Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days (4 page)

Like the white man coming to this continent,
the wasps killed, maimed, and pillaged everything in their path.
When wasps eat, they kill. And they eat only living tissue. The
wasps went through the Pen in the matter of days. They left the Pen
in waves and brought their brand of death to anyone or anything in
their path.

The 146-protein affected people differently
based on how much of The 146 they’d come in contact with. Here are
some examples of the variations at the Pen:

* The warden grew up on a commune and made
enough money to eat mostly non-146 food. As a warden, his job
required that he stay vaccinated. When the transition happened, he
kept his mind but lost his bodily functions. He was trapped in his
office unable to eat or relieve himself. I dispatched him in one of
my early visits through the prison.

* Two guards, who were both ex-military,
lost their minds and bodily function along with their souls. I
found them in a closet they had hidden in. Mad and unable to move,
they died of starvation.

* One guard managed to keep some of his
mental processes but lost his soul. George and I fought him for a
year. He finally succumbed to The 146. We found him stuck in a
corner in the big Pen.

* The rest of the prison staff turned to
wasps. With George’s help, we tracked down, and dispatched, any
prison guards, office workers, and staff still remaining in the
Pen.

* George lost only the speaking and
analytical part of his mind. He became simple, and sweet, but not
dumb and savage. I believe that the one-month fast and George’s
overall tremendous physical condition were the only reasons he did
not deteriorate more.

While the Great Human Transition happened on
October 31, 2046, people continued to transition long after the
vaccine was destroyed. The 146 DNA from food and the vaccines had
integrated into human DNA. This meant that every human being who’d
eaten 146-modified food or had even one vaccine continued to make
the protein. And the DNA was passed from parents to children.

After the Great Human Transition, people
stopped taking the vaccines. They started growing non-modified
foods. The poorest of the poor made this transition first because
they had received the modified seed the last. Poor farmers from
India and Africa became brokers for unmodified seed. For a few
years, there was hope that the transition had affected only those
given the last vaccine.

But The 146 was too insidious. The DNA was
now a part of the human genome. Children who had never received a
vaccine nor eaten the modified food transitioned to wasp around
their fifth birthday.

The 146-protein continued to build up in the
blood until some people and some farm animals transitioned on their
own, without intervention. Scientists and pharmaceutical companies
threw themselves at the problem. With so many copies of The 146 now
lodged within the human genome, there was no way to remove them.
The researchers found only dead ends before succumbing to The
146.

The Great Human Transition was followed by
significant, but lesser, transitions until The 146 Suicide Project
eliminated great portions of the population. As far as I can tell,
human beings have either transitioned to wasps or killed
themselves.

I, too, may someday succumb to The
146-protein.

Before we lost electricity, we heard reports
of people who were a kind of half-breed like George. They’d lost
some amount of functioning due to the 146-protein, but their
deterioration had been arrested, at least for some amount of time.
The military was working on a formula that would do just that.
We’ve heard that they succeeded and that, now, these half-breeds
control armies of wasps on the large military bases. But we have no
evidence to suggest that this is true.

Until I leave this prison, I simply will not
know. Right now, what we know is true is that every single person
who lived at the Santa Fe Penitentiary in 2046 has either
transitioned to wasp or been eaten. The entire city of Santa Fe,
New Mexico, stands empty. No human beings or livestock have
survived.

Except me.

11/04/2056

There’s a lot that we don’t know. Here’s an
incomplete list:

1. How much of The 146-protein has to be in the
   blood for it to cross over the blood brain-barrier and cause the
   person to transition to a wasp?
   

2. Are the children of 146-protein parents born
   as wasps?
   

3. Has all livestock transitioned to wasp?
   

4. Have any livestock species survived?
   

5. Did any of our families survive?
   

6. What will we do if we see a family member
   turned wasp?
   

7. Do the half-breeds control armies of
   wasps?
   

8. Is it possible to control a wasp in any
   way?
   

9. Have wasps killed every human on every
   continent?
   

10. Have the wasps run through this country, and
    then died out?
    

11. How long can a wasp live?
    

I have this fantasy that we will leave the
Pen and everything will be normal, like it was when I entered the
Pen in 2021.

During the Great Human Transition, people
took videos of the wasps and posted them to the Internet. They made
a sport out of setting wasps on fire or running over them in their
vehicles. I suppose they saw this in movies and wanted to try it
themselves. The first year or so, there were hundreds of thousands
of videos of wasps.

There was an entire Internet video channel
dedicated to videos of people turning into wasps. After watching
all these videos, I’ve determined there are four stages to becoming
wasp.

1. Turn on 146: In defense of the original
   scientists, the first four nucleobases of The 146 historically have
   stopped protein synthesis. This was known to be true in every
   species and most plants. The 146 DNA should not have created any
   protein. This remained true for a long time. No one is sure how
   long. And then The 146 was turned on and started generating
   146-protein.
   

2. Build-up of 146-protein: Once turned on, The
   146 created 146-protein. The body is unable to break it down or
   excrete it. The protein disrupts higher brain functioning such as
   decision making, planning, and some types of memory in three
   distinct pathways:
   

   1. Slow loss of brain function: According to
      scientists, around 70 percent of the humans have an open blood
      brain barrier which allows any amount of 146-protein to flood the
      brain. Thus, their higher brain functions began deteriorating the
      moment The 146-protein hits their bloodstream. It’s believed that
      President Olymsteed’s higher brain functioning was destroyed in
      2037 nearly two years before he ordered the nuclear strikes in the
      Middle East. His handlers thought they could keep him in office, as
      they did with Ronald Reagan after Reagan had fallen ill with
      Alzheimer’s disease. Of course, we know now that they had to kill
      President Olymsteed after he ate Secretary of State Janey
      Stephens.
      

