Storm of Locusts

Chapter 13

I sit at the bar while Rissa queues up the video recording. The All-American looks much the same as last time I was here. One big room, cloaked in perpetual dive-bar twilight. A wooden dance floor bordered by a smattering of low round wagon-wheel tables and squat matching chairs. Walls a dull gray-washed wood paneling that match the dull gray-washed wood-paneled exterior, decorated with a half dozen now-dark neon signs of beer makers long dead in the Big Water. Advertisements for St. Louis and Lynchburg and Milwaukee and a handful of other places that no longer exist. A long wooden bar stretches the length of the front wall, and above the bar, attached to the wall and leaning slightly toward the line of barstools, are three wide flat-paneled televisions.

Back before the Big Water, the TVs piped in the weekend football games, local teams from Dallas and Phoenix the big draws. But now there’s no satellite, no networks either. The TVs are hooked to a closed-circuit feed that can show old DVD movies or pick up the feed from the security cameras Grace has around the place.

Rissa clicks a button and the whole wall of TVs comes alive at once, a grainy rain of static. She sets the remote control on the bar in front of where I’ve taken a seat. She turns to leave. Hesitates. “You want a drink or something?”

“Hmm?” I say, surprised she’s offering.

“From the bar.” Her gesture encompasses the smoky glass bottles of hooch, the double tap for Grace’s homebrewed beer.

“I’m good.”

She grunts, sounding dubious. “Well, if you change your mind, you know . . . after you watch it. The good whiskey is under the bar, glasses on the shelf.”

“Is it that bad?”

She doesn’t say anything. Just gives me a long look that could pretty much mean anything, but I think may be actual sympathy. It really is that bad.

“Thanks.” I don’t know what else to say.

She nods. “You know how to work the remote?”

“It’s been a while, but I remember the basics. Arrow means go. Square means stop.”

“And that one’s rewind. And this is pause.”

“Got it.”

“Yeah.” She stands there, arms hanging at her sides. Her mouth is twisted up like she wants to add something else, and there’s a heavy double line across her forehead. I’m pretty keyed up myself. Anxious to see what’s on the tape and not interested in bickering with her again.

“Got it,” I repeat, my voice heavy with “go away.”

She looks down at the bar, jangles the keys she has in her hands. “Mom’s not well. She . . .” She clears her throat. “She thinks Caleb’s dead.”

It’s hard to imagine Grace as anything less than the formidable woman who rules her criminal kingdom with an iron fist. But I remember how small she looked when we came back from Rock Springs, Rissa bleeding out. How vulnerable. Even then I wondered if losing another child would be the grief that would finally break her.

“I don’t think he’s dead,” I offer.

She looks up sharply. “How would you know? You saw the blood.”

“Because he’s with Kai. And you of all people should know that Kai wouldn’t let him die.”

She pulls back a little, blinking. Her hand unconsciously moves to her stomach. Her fingers flex over the spot where the monsters ripped her belly open. Hopefully she’s remembering that Kai saved her life, and that should mean something, should matter when she’s ready to throw him over as some sort of traitor.

She stares at me, her hazel eyes weary. Scared. “I hope you’re right. I really do.”

Once Rissa’s gone, I turn back to the bank of TVs. Take a deep breath. And pick up the remote. I press play. Hold it for a second, afraid to let go. The feeling of the button is a dull rubbery firmness that belies the anxiety of the moment.

“Better to know,” I tell myself. And let go of the button.

The picture comes up in triplicate. At first there’s nothing, just empty space and a camera trained at the door of the gatehouse, a good view of any vehicle trying to enter Grace’s compound. And then someone steps into frame. The back of Caleb’s head. There’s the sound of an engine, but the vehicle doesn’t pull in, staying out of the entryway and out of view. Caleb says something, and someone outside the frame answers. A female voice.

And then there’s another voice.

A voice I know all too well. It is the one I feared I might never hear again.

