Apocalypsis: Book 1 (Kahayatle) (20 page)

The deepest part of me was feeling desperate, thinking that we might not be at the top of the food chain anymore.
 
Living the life of hunted prey was definitely stressful and unhealthy.
 
Humans had become lax and bloated in their sense of superiority.
 
I’d been raised to believe in my natural supremacy, and I wasn’t accustomed to this knowledge that I was vulnerable and weak, at the mercy of the elements and those of a baser nature than I.
 

My stomach was hurting again.
 
I had to find a way around this fear or it was going to eat me up from the inside out.
 
If the canners didn’t get me, I was going to get myself with the stress.
 
In that moment, as I contemplated my own place in the cycle of life, I could see what might drive a canner to do the crazy things they were doing.
 
It was an affirmation, in a way, of their spot at the top.
 
A sick, insane, and delusional one, but one nonetheless.

***

The sun rose high in the sky and the day got hotter and more humid than the one before had been.
 
I prayed for rain, but the heavens didn’t cooperate.
 
There was blue sky for as far as the eye could see.

“We’d better stop,” said Peter.
 
“I’m getting too hot.
 
My body can’t cool itself down anymore and my legs are cramping.”

“Dats not a good sign.
 
You are dehydrated.”

“Alright.
 
There’s an overpass up ahead.”
 
We’d passed a town a while back, but now we were out in the middle of nowhere again.
 
There were a lot fewer cars on the street and none of them were burned.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” asked Peter.

“No,” I laughed, not quite believing he’d just asked me that.
 
“Do you have any better ideas?”

“No,” he said weakly.
 
“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”
 
Now I felt bad for making him feel stupid.
 
“I wish I could offer us something better, but I just don’t see anything; and I haven’t in a while.
 
I thought the grove was safe, but it obviously wasn’t.”

“I think it’s good.
 
Let’s go dare,” said Bodo, pedaling harder now.
 
He pulled ahead of us and I just let him go.
 
I was anxious to get off the highway too, but I didn’t want to leave Peter behind.
 
He was visibly flagging now that he’d seen his goal.
 
It’s like he’d lost the will to press on.

“Don’t give up, we’re almost there.”

“I know,” he said breathlessly.
 
“I’m coming.”

We made it to the exit and got off the highway, coasting down the slope all the way to the bottom of the big concrete incline below the highway.
 
Off in the distance I could see two gas stations on opposite sides of the street from one another and a giant sign that said ‘Cracker Barrel’.
 
Back in the day, that chain of restaurants had been one of my favorite places to eat when my dad and I took road trips.
 
They had the best candy store attached to the restaurant.

Bodo was waiting down at the bottom.
 
“Do you want me to bring da bike up dare again?
 
Or are we staying down here?”

I looked up at the slope and then off at the service stations, gently lifting Buster from the basket at the front of my handlebars.
 
“I don’t know.
 
I was originally thinking go up, but now … I feel like I want to be able to just take off without worrying about getting bikes down.
 
Just in case.”

“I agree,” said Peter, sitting down on the ground.
 
“Let’s stay down here tonight.
 
Can we eat now?
 
I’m starving.”
 
He tipped his water bottle up and almost drained it, putting the remaining bit in the bowl for Buster who wasted no time drinking every last drop.
 

I walked over and handed Peter my bottle.
 
He looked like he needed it more than me.

“I can’t take yours,” he said, trying to push it away.

“I can make more.
 
We have cooking water and bleach.
 
But I’m sure it’ll rain later, so don’t worry about it.
 
Drink.
 
You don’t look so hot.”

“I don’t feel so hot, either,” he said, no longer arguing.
 
He finished my bottle and then laid back, right on the gravel.
 
Buster laid down in between his legs, resting his head on Peter’s thigh.
 
Peter didn’t move a muscle.

I gestured silently at Peter so Bodo would see, and he nodded.
 

“I will get da camp site set up for sleeping if you want.”

“Yeah, go ahead.
 
The sun’s moving over there, so do your best to find a spot that will still be in the shade in a few hours.”

“Of course, yes, I will do dat,” he said, digging out the tarps.

I got out the parts for the water catcher and set it up just outside the shelter of the highway overhead.
 
I knew that even with blue skies now, the clouds could come in quickly and bring the rain with them.
 
We were lower on water than I liked to be, especially since I was planning to make pasta with sauce tonight.
 
Peter really looked like he needed the calories and I had a terrible craving for tomatoes that was getting harder and harder to ignore.

I went back to the site that Bodo had set up, and sat down.
 
“Bodo, have you ever had a garden?”

“Yes.
 
My mudder always had one when I was growing up.
 
I had to pull da weeds all da time.
 
Dat was my chob.
 
One of many.”

“I want tomatoes.
 
Real ones, not the kind from a can.”

“Dey are easy to grow.
 
I can do dat for you.”
 

Hearing him say that warmed my heart.
 
I’d been taking care of my own survival for so long, and now Peter’s, it was nice to hear that someone was going to do something for me for a change.

Bodo looked up from his organizing and smiled at me.
 
“You look happy about dat.”

“I am.”
 
He had the nicest blue eyes I’d ever seen on a guy.
 
I’d noticed them before, but for some reason, they looked even bluer today.

“Goot … I mean, good.
 
You are very pretty, but especially when you smile.”

I looked down at my dirty, raggedy fingernails and laughed.
 
“Wow, Bodo, you don’t set the bar very high, do you?”

“What does dat mean?” he said, a confused expression on his face.
 
