Apocalypsis 02 - Warpaint

food here for them, which made me think going after a human might be more trouble than they were interested in. Maybe I was giving their intelligence too much credit, but the sun was warm, my belly was full again, and I was dead tired from all the training I had done. I soon fell asleep leaning against the tree behind me.
    I was having a dream about the mountains. I had taken a trip with my dad there once. We stopped outside an old fashioned general store in a small town, and there was a man sitting on the porch in a rocking chair. He was rocking back and forth, playing a harmonica. I remembered trying not to stare, but being mesmerized by his ability to make the thing sound like it was moaning and crying. It had freaked me out then; and in my dream now, it was happening all over again. It didn’t frighten me, it just made me feel like I was being transported to a different time and place. A loud shriek jerked me out of my sleep and had me sitting bolt upright.
    What the hell was that? I looked around in a panic. The sun was still up, but it was lower in the sky. No gators were swimming around nearby anymore, but there were several more up on the banks across the water. None of them were by me, thank goodness . It crossed my mind that it was probably not the smartest thing in the world to fall asleep next to a pile of man-eaters like that.
    Something had woken me up, but I wasn’t sure if it had come from my dream or the swamp. But then I heard the noise again and knew it was coming from here, not my mind. I looked up and saw a large bird circling above me, calling out, an unholy scream bursting from its throat.
    And then I heard that friggin harmonica sound again. What the hell? I looked out across the water, a little to my right, and saw a figure standing on a bank. I wasn’t positive, but I squinted to get a sharper view, and was pretty sure then that it was Bodo. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and light-skinned, standing with an air of quiet confidence. Yeah, definitely Bodo .
    I scrambled back on my hands and knees until I was once again under the full cover of the trees, standing once I was sure he couldn’t see me. Time to test my sneaking skills in real time.
    I ran around through the trees, heading in the general direction where I’d seen him. I didn’t bother trying to be quiet here, since even if I were sounding like a buffalo he’d never hear it from so far away. But once I got close to where I thought I had seen him, I changed tactics, paying close attention to the leaves under my feet, shuffling them out of the way when I needed to. I paused between steps to make it less obvious that a two-legged creature was headed his way.
    I could still hear short, quick toots coming from the harmonica occasionally, and they helped me stay on track. I wondered why Bodo didn’t just play the damn thing instead of honking on it like that. He sounded like a deranged goose.
    I eventually ended up in a spot just behind where Bodo was standing. A few more steps and I was sure I’d have him in my sights. I heard another honk of his harmonica and used the noise to cover the sound of my next two steps. I reached a large tree and stood behind it, climbing up into it a little on its knobby roots so I could get up higher and look through a space in the trunk where a natural oval-shaped hole had formed. If my guesstimate were correct, I’d be able to see the back of Bodo easily without him being able to see anything of me. No way he’d be expecting to see my face in the middle of a tree.
    I got to my spot and looked through the hole. Bodo was standing on the edge of the water, his feet submerged just a little, his arms dangling at his sides. In his left hand he held the harmonica, which I watched him lift up to his mouth, a short blast of sound coming from it before he dropped his arm down again. In his right hand he held something I couldn’t see very clearly. It appeared to be a wide strap of leather, wrapped around his arm. It moved just a tiny bit and I heard bells again.
    Bells? Where did I hear bells recently? And then it struck me. In the shower. When Bodo was getting undressed. My face screwed up in confusion. Why the hell does Bodo have bells with him?
    My thoughts were distracted by a movement again from Bodo. He was reaching his arm out towards the water, the one with the leather wrapped around it. He looked like a zombie guy, getting ready to walk forward right into the gator-infested swamp. I almost