Kai’s voice is a soothing tenor. He’s the child of college professors, and it showed in the way he talked. Never nonplussed, an observational quality in the lilt of his words. It always seemed like nothing much bothered him. When we first met, I thought that was just Kai. Calm, cool, and collected. I wonder now how much of that easygoing facade was real, how much of that was a cover to hide some of the darkness that was haunting him. Even so, hearing his voice now, that same voice that pulled me back from getting lost in my own misery, rips my heart open.

I pause the recording to gather myself, and when the cool dark quiet of the bar has got me settled again, I press play.

A woman’s voice answers Kai. And then a murmured question from a new voice, not Kai or Caleb but masculine. So that means that there’s at least four of them, a man and a woman in the vehicle and then Kai and Caleb.

Caleb answers, sounding angry, and I catch a “ . . . fucking kidding me . . .” I can’t hold back the smile. That sounds just like what I remember of Freckles.

Kai again, soothing intervention. But this time his voice sends a chill dancing down my spine. It’s neither quite that easygoing tenor nor the crisp professor, but something else.

Something a shade deeper, a touch sharper. I know what it is. Bit’ąą’nii. He’s using his clan power. Kai once referred to his clan power as “a way with words,” but it’s more than that. Kai possesses the power of persuasion, making him as deadly as anyone with a firearm, maybe more. Because why shoot someone when you can talk them into shooting themselves?

Not that he would. Kai was unwilling to even hold a gun, much less kill someone. Maybe this time he should have.

I sit forward, punching the little button to raise volume. Hit it again and again until it’s as high as it will go. But without the visual cues, the audio feels distant, too garbled for me to follow.

Then the woman’s voice, and this time she’s arguing with Kai.

Impossible.

Kai’s power persuaded gods.

And then singing. Beautiful, soft and rhythmic, a lilting melody I recognize immediately.

Uneasiness churns in my gut. I’m pretty sure I’m immune to that singing, but I rapidly tap the button to bring the volume down to zero. No need to take a chance.

I know who’s got Kai. Caleb, too. Someone with powers of persuasion all their own.

I reach out to tap the pause button, ready to go share my discovery with the Goodacres, when Kai’s face fills the screen. My finger freezes, hovering.

Just like the first time I saw him, I let out a little gasp.

His face is still perfect, an impossibly unfair combination of flawless warm-brown skin, blue-black hair, graceful features. When he looks into the camera, I swallow hard. Last time I saw him, his eyes had bled out a liquid silver, something to do with his clan powers. A mystery that neither he nor Tah understood. Part of me expected to see those eyes, the eyes of a man so strange and powerful that he could come back from the dead. But instead his eyes are normal. No, not normal. Never just normal. Beautiful. A rich reddish brown that seem to even now reflect the warmth and kindness of the man they belong to.

He looks directly into the camera. Directly at me. Mouths a sentence I can’t quite follow.

And the feed shuts off.

Nothing but blank screens that, after a moment, bleed to gray rain.

I scramble to replay the video, watching it again. Not so much looking for clues as just waiting to see his face.

A second time, he looks into the camera, lips moving silently on a final phrase, ending in a blank screen.

I watch it again.

By the fourth time, when I pause the feed on Kai’s face, my hands are shaking and I’m holding back some emotion that if I let it out might shatter me whole. A joy that he’s alive. A fear that I’ve lost him all over again. Because I’ve figured out what he says in that final frame, and I know his words are meant for me.

I love you. Don’t follow me.

Six words. Simple words. Words that leave my heart stuttering in my chest, my breath coming short, but my feelings conflicted. Because the words don’t make sense. If he loves me, why would he tell me not to follow him? If he was going to leave, why bother to say he loved me? Kai is smart. He would know what those six words would do to me, how they would make me want to destroy worlds to reach him, how they would send me reeling toward something as terrible as hope.

Why would he say that? Why? Unless he really thought he was saying good-bye. A thought that sends me spiraling into a future I have no interest in living.

