had a lot in common - more than we had thought we