Storm of Locusts

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  I get to my feet, and we both sprint, sightless, through the earth. Cobwebs cling to my face, something skitters down my cheek. I slap at it, too terrified to scream. The tunnel seems to go on for miles, hours, even though logic tells me that the garage is only a few dozen yards away. But logic has no claim here, and when Clive and I finally spot hazy daylight, we stagger toward it like it’s our last hope in the world.

  There’s a rope ladder, and I drag myself up it. Ben sticks a hand out and helps me up the last rungs. Clive is next. And we slam that door shut too.

  “Where’s Rissa?” I pant, my heart still hammering in my chest. “And Grace?”

  “Already gone,” Ben says. “They went out the back way, headed for Crystal, like you said.”

  “Already?” Clive asks, incredulous.

  “I thought that was your plan,” Ben says, looking back and forth between us, worried.

  “It was,” Clive says. “Until we saw that . . . thing.”

  “What thing?” Ben didn’t see the locust man.

  “No time,” I say, moving toward the closest bike. “We go. We’ll worry about meeting up with Rissa later.”

  Clive doesn’t argue. Just gets on the bike. Ben slides on behind him. I climb onto the other bike, where my pack and shotgun are still tied to the rack, secure my goggles, and adjust the cloth over my nose and mouth.

  “Here,” Clive says, handing me a small metal device, curved to fit the shape of my ear.

  “What is this?”

  “Sort of like a walkie-talkie. A short-range communication link. I call it a commlink. Not the most original name, but as long as it works, right? This way we can talk to each other on the bikes.”

  I tuck it over my ear, the round center clicking into place. A thin wire hangs loose against my neck.

  “Tap it to turn it on. Tap it again to turn it off.”

  “Did you build this?”

  “Try it,” he says.

  I tap the commlink. “Can you hear me?” he asks, clear as if he were standing next to me.

  I nod, then remember to talk. “I can hear you.”

  He gives one to Ben, who slips hers on and taps the device. “Hello!” she shouts.

  I wince. “Okay, so we know they work. Let’s go, and remember: Whatever you see—and I mean whatever—do not stop. Understood?”

  “I know.” Clive kicks the bike alive. “Where are we going?”

  “Tse Bonito for now. And then”—I look over at Ben and pat the bloody bandanna in my pocket—“we’ll find a way.”

  We skip opening the garage bay, opting to sneak out the back door single file. The swarm is still hovering around the trailer and the bar, which look as though a black blanket has been thrown over the structures themselves. I know it won’t be long before the swarm figures out where we went and follows. We’re buying hours, not days.

  “Fire,” Clive mutters over the communication link.

  “What?” I speed up as we come off the dirt path and hit the paved freeway. He accelerates to stay close, Ben huddled low against his back.

  “Just like the tsé nayéé’, we can burn those locusts with fire.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s thousands, maybe millions, and they’re smart enough to avoid it. Plus, your mom won’t appreciate it if we burn her house down. We’ll think of a better way.”

  “What if we don’t?”

  I have no idea what to say to that, so I don’t say anything at all.

  Chapter 15

  Nothing after that. Just a breakneck push to Tse Bonito, and soon the town comes into view. Tse Bonito is the main hub of activity for southeastern Dinétah, located at a T-shaped stretch of asphalt where the two main highways meet. Its busy roads are filled with shops and stew stands, interrupted by the occasional hogan or trailer, all tucked within the embrace of tall white cliffs. I hate it. Always have. And I hate it even more since everything with Longarm went down. But I can’t avoid it today.

  We move through town, weaving through afternoon traffic. I’m pretty covered up—goggles, rag over half my face—and I have no reason to think the Law Dogs might be looking for me, but I keep my eyes peeled, wary of every glimpse of khaki I catch out of the corner of my eye. Mostly it’s Diné people, going about their business. Oblivious to the swarm of locusts thirty miles behind us.

