Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days by Claudia Hall Christian

ever after he
deserves, that I can have the peace I so long for.
    Killing those women was the straw that broke
my camel back. I know there’s no going back. The prophecy is
unfolding.
    The prophecy says:
    “ There will be a moment, a
single moment, when the last shaman must do something so loathsome
that even he will realize the world has irrevocably changed. And in
his grief, he will save the humankind.”
    My “single moment” was when I killed the
women.
    I’m weeping now. My free will? What free
will? My entire life was scripted hundreds of years ago. I never
had a choice. Everything was written.
    I’ve journeyed to the spirit world these
last days. I’ve lingered by the pool while the spirit guides
surrounded me. We gathered for comfort at the pool by the stream
under the Honey Locust. I have nothing to say, nothing to ask. They
have nothing to give. As they keep watch, my soul grieved my
loss.
    I know that someday soon, I will put on my
animal-skin clothing, gather my weapons, load the vehicle, and we
will leave this life. I doubt I’ll be sad. George will smile and
start the vehicle. At 80 miles an hour, we will drive past the
prophecy to our destiny.
    But today, I lingered by the stream and
pool. I wished for control. I wished I was stronger. I wished I had
died along with my people. I wished I’d enjoyed my life more. I
wished...
    My father used to say, “A wish in one hand
and shit in the other, bet you know which fills up faster” or “You
can’t spend your days wishing for a life you’ll never have.” He was
right.
    It is time to stop moping and start
doing.

11/21/2056
    We aren’t going to be able to drive out of
the Pen like we had planned. If we drive out of here, the wasps
will follow. Unlike the movie zombies, the wasps are vicious. What
they lack in speed, they make up in sheer determination for
violence and destruction of anything in their path.
    We’ve killed thousands of them, and many
thousands of them still surround the Pen. The sheer volume of
bodies makes it nearly impossible to get through them, let alone
get away. If we leave our fortress, we will take this battle on the
road, where we are more vulnerable.
    One thing has become clear -- as long as the
fences hold, we are safe inside the Pen. Many wasps have impaled
themselves on the electric fencing. The heat of the electric fence
causes their flesh to sear onto the steel. Still alive, they flail
and scream at the top of their lungs with rage. We go out every
couple of hours and use the flame thrower to burn off the hundred
or more stuck wasps. The moment the fence is clear, the next set of
wasps hurl themselves against the fence.
    The wasps are not investigating other ways
into the Pen. They followed us from the ranch to the fences, so
that’s where they attack. I believe the original wasps to be from a
single tribe of wasps. However, it doesn’t seem like any one wasp
is in charge. And they don’t act like honeybees or ants. These
wasps work for the good of the collective. No, these wasps move
like a single unit but work only for their own personal gain. We
now believe the commotion and noise from the original tribe of
wasps has drawn wasps from all over New Mexico.
    After killing thousands of wasps, and
sending their spirits on, they continue to come en masse. They’ve
surrounded the entire Pen’s fences. Between the electronic fences
and our flame throwers, we’ve killed two, maybe three thousand in
the last week.
    And a sea of wasps remains.
    How many wasps can there possibly be? They
ate their way through half of the population. Is it possible that
there are 4.8 billion wasps? If they are breathing, have they added
to their numbers?
    All I know is that no matter how many wasps
we kill, no matter how many souls are released, there are still
thousands surrounding the Pen.
    We need another way out of the Pen. Right
after the Great Human Transition, I found a map of the Pen in the
Warden’s office. The Pen was a large campus