Apocalypsis 03 - Exodus

or something?”
    “No. Birds of prey are not like dat. Dey are not like dogs dat chust want to have dare bellies tickled. Nina wants meat from me. Dat’s all.”
    Buster came over as if on cue, angling his head under my hand to get a pet from me. I absently played with his ears.
    “Just like Kiersten and her girls,” I said, trying to get a smile from him.
    His responding snort had zero humor in it. “Maybe.”
    I put my arm around him and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “When we get to the prison you can build a special place for her. Maybe you can find more birds, too, and train them. I’ll bet some of the kids would love to learn how to do that … what you do.”
    “Maybe,” he said. He took another small sip of water and then looked at me. “Thank you for trying to make me feel better. I’m gonna be okay later. I chust need some time to make things all straight in my head. It’s very confusing for me right now. Da drugs are still swimming and swimming dare.”
    I nodded, patting him on the back. “I know. I can wait. I’m here for you if you need me.”
    Buster jumped up on Bodo, begging for attention. Bodo reached out to touch him on the head a few times with the tips of his fingers, making it seem like even petting the dog was too much effort.
    “Me too, Bodo,” said Peter, holding out his hand. “Come on, I’ll help you up. We need to go.”
    A sound of someone shouting off in the distance gave serious emphasis to his words. Buster barked several times before I was able to grab him and squeeze his mouth shut.
    “No, Buster! No bark!” I growled at him. He stopped trying to bark and looked at me suspiciously.
    Winky cocked her head. “Did you guys hear that?”
    “Yeah,” said Jamal. “Good guys or bad guys, do you think?”
    “Assume they’re all bad guys,” I said. “We need to get off the highway, now. ”
    We scrambled to our bikes, even Bodo moving faster than I’d seen him go all day. He was stumbling a bit, like he was drunk, but he was able to grab his handlebars and get on his ride.
    “What about the sign?” I asked, looking at Winky, panicked. “For Rob and Fohi?”
    “I’ll do it later.” She glanced left and right, looking over both sides of the shoulder. “Where are we going? Which way?”
    “There!” said Peter, pointing to a copse of trees in the distance, off to our right. We had to get across at least one hundred yards of weeds and tall grasses to reach it.
    ***
    “Run!” I said, pushing my bike a few feet before jumping on and pedaling. I waited for Bodo to get in front of me before I put too much energy into it.
    Peter was in the lead, pumping his legs as fast as they would go. Winky was just behind him, followed by the twins. Buster’s little body bounced all over the place as my bike went over the uneven bumps that sprung up out of the ground. They were clumps of grass, not earth, and in between the ground was soft. Our tires kept getting stuck, making the going much slower than I would have liked.
    More shouts came from behind us. I risked a look back and saw no one yet. “Go!” I said, not too loud, but desperately enough that it had an effect. Legs pumped harder and bodies hunched farther over the handlebars in our efforts to go faster. Peter jumped off his bike and started running with it, his tires giving him too much trouble to continue. The rest of us soon followed suit, and the last twenty yards had us all running like charging bulls at the trees.
    We pushed our bikes behind the thickest part of it and stood there for a few minutes, getting our breath back. Bodo fell to the ground, letting his bike drop with him. Luckily, it fell in the other direction. I’m not sure he would have been able to move if it had landed on him. He turned his head and vomited into the grass, moaning.
    Peter bent down and stroked his forehead from behind. “Shhhh, I’m sorry you feel sick, but you have to be quiet.” He looked up at Jamal. “Can you bring me some water for him, please?”
    While Jamal moved to get him a bottle, Ronald, Winky and I went to the edge of the trees, trying to get a good look at the highway. At first we saw nothing, but then we saw a guy. And then another. And eventually a whole group of them, seven in total. The majority of them looked energized, happy to be partying it up on the highway. But a few of them, three it looked like, did not. They walked in a line, their shoulders stooped and their hands in front of them like they