  Clive leads us to the dusty parking lot of a pawn shop just off the main drag. The lot is crisscrossed with a hundred different tire tracks. He kills the engine and gets off. The pawn shop looks like pretty much every pawn shop I’ve ever seen. A long rectangular building with a white concrete exterior, one of those cheap buildings they built when the economy was booming and people were more worried about speed and practicality than beauty. The long flat front has no windows, just two glass doors huddled at the west end of the building. Above the doors is a sign that says CAFÉ & PAWN.

  “This where we’re stopping?” I ask.

  “We’ll wait here for Rissa.”

  “Isn’t this a little public?”

  “This is where their trail ended.” He kicks at the dusty parking lot, sending up swirls of dirt, disturbing the patterns of a hundred vehicles and footprints. “She’ll know to come here.”

  No wonder they lost the trail here. If Kai came through this parking lot, there’s no way we’d be able to distinguish which tracks were his just by looking with our eyes. But we aren’t just looking with our eyes, or even just our noses. We have a secret weapon.

  Who right now is checking her profile in the glass doors, striking various cool poses on the back of Clive’s bike.

  “Go on,” I tell Clive. “I want to talk to Ben for a minute.”

  She stops the modeling and turns to me.

  “About what?”

  “Girl stuff.” I smile flatly.

  Clive frowns, no doubt remembering just how hard he had to work to get me into a full face of makeup before. But he doesn’t ask questions. Just shakes his head and goes inside, boots making a heavy clatter on the concrete step.

  I lean back on my bike and strip off my leather gloves. Reach into my pocket and gingerly pull out my blue bandanna. Unfold it.

  Ben slides off the bike to come over and look. “What is that?”

  “Come see.”

  “Does it have to do with girl talk?” she asks suspiciously.

  “No,” I admit. I hold the bandanna out to her. “I want you to do your thing.”

  She blanches, looks up at me. “Do what thing?”

  “Born for Keha’atiinii, right?”

  She nods, wary.

  “I took this blood from the guardhouse. It’s either Kai’s or Caleb’s. And you said your power works with blood. I assume that means you track people by their blood.”

  Her eyes are as big as fry breads.

  I say, “Stop me if I’m wrong here.”

  “Not wrong,” she whispers.

  “Good. So here’s your blood sample. We’re in the last place we know Kai and Caleb were. So”—I wave a hand—“do your thing.”

  She takes a step back from me, and another, her eyes fixed on the flakes of blood in the cloth.

  I sigh. She seemed so proud of her clan power. I didn’t expect her to get stage fright. “Is there a problem?”

  “No,” she says quickly. “It’s just . . .” Brown eyes look up at me. And I think I get it. I fold up the bandanna carefully. Hold it in my hand, which I fold in my lap.

  “You want to know how I got my clan powers? My nalí and I were attacked by monsters. Monsters who murdered her in front of me. They were going to murder me, too. But something happened, and they didn’t. Because I murdered them all first.” I shift in my seat. “I killed them all, Ben. Violently. Brutally. And I loved it.”

  “You did?” A whisper.

  “Never felt better in my life.”

  “How old were you?” she asks, her voice so soft it’s almost lost to the wind.

  “Fifteen.”

  She looks up, a little less scared.


  “So, if there’s something not so pretty about your clan power . . .” I shrug. “It’s not going to faze me.”

  She swallows. “Okay, but not here. It’s too public.” She walks away, disappearing around the corner of the building, where a narrow alley separates it from some sort of fueling station. I follow her. She’s waiting for me in the shadows.

  “You sure I don’t need to threaten you or something?” I ask, feeling a little awkward. “Put you in danger?”

  “No. Besides, I would have to believe it, Maggie. Even if you threatened me, I would know you didn’t mean it.”

  “Oh, I can make you believe I mean it.”

  She bites the edge of her lower lip, considering. “I can never tell if you’re serious,” she finally admits.

  “I’m always serious.”

  She stares at me a little longer before she sighs. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t need it. So . . .” She holds out a hand, gesturing for the bandanna. Her face is eager now, almost hungry. I hand her the cloth, and she holds it up to her face. I expect her to sniff it, but she doesn’t. She licks it. Licks it again until she’s licked off all the blood. Smiles like it was sugar candy.