And there it is. Clear as a desert morning. I am not willing to give Kai up. No matter my posturing about letting him come to me, no matter my fears and insecurities. No matter what he’d done in the past. Tah said that Kai was mine now, and it’s true. But what he didn’t say was the other half of that. I am Kai’s.

And there’s no way in hell I’m losing him again.

I don’t even hear Ben come up behind me until she says, “Mama mercy, who is that?”

I shove my feelings down somewhere deep. Look over my shoulder at my new ward. Ben is staring at the screens, eyes wide and mouth gaping like someone just knocked her on the head with a hot-boy stick. I know the feeling.

“Don’t sneak up on me,” I mutter.

“Footpath People clan,” she says absently. “Makes me sneaky. I can’t really help it.”

“Yeah, well, Footpath clan or not, I’ll put a knife in your gut if you sneak up on me again.”

Her eyes flicker my way, like she can’t believe I just threatened her and she’s not sure how to take it.

I sigh. “Just don’t push your luck. My reaction time can be . . . fast.”

“Wow,” she says, and then, “Sorry.” Not sounding all that sorry. Sounding more like a teenager who just decided I was dramatic instead of dangerous. She slides onto the barstool next to me. “That guy on the screen had me distracted. I’m bi, but I usually don’t go for boys. Too much ego, if you know what I mean, but I can appreciate the lovely wherever I see it.”

“So, is that the guy we’re trying to find? I mean, the other one. Your Kai. He’s clearly not a red.”

By “red” she must mean a Goodacre. Not sure if the twins would find that insulting, but I’ll leave it for her to find out on her own.

“That’s Kai,” I acknowledge as I hit the button and turn off the screen.

She sighs and drops her chin onto her hand, elbow propped up on the bar. “You didn’t tell me he looked like that. No wonder you agreed to this gig.”

I give her a tight smile but don’t answer her. I can tell she wants to hear more, maybe a story about Kai. How we met. What we mean to each other. Why I shot him. But I’m not offering.

I love you. Don’t follow me.

Ben’s watching me. But she doesn’t ask me what’s wrong, or why I turned the video off. Instead she spins the barstool around, surveying the All-American. “This is a cool place. Very cowboy.” She hops down and walks behind the bar.

“What are you doing?” I ask, suspicious.

“Having a drink,” she says, eyes roaming over Grace’s limited inventory. Even though the All-American is one of the more prosperous establishments of its kind, there’s really only a few options for the drinker in a post–Big Water world. Grace’s specialty is beer, something her and her kids brew themselves in vats out back in one of the garage bays. But on occasion she has other stuff. It’s really the luck of the draw, what’s coming across the Wall from New Denver or the Burque.

“You want a drink?” Ben asks me.

“Aren’t you a little young to be drinking?”

Ben rolls her eyes. “Pretty sure there’s no drinking age in the apocalypse.” She tilts her head to give me a look. “You’re not going to start mothering me, are you?”

I stare, horrified. Is that what I was doing? “Good whiskey’s down there, second shelf. Glasses behind you.”

She grins. Bends down to find the bottle of whiskey. She puts it on the bar triumphantly and reaches back to retrieve two glasses from the shelf. She’s careful to measure us each out a shot, not too generous, but not stingy either. “Where’d you learn to pour?” I ask her.

“Thirsty Boys are my uncles,” she says by way of explanation. Which I guess is pretty much all the explanation needed.

She pushes my glass over to me. I pick it up, and we briefly clink the cheap imitation crystal together in a toast. I sip mine. Watch as Ben takes a drink and immediately breaks out into a gagging cough. I raise an eyebrow and wait for her to catch her breath.

“Confession,” she chokes out hoarsely, swallowing hard to clear her throat. Her face looks pained. I don’t even crack a smile. “I’ve never drank alcohol before. My uncle would never let me. I poured for the Boys”—she waves her hand in a vague gesture—“but I never drank it. I just wanted to try it.”

I don’t say a word.

