Apocalypsis 03 - Exodus

CHAPTER ONE

    IT WAS POURING RAIN, BUT we were greeted back at our home in Kahayatle with a hero’s welcome anyway. Many hands reached out to us, guiding the group of injured warriors to the hut set up for treating them. We were all soaked to the bone, but no one other than me seemed to care. I was cold and shivering, lost, and confused about what I was doing there. I should have been back at the canner place, searching for Bodo. He should have been here with me, smiling, getting his bruised face looked after by the girls living in The Everglades.
    Faces that were familiar to me cleaned, stitched, and bandaged the wound on my arm. Others brought food and water, standing over us, chatting with one another, stopping occasionally to hug or just touch us before asking questions. When no answers were forthcoming from the exhausted and shell-shocked, they speculated as to the reasons for various injuries and whispered about the possible outcomes that we might anticipate as a result of having attacked this vicious group of canners.
    The bright flashes of lightning slicing the sky not that far away lit up the faces around me in short bursts, reminding me of cameras and paparazzi that no longer haunted the streets of our country. The thunder rumbled and boomed, rolling across the sky, sometimes sounding as if it were right over the swamp and other times as if it were blasting the roof off the inferno that used to be the canners’ home and a prison for the kids now lying around me.
    None of us had told our eager healers yet that we had let some of the monsters escape alive. The time for dealing with that problem would be later, when we knew how many people would survive their injuries and could discuss the potential fallout. Maybe the two chiefs, Kowi and Trip, were thinking the same thing I was - that we could delude ourselves for just a little while that there wouldn’t be retribution and that the monsters would just disappear … fade into the horizon never to be seen or heard from again.
    I watched numbly, as kids with missing limbs were gently laid on raised pallets set up on the floor of the hut and on the ground just outside when the hut was too full to handle any more of them. Many were moved soon after, to the homes of other Miccosukee or Creek indians who were eagerly volunteering to see after these kids who had been captured and kept by the canners, abused horrifically before being set free and brought to Kahayatle. It was almost an honor, to take them from broken to whole - or as whole as they could ever be again.
    Celia was on her feet for hours, tending to the wounded and sitting with them as they cried. She held their fingers or feet with the one hand she had remaining, knowing better than anyone else that, while we might be able to heal their physical wounds, the emotional ones went way deeper and would be much more difficult to cover with toughened scar tissue. I saw their faces and knew that being with Celia was the best thing we could offer them right now. She gave them hope, and that was powerful medicine.
    Peter came in at some point and pulled me to my feet, guiding me away from the crowds.
    “Where are we going?” I asked, my voice sounding flat.
    “Back home, to our hut,” he answered without looking at me.
    I stopped walking. “No. I don’t want to go there.”
    “Why not? It’s where we live. You don’t want to stay in the clinic, do you?”
    “No. But I don’t want to go back to our hut, either.” I looked down at the ground, fighting back the tears.
    “Why not?”
    I just shook my head. I was afraid if I started talking about it, I was going to cry like a stupid baby.
    Peter sighed. “Look … I know you miss Bodo. I know that’s what this is all about. But you can’t let that stop you from living, Bryn.” He stepped closer and put his arm around my waist, half-pushing and half-dragging me along. “This isn’t like my sister, Lily. Bodo could still be out there.”
    “Do you think so?” I wanted to believe him. Peter had seen his sister brutally murdered by animals much like the ones we had just fought.
    “Yes, I really do. No one saw him … dead.”
    I stopped again, tears jumping to my eyes despite my attempts to keep them back. My heart was spasming in my chest as the words I was thinking made the picture so clear for me in my mind. “Then why didn’t he come to the truck? He knew we were going to leave. He knew it was the only way out.”
    “Maybe he was busy