Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days Read online

  Reliable. My great-great grandmother said that the Tewa needed my father’s reliability, consistency, and strength to create a strong, reliable shaman. She believed that only my father’s son could fulfill the prophecy. My brothers all had a touch of spirit in them. My oldest brother wasn’t interested in the unpractical. He became an accountant.

  My middle brother, Earnesto, was my best friend growing up. Earnesto liked the idea of the power of being a shaman, but would rather race bikes or play his guitar than study. He didn’t want me to be a shaman, either. Made me too weird. But he loved me nonetheless. He was the only one who worried for me when I was gone in the summers. He was devastated when I had to come here to the Pen.

  I see my middle brother about once a month. He stops by to see how things are going. When we get to Pecos Pueblo, I’m certain he will know what we need to do and where we need to go. He worked there with my father. He was always prying into the Pueblo’s long-held secrets. He took my mission to save humanity very seriously. He was confident I would need his help. At the time, I thought he was nuts. But now I realize he was right. I will need help, and I know he will help me if he can.

  My sisters had a touch of the shaman in them. After my great-great grandmother, there was never a woman shaman in my family line. Not one. I’m not sure if the women didn’t get the gift or if my great-great grandmother worked so hard that they were intimidated by the work. Either way, they used their gifts to snag husbands, keep on top of their children’s mischief, and generally enjoy life. My sister was one of the joys of my life.

  My mother’s children knew how to laugh, that’s for sure. My steadfast father was always the last to join in, but even he enjoyed the loud, rambunctious chaos of our family the most. He never had a cross word to say to anyone, and still he was not someone to be taken lightly. He was wise and strong, in a way I have not seen since then.

  He and my great-great grandmother fought over me. He created the space for me to roam the woods and mountains most of my childhood. My great-great grandmother thought it was a waste of time. I should be studying. But my father was adamant. “Let him follow his own path. Let the boy go,” he’d say. Around and around they went. My father always won.

  While I probably needed more study, the thing that’s kept George and me alive is my experience in the backwoods of New Mexico. Dad was right. I needed to learn how to live and how to survive, before I could become a real shaman. Without his intervention, I’d surely be dead by now. George, too.

  I haven’t seen my father, or my mother, since all of this happened. In my fantasy, my father is waiting for me at the Pecos Pueblo. In my heart, I know that he found my mother waiting for him. After having to live without her for so long, he would never leave her side. In my heart, I know they are together and in love.

  The thought makes me smile.

  11/09/2056

  We spent today like we’ve spent most days -- in the peace and safety of working to survive. For the last six months, we’ve been working to get ready for our journey. Today, we went bow hunting for elk. I shot an elk not far from here.

  Of course, the smell of blood can bring the wasps from a hundred miles away. We were careful to hang the elk before returning to the Pen for the vehicle. We heard, but did not see, the wasps moving in our direction. Thank the creator because I’d hate to start the count to 500 days over again.

  Together, George and I skinned and butchered the animal. While George attended the fires, I cut the flesh into strips and lined our drying racks. This enormous creature will be the third elk we’ve dried for our journey.

  George and I had elk steak tonight with the last of the Worchester sauce. Funny the things you become accustomed to. We found a stash of this precious flavoring in the chef’s private reserve.

  That brings to mind an interesting thing.

  I would have thought there would be an abundance of supplies left hanging around for the last human beings. Unlike in the movies, the world’s transition to wasp didn’t happen all at once. It happened slowly, one person at a time.

  It was different here at the Pen. Because they gave the vaccine to so many people at one time, they turned en masse. It was a solid month before the wasps ran out of people to eat and almost a year before we had a handle on them.

  But in the “real world,” the change was much more subtle. One person would change and then slowly eat their family. An entire year after the Pen changed, the world and media began to catch onto the problem. And even then, a lot of people thought it was a joke. Efforts to rehabilitate wasps took hold in the conservative churches and other charities.

  The government knew that wasps had ravaged through the prisons, hospitals, jails, military bases, third-world shantytowns, most of India, and any other place where people were warehoused together. They even knew about the half-breeds created by eating 146-modified food. There was too much money at stake to let the public know.

  The general public was kept in the dark. The first article about this problem was actually about all of the missing people. Almost half of the United States had “mysteriously” disappeared. Half of the population! Because the wasps ate their own families, there was no one to raise the alarm. No one to call the police about their missing or ill loved one. Anyone who cared enough to report a missing person had already turned or was dead.

  The apocalypse began right under everyone’s noses.

  There were no mass protests by crazed Evangelical Christians. There were no press statements about “Hell on Earth.” In fact, by the time it was time to panic, there was no one left to do it.

  Except me. And who would I call?

  George and I didn’t realize that no one knew about the wasps. With everything going on, we didn’t have a chance to look at television until six months after everything happened. Imagine our surprise to find no reports about the transition or any news stories about wasps. In fact, everything seemed completely normal. I think that’s what made this so hard for us.

  We became accustomed to the world’s denial. We lived in a bubble of reality that the world never saw or cared about. But that’s an apt metaphor for being in prison anyway. We were used to it. In fact, we were so accustomed to the world’s denial that we were devastated when the television stations were gone. The radio stations were gone. All that was left was the Internet.

  Wikipedia posted a page about a virus that caused “personality changes” about seven months after the wasps had killed everyone in the Pen. The page spoke of a pandemic virus, not a genetic sequence causing a kind of semi-death. Like they did for all the other pandemics in the last fifty years, Google created a viral-infection map. Millions people were dead before the map was even started.

  How did so many people die without anyone noticing?

  Personally, I think society had become so self focused. With the advent of cell phones and other handheld devices, people became accustomed to shouting to the crowd rather than carrying on individual conversations.

  Who would notice if their social media friend list went from 1500 to 1300 overnight? Moreover, systems like Facebook, Twitter, and the like were set up for the individual to control their online exposure. Many celebrity handlers continued to communicate with fans long after the person had changed or was dead. A few times, people live-Tweeted their transition. But no one believed them. Even if they did, they were so caught up in their own dream that they didn’t really understand what was going on. Modern culture literally consumed itself in front of a live audience while everyone laughed.

  People had lost contact with their neighbors, their community, and their streets. Few people engaged face to face with anyone outside their household. And a lot of people lived alone. Grocery stores, 7-11s, and fast-food drive-through handovers were the closest anyone came to interaction with another human being. With the advent of Internet ordering, even those interactions became rare.

  Certainly the major retailers noted a decrease in patronage. The media and government attributed the lack of c
ustomers to a downturn in the economy. There was a lot of hand wringing everywhere. Television news programs did specials on the “New Depression.” Everyone was terrified that the global depression of 2008-2009 had returned.

  Of course, not one of the many esteemed news programs ran a special on The 146, which had turned humanity’s minds to mush. Not one. I wonder what it must have felt like to be a reporter finally figuring out where all the people had gone. I’d think it would be pretty humiliating.

  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.