She coughs some more. Finds Grace’s jug of drinking water and fills a clean glass. Chugs it down and, with a disgusted look on her face, tips her whiskey glass and pours the rest of her shot into mine. “Take it,” she says.

Now I laugh. I figure I’ve let her keep her dignity long enough.

“Jesus,” she mutters, wiping at her mouth. “Why on earth would people choose to drink that stuff?” She disappears behind the bar again. “Especially when . . . I thought I saw . . .” Her voice drifts off as she rummages around. I sip my whiskey, waiting. Happy for the distraction Ben provides. Trying not the see Kai’s face every time I close my eyes. Hear his words. I love you. Don’t follow me.

“Found it!” she declares, holding up a brown-and-white aluminum can.

I come back from my reverie. Notice what she’s holding. “Is that . . . ?” I gasp.

“Shasta! Yes. I heard Clive mention something about soda pop to his mom, so I figured where else would you keep your rare sugary carbonated beverages but behind the bar?”

I narrow my eyes. “So you didn’t come looking for me. You came to pilfer soda.”

“Don’t take it personally,” she says. “I came to check on you too. Looks like some huge dust storm’s rolling in from the west, and Clive said we should all get together in one place to wait it out. But this.” She frames the soda can with her hands like a game show hostess. Something she’s too young to have ever seen in person, but maybe the gesture’s universal.

“You know that’s probably Grace’s secret stash.”

“I know.”

“So maybe you shouldn’t drink it.”

“Do you think she’ll care?” She looks crestfallen.

“No,” I lie, amused. Thinking of the lecture Grace would lay on Ben if she were her normal feisty self instead of what Rissa feared her mother had become. A mother heavy with the belief that she’s lost her youngest child.

Ben pops the can open with a soft hissing sound. The distinctive smell of cola, a smell I would have sworn I forgot but remember as clearly as my own name, fizzes in my nose. She pours half the soda into her glass and the rest into my recently emptied whiskey glass, then comes around and sits next to me. We toast and drink. The bubbles dance against my lips, and I can’t help but smile.

“So what’s the plan? I figure you got a plan. If that were my boyfriend, I’d have a plan.” She holds the glass to her mouth. “Even if you did shoot him.”

I ignore that. Jabs from Rissa cut deeper than I’d like to admit, but Ben’s feel more like teasing. Meant to make me laugh more than bleed.

I sigh. Back to business, and Ben needs to know anyway.

“Listen to this.” I touch the screen, bring the video back to life. Rewind to where I want it. Bring the volume back up. “Hear that singing? Isn’t that just like what we heard on the mountain?”

Her face is an open book. Horror and fascination and grief. She rolls the glass in her hands, looks up at me with big eyes. “That’s the same ones who killed my uncle?”

“I think so.”

“And that woman. That’s the same one, isn’t it? The one I killed.”

“Could be,” I say. “Maybe. Probably. Which means they came here first.”

“And then, what? Back to Lake Asááyi?”

“Or they split up. Who knows? But the timing is right.” I down the rest of my Shasta, the aftertaste of whiskey dulled by the sugary drink. “Let’s go, before the dust storm hits.”

I turn off the video feed. Slide off the bench. Take a few steps before I realize Ben isn’t following me.

“What is it?”

She’s rocking back and forth on the barstool, eyes down and hands tucked in the sleeves of her shirt. She looks young. Alone. All that teenager sass from earlier vanished like it never was.

“We’re going to kill him, aren’t we?” she says, her voice hard. “The White Locust?”

I think about what Kai said on that tape. He didn’t know, couldn’t know that Caleb’s disappearance would threaten to destroy Grace, that the White Locust’s follower would kill Hastiin, that his cheii would be desperately waiting for him. And I think about my vow to myself, that I’m not the indiscriminate killer I was before, definitely not the boogeyman Ben described me as up on the mountain. But before I can answer her, the walls of the All-American give a little shake. We stop still, listening, as the roar of a dust storm rolls over us.

