Storm of Locusts

Chapter 41

We hit the north entrance to the dam forty minutes later. Ben slows, and the buggy comes around and the massive dam comes into sight. It looked different when we crossed from the eastern side and from the driver’s seat. I had been too nervous to get a good look at it. But now I can see it in all its massive glory.

It’s enormous, ten times higher than the Wall, high as a mountain. Seven hundred and fifty feet and an almost sheer wall of concrete. It is an arch, curving upstream at the narrowest gap in the canyon, which is still, as Aaron had informed us, a little more than a quarter mile wide. Behind the arch lies Lake Powell at its capacity, all eight billion gallons of it. And along the concave side of the dam, something Aaron didn’t mention. Dozens of small pearlescent dots littering the sheer surface of the dam. I stand up in the buggy to try to get a better view.

“What are those?” Ben asks, seeing the same shimmering spots, no doubt. “They’re beautiful.”

And they are. In the light of the new sun they look like shining drops of dew strewn along the face of the concrete like jewels on a necklace. One every fifty feet or so, moving steadily down the face of the dam like drops of rain against a windowpane. Every once in a while a drop of pearlescent dew breaks free, shattering the beauty of the scene with a sudden violence as it goes rolling down the wall headlong. A quickening plummet, faster, faster, until the tiny pearl-like figure ruptures against the rocky shallows hundreds of feet below. And as I watch, others are tossed back and forth across the vertical surface of the dam, caught in crosswind. Their strange ballet is mesmerizing until I realize what I’m looking at. And that those shiny dewdrops aren’t dewdrops at all.

“Let’s go, Ben,” I say, tapping her shoulder.

“Is that a person?” she asks, coming to the same realization I did, her voice suffused with the same soft horror that’s making my stomach curl.

“I think that’s the Swarm.”

“But why don’t they use their wings?” She looks back at me, her face contorted with the insanity of it. “Why are they falling?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the winds are too strong out there, maybe once gravity and speed get a hold of them, those wings don’t work so well after all.” I don’t tell Ben, but I’m thinking that they just don’t care. Gideon’s brought them here to watch the end of the world. Maybe setting explosives on the dam face is volunteer work, same as letting yourself be nailed to a turquoise wall. Maybe dying like this is an honor. Maybe it’s their purpose.

I sit back down in the buggy.

“Let’s go, Ben,” I say, more insistent.

“But . . .”

“There’s nothing we can do for them. We’ve got to find Kai. My guess is he’ll be somewhere close, near the control tower, so head in that direction.”

Ben is silent as she drives us over. Once we’re at the gate that blocks entry across the top of the dam, I motion for her to stop. The gate’s been chained shut, closed to vehicle traffic until the Alt-Rangers arrive for their morning shifts. But nothing’s keeping us from walking out over the roadway. I climb out of the buggy. Check my weapons out of habit. Throwing knives. Glock. Big-ass lightning sword. Ben climbs out beside me, and I hand her the shotgun.

She looks at me, eyes wide. “You mean it?”

“Hastiin taught you how to shoot, didn’t he? Then you’re going to cover me.” I point with my lips to the top of a concrete pillar, probably twenty feet high and wide at the top. “Up there.”

She nods, her face solemn. I start to walk away but turn back to her, face grim. “Once I’m on the dam, you stay out of sight. If anything happens, like the dam starts to blow, you get in that buggy and you drive like hell back toward Amangiri. Go find Tó. He’ll help you.”

“Don’t die, Maggie,” she blurts. Runs forward and hugs me. I let her. She sniffles a little, and I pat her on the back. Give her a second before I gently push her away. I wait for her to climb the ladder to the top of the pillar and get herself in position. I can see the barrel of the shotgun laid out across the top, Ben hunched over, already scanning the landscape ahead of me.

“I love that gun,” I mutter, nostalgia hitting me. Because I don’t want to admit it, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this. A bad feeling that I’m missing something important. Some clue or sign that I should have seen. Little to do about it now. I’ve come this far. So I pull the lightning sword from the scabbard, feel its supernatural energy curl up my arm and around me, and step onto the Glen Canyon Dam.