“Set da bar?”

“Never mind.”

“You think I am making a lie, don’t you?”

“Not necessarily.
 
But I haven’t had a shower in weeks and I’ve probably never looked worse in my entire seventeen years of life.”
 
I looked up and smiled at him anyway, happy with his effort, even if it wasn’t true.
 
“So I find it hard to believe you can see beneath the grime to anything that looks appealing, but I appreciate the gesture.”

“Well, what I see looks pretty good to me.
 
Plus, you are very strong, like my mudder was.
 
She loved me a lot and I loved her too … but I also atmired her.
 
No matter what, she always did the best she could.
 
Efen when my fadder left, she always worked very hard to make sure dat I could do thingks.
 
Like come to the Unitet States for example.”

I lifted an eyebrow.
 
“Well, that sure worked out well for you.”

“It did.”
 
He shrugged, ignoring my sarcasm.
 
“The worlt that we knew is ofer.
 
Not just here, but efreywhere.
 
Apart from my mom, dare was no one dare in Chermany dat I cared about so much.
 
I’m okay with being stuck here.
 
With you and Peter and da little doggy.”

I was impressed with his positive outlook.
 
Germans were tough, there was no doubt about that.

“Bodo, what’s your last name?”

“Ruster.”

I giggled.
 
“Your last name is
Rooster?
 
As in cock-a-doodle-doo?”

He smiled.
 
“What dit you just say?
 
Cock-a- …
what?”

We were both grinning like idiots at each other.
 
“I said, ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’.
 
That’s what roosters say.
 
You know?
 
Male chickens?”
 
I put my hands in my armpits and did a few chicken wing-flaps for effect.

“Ohhhh, I ssee.
 
No, not a rooster.
 
Spelled like R-U-S-T-E-R.
 
See?”

I laughed some more.
 
“Okay.
 
I would have pronounced that
ruster
, like the word ‘rust’.”

“You can say it however you want.
 
I don’t care, really.
 
It’s not a problem.”

“No, I like rooster.
 
That’s cool.
 
I can see that,” I said, pretending to look him over.

“What do you mean?
 
Like I am a proud bird who walks around a bunch of girl chickens and tells all de udder boy chickens to go away?”

“Maybe.”
 
He did seem to be perfectly at ease around me.
 
Either that meant he was supremely confident or he didn’t consider me to be a member of his henhouse.

“No.
 
I am not dat proud.
 
Plus I am a one-chicken kindt of guy.
 
I don’t think I could manatch more den one chicken at a time.”

I don’t know why that made me so happy, but it did.
 
It’s not like there was a lot of competition around here or that I’d decided that I wanted him to be my boyfriend.
 
But still … he was funny and cute and didn’t seem stuck-up at all.

“Is it possible to be conceited anymore?”
 
I voiced my thoughts aloud without even realizing I was doing it.
 
But it was out there now and I was curious to know what Bodo thought, so I waited for his answer.

Peter spoke up before he did, though.
 
“No.”

“Oh, it’s possible, I think, but it wouldn’t do any good,” disagreed Bodo.
 
“Not unless dare was a group of guys around and just a few girlss.”

“Does it ever do any good?” I asked.

“Sure.
 
Women go for dat.”

I frowned at him.
 
“Whaaat?
 
You’re nuts.
 
Girls don’t like conceited guys.”

“Yes they do,” agreed Peter.

“You guys are nuts.”

“Then why do all the conceited guys have girlfriends and all the nice ones don’t?”

He had a point there.
 
Maybe
.
 
“But which came first?
 
The girlfriend or the conceit?”

Peter sat up slowly and tried to reach around to brush his back off.
 
I leaned in to help him as he explained himself.

“Try to imagine back to when you were in like third or fourth grade.
 
Which boys did you have a crush on?”

“None of them.”

“Come on.
 
Don’t lie.
 
Okay, which ones stood out to you, then?”

Bodo was watching us intensely, looking very interested in our discussion.

“I guess the ones who stood out were the ones looking for the most attention.”

“Were they just loud or showing off.”

“Showing off, mostly.”

“And when they did that, did they get positive reinforcement or negative?”

“It depended.”

“On what?”

I tried to think of the few boys I could recall from my much younger days as being kind of loud and in-your-face types, and remembered three of them.
 
Two cute ones and one not so cute.
 
I realized that the cute ones were seen as cocky, as if they had something to crow about, and the not so cute one just seemed obnoxious.

I sighed.
 
“It depended on what they looked like.”

“Explain dat part,” said Bodo, leaning in and studying my face.

“Well, I hate to say it because it sounds so shallow, but the ones that were good-looking were encouraged, and the ones who weren’t, were looked at as obnoxious and shunned.”

“So you encouraged the conceit of the good-looking guys and told the ugly ones to stay in the background, essentially,” said Peter.

“God, that’s terrible when you put it like that,” I said, a little disgusted with myself.
 
“Man, was I shallow or what?
 
I helped perpetuate the problem from the time I was like, ten or something.”

“Don’t feel bad about it.
 
We all did.
 
It’s how we were raised.”

“It’s dat theory of efolution.
 
The handsome specimens survive to make babies.
 
De ugly ones dat have less desirable thingks die off.
 
Nobody wants to make babies with dem.”

 
“So your theory that women like conceit is true to some degree.
 
That’s sad.”

“Yes, but it is good for the survifal of de human race.
 
You want to make babies with de ones who are strong and bold and fearless.
 
Dey are de ones dat will make it through the tough times.”