“Damn,” I mutter. “You didn’t say it was coming in that fast.”

We can hear the thunk of something hitting the roof loud enough to make me flinch. It sounds like a hail storm, but there’s no way it’s hailing. The weather in Dinétah doesn’t vary much from dry and sunny.

The sound of objects hitting the roof gets louder, more steady.

Ben hops down off the barstool and walks toward the back door, the one facing the trailer. There’re no windows in the All-American, so if we want to see what’s going on, we’re going to have to open a door.

“Wait,” I tell her. I reach around the bar to find a couple of Grace’s ubiquitous bar rags. Hand Ben one, and we tie them around our faces, covering noses and mouths. By now the sounds of the storm have become so loud I have to raise my voice to be heard.

“What’s going on?” Ben asks, her voice scared. We both flinch again as something heavy lands on the roof.

“I don’t know, but that doesn’t sound like a normal windstorm unless it’s tossing around boulders. You better let me do it.” I step in front of Ben, moving her protectively behind me. She grasps the back of my shirt in her fist, holding on. “I’m going to open the door,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice reassuring, “and we’re going to make a run for it. On the count of three. Okay?”

She pulls a little harder at my shirt, so I take that for a yes. It’s less than fifty feet to Grace’s porch. Whatever is raining down on us, we can make it.

I grip the door handle. “One . . . two . . .”

But I don’t get to three before the door comes crashing inward, forcing me to step back and almost knocking Ben, who’s too close to me, over. I reach back to steady her as a hulking figure fills the empty space. I catch a glimpse of the storm before Clive slams the door shut.

“What in the . . . ?” I whisper, awe in my voice, my eyes still staring beyond that flimsy door.

“Locusts,” Clive says grimly. He shakes his shirt out. Shudders as three insects fall to the floor. They are about an inch to an inch and a half long, a dull dusty-brown color, with the shimmering wings of a dragonfly and the long back legs I associate with a grasshopper. Clive immediately stomps on the bugs, crushing them under a heavy boot. The crunch of their carapaces is drowned out by the roar of the swarm outside.

Ben makes a choking sound as they splatter against the hardwood floor, and I’m not far behind.

“What in the hell is going on?” I ask.

Clive shudders as something huge thumps against the closed door. “That’s not a windstorm out there,” he says grimly. “It’s a locust swarm.”

“What are they?” Ben asks, her voice shaking. “Why are they here? Why are there so many of them?”

“All good questions,” Clive assures her. “But right now we’ve got to get back to the house with Rissa and Mom. The bar’s not going to hold up to this.”

As if to prove Clive’s point, something strikes the roof hard enough to shake a piece of the ceiling free. Plaster and Sheetrock rain down a dozen feet from us, and through the hole they leave, I can see daylight. Or at least the place I expect daylight to be. Because all I see out there is a dark cloud of living shadow.

“Not good,” I murmur.

We all watch as a single locust squeezes through the hole. And then another.

“Gotta go,” Clive repeats. He hands us each a pair of goggles, which we gratefully put on. “Tuck your shirts in too. Tighten your sleeves, if you can. And make sure those towels don’t leave any holes for them to get into. They stick to you”—the big man shudders again—“so move fast. They get in your hair, but there’s no way to avoid it. If one gets in your clothes, don’t stop. Get in the house and we’ll deal with it then.”

“Look!” Ben says. Crawling through the growing hole in the ceiling is what can only be called a giant. More than twice the size of the other locusts, it is at least four inches long, with iridescent wings and long spiked back legs. It swivels its huge head back and forth, mandibles snapping.

“Tell me that thing can’t actually see us,” I say, my voice high with a primal fear of crawling six-legged things.

“There’s no way . . . ,” Clive starts, but he drifts off as the giant locust settles its huge eyes on us. I swear it looks right at me.

“Run!” I shout, pushing Ben to the door. Just as the swarm breaks through the ceiling and the giant locust launches free.