My feet tell me there’s solid ground beneath me, a well-traveled road wide enough to move a semitruck across, but my body doesn’t agree. My stomach drops, and a wave of dizziness pulls me up short. I suck in a breath and try to calm the adrenaline that’s pumping through my blood. To my right is the lake runoff, a sparkling bed of water a hundred feet deep. To my left is a seven-hundred-and-fifty-foot drop to certain death. The wind picks up a little, and out on this precipice there’s no protection from the elements. I lean into the breeze, pushing myself forward. My mind flashes back to the Swarm, falling one by one to their beautiful deaths, and for a moment, I swear I can still hear their screams.

Head down, leaning into the wind, I make my way across the dam. I keep moving, eyes scanning, heading for the tower and hoping Ben has my back. A worrying dread has settled in my gut like black tar, and my breath comes in short pants. The back of my neck itches, like someone is watching me, but so far I can’t see anyone.

And then I spot him.

A small figure kneeling on a platform hanging just over the protective railing along the lake edge of the dam. He’s in dark jeans and a black Metallica T-shirt. He has his maps spread before him on the ground, the corners held down by rocks. He’s fighting the wind, too, as it tries to throw his notebook over the side. I’m close enough to hear him curse as he pushes his too-long hair from his eyes.

I have to school the grin of relief that flashes across my face, calm my heartbeat that speeds up, try not to remember the way his mouth tasted like smoke and wine.

“Kai.” I call his name, not wanting to startle him.

He doesn’t hear me the first time, so I say it again, louder. This time he turns, her face tight with annoyance at being disturbed. His eyes meet mine, and his face brightens. And then his glance immediately darts to the sword wreathed in lightning in my hand, and his joy fades.

“Friends?” he asks, voice tentative.

“More than friends,” I say, grinning. “Partners.”

He laughs, tension draining from his body. He sits back on his heels. “I didn’t know if you were coming.”

“ ‘Come hell or high water,’ ” I say, quoting his last words to me back to him. “You’re not trying to help Gideon; you’re trying to stop him.”

He nods, relief breaking across his face. “Once I figured out what he wanted to do, I thought I could talk him out of it. Bit’ąą’nii and all. And at first it worked. A day would pass and he would forget. But then it was only an afternoon and then an hour. And I realized if I was going to stop him, I would have to stay with him. See it through to the end.”

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“I don’t trust myself around him. He has a persuasion all his own. We’ll be talking and I’ll tell him things. Things I don’t mean to, even as the words are coming out of my mouth. I had to commit. I had to be convincing so he wouldn’t ask.” He runs a hand through his hair, fighting the wind to push it from his eyes.

“He’s using you. He doesn’t have the answers you need, Kai. He can’t give you purpose. You’re going to have to find that on your own.”

He narrows his eyes, squinting into the rising sun. “The Godslayer—that’s you, isn’t it?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“He wants to use you, too.”

“He can’t. His powers of persuasion don’t work on me. I don’t know why not.”

His eyes flicker to the sword in my hand.

“Maybe,” I admit. “It has other properties. It’s possible.”

He nods once. The wind whips up, rattling his maps.

“So, what’s the plan? You have a plan, right?”

He grins and motions me closer. “I’ve calculated everything. He wants to blow the dams all up and down the Colorado River. My job is the keep the water on track and running true to her tributaries. Only”—he hunches forward, excited—“I think I can generate enough force to push the water into the atmosphere, to turn it into rain. If I can do that, and spread it wide enough, it should become a natural phenomenon, self-sustaining. Nature will take over and I won’t even have to hold it together. There’ll still be flooding, some damage, but nothing like what he had planned. I can’t save everyone. But I can save a lot.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I don’t for sure. But it makes sense theoretically.”

“But you’re using clan powers to do this, not science.”

“I definitely need a little luck,” he says, the grin I missed so much ticking the side of his mouth up. “Magic, medicine, science, and a little luck. If I had duct tape, I’d throw that in too.”

“And if this doesn’t work?”

His voice is matter-of-fact. “Then we die.”

“Can you die?” I ask before I can think better of it.

“It’s one thing to take a bullet. It’s a whole other level to be crushed under the pressure of millions of acre feet of water. I’ll die.”

“Well, when you put it that way . . .”

We sit there for a moment in awkward silence, and then I remember Tó’s parting gift.

“I have something for you.” I reach into my shirt and pull out the pot Tó gave me. It’s the size of my palm and thankfully still intact.

“What is this?”

