Dirt Eaters

First Chapter

Longlight

In the shrouded valley, the people of LongLight evaded destruction. For seventy-five years they quietly thrived, isolated from the world, nurturing a small flame of hope. It took less than one hour for them to annihilated.

-- the book of LongLight

A snow cricket leaps between two smoldering buildings onto a collapsed stone wall. It sits for a moment, antennae probing, then jumps to a footprint in the snow. It vaults again and again, from footprint to footprint, moving past snow-covered boulders, until it stops at a thick patch of blue bramble and settles beneath the thorns, on a mound of snow speckled red.

The white cricket sings one sweet, resonant note. The mound shudders and, within it, a pair of eyes snaps open. The eyes belong to Roan.

Roan listens, afraid to move. In the distance, the sullen cawing of crows. Stiff, cold, he considers sitting up. But then -- crash! He stops breathing, terrified of being seen.

His father's anguished face.

-- Quick, quick, Roan, move, move, move!

Hands pulling him up, throwing clothes on him. His sister, Stowe, clutching her straw doll, shaking. His mother kissing him, hugging him, then pushing Roan and Stowe through the open window.

-- Go! Hide in the blue brush! Run! Run!

There's another crash, this one landing at Roan's feet. It's only melting snow falling from the bramble. Hearing no human sounds, he rises. Slowly. Staying invisible inside the mass of thorns. Roan's head pounds. He feels his temple. There's a crust on his hair. He scratches off a piece and groans as he examines it. Scab-mattedblood.

Smoke rises from the other side of the hill. The village they called Longlight is silent. No voices, no screams. Desperate to see, terrified of what he'll find, Roan breathes deeply to slow his pounding heart. Then, painstakingly untangling himself from the bramble, he crawls over the snow-spotted hill. His eyes catch something. He moves quietly through the brown whip-grass, staying low. A bit of purple cloth -- Stowe's doll, wrapped in its vivid shawl, the one she dyed herself. It's been ground by a horse's hoof into the half-frozen mud. Hands trembling, he lifts the precious object.

Shouts. Explosions. Crazed, skull-masked invaders on horseback, waving torches, slashing, burning. An eerie, rumbling sound pulsates from the villag4 like hundreds of voices humming in unison.

Scrambling, sliding on the icy whip -- grass, Roan and Stowe race, closer every step to the blue bramble to safety. A piercing scream. Stowe's fingernails rip Roan's palm as a hideous red skull leans down, lifts her. The masked rider kicks off Roan's bleeding hand. Stowe is reaching, reaching for Roan, but high in the air above her the rider's bone club swoops down.

Shivering, head throbbing, Roan gently places the ruined doll in his pocket. He inches close enough to see the smashed walls of Longlight. Beyond them, smoke rises from the shells of crumbled wood and clay houses. No sign of riders. No human sounds at all. Trembling, he edges closer, then rushes toward the broken gate and dives for cover. He is lifting his head for another look when a black shape whirls past him. He ducks, terror-struck, waiting for the death blow. It doesn't come. He waits, then peeks again. The ground past the gate is a mass of foraging crows, shattered pots, burned woven baskets.

How did they find us?

--

An acrid smell flares in Roan's nostrils. From the Community House. Burning plastic: the solar energy panels. Years spent scavenging the parts to make one