Storm of Locusts

Chapter 6

The cave is empty, or, more correctly, abandoned. It’s clear someone’s been living here, and more than one someone. There are shallow shelves carved in the walls that still hold a stash of canned goods. A spatula and a wooden spoon hang next to each other from hooks forced into the cracks in the rock, and a tub of soapy water sits next to a Coleman camp stove, both on an old Walmart folding table. A metal chair is pushed back from the table in front of the remains of someone’s breakfast, hastily left unfinished. The archer was definitely living here. But it looks like she was living alone, at least for now. But if they’d all fled, why leave one woman behind alone? To protect something? To punish her?

There are papers on the table next to the Coleman. I dig through them, looking for some sign of where the White Locust and his people might have gone. I find a guard schedule, penciled in neat, precise handwriting. A list of traveling supplies. An inventory of weapons.

The weapons list gives me pause. Hastiin was right. The White Locust has a shitload of explosives. And not just explosives. Compound bows, likely similar to the one the archer was using. Small firearms. Long guns. Grenades. I’m starting to think we were lucky we missed visiting with the White Locust. Guns are one thing, but a grenade?

A map catches my eye. Lake Asááyi is clearly marked with a “RV.” No idea what that means. Black pencil limns the road back to the main highway and then down through Tse Bonito, all the way to the southern Wall. The markings end abruptly at Lupton, a small border town on the edge of the Wall. Beyond Lupton, on the other side of the Wall, is the old highway. Route 66, they used to call it, and then Interstate 40.

I pocket the map in case the Thirsty Boys want to take a look, but I can guarantee that the Thirsty Boys won’t cross the Wall for any amount of trade, or revenge. The truth is that Dinétah got off easy when the rest of the world went to shit. Outside that wall is the horror of what happened to everyone else. And it may sound truly selfish, but I’ve had enough horror in my life. I don’t want to know about other people’s horrors too.

I walk past the makeshift kitchen to find at least a dozen crudely dug holes, wide enough to accommodate a human and about ten to fifteen feet deep. I bend to look down into one and see blankets piled at the bottom. Sleeping holes? Prisons? Whatever they are, people were living in them. In the last hole I find him. The Tribal Council representative. Dead. But there’s no smell, so he can’t have been dead long. A day, two days max.

A sound comes from outside the cave. A high-pitched keening, the sound of a girl in mourning, that instinctively makes me want to cover my ears and run away.

But as much as I’m tempted to run, I don’t have the option. I owe Hastiin for the month he took me in, gave me a purpose with the Thirsty Boys so that I wouldn’t dwell on what happened at Black Mesa, what I’d done there. The blood staining my hands. I owe him for his friendship, prickly as it was. For his forgiveness of my social transgressions. For being there, in his own way, when everyone else was ready to give up on me.

And so, mouth set in a grim line and soul aching, I leave the cave to face Hastiin’s niece.