Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

idea.
    “Dare are lots of places already in de Everglades.   I haff seen dem.   Hamerican indians haff lifft dare for a long time.   Two or three tribes if I remember correctly.”
    “Yeah, but isn’t that all just touristy stuff?” asked Peter.   “I don’t know if they’ve actually lived there since the eighteen hundreds or whatever.”
    “I guess we’ll find out when we get there,” I said, my mind wandering to the idea that living in the swamp might not be as inhospitable as we had originally thought.   In a way that made me happy because, well, obviously I didn’t like the idea of sharing a bed with a cottonmouth.   But on the other hand, if it was hospitable to me, it would be to canners too.   And eventually they’d get all the easy prey and it would be next on their lists to find the harder stuff.   Like us in the indian villages of the swamps.
    “Wherever we end up, it has to be hard to get to and hard to find.”
    “Agreed,” said Peter.   “I’m glad we don’t have to worry about planes or things coming overhead.”
    “Yeah, I guess there are a few benefits to the lack of fuel in the world.   But I wouldn’t have minded being able to run a generator and have some electricity or warm water again.   I’m not even going to dream about air conditioning.”
    “We have that solar power book.   Maybe once we’re settled we can go out on some scouting missions and find things to do some of that.”
    “I dit a project last year in school with a solar cell.   It was very interesting.   I would like to see dis book of yours.”
    “When we stop today, I’ll get it out for you,” said Peter.
    We passed the rest of the morning talking about potential inventions we could manage to make with the limited supplies we imagined might be in the towns skirting the edge of the Everglades.   The canals running down the sides of the highways got wider, deeper, and more wild-looking.   More than once we saw gators out on their banks, lying immobile, sunning themselves.   I tried not to feel intimidated by them since they’d soon be my permanent neighbors, but it was impossible.   They were like prehistoric creatures who had survived the last cataclysmic Earth event and now this one too.   They were indestructible, but we definitely weren’t.  
    The deepest part of me was feeling desperate, thinking that we might not be at the top of the food chain anymore.   Living the life of hunted prey was definitely stressful and unhealthy.   Humans had become lax and bloated in their sense of superiority.   I’d been raised to believe in my natural supremacy, and I wasn’t accustomed to this knowledge that I was vulnerable and weak, at the mercy of the elements and those of a baser nature than I.  
    My stomach was hurting again.   I had to find a way around this fear or it was going to eat me up from the inside out.   If the canners didn’t get me, I was going to get myself with the stress.   In that moment, as I contemplated my own place in the cycle of life, I could see what might drive a canner to do the crazy things they were doing.   It was an affirmation, in a way, of their spot at the top.   A sick, insane, and delusional one, but one nonetheless.
    ***
    The sun rose high in the sky and the day got hotter and more humid than the one before had been.   I prayed for rain, but the heavens didn’t cooperate.   There was blue sky for as far as the eye could see.
    “We’d better stop,” said Peter.   “I’m getting too hot.   My body can’t cool itself down anymore and my legs are cramping.”
    “Dats not a good sign.   You are dehydrated.”
    “Alright.   There’s an overpass up ahead.”   We’d passed a town a while back, but now we were out in the middle of nowhere again.   There were a lot fewer cars on the street and none of them were burned.
    “Are you sure it’s safe?” asked Peter.
    “No,” I laughed, not quite believing he’d just asked me that.   “Do you have any better ideas?”
    “No,” he said weakly.   “Sorry.”
    “Don’t worry about it.”   Now I felt bad for making him feel stupid.   “I wish I could offer us something better, but I just don’t see anything; and I haven’t in a while.   I thought the grove was safe, but it obviously wasn’t.”
    “I think it’s good.   Let’s go dare,” said Bodo, pedaling harder now.   He pulled ahead of us and I just let him go.   I was anxious to get off the highway too, but I