Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

“You’ve been crying.”
    I turned away to grab some more cans.   “Yeah.   Like I said.   It’s sad.”
    Peter didn’t say anything in response - he just grabbed what he could in one armload and left with it to find spots for it in the trailer.
    Bodo came over with a ring of keys jingling in his hand.   “I got da keys.   You want me to go unload da canoes?”
    “Yes, please.   I’ll finish getting stuff out of here.   I figure we need to get it all now.   We can’t expect this place to stay untouched for long, now that its protectors are dead.”  
    “Yeah, you’re right.   Okay, see you later.”
    He jumped back up on the sill and fell out head first again.  
    I shook my head at his antics.   I’d never known anyone like him before this life-changing event, and I wondered what I would have thought of him if I had met him a year or two years ago.   I also wondered whether he acted this way back then or if the world having changed had somehow made him different.  
    I know it had made an impact on the way I acted.   It probably should have made me more distrustful and introverted, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect.   I was more open to other people now and had lost some of my preconceived notions about people my age.   Where before everyone had appeared so different from me, now they all seemed the same.   Maybe they had different wrappers on the outside, but inside we were all just … people - the only exception being the canners.   They were nothing like me.   Inside they were monsters, hidden on the outside by wrappers that looked normal.
    I shook my head, trying to make the visions of the two canners who I’d had the close encounters with leave my mind.   I thought of Bodo’s eyes instead, how they looked when they stared at me while he reassured me that everything was going to be okay.   It brought me a measure of peace, and even made it possible for me to look over at the brother and sister on the floor without feeling sick.   I noticed for the first time that they were holding hands.
    “Thanks, William and Rachel.   We appreciate you sharing your parents’ stuff with us.   We’ll put it to good use, I promise.”
    “Who are you talking to in there?” asked Peter, his face at the windowsill again.
    “No one … myself.   Here.”   I handed him a bag of Doritos.
    “Holy crap-on-a-stick, Bryn, it’s a bag of nacho cheese Doritos!”
    I smiled.   “I know.   We’re going to have a serious party tonight.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

    BY THE TIME I HAD emptied the small shack of anything we could use, Bodo had taken all the canoes down and lined them up on the beach.   Each one had two oars inside it, one with a wide paddle-part and one with a narrower one.   I’d never used a canoe before so I had no idea what difference the sizes would make.   Something told me I was going to find out soon enough.
    “Let me help you with that,” I said to Peter, as he struggled to maneuver the trailer to the edge of the bank that led down to the canoes.
    “Thanks.”
    Buster kept running down to the canoes and then back up to the trailer, apparently excited about the idea of whatever we were doing.   I didn’t know about small poodles being much for the water, but he sure seemed to think it was cool.
    “We should do an assembly line thing,” suggested Peter.   “I’ll throw stuff down to you one at a time and you can pass it to Bodo to put in the canoe.”
    “Works for me,” I said, looking over to Bodo for his approval.
    “Sure.   Go aheadt.   I’m ready.”
    Peter began with the canned goods.   I managed to only drop about one out of every ten cans, but I blamed it on Peter and his not so amazing tossing skills.
    “I’m over here, Peter, not over there.”
    “Sor-ry.   I’m trying to get them right to you but they’re different sizes.   It’s hard to estimate the force exactly right.”
    “Excuses, excuses,” I teased.
    “I’m not going to throw the chips.   I don’t want to break the seals on the bags.”
    “Good thinking.”
    Once we’d moved the lighter items, the last things remaining were the grenades, backpacks, and the bikes and trailer themselves.   One canoe was almost completely full of the other stuff.   Bodo came up to join Peter and me at the top of the bank.
    “What are we going to do with da bikes?” he asked.
    “I don’t know.   It’s not like we can ride them in the water or use them in the small bits of