  Unexpected, but I promised not to freak, so I press my lips together and keep my word.

  Her slender form shudders, and something supernatural rolls across her like a wave of heat I can almost feel. Instinctively, I take a step back. Her eyes close, and she lets out a moan of what in other circumstances I might mistake for pleasure. She rolls her head ear to shoulder. Left and then right and then left again before she straightens. And inhales like she could suck down the whole world.

  She opens eyes narrowed to pinpricks of dark ink in a sea of white.

  Okay.

  She spins slowly, like she’s looking for something. Something in the crowded streets that only she can see. She stops, points a steady hand. And exhales a pale red mist. It hangs in the air for a moment before it rolls thinly southwest.

  “Damn,” I whisper, at a loss for anything more eloquent.

  She shudders and blinks, and her irises expand back to normal, brown islands growing large. She looks a little unsteady, so I lead her over to a metal guardrail that doubles as a bench. She leans forward, arms braced against her knees and head down, looking tired. Clan powers exhaust.

  “Now what?” I ask her after she’s had a few moments to recover.

  “Now we follow the blood mist.”

  “It’s gone.”

  She shakes her head. “Not to me. That person, I know them now. Could find them anywhere. I don’t actually need to follow the mist. I can . . . feel them inside me.”

  I sit next to her, thinking. “Do you want to tell me how you got your clan powers?”

  She looks up. “Please don’t make me.”

  “Never,” I reassure her, part of me already regretting prying and part of me relieved she doesn’t want to share. “But if you want to talk . . .” Please don’t want to talk.

  She gives me a small smile. She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “My uncle was right, Maggie. You make a great auntie.”

  * * *

  We find Clive inside at the small café. The café is not much, just a collection of half a dozen square tables and mismatched chairs where a woman named Cat, if her name tag is anything to go by, has informed us of the day’s menu and brought Clive a plate of grease-soaked yeast bread. He’s happily stuffing the thick bread in his mouth like he hasn’t eaten for days. Around bites he says, “So how’d the girl talk go?”

  “Great!” Ben chirps, and I think she means it.

  I look up briefly as Cat brings another plate of bread, dripping with mutton grease. She also sets down a bowl of corn stew. All in front of Ben. There isn’t much meat in the stew, but the kernels of steamed corn are plentiful, and the broth looks rich. My stomach grumbles as I realize that I haven’t eaten today and didn’t eat anything but Tah’s broth yesterday. I wait for Cat to come back with more bread and another bowl.

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Ben,” Clive is saying. “But shouldn’t we get some kind of outside confirmation? The only thing south of here is the Wall.”

  I must have missed some part of the conversation. Ben must have told him what she’d done. Probably not the details, but enough.

  “They were kidnapped, remember?” I say, my mind still on my potential meal. The woman, Cat, is back over behind the counter, not looking like she’s planning to bring me anything, and my hunger is quickly turning to irritation.

  “Yes, but even if . . .” Clive continues, but I’m not really listening. I’m staring a hole in Cat’s head, willing her to look my way. She finally does, and I point to Ben’s food suggestively.

  “I’m all out,” she says impassively before turning back to whatever it is she’s doing besides feeding me.

  I lean back, tipping the front of my chair off the tile floor, and gaze back behind the counter to the two-burner she’s running. A hug metal pot bubbles gently under a low fire, smelling like steamed corn and fresh chilé. Clearly there’s more stew.

  Clive finally notices I’m not listening and stops talking. His eyes flicker between Cat and me, picking up on the strange tension. Ben, however, keeps eating, making happy noises as she shovels another spoonful of corn stew into her mouth. I try not to take Ben’s teenage metabolism personally.

  “Seems there’s more stew,” I say evenly, eyes on Cat.

  She sniffs and folds her arms below her breasts. Gives me a look usually reserved for naughty children. “For them. For you? I’m all out.”

  I can hear Clive sigh heavily. Ben finally looks up from her bowl. “What’s going on?” she asks, her mouth full.