   2. Rapid loss of brain function: Around 25
      percent of the population has a less porous blood-brain barrier.
      The 146-protein must build up in the blood before it crosses the
      blood-brain barrier. These people’s brains are flooded with the
      brain-melting protein all at once. While they resist the protein
      longer, they succumb much faster. Less than 8 hours after The
      146-protein reaches the appropriate level in the blood, they
      transform into wasps.
      

   3. There is a very small portion of the
      population that is immune to The 146-protein. It’s believed these
      people represent a genetically distinct subset of human population,
      possibly related to the Denisovan.
      

3. Turning into a wasp: After The 146-protein
   turns the brain to mush, the person effectively dies and the soul
   leaves the body. The person falls to the ground and is still, as if
   asleep, for at least two hours. We saw a security video of a man
   going to sleep in his own bed, next to his own wife. He woke up two
   hours later to eat his entire family. His transformation to wasp
   was complete
   

4. Cannibalism: The wasp wakes with a
   tremendous hunger and need to feed. They will eat anything and
   everything in their path. Animals? Pets? Children? Everything. The
   very young, infirm, vulnerable, and dependent are the first to go.
   Wasps seem to have a particular dislike of domestic cats (not dogs
   or feral cats) and domestic cats have been eliminated from the
   Earth. The hunger lust appears to be insatiable.
   

Once a wasp turns, it is unstoppable. A wasp
will eat through its own hand to get at a living being. They are
hunters with a keen sense of smell and hearing. You can shoot them,
hit them, light them on fire, or otherwise destroy them, but the
wasps keep on coming.

Early on, I found a couple of videos
documenting scientific studies of wasps. In one study, scientists
and/or government officials from the NIH infected five death row
inmates. Every experiment turned out the same way -- the wasp ate
everyone in the room only to move on to eat everyone in the
building.

After the first announcements of the wasp
outbreak, some person with a unique sense of humor posted all the
digital zombie films to an Internet video site. Hoping for clues
for fighting the wasps and half breeds, George and I watched every
zombie movie we could get our hands on.

The most accurate film? “28 days later.” But
that’s because the movie is about survivors long after infection,
and we’ve survived so long after the infection. It’s been almost
ten years. George and I have survived, even thrived, here at the
Pen.

I was instructed to leave by the original
prophecy. I feel compelled to follow the prophecy. George would
follow me anywhere. My great-great-grandmother said that when the
Tewa shaman had gone 500 days without seeing a wasp, it was time
for him to return to the pueblo. It’s been 472 days since either
George or I have seen a wasp. Day 500 will be November 30,
2056.

I don’t know what we’ll find at the pueblo.
In my heart, I hope that I will see children playing ball in the
streets; women gossiping as they hang laundry; men laughing,
talking, and watching football; and food, glorious bounty of Ind’n
tacos, elk chili, donuts, cheetos, frito pie, and all childhood
favorites. But in my heart, it’s still 2015.

About nine months after all hell broke
loose, my peoples’ souls stopped by on their way to the afterlife.
Rather than turn to wasp, or be food for wasps, most of the Tewa
and Tiwa killed themselves. It sounds very dramatic, but we’d been
waiting for the invader to turn to wasps for almost 500 years. The
pueblo people knew what would become of them. We would much rather
live and die together than turn to wasps.

I know they are dead. The woman I’d loved
died with our grandchildren in her arms. I know my son died before
my brothers and their children. I know my sister, cousins, nieces,
nephews. and any aged elder, are all gone.

And still, in my heart, it’s the summer of
2015. The fields are full of a bounty of harvest. Having arrived
from Mexico, I’m a minor celebrity in our community. My
great-great-grandmother is ill but not yet dead. My father has just
retired from his job as Park Ranger at the Pecos Pueblo Historical
Site. My brothers and sister are married, and their children run
like banshees in the street. The weather is warm, and I am
happy.

What if I missed their ascent to the
afterlife in the press of souls and my own grief?

The question haunts me. I am filled with
doubt -- maybe someone survived! I tell myself that I’m being silly
or stupid. Of course, the pueblo people are gone. The Dine, with
their general mistrust of people and scattered Hogan housing, might
have survived. The Hopi and Apache may have outrun the wasps. The
wasps may have missed the Comanche and plains Indians. But the
pueblo people live right on top of each other. My mind accepts the
truth that my heart rejects -- my people are gone.

I have projected my soul to my home, to the
black mesa, where we hid from the Spanish Conquistadors, to Mesa
Verde, where our ancestors made their home, to Three Rivers, where
the ancient Mogollon thrived, and to the Clovis cave at Burnet
Cave. My soul sees only death, destruction, and wasps.

I had prepared myself for this
eventuality.

And still, my heart refuses to give up on
humankind. In the deepest reaches of my heart, I believe that,
somewhere, there are other human beings. Maybe the Wixaritari
survived or some of the hidden tribes of Mexico. Maybe the Mogollon
Monster or Bigfoot, as the white man called him, survived. Maybe my
mother’s little sister is waiting for me at the pueblo.

The first few years with the Wixaritari, I
was desperate with homesickness. I would lie next to the fire long
after my shaman teachers were asleep. In my mind, I would see each
person in our clan, all of the friends I’d left behind, every
lover, and beloved. I would send them blessings and love. I prayed
that they missed me in the same, desperate way. I longed for
them.