Apocalypsis 03 - Exodus

frown. “Are you with dem now? Are you going to rape me, too?”
    I laughed, grabbing him into a bone-crushing hug. “No, you idiot. I’m here to rescue your stupid butt.”
    “Oh, dat’s a relief,” he said over my shoulder. “You are here to rescue da meat.”
    I backed off my hug to look at him. His head was up but still bobbing a bit.
    “Meat?” I asked. “They weren’t planning to eat you, Bodo. You know that, right?”
    “Man meat. Dey want me to be da man meat. Not for eating but for da sexy time. Dat’s what dey said. But Bryn, I see dat I really don’t like to be a piece of man meat at all. Dat’s a problem for me. It’s a bigk problem.”
    I hugged him again, patting and rubbing his back, trying not to giggle. “Yeah, I understand. I wouldn’t like being treated like meat either.”
    “Man meat. It’s man meat.”
    “Yeah, sure. Man meat.”
    Alejandro had been released and wandered over to join us. “Hi, Bryn. I’m Alejandro, as you already know.”
    I let Bodo go so I could shake his hand. It was warm and dry, very unlike Bodo’s clammy skin.
    “You don’t look very drugged-out compared to Bodo.”
    “Oh, I’m not. Not at all. I’m stone-cold sober, actually.”
    I lifted my eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.
    “Don’t look at me like that. I’ve got an awesome gig here.” He looked out and gestured to the fire and the people gathered around it. “I’ve got twenty-odd women worshipping the ground I walk on, any number of them wanting to have sex with me at all hours of the day. They feed me, keep me clothed, protect me from the crazies … it’s different than before, but hey … it ain’t all bad.” He grinned.
    “Man meat!” burst out Bodo, slurring his words. “Dat’s all you are. Man meat.” His head flopped down again.
    “What’d they give Bodo?” I asked.
    “Shrooms. That girl Kiersten is a mad freakin scientist, man. She’s, like, a genius or something. She was in college already when the crap went nuts around the world. She came back home to be with her sister and started working on her master plan .” He used his fingers to make air quotes.
    “Master plan?”
    “Yeah. You heard her. They’re gonna repopulate the earth with peaceful people who don’t want to start wars and stuff.”
    Bodo was looking at me again, staring over the top of my head. I reached up and smoothed my hair, paranoid it looked really bad.
    Alejandro leaned over and snapped his fingers in Bodo’s face a couple times. “Wake up, dude. Your girlfriend’s here to take you home.” He looked at me. “Where do you guys live, anyway?”
    I sighed, my brain forcibly jerking itself back to my other troubles - the ones that had temporarily taken a back seat to my Bodo issue but would soon be front and center again.
    “We were living … with some friends. But we’re moving to a prison south of here.”
    Alejandro nodded. “You were with those guys in the swamp, huh?”
    “Yeah. How’d you know? Did Bodo tell you?”
    “Nah,” said Alejandro, frowning and shaking his head. “Everyone knows they’re out there. The crazies were talking about it all the time.”
    I took a step closer to Bodo, feeling very protective of him. “How would you know that?”
    He shrugged. “I used to live on one of the streets down from their place. I heard stuff.”
    “You were one of their spies,” I said, my eyes narrowing, my hands itching to choke him.
    “Not really. They came by and asked us what we saw while they were busy sleeping or whatever … but there was nothing to see. Not as far as I was concerned,” he said, smiling.
    I cocked my head to the side, not sure I understood. “You mean you lied to them?”
    “Every chance I could get,” he responded, pride in his voice.
    “But what about your neighbors?”
    “What about them?”
    “Well, if they were telling the truth and you were lying, it wouldn’t take very long for the canners to realize you weren’t on their side.”
    “Pfft. No one was on their side. Not in my ‘hood. We met when they were sleeping and made our own plans. We saw you guys come in that day. Why do you think your car stayed all fine and wasn’t missing when your guy came back for it? And who the hell do you think came and got your boy here and took him out of there when the place was going up in smoke?”
    “That was you?” I asked, not sure I understood everything he was saying.
    “Yeah. That was me, and my bros. But that crazy bitch in the