The morning sun was low in the sky as Darius loped the three hours back to his village, the confusion of Andrew’s announcement still roiling in his mind. No Peaks. What did that mean? Andrew had talked about commerce among the villages. About something he called specialization of labour. Darius hadn’t understood, but there was no doubt that Andrew was excited, so Darius supposed he should share that enthusiasm. But what did it mean?
He smelled the smoke before he saw it. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so immersed in his own thoughts, he’d have noticed the dark plumes coming from his village. When the smell hit him, he saw smoke that was more than just stoves or campfires, more than the signs of normal life. He broke into a full run. His feet pounding the packed dirt of the path. His legs panicked him toward the columns of black smoke rising in the still summer air.
He tripped, tumbling over the side of the trail. Arms grabbed him. A hand clamped over his mouth. A voice hissed in his ear. “Shut up. You’ll get us all killed.”
Josiah released his hand from Darius’s mouth. “Shut up, okay?”
“What’s happening?”
“Peaks. They raided us about an hour ago. Me and Arnie was at the coulee gettin’ some fish when we heard ’em.”
Darius listened. For the rest of his life, the screams from the village would haunt him. He started to jump up, ready to charge, to rescue, to avenge, to fight, but Josiah and Arnie held him in a grip that their years behind plows had made like steel bands. “Are you crazy? There are dozens of them. You’d never stand a chance.”
“But Uncle Rolf. Aunt Helena. I have to help them. You may want to hide here. I can’t.”
Arnie hissed at him. “You think you’re the only one who wants to fight? Julia is in the village. Maybe she got away, maybe she didn’t. All’s I know is that if I go there, I’ll be dead. And how’ll that help anyone. We’re gonna wait. When the Peaks pull out, we’ll go in and help whosever left.”
Darius collapsed. Arnie was right. Julia was his sister, and the stricken look on Josiah’s face made it clear that the rumors were true. He and Julia were closer than just friends. He pounded his fists into the ground, tried to cover his ears against the screams, and wept for his aunt and uncle.
Sarah! And Andrew and Olive. It was likely the Peaks were heading there next. He tore himself away from his two friends and charged back down the path, all thought of caution gone.
He was too late. He could see the smoke from a distance. Damn restraint. He charged into the village ready to tackle the first Peak he encountered.
But all he saw were bodies. They lay scattered on the dirt street, blood pooled around them in a liquid embrace. The men had been shot, small holes where the bullets entered, gaping caverns of red flesh where they exited. The women were naked. Blood still oozed from their groins or from the buttocks of those who lay face down. A smell, like that of a slaughtered deer, hit his nostrils. But this was no deer. Darius retched, his vomit spreading across the dirt, mingling with the blood of the bodies nearest him.
Sarah. Olive and Sarah lay in their house close by one another, their clothes torn off, their groins raw and bloody. Andrew sat tied in a chair, his body ripped apart by a spray of bullets.
Darius collapsed. He wanted to reach out and hold Sarah, but somehow any act of affection seemed foul. An invasion. He got a shovel. He would bury the three of them together.
DARIUS SAT WITH Josiah and Arnie. They had dug a deep pit and buried the dead. His aunt and uncle, Mandy, Julia, Harold, and all the others he had come to know and to care for and to celebrate with during the end of the spring planting and the close of the fall harvest. It was the hardest work he had ever done, not because of the labour and not because of the stench of burnt flesh, but because of what it meant. He wouldn’t cry. Josiah and Arnie weren’t. But by some unspoken agreement, they moved his aunt and uncle into the mass grave, while he carried Julia’s violated remains.
When they finished, when they had taken one last look over the still-smoldering ruins of the village, they walked along a trail to a small pond covered with scum, alive with flies, tadpoles, and newts.
“What’re you gonna do?” he asked Josiah.
“Arnie’s got a cousin in a village to the east. If the Peaks didn’t hit it, we’ll go there.”
Darius understood. They’d need to go together. Arnie’s cousin would vouch for Arnie, but if Josiah was alone, he’d be shot before he could get close enough to plead for help.
“Come with us,” Arnie said. Darius shook his head. “Why not? There’s land there. We can make a new start.”
Darius had squelched his emotions in the physical labour of digging the mass grave, of laying down corpses, of covering them with dirt. But now, the effort over, the enormity of the slaughter sliced through his soul. The fury that was starting to boil inside him rebelled at the thought of finding any kind of normal. “New start? New start? I don’t want a new start. These monsters murdered my aunt and uncle. Sarah and her family. Am I supposed to just pick up a plow and forget about this?”
“Damn you. You’re not the only one who’s lost someone.”
“No.” The thought had been picking at the edges of his mind, struggling to break through the defences he had built up against its harsh judgment. But now, faced with the horror of what happened, it slammed into him with a force that doubled him over, that threatened to spew vomit from his churning stomach. “No, but I’m the one who’s responsible. I did this. They’re dead because of me. It’s my fault.”
Josiah’s snarled words were slow, deliberate, menacing. “You selfish bastard.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I’m getting tired of hearing this. Darius the Peak slayer. Darius the brave. Darius the hero. Carrying the fight while the rest of us worship you. Well, you didn’t do this by yourself. Who the hell made the explosive charges? Me and old lady Cuthbert. Who the hell took you upstream to get into the city? Old man Willoughby. Who the hell made the timers? Harold. Who the hell dug the tunnel—and died for it? Alain. You want to take all the credit? Go to hell. We all did this. You’re nothing special. You just pulled the trigger.”
“You don’t blame me?”
“The hell I don’t. I blame you and me and everyone else who thought we could poke the Peaks, and they wouldn’t hit back. Well, they did, and me and Arnie and you are the only ones left. You wanna cry about it, go ahead. Fill the river. I’m gonna find myself another town and another piece of land and I’m gonna grow crops until they bury me.”
Darius had never envied anyone, but now he wished he had Josiah’s stolid world view. “Josiah, I hope you do. You too, Arnie. You guys deserve it.”
“So you gonna come with us or you gonna sit here crying until the vultures pick your eyes out?”
“Neither. You said that all I did when I fought the Peaks was pull the trigger. Well, that’s all I know how to do. So I’m going someplace where I can pull a lot of triggers.”
“There’s gotta be more to life than killing Peaks.”
More to life? The comment was like a flare. Like the morning sun. Like a light shining into a pit that had never been illuminated. More to life. He had never had a purpose. Every day, every attack on the Peaks, every drink at Mandy’s, were events that somehow arrived like a storm or a flood. His only role was to react. Never to look beyond. Never to know, to be consumed by, a purpose. But now, somewhere in his mind, a switch had opened, a block had dissolved. The words emerged from his mouth unbidden, powered by a blossoming drive that he didn’t know existed. Until it was spoken. “Josiah, there’s more to life than plowing a field. But it’s what you want. And it satisfies you. Well, getting rid of the Peaks is what I want. It’s happened here, and I want to make it happen somewhere else. And somewhere else after that and after that until they’re all dead and buried.”