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I bu to blow our cover"

That was the last thing I re off into an unco into the skin of my arm

A loud clap of thunder woke rabbedus down on a motorcycle The thunder had taken on the oot closer and closer I woke startled, sitting up so fast I almost slid down the ramp

I looked at our bikes and noticed that the tarp had come up on one side Peter was still asleep and I decided to leave hi as possible The kid was obviously exhausted

As the first drops of rain fell, inspiration struck I quickly got under the tarp and took out the square of plastic and sht for e of the overpass, where I proceeded to try and rig up a water catcher

I gave up after a fewthe plastic up and slightly folded, on a diagonal, so the water hitting it would drain into the bucket I was holding steady with the insides of my feet The shoas over in less than an hour, but it had coh water to fill all three bottles with some left over I poured the extra into the boith the straw on it for Buster, who eagerly drank it all up

I sat there thinking about our nextfor the hu so well By the tiot up an hour later, I’dbut was still pretty da He looked around and then over at ot us soe ditch?"

"Ha, ha, very funny It rained I filled up our water bottles Here" I handed him a full one

"Awesome Thanks"

I watched him drink half of it in seconds and etbetter and better about going towards the Everglades We’d never run out of water or food there The key would be figuring out how to catch the food I wasn’t even sure if the fish we’d get there were edible I wished we had a book about the animals in the swamps - other than just the one we had on snakes

"So what’s the plan?" asked Peter, his thirst now satisfied He handed me his bottle and I put it back in the trailer

"Well, if we et about fifty miles a day And we’re about two hundred and fifty miles from where I think we need to be"

"So about five days of traveling, you think?"

"So like that I don’t reure we’ll get down there and stop e find a place that looks good Maybe once we get closer we can go into a tourist shop with some books that have info or a ," said Peter, sounding skeptical

"I know But we need to find a specific spot One that’s hard to reach and has trees to hide a shelter in"

"How are we going to get into it if it’s hard to reach?"

"Boat?" I suggested

"I can see you’ve put a lot of time into this plan," he said sarcastically

"Yeah, well, how much time have you put into it, sh-five "You’re right I’ingly slapped his hand back "The plan is flexible We’ll just figure it out as we go along It’s better that way, anyway - if one of us gets caught, on’t be able to divulge any secrets"

"Since we don’t have any"

"Exactly" I senius

"Let’s just pray we don’t get taken captive, because the only reason someone would do that would be to … well, you know"

"Invite you to dinner," I said

"Yeah"

"Do you want to tell e at the fact that I’d just brought up his sister while ere on the topic of being eaten for dinner, but it was iot away from me before I could stop it "Sorry That wasn’t cool"

Peter didn’t seeot a far off look to them as he stared off into the distance "She elve Really sh She looked about ten or so We used to fight all the ti into s invading

"We were in Sanford, in our house We had to bury both of our parents in the back yard They died on the sa it I had only lost one parent and that was bad enough

"My sister and I had a hard ti, because we kept worrying that ere hurting them Isn’t that stupid? I mean, they were already dead We checked their pulses like a hundred ti Even when bodies were dead, if they belonged to people you loved in life, they seerateful I was toelsewhere

Buster went over and sat in Peter’s lap Tears were going down his cheeks and Buster kept trying to ju with and petting his ears absently as he continued his story<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>