Apocalypsis: Book 3 (Exodus) Read Online Free PDF

shut down completely and everything went black.
    ***
    I woke up in my hut, Peter and Buster asleep at my side.  As soon as I moved, Peter sat up quickly, his hair sticking out all over the place.
    “What?  Who? …”  He looked around, lost in his dream world for a few seconds until he laid eyes on me.  “Oh.  Hey, Bryn.  Do you need anything?”
    “Water?” I asked, my tongue nearly sticking to the roof of my mouth.
    Peter reached over and grabbed the bottle next to him.  “Here.  I guess I fell down on the job.  I was supposed to wake you up in the middle of the night and make you drink this.”
    I guzzled the entire bottle and burped when I was done.
    Peter curled his lip in disgust but said nothing.  I was probably getting a pass since I was on the injured list.  I wondered what else I could get away with.
    “What time is it?”  My watch had disappeared somewhere between punching a canner in the face and being here on the mattress with Buster licking my fingers.  I couldn’t remember the last time I saw it on my wrist.  “Ew, Buster, get away.”  I shoved him over onto Peter’s mattress, but he was back in half a second, deciding that me pushing him away meant I wanted more attention from him, not less.
    “It’s about seven in the morning,” answered Peter, enjoying Buster’s torture of me.
    Buster was angling for a chin lick, I could tell by the way he was staring at me while his butt wiggled with frantic tail wagging.
    “No, Buster!  No lick!”
    He dove at me and got one in, practically knocking me over in his enthusiasm.
    I pushed him away again and held my hand out to stop him from getting close.  “I swear to God, that dog knows when I’m weak and can’t fight him off.”  I waited for him to walk away and then wiped his stinky drool from my face.  “I need some bleach or something.  I probably have an amoeba on my chin right now.”
    “An amoeba?  From Buster?  Not likely.  More like e-coli.”
    “Are you serious?”  Now all I could think about were the possible flecks of poo on my face.  I scrubbed my chin harder.
    “No, I’m not serious, dope.  There’s nothing on your face that isn’t on every other square inch of your body right now.  I’ll help you go take a shower in a minute.  Let me just get some food in you, first.”  Peter left the sleeping area and came back with a basket that had been sitting on the shelves.  “Eat this stuff.  Then we’ll get up and get you clean and destinkified.”
    I picked through the basket, not finding anything appealing; but my growling stomach would not be ignored, and the look on Peter’s face told me he wouldn’t be either, so I took out a piece of stale bread and chewed on a bite of it.
    “So what happened?  One minute I was getting up to talk to Kowi, and the next I’m cuddled up next to you and the lick master here in the hut.”
    “You passed out.  You’ve lost quite a bit of blood and you were just … I don’t know.  Stressed.”  He avoided talking about the reason for my stress.
    “Any news?” I asked, chewing on my bread, not looking directly at Peter.  “About anything … or anyone?”
    “No.  No news about Bodo.”
    I was going to declare my intentions to go after him, but I stopped myself.  Peter wasn’t going to be invited, and I could totally see him tattling on me when he found out he was being left behind.  I changed the subject.  “So what does Kowi want to talk to me about?”
    “I’m not sure.  Maybe next steps.”
    “Next steps?”  Hopefully they’re not the next steps of us being kicked out of the swamp.
    “Yeah.  We didn’t kill all the canners.  Some of them got away.”
    My eyes widened.  “Does he want to go after them?”
    Peter shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I’m just speculating.  I have no idea why he wants to talk to you or what everyone is thinking.  I’m not in the loop.”
    “You don’t sound upset about that.”
    “I’m not.  I just