“Thanks.”

“Yes, of course,” he whispered. “Can I do anything else for you?”

“No. Just make sure that other guy doesn’t find his friend.” I walked over to sit by Peter and Buster, who were now out from under the tarp. I couldn’t hear the other guy at all anymore.

“Sorry,” whispered Peter. I could tell he was crying. “I tried to keep him quiet, but he wouldn’t stop.”

“Shhh, don’t worry about it. Buster’s a dog. That’s what dogs do. When we get to the Everglades it won’t matter.”

“You’re not going to kill Buster?”

“Are you nuts? Of course I’m not going to hurt Buster. He’s part of the tribe, stupid.”

“What happened?” said Peter, sniffing, now I think over his biggest fear of losing his fuzzy pink friend.

“I don’t want to talk about the details right now. I’m trying not to vomit again. We just need to lie low and wait for them to move on. They’re already moving away. I can hear them farther down.”

“You smell funny,” he said.

“Yeah. Excuse me while I go bleach my face,” I said, as I crawled over to the trailer, my stomach feeling sick all over again. I pulled out the bleach and put a half-capful in the cooking water by the light of the stars. Then I used that water to scrub my face as best I could. I even rinsed my mouth out with some of it before swishing regular water around to get the bleach taste out. I found that I much prefer the smell of bleach to canner crotch.

***

The canners who were blowing up cars moved on and none of them had come back to look for their friend. At least not yet.

“It’s time to go, Bryn. Or do you think we should stay longer?” asked Peter.

“No, we need to go, definitely. They’re going to eventually wonder what happened with Bigboy over there.”

“What should we do with him, den?” Bodo was squatting down, tapping the side of the gun against his palm, looking very serious.

My lip curled in distaste. Part of me wanted to kill the canner, but the years of morality I’d learned from my dad and the discipline of my training won out. “We can’t kill him. Then we’re little better than those idiots out there.”

“But he will come after us, won’t he?” asked Bodo. “Why giff him a chance to kill us again?”

“He doesn’t know we’re going north to Orlando, does he?” I gave the guys looks that said not to contradict me. “So we’ll just knock him out again and leave. He won’t know where to look.” I didn’t know if the canner could hear me or not. He hadn’t moved since Bodo had smashed him one, but I’d heard once, that people picked things up when they were unconscious and I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Oh, dats riiiight. He doesn’t know about our trip to Orlando. I want to go liff in Dissney World.”

“Alright, Peter, get these tarps put away and put the water from that bucket into our bottles, while I go see if the coast is clear. And Bodo, you go give Smelly Pants another crack in the head for good measure so he doesn’t wake up for a while. Unless you want me to do it.”

“No, diss iss a chob for a man. I will do it, it’s not a problem.”

“Is anything ever a problem for you, Bodo?”

“Rarely. One time maybe I can remember I had a problem.”

I laughed. “Good. I like a guy I can depend on.”

“Yess, und I like a girl who can kick a guy’s ass when she needs to protect her family.”

He walked away to do the dirty work and I walked out towards the edge of the trees to see where the enemy was, my face burning with the flattery.

CHAPTER SIX

IT WAS STILL DARK WHEN we got back on the highway, but we could see small flames here and there, coming from cars that had not completely burned out yet.

“All they do is destroy things,” said Peter, sounding depressed.

“Yeah. They’re animals. They don’t care about this world anymore. They’ve given up,” I said.

“How many miless do you think we should go today?” asked Bodo, pedaling away and dragging the trailer behind him. I had the big butt seat bike again with Buster riding shotgun in the basket.

“As many as possible. We originally said fifty a day, but I don’t want any of those guys coming after us. I think we should go at least until eleven today, as long as we aren’t too hot or tired.”

“Yes, let’s not add sun stroke to our list of woes,” said Peter wryly.

“We need hets,” said Bodo.

“What’s a het?” I asked.

“A het. You know, you put it on your head. A het.”

“Oooh, a hat. Yeah. We do need hats,” I agreed.

“Dat’s what I said. A het.” He looked over at Peter who I could see was smiling in the bare light of the pre-dawn. “It’s my accent again, issn’t it? I try so hard to sound Hamerican but I keep failing.”

“No, you’re doing just fine,” said Peter. “Sometimes you do better than others. Your accent comes and goes.”

“When I’m tired or freaking out, den I know, it is stronger. I can’t concentrate so much in dose situations.”

“Well, I don’t think you should lose all of it. It’s kind of cool if you ask me,” I said.

“Really? Do you think so?”

“Yeah. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that before?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She’s right. Accents are cool.”

“You would haff an accent in Cherman, I know dat. I hear American accents all de time. Or I used to, when I was at home in Frankfurt.”

“I wish I spoke another language,” said Peter wistfully. “All I was ever able to take was Latin. What a bunch of garbage that turned out to be for me.”

“No one knew the world was going to end. Latin would have been great for the S.A.T.”

“Oh it was. I scored a 2250.”

“What? That’s … amazing,” I said, seriously impressed. I’d taken it twice and hadn’t done nearly that well.

“A lot of good it does me now.”

“Hey, dis new worlt needs smart guys like you to start things up again. We need people with good minds in math and mechanics. I think dat is where you will find me most helpful. I am an enchineering student. I can build thingks. My parents were both enchineers.”

“That’s good to know. You can be in charge of that,” I said, glad to be rid of a responsibility. “You will direct the building of our shelter, wherever it happens to be.”

“Maybe we can findt a shelter dat is already built.”

“In the swamp? Not likely,” I said, scoffing at the idea.

“Dare are lots of places already in de Everglades. I haff seen dem. Hamerican indians haff lifft dare for a long time. Two or three tribes if I remember correctly.”

“Yeah, but isn’t that all just touristy stuff?” asked Peter. “I don’t know if they’ve actually lived there since the eighteen hundreds or whatever.”

“I guess we’ll find out when we get there,” I said, my mind wandering to the idea that living in the swamp might not be as inhospitable as we had originally thought. In a way that made me happy because, well, obviously I didn’t like the idea of sharing a bed with a cottonmouth. But on the other hand, if it was hospitable to me, it would be to canners too. And eventually they’d get all the easy prey and it would be next on their lists to find the harder stuff. Like us in the indian villages of the swamps.

“Wherever we end up, it has to be hard to get to and hard to find.”

“Agreed,” said Peter. “I’m glad we don’t have to worry about planes or things coming overhead.”

“Yeah, I guess there are a few benefits to the lack of fuel in the world. But I wouldn’t have minded being able to run a generator and have some electricity or warm water again. I’m not even going to dream about air conditioning.”

“We have that solar power book. Maybe once we’re settled we can go out on some scouting missions and find things to do some of that.”

“I dit a project last year in school with a solar cell. It was very interesting. I would like to see dis book of yours.”

“When we stop today, I’ll get it out for you,” said Peter.

We passed the rest of the morning talking about potential inventions we could manage to make with the limited supplies we imagined might be in the towns skirting the edge of the Everglades. The canals running down the sides of the highways got wider, deeper, and more wild-looking. More than once we saw gators out on their banks, lying immobile, sunning themselves. I tried not to feel intimidated by them since they’d soon be my permanent neighbors, but it was impossible. They were like prehistoric creatures who had survived the last cataclysmic Earth event and now this one too. They were indestructible, but we definitely weren’t.

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.