Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days (10 page)

Like the wasp insects, they have stuffed the
women full of wasp eggs. The wasp eggs will mix with my or George’s
sperm to create a wasp. The wasp will hatch in their digestive
system, not their reproductive system.

Salt kills the wasp.

We cannot wait. We must do this now.

11/15/2056

When I told George what we must do, he
sobbed. We both long for some normalcy. We want to believe that we
will find partners and live out a whole, real life. No matter how
many wasps we kill. No matter how much horror we’ve seen. We still
want to believe that we’ll find love and live happily ever
after.

Today, reality set in for us. There’s no
going back.

We changed into our outer clothing and
retrieved our supplies. Delaying the inevitable, we started with
the horses. We started with salt. We fed the horses a mixture of
salted oats. The horses seemed to crave the salt. They wanted more
than we had prepared. We left the horses, let the salt do its work,
and went to the kitchen.

When we finally made it to the women, they
were expecting us. We smiled and played as if our lust had brought
us to their cell in the middle of the night. We fed them the salted
fried potatoes called “French Fries” that were outlawed in 2021 in
the sweeping obesity legislation. George had a cellmate who’d
worked at a place with the odd Irish name of McDonald’s. The
cellmate taught George how to make these French Fries. He made them
for us once a week. Tonight, we over-salted these potatoes.

Each of us played our roles. The Talker
giggled and chatted about nothing. The other women batted their
eyes, smiled, and ate their salted potatoes. Even the Ute woman,
the woman I had refused to believe was a part of this, played along
with the women. These women acted like lustful teenagers --
virginal and earthy, pure virtue and pure evil.

George refused to touch them. From the
moment he saw them, he’d known, on some deep level, that these
women were dangerous. He was right.

I laughed and flirted with them while
continuing to encourage them to eat the salt.

The women and horses were eating sea salt I
had purified and blessed. It was ten times as powerful as table
salt.

The women had eaten about half of their
potatoes when we left them to check on the horses. George and I
went to our munitions area to select our weapons. I took a
long-range rifle and a handgun. George took out his favorite
sawed-off shotgun loaded with purified salt.

We went to work preparing the sickles and
axes. When we finished, we dug a pit in one of the yards and
started a fire. We waited until the coals were hot and ready to
consume what we ever killed.

Standing near the door, we shared a look of
determination. We did not want to do this thing. We would do it
anyway.

The herd of horses had shifted away from the
most ill -- the pregnant mare and a stallion. I wouldn’t have
selected these creatures as the most infected. We had to trust the
horses’ instinct around illness. George and I led the pregnant mare
and stallion away from the others to the other side of the Pen.

I shot the mare just under her ear. And she
didn’t fall over dead. She was not affected by the bullet. Instead,
her soulful eyes flicked to look into mine as if the say, “Is that
the best you could do?”

George mewed his horror. He shot the mare
full of his salt load, reloaded, and shot her again. She jumped at
each impact but didn’t die. She continued to look at us, almost
begging us to do better.

I took her tattered rope bridle and led her
to a soft area of earth. I was able to get her to lay down. With a
nod to George, George severed her head with a blow from his razor
sharp axe. Four more blows and the head released from the body.

I was moving the head away from the horse’s
body when human-looking hands reached from inside her body to grab
at the head. An entire being -- not quite horse, not quite human,
100% wasp -- unfolded from inside the mare. What we thought was
pregnancy was merely the mare acting as a kind of cocoon for the
wasp.

The creature screamed and snapped. He tried
to bite through our animal skin clothing. I kicked him away from
us. The creature knew no fear. It did not hesitate to come after us
again. George shot it with salt.

At that moment, the Pen was attacked by
wasps. The wasps hurled themselves against the electrified fence.
The wasps screamed with rage. Scores of wasps bellowed in pain and
terror as they were electrified in the fence. All the while, the
fence buzzed and clicked with electricity. The cacophony shook us
to the bone.

My eyes and ears were clear. I saw the
spirit of the mare waiting for release. Using the sickle, I lopped
off the head of the wasp-horse progeny that had lived inside the
mare. I dragged the creature’s body to the fire pit and threw it
in. The creature’s body writhed as it was consumed by the fire; its
head, a foot or two away, screeched with rage and pain. George
threw a layer of hay over the burnt wasp-horse progeny and threw
the mare’s carcass into the pit.

We took no chances with the stallion. We cut
off his head in such a way as to not disturb the progeny we assumed
was growing inside. We burned him without ceremony. We heard the
wasp-horse progeny cry and scream from inside the burning stallion,
but it could not get out.

Bloody, exhausted, and heartbroken, we
returned to the horses in our prison yard. The wasps continued
their screams and chants. Looking out into the night, there seemed
to be thousands of them, if not millions. I averted my eyes. I
did’t want to start the 500 day count again.

