Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(7)

That’s why I have my dogs. A trio of rez mutts that run herd on me and keep the place pretty well guarded from unwanted visitors—human, animal, and otherwise. I picked the first pup up after I figured out Neizghání wasn’t coming back. The second one invited herself in and never left, and the third was the sole survivor of her litter—just like me.

They greet me now as I pull my truck in through the gate and over the cattle guard. Anyone but me pulls in those gates and they bark and carry on. But they know me, know the rattle and hum of my old Chevy that I’ve hooked up to run on hooch now that gasoline’s harder to come by. Know the thump of the tires, especially that one on the right in the back where a lug has come loose and bangs against the wheel in protest. I remind myself that I need to fix that, sooner than later.

Once inside, I stand in the bathroom and peel off my bloody clothes. They’re so covered in gore that I consider throwing them out, but I dump them in the sink, pull the plug up, and run a little of my precious water over them so they soak instead. I’m hoping that most of the blood will come out on its own, but with my luck I’ll have to scour them to make them wearable again. The clothes they have at the government trading post in Tse Bonito are serviceable, but it’s mostly undyed wool and salvaged hand-offs that are priced just short of highway robbery.

I pump the generator and give it time to heat up what’s left in my water tank. I know it’s indulgent to take a shower with water rations the way they are, but I do it anyway. There’s blood and bits of something nastier in my hair, and nothing but a hot shower and yucca soap is going to fix it. It’ll leave me short on water for the rest of the month since the water delivery truck won’t come in for another two weeks, but it’s worth it. I even stand in the steam and take the time to dig the dried blood out from under my nails. My cuticles feel raw by the time I’m done, and my face is flush and tingly to the touch, but I’m clean.

I think about taking a quick nap but decide against it. Not because I’m not tired. I’m exhausted and my whole body still aches, especially the shoulder the monster tried to chew on. But if I want to get down to Tah’s early enough to catch him before breakfast, there’s no time to sleep.

I put my shotgun back on the rack in the truck, check to make sure the monster’s head is still in the back, and head south. The drive to Tah’s place in Tse Bonito takes a good hour. I flip on the radio to keep me company. There’s only one reliable radio station in Dinétah after the Big Water, an all-purpose AM station that plays a combination of old country music and government reporting that passes for news. Every once in a while someone outside of Dinétah will boost their radio signal strong enough to make it past the Wall, and for a week or two we can pick up reports on the massive waterworks projects along the newly formed coastline that stretches from San Antonio to Sioux Falls, or the continued civil unrest in New Denver. But generally Dinétah is just as isolated and insular as it was before the Big Water, and most locals don’t seem to notice either way.

The Wall. The Tribal Council approved it back when the Energy Wars first started. Most Diné supported the Wall. We all grew up with the stories that taught us that our place was on our ancestral land, the land within the embrace of the Four Sacred Mountains. Others call the Wall absurd, saying it’s some paranoid attempt at border control that’s destined to fail, just like the wall the doomed American government tried to build along its southern border a few years before the Big Water.

The tribe built it anyway. The head of the Council, his name was Deschene, wrote some article for the Navajo Times that put the fear in people, especially after the Slaughter on the Plains. Navajo people weren’t safe anymore, he said. He invoked the specter of conquest, manifest destiny. And he wasn’t wrong. The Slaughter had ushered in a heyday of energy grabs, the oil companies ripping up sacred grounds for their pipelines, the natural gas companies buying up fee land for fracking when they could get it, literally shaking the bedrock with their greed. Plus the Feds had outlined some plan to dissolve reservation trust land that would open up Indian Country to prospectors just like they had during Termination. This time the prospectors were multinationals with private armies a thousand times more powerful than the original bilagáana settlers. Deschene warned that if we wanted to remain Diné, if we wanted to protect our homes, we had to build that wall.

The funds were approved within a month. The foundations, made with rock from each sacred mountain, were laid within a year. People laughed and said they’d never seen the tribal government do anything that fast. Six months later the New Madrid earthquake happened and the bottom fell out of the Midwest. Then the hurricanes started. And Deschene’s wall started to look downright prescient to a lot of people.

I remember the first time I saw the Wall. I had expected something dull and featureless. A fifty-foot-high mountain of gray concrete, barbed wire lining the top like in some apocalyptic movie. But I had forgotten that the Diné had already suffered their apocalypse over a century before. This wasn’t our end. This was our rebirth.

They say the hataa?ii worked hand in hand with the construction crews, and for every brick that was laid, a song was sung. Every lath, a blessing given. And the Wall took on a life of its own. When the workmen came back the next morning, it was already fifty feet high. In the east it grew as white shell. In the south, turquoise. The west, pearlescent curves of abalone, and the north, the blackest jet. It was beautiful. It was ours. And we were safe. Safe from the outside world, at least. But sometimes the worst monsters are the ones within.