Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days (8 page)

At one point, I wondered if the reporters
were half-wasps. They seem so soulless -- it’s entirely possible
that they continued on without realizing they had lost their soul.
Or maybe they never had a soul to begin with. Hard to say.

As with so many other
things, I have no experience with news reporters, television
programs, movies, really anything in the media. I never watched
television as a kid and spent the years before coming to the Pen
with the Wixaritari in Mexico. I was so busy listening to the
Earth, that I never knew what song was a number-one hit or was at
the top of the charts or who won awards or
…

Maybe all these people were always soulless,
or, maybe, like the rest of humanity, their soul detached from
their bodies in response to The 146-protein. There’s no way for me
to give an accurate report on that. And George wouldn’t know the
difference.

So the world changed, human beings became
wasps and/or died out, and no one noticed. It’s been about ten
years since the Great Human Transition here at the Pen. Humanity
died two and a half years later.

And the Earth had begun to recover.

While the Internet was still up, there were
reports of the end of Global Warming. The honeybees began to thrive
again. Smog began to clear from the sky. The rivers ran clear and
were full of fish. The forests began to renew themselves. It’s
amazing what the death of millions of humans can bring to an
ecosystem.

More than 251 million years ago, the Earth
was populated by mammal-like creatures. Then, in one fell swoop,
the “Great Dying” happened. More than 90% of all sea life and 70%
of all terrestrial life died off. The mammal-like creatures were
all but gone. It took 30 million years for the reptiles to take
over.

I wonder if that will be our fate this time.
Will the dinosaurs return to walk the earth in 30 million years?
Will this be called the “Second Great Dying” by the mammals that
will eventually replace the reptiles?

The prophecy is vague on this point. Mammals
did survive the Great Dying all those millions of years ago.
Mammals did return to rule the earth again.

Maybe humankind will do the same? Right now,
it seems unlikely.

At least the elk and deer herds can roam
free again. Large dog packs have replaced the wolf packs as their
predators. I would guess that, in five or six years the wolves will
make it to New Mexico from Wyoming. New Mexico will return to
pre-invader days. The wasp hives will replace the warring plains
tribes.

George and I will witness it all.

For all of my grief, loss, and regret, I
must say that I’m grateful to be alive. I’m delighted to have this
chance to be here now. I will probably miss my cell at the Pen when
we leave. I’ll miss the warm days on our safe prison-yard farm. The
easy afternoons hunting elk and deer or raiding houses in Santa
Fe.

Who knows what adventures lie before us?
Maybe we will meet our soulmates? Maybe George will finally have
the family he dreamed of all those years ago? I will become the
head of my own family clan. Everything, and nothing, is
possible.

Everything and nothing is possible.

11/10/2056

I meant to talk about our supplies and food
inventory in my last entry. George and I were pretty lucky to be
here at the Pen when all this went down. There were freezers full
of frozen bacon, meat, stews, soups, and general supplies for 800
people. The Pen had just received dry supplies for a month. Since
there was just George and I, we had a lot of food. In fact, we’ll
take with us beans and pasta from that last dry supply
shipment.

They were due to receive fresh supplies of
meat, milk, and cheese, the day after everything went down. Unable
to find anyone, the trucks dropped the supplies at the supply
docks. I found it rotting on the docks a couple months later. That
shipment began our composting efforts, which have created fertile
ground from our barren prison yard.

We tried to feed meat and other things to
the wasps, but they are only interested in living flesh. They are
drawn to fresh meat but won’t eat anything that’s not moving. After
a few weeks without food, they will eat blood and meat. It makes
them ill, but they will eat it.

The Pen had a lot of other supplies. One of
the assistant wardens loved office supplies. We found stashes of
special pencils and expensive pens. We found George’s old-style
white board in this assistant warden’s secret office-supply stash.
She even had 30 dry-erase pens.

These old-style boards hadn’t been
manufactured in almost ten years. People preferred electronic
everything. Anything functional, practical, and inexpensive stopped
being manufactured decades ago. The hoarding assistant warden liked
them. We still have three pens with ink in them. They are now
George’s prized possessions. I guess like this ancient typewriter
and the ream of paper George found are mine.

These days, all the paper, post-its,
folders, files, etc. are gone. I thought they were burned in the
fires to keep the wasps at bay. But, George says the wasps use
paper to make their hives or homes. The only wasp hives we’ve seen
have been those they made here in the Pen. (Thus the lack of paper
supplies here.) They were temporary hives. We think they’ve made
more permanent structures, but we don’t really know.

In the end, the supermarkets, grocery
stores, well, all the stores, were looted by the remaining human
survivors. When the owners or managers fell ill, the employees
continued working until they were eaten or changed. Most stores
were locked one night and not opened the next morning. I can’t
blame people for looting the stores.

George just came in. He’s frantic. I

11/13/2056

I have just witnessed one of the most
disgusting things I’ve ever seen.

After typing that sentence, I realized that
I’ve gotten used to the gore and death of flesh eating wasp people.
They are no longer the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.

A couple days ago, George came in while I
was typing. He was frantic, weeping, and pulling at me to come with
him. I haven’t seen him upset in years. I don’t know that I’d ever
seen him that frantic.

I got up, put on my outer clothing --
deerskin pants, elkskin jacket, buffalo boots -- that wasps can’t
get through and went with him. With him pulling me along, we went
to our off-road vehicle. He drove straight West from the Pen,
through what once was a mixture of ranch land and public land,
until we reached the foothills.