“Not sure, but a friend gave it to me. Said to give it to the silver-eyed boy. That’s got to be you.”

He frowns. “I don’t understand. A friend?”

“He lives on the lake. Called himself Tó.”

Lines crease his forehead as he stares at the pot, turning it over in his hands. “What does—” He cuts off with a gasp, eyes wide. “Did you say Tó? As in Tó Neinilí?”

“Maybe?”

“A curmudgeonly older man, a little bumbling, likes to dance.”

“Lives on a houseboat,” I say, nodding. “Who is he?”

“He’s a god. A rain god, to be specific. One of the Diyin Dine’é. He gave you this?”

“To give to you. Said the Diné could use a good soaking. I didn’t get it at the time, but now I do. He thinks your plan is hilarious, by the way.”

Kai throws back his head and laughs. Leaps over the railing in one smooth movement and wraps his arms around me. Kisses me, impulsive and wild. “You’re a genius, Maggie!”

I grin back. I can’t help it. “Well, maybe not a genius, but I can carry a pot real good.”

A shotgun blast rattles across the canyon. I instinctively duck, pulling Kai down with me out of the line of fire. I look back over my shoulder, but I’m too far away and can’t see Ben anymore. Kai presses something into my hand. Binoculars. I scan back across the dam from the way I came. Find Ben, who’s waving frantically and motioning toward the southeast. I pivot and use the binoculars to search the sky, looking for whatever Ben saw. It doesn’t take me long to find it.

“We’ve got trouble,” I tell Kai, as a black cloud crosses in front of the rising sun, darkening the horizon. He stands next to me, hand braced above his eyes, trying to get a better view. Trying to comprehend the sudden eclipse. But there is no better view.

“What the hell is that?”

“Locusts.”

We watch as the swarm moves closer, an immense unstoppable force.

“It stretches for miles,” he murmurs.

I tighten my grip on Neizghání’s sword, letting the swirl of electricity be a comfort. We watch as the first edges of the swarm curve and descend, landing less than a hundred yards in front of us on the roadway.

“Shit,” Kai says.

I watch as the locusts form themselves into shapes, thousands of insects melding together into individual human-shaped figures like the one that attacked me at Grace’s house. Watch as their arms extend into swords, replicas of the one I hold, but forged from living insects. They move forward as one. Another line forms, and another, until there’s a dozen chittering warriors headed our way, and still the swarm keeps coming.

“I think Gideon knows you switched sides, Kai.”

“Shit,” he says again.

“Well,” I say lightly, “looks like you won’t be crushed by a giant wall of water after all.”

“Should we run?”

“To where?” I look around the dam pointedly. “There’s nowhere to go.”

“Gideon won’t kill us,” Kai says, eyes flickering to the locust army. “He still needs us.”

“So what are these for?”

“To subdue us. He controls the locusts best when they’re in human form. Otherwise they might just eat us.”

“Great. That makes me feel great.”

He glances down at his maps. “I can . . .” He climbs back over the railing and starts flipping through his notebook. “Can you hold them off, Maggie? Ten minutes. I need ten minutes to build up enough of a storm to take them out.”

The locust men have come closer, their high chittering song almost deafening. Ten minutes might as well be twenty. What can I do against a swarm of locusts?

Unless.

“Fish psychology,” I mutter. Because Gideon was right. The Diyin Dine’e do take sides. And Tó is on ours.

I sheathe Neizghání’s sword so I can draw my Glock. Hit the release to eject the magazine and dump the bullets into my hand. And then into my pocket. Do it again with the extra magazine before I trade the gun for the sword again.

I have two handfuls of tiny gunpowder bombs encased in lead shells. For this to work, I’ll need speed.

Speed I’ve got.

I roll my shoulders, breathe deep. Try not to remember the feel of millions of insects clawing through my hair, biting my skin, trying to crawl down my throat.

I take one last look back at Kai. He’s kneeling, eyes closed, singing softly in Navajo. Already in his own world. One hand is stretched out to the lake, the other over the water god’s pot.

“Ten minutes,” I repeat to myself. “Always with the ten minutes.”

I walk forward, letting the tip of the sword trail behind me, sparking fire against the concrete. Once I’m closer, I break into a jog. Honágháahnii wakes and catches, pure potential in my veins. I raise Neizghání’s sword. Lightning cracks and flashes in my hand.

And I run straight into the horde.