  “What is going on?” I ask Cat.

  She narrows her eyes. “You don’t recognize me, do you, child? Do your eyes not see? Can your nose not scent?”

  She stares at me, a challenge.

  I stare back. “I don’t give a—”

  “Maggie,” Clive warns. “Drop it.”

  “But—”

  He shakes he head. “Don’t go borrowing trouble from strangers. We’ve got bigger problems right now.”

  “Then you can share,” I say, reaching over and pulling his half-full bowl to me.

  He doesn’t argue. In fact, he rips his bread in half and hands me some. I eat. A few more bites stop my stomach from complaining, but it’s not enough to fill me, to replenish what I spent fighting the locusts earlier, what I spent on the mountain the day before. But it will have to do.

  I pass the bowl back to Clive. Shoot a glance toward the counter where Cat was, but she’s turned away from us, busy in her tiny kitchen.

  “What were you saying about the Wall?” I ask Clive, ready to listen.

  “Just that the direction Ben’s suggesting, there’s nothing there. Only empty desert until you hit the town of Lupton, and from there, the Wall.”

  “The map!” I exclaim, remembering. In the chaos of the afternoon, I’d forgotten all about the map. “There was a map, back at the camp at Lake Asááyi. There was a route marked that led to Lupton. I’d forgotten about it until now.”

  “What’s at Lupton?” Ben asks.

  “It’s the southern entrance into Dinétah. There’s a refugee post, like Rock Springs. Remember Rock Springs, Maggie?” He turns back to Ben. “They process people wanting to enter, check your CIB, find a relative who will vouch for you. Immigration stuff.”

  I scratch absently at my neck, thinking. The southern entrance. That means it’s also the southern exit. But surely not . . .

  “Do you think they left Dinétah?” Ben asks, the very thing I was thinking.

  “No.” Clive’s voice is definite. Final. “Nobody wants to go to the Malpais.”

  “The Malpais?” Ben asks. A tiny piece of corn flies out of her mouth and lands on the table. I give her a look. She wipes it away, sheepish.

  “It’s everything south of the Wall, along the old highway,” I explain. “What was it
called?”

  “Interstate 40,” Clive says. “And it’s a wasteland.”

  “It was Route 66,” a voice behind me interrupts. I look over my shoulder as Cat sets a fresh bowl of stew in front of me. Bread, too, the grease shining under the artificial light. I look at Clive. He shrugs. Ben shakes her head and mouths, Poisoned?

  To my shock, Cat pulls out the empty chair to my left and sits. Tears off a piece of my bread, runs it through the grease, and starts eating. “It was always Route 66. Some terrible men called it I-40 for a while, but that didn’t make it so. It didn’t change its soul. It will always be Route 66.”

  She smiles when she says it, like the name means something. And maybe it does. Maybe giving a road a name is not so different from giving a person a name. Outside of the main highways, most roads on the rez don’t even have names. They’re simply “the road right after the big red rock” or “the road near that abandoned school bus.” Easy enough. But maybe when you give a road a name, it changes it.

  “Sometimes they called her the Mother Road,” Cat says, eyes still dreamy. “She ran from Chicago all the way to the ocean in Santa Monica.”

  “What’s a Chicago?” Ben asks, sounding confused. “Or for that matter, a Santa Monica?”

  “They were major cities before the Big Water,” Clive says. “We learned about them in school and on TV shows. They’re long gone now. But part of the road is still there. She’s right about that. I think it’s a refugee road now. It starts somewhere around the Burque and ends at Flagstaff, or wherever the ocean starts these days.”

  “What do you know about the road?” I ask our new suddenly friendly tablemate.

  “They wrote songs in her honor,” she says, chin in hands. “Built museums so generations would know her greatness.”

  “We’re still talking about a road, right?” I ask.

  “Yes. A place a cat—” She clears her throat almost delicately. “A place that I have dreamed of seeing.”

  “It’s probably not much to look at now,” Clive says.

  The woman doesn’t seem to hear him. She starts softly humming a tune I’ve never heard before, maybe one of her road songs.