I don’t know what he was doing here. He said
later he was checking the area around for our journey. He knows how
worried I’ve been about getting through the mountains. I believe he
was trying to find an alternative way to the Pueblo. Truth be told,
outside of the work we do together, George wanders on his own. I
don’t own him or control him or otherwise force him to do one thing
or another. He’s very careful and knows the risks. I’ve always
known when he’s been in trouble.

I’m avoiding writing what we found.

We drove straight into the foothills, where
we came onto an old ranch gate. I got out to open the gate, and
George drove through. He waited to pick me up. We drove down an
idyllic road to a what had been a two-story ranch mansion. The
wasps had turned the ranch house into a wasps’ nest. Paper covered
the windows. The doors were wide open for ventilation. Through the
open space, we could see the paper cells the wasps like to live
in.

We were prepared for a wasp attack. George
held his shotgun loaded with salt shot, and I had my bow. But we
saw no wasps.

Not one.

He continued past the house to what had been
a pasture. The grass and brush had turned to mud and muck. The
off-road vehicle had no trouble making it through the mud. This
gives me great hope for our upcoming journey to the Pecos Pueblo.
Of all the things I need to worry about, getting through mud is not
one of them.

I’m still avoiding writing what I saw. I
will be braver.

Inside the pasture gate, there were a
variety of creatures with chain collars around their necks, staked
to the ground. We found five mares, three stallions, three cows, a
bull, and four human women. Every female -- human, cattle, horse --
were either pregnant or had just given birth. The offspring were
nowhere to be found.

The wasps had used these wretched creatures
to breed food.

The human women looked as if they had been
mentally impaired by The 146-protein, but, otherwise, they were
physically healthy human beings. Only one could speak verbally. The
other three had lost their minds or were so traumatized that there
was nothing left of them. One of the women was pregnant.

How long had they been here? Months? Weeks?
The last ten years? Who was the father of their children?

The cows were in the same condition. The
bull was emaciated, barely able to stand. When we let him off the
stake, he fell to the ground, dead. Somehow, he had been hanging on
to die when he was freed. George wept for him.

Whether by mad cow disease or The
146-protein, the cows’ minds were mush. When we let them off their
staked leashes, they walked in circles, mooing frantically again
for their lost calves.

The horses were in better condition. It’s
possible that they were more recent acquisitions. One of them was
with foal. The others were healthier, less emaciated. The stallions
looked as if they’d been misused but not yet broken. Unlike the
other creatures in this filth, the horses acted as if they belonged
together, almost as if they had been a herd before they were
captured.

When we let the stallions go, they moved to
protect the mares. I was able to convince the leader, the oldest,
largest stallion, that we were there to help. Looking deep into his
soulful brown eyes, it was almost as if he’d been waiting for us.
He seemed to know we had come to rescue them.

Not knowing what to do, and unable to leave
these creatures as they were, we put the women in the back of the
vehicle and tied the animal leads to the bumper. Certain the wasps
would return at any time, we worked fast. We had no idea where the
wasps were or how we had missed them. In the back of my mind, I
worried that this was a trap of some kind. Like maybe they had
trapped the women here because they came to help these animals.

The ride back to the Pen was horrible. The
women wept and cried with pain. The animals could only go at a
moderate pace. Slowly, very slowly, we traveled across the ranches
back to our safe Pen. We heard the wasps following us, surrounding
us, but never saw one.

For the last three days, we’ve attended to
these creatures. We’ve also run the gasoline generators to keep the
electricity flowing through the fences.

We dispatched the cattle. They seemed to beg
for death. I sedated them with high levels of barbiturates. George
chopped off their heads. We burned them in a pyre and buried their
ash and bones deep.

We’d hoped that the horses would make it.
One of the mares barely survived the journey to the Pen. She died
the moment we stopped moving. A sickly stallion succumbed shortly
afterwards. Not wanting to take a chance, we also cut off their
heads and burned their bodies in our fire pit. They are buried with
the cows. After we bathed, brushed, and fed the other horses, they
seemed to recover. They have feasted in our fall garden, on a
mixture of oats, and are resting comfortably.

The women are a greater problem. They are
ill, exhausted, and mentally broken. We set them up in a cell on
our hallway. George brought cots, medicine, and supplies from the
infirmary. We bathed and clothed them in warm, clean clothing.
Their hair was matted, filthy, and full of lice. We had to shave
off all of their body hair and douse the lice. When they were
settled, we fed them broth and noodles, before leaving them to
sleep. I wasn’t sure they would survive the first night. But they
have survived, even rallied.

In bits and pieces, the woman who could talk
(I call her The Talker) told their story.

They were teachers who had received the last
146-vaccine around the time that George had. Because they worked
with such poor and sickly students, they ate mostly 146-modified
foods. They had jumped at the chance to be vaccinated. They were at
school when they turned. She was able to take care of the other
teachers, younger teachers, until a nest of wasps came through the
school. They were captured.

One of the women was pregnant when she
received the vaccine. When the child was born, the wasps ate her
child. It was after that that the wasps came up with the idea of
breeding their food.

The Talker was vague about who impregnated
them. I wasn’t sure if she couldn’t remember or didn’t want to
remember. Or maybe it didn’t matter.