We will have to wait and watch over the rest
of the herd. Of the original herd, we lost two mares and two
stallions. Four horses remain. They seem only marginally effected.
They are hungry for salted oats. Their droppings contain piles of
what look like shelled pinon nuts. We assume they are some kind of
wasp egg. If so, it’s possible these horses will shed the wasp. We
burn their droppings in our fire pit.

We’ve decided to wait until dawn to make the
decision about the rest of the herd. For safety’s sake, it would be
smarter and safer for us to dispatch the entire herd. Neither
George nor I had the heart to kill the rest of the horses tonight.
We brought them inside to the old dining area where they would
spend the rest of the night.

Returning to the women’s cell, we found them
in a state of panic. The pregnant woman had collapsed, most likely
from the interaction between the salt and the wasp inside her.

While George went to the infirmary, I
pretended to want to calm and comfort them. When George returned
with syringes and phenobarbital, we injected the women with enough
medicine to nearly kill them. I smiled, held, and hugged the women
as they weep; George did the injecting. Only the Ute woman seemed
to know what I was doing. When it was her turn for an injection,
she kissed my cheek before taking her shot.

They were not conscious when we severed
their heads and burned them in the pyre. Inside every woman was a
creature that tried to escape when her head was cut off. These
creatures looked more human-like and had less of the obvious wasp
features. The human-wasp progeny had been weakened by the salted
potatoes. They died when we severed their heads.

There isn’t any way to express how we felt.
Somewhere in our hearts and minds, George and I had believed things
would go back to the way they were. George would get his happy
future, and I would go home to take my place of honor among the
Pueblo peoples.

Whatever tiny flicker of hope that remained
died tonight.

Killing these women has ripped the very
heart out of us. There is no going back now. The wasp hive screams
and calls at the gates. By killing their livestock -- horses and
humans included -- we’ve made them our enemies. There are too many
of them for us to kill them outright. With any luck, our defenses
will hold until we are rested and ready to leave.

Exhausted, disheartened, and covered in
blood, we returned to our cell. Out of habit mostly, we managed to
go through our routine -- salt spray to disinfect everything,
shower to clean our skin, clean clothing, and back to the cell that
has been our home. We heard the wasp hive outside the Pen, but we
are too dejected to respond.

The single positive thing from all of this
is the release of these women’s souls. Some time between when their
heads were lopped off and before their bodies burned, their souls
came to bless us for releasing them. Even George was aware of their
presence.

We did the right thing. We feel terrible
about it.

Our last hope of life returning to normal
has vanished. In its place is an angry mob of zombie wasps ready to
kill us for destroying their macabre livestock. We cannot stay here
at the Pen. The fences will hold only for a while. Every gallon of
gasoline used in the generators is one we can’t take with us on our
journey.

We have no choice. We must leave.

I can’t write anymore today. I simply can’t
face it.

11/16/2056

It’s very early morning -- two? Three? I’ve
awoken from a dream.

In the dream, I was standing in a parking
lot in Ignacio, Colorado, near the Southern Ute tribal
headquarters. The Ute woman was surrounded by a group of laughing,
bouncing, happy ten-year-old children. The children were vying for
her attention like a beloved aunt or teacher. She touched their
heads and shoulders in greeting. The sun danced on her long dark
hair. Feeling my gaze, her eyes wandered over to me. She smiled.
Her teeth were white against her light, mocha-colored skin.

As if to say, “Come and get me,” she flicked
her hair in my direction. I moved toward her. I craved the touch of
her skin. I longed to go home, to her home, to her, day after day,
for the rest of my life. Before me, I saw our future unfold --
home, children, work, night after night coming together for joy and
comfort. When I got about halfway across the parking lot, I
realized there is a barrier between us. No matter how far I walked
or ran, she remained a distance away from me.

She was on the other side, surrounded by her
people.

And I was alone.

She smiled at me before she was distracted
by one of the children. I tried to move past the invisible barrier.
When I looked up again, she gave me a different smile. A good-bye
smile. While I watched, she and the children walked down the
street.

I shivered. The wind picked up on my side of
the parking lot. Like so many Colorado days, the weather had turned
without warning. The sun disappeared behind the gathering snow
clouds.

Yet the sun continued to shine on the
beautiful woman as she walked down the street. Her blue-jeans
encased hips shifted back and forth. Her hair glistened in the
sunlight. And the children danced around her. Just before she
disappeared, she looked at me. Across the barrier, across time and
space, I heard her say:

“
Bless you.”

She turned and disappeared with the laughing
children.

The snow began to fall. The wind began to
howl in my ears. I shivered in my cotton T-shirt and jeans. I lost
feeling in my toes.

Yet I refused to move from the parking lot.
I refuse to stop watching the place she’d been.

I’m not sure how long I stood there. When I
awoke, I was shivering, my ears filled with the sound of wasps
howling outside the Pen.

I longed for death.

In the light of day, I must be strong for
George. I must have a plan. I must be capable of executing some
stupid six-hundred-year old prophecy.

In the wee hours of this morning, I felt
only sorrow and loss. I missed my life, my family, my people, and
the simple brush of a woman’s skin.