Apocalypsis 02 - Warpaint

going?”
    “Ten or so.”
    “You’re not going,” said Bodo, matter-of-factly.
    “Of course I’m going.” I looked at him, confused. I had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe he misunderstood or something.
    “No. You cannot risk it. You need to stay here in da swamp with da udder girls.”
    My jaw went out of whack as I stood there looking at him, getting angrier and angrier by the second. “You’ve got to be frigging kidding me,” I finally said, once I realized he wasn’t joking.
    “No. I am totally serious. You stay here and let da men take care of dis problem.”
    I put my hand up to block his face from my vision and looked at Peter. “Get him away from me before I kill him.”
    Peter looked nervously from Bodo to me, his gaze finally resting on Bodo. “Um, yeah. Bodo? I think maybe you should go, uh, doodle on something. Somewhere else. Right now.”
    “No,” he said firmly. “I’m not gonna doodle on anything. I am saying da truth. Bryn is very smart and strong but she cannot go. Dat’s how it is.”
    I dropped my hand and fixed him with my best evil eye. “Let’s get one thing straight, Bodo. You don’t decide where I go or what I do. You don’t put me back in a safe little box with all the other weak-ass girls. I go where I want. I do what I want. You have no right to even dream of giving me permission to do anything.”
    “I just dit.”
    “No, you didn’t!” I yelled. Talking to Bodo was like talking to a tree. His head was made of wood.
    “I know you heardt me,” he insisted. “I said it in Engklish. You want to hear it in Cherman too? Here you go: Du gehst nirgendwo hin. Du bleibst hier mit den anderen Mädchen, das ist mein letztes Wort. Mir geht es nicht darum, dich zu beleidigen; ich bin lediglich um deine Sicherheit besorgt!”
    I took two steps forward and pushed him hard on the chest, shoving him away from me. “Blow it out your ass, Bodo!”
    He caught himself after stumbling back a few steps. “Dat sounds interesting, but no thank you. Not today. Maybe anudder time.”
    I had a feeling he wasn’t going to engage me in a fight no matter what I did, so I gave up physically intimidating him into leaving me alone, deciding that ignoring him was the better option instead.
    “Peter, do me a favor and put together a list of all the indians and divide them into groups so that I can see everyone, guys and girls, over eight or ten sessions max. This is for tomorrow. Start at sun-up.”
    I heard him say, “Okay, that’s not a problem,” as I stomped off into the trees. I had to get away from Bodo before I kicked him in the nuts or worse.
    ***
    I eventually calmed down a few minutes later and changed to a less obvious style of travel. I looked up at the leaves on the trees and down at the ground around me, avoiding the areas that looked like they were full of the dry, crackling stuff. My progress through the swamp changed from sounding like that of a buffalo to that of a smallish bear. It felt like an improvement and made me a tiny bit happier than I had been back at the hut.
    Stupid Bodo. Thinking he can tell me what to do. Acting like this is all about men being men and girls being wimps. Idiot.
    I’d been walking in pretty much a straight line through the trees, going in a direction I’d never been before. I noticed an area off to my right that looked brighter than the spot I was currently in, so I made a detour to see what was over there. Hopefully, I’d be able to find my way back without too much trouble. I had a plan though, in case I got lost. It would be to employ the scream-my-head-off technique.
    I arrived at a clearing in the trees to find a beautiful, wild sanctuary-looking place. Patches of water mixed with areas of small mounds of grasses and plants, and the entire bay-like area was ringed with cypress islands, held together by their tangled webs of roots.
    I sat down just inside the cover of the trees to keep the shade over my head, watching some birds hovering over the area, scanning the water below for prey. I saw a few gators moving lazily through the algae floating on the water, and several up on the banks of the grassy mounds across from me. It probably should have sent me into a state of panic, seeing all those man-eating, prehistoric-looking creatures out there; but they seemed far away from my reality and totally unconcerned about my presence. It probably helped that they didn’t look hungry to me, and there seemed to be an abundance of