Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

time, a group of crazy birdcalls rang out around us.   Bodies were coming out of everywhere, formerly hidden behind trees and clumps of rotted trunks and moss.   When everyone was finally gathered in our small space near the hut, there were three of us and twelve of them - eight Miccosukee guys and four girls.  
    “Wow.   I’m glad you made that deal,” said Peter, quietly so only I’d hear him.  
    I was thinking the exact same thing.   Talk about outnumbered.
    ***
    We went back to our canoes, and the entire group of Miccosukee came with us.   They all piled into the different boats, making the paddling and rowing a complete breeze.   These people knew what they were doing.   Kowi rode with me and two other guys who were all heavily tattooed and shaved.   Turtle boy was in the boat with Peter and two of the girls.   The rest of them were spaced out with Bodo and the formerly empty boats.
    “How come you left these canoes and boats with Rachel and her brother?” I asked.   It didn’t seem very smart for them to have provided the vehicles that brought us this far towards their home.   We could just as easily have been canners.
    “They belonged to the Coleman family and were always kept locked up.   The last time any of us saw them they were still alive.   Rachel was very sick, though.”
    “Yeah, well, she asked her brother to stop the pain with a bullet and then he decided to join her,” I said, softly.   It didn’t seem right to speak so casually about their pact, especially since if it hadn’t been for their boats, it was hard to imagine what we’d be doing right now - probably still trying to outrun and hide from the canners.   We owed them big time.
    “I’m not surprised,” said Kowi.   “They were close.   She took care of him until she couldn’t anymore.   Then he took over.”
    I thought about Peter and his sister, guessing that it had been the same with them.   Lily, I knew, was younger; but Peter was the type that seemed to need taking care of.   I could see the back of Peter’s head and his slumped shoulders, telling me he was listening to us.
    We took the left turns that Yokci had mentioned earlier and pulled into a small cove of root outcroppings.   It didn’t look like anything special to me - it appeared to be pretty much the same as the other place, and there were no huts in sight.   I tried not to feel suspicious, since the indian kids seemed to be acting normally and none of them were shooting each other any funny looks, but living in this messed up world had made that impossible; now everything and everyone was a suspect until proven otherwise.   Since I couldn’t get rid of my sense of unease, I worked instead at hiding it behind a smile at the dog.
    Buster jumped enthusiastically onto the bank and then ran back and forth, waiting for the rest of us to disembark.   He was on happy-dog hyper drive, lifting his head up over and over as if to say, “Come on, guys!   This is fun!   Let’s go!”
    “Leave the boats and things here for now.   You can look first and decide if you want to stay,” said Kowi.
    Yokci led the way, moving quickly through the heavily wooded area, ducking under moss and low hanging branches, and finally at one point, climbing through a crazy growth of trees whose branches had melded together over the years to create a widely spaced web of wood and leaves.   Once I got through to the other side, I realized it was acting as a screen, blocking the view from the boat area of the two small huts we were standing in front of now.
    Kowi came up and stood beside me.   “These are two chickee huts that you can have, if you want them, in exchange for the training help and the grenades.   They have sides you can put up when the rain comes or during the few weeks out of the year it gets cold.”
    “Half of da grenades,” said Bodo, pushing past us to go get a closer look.   Buster went running after him, looking every bit the klutz as he fell through the roots several times and scrambled like mad to get back on track.
    Kowi said nothing more.   He just stood in place, waiting for our reaction.
    Peter and I followed behind Bodo.   I didn’t see as how we had much choice other than to accept Kowi’s offer, really.   It’s not like we could walk away and say, Thanks, but no thanks.   Even if we wanted to, and I was pretty sure I didn’t, this was almost exactly what we had come looking for; it would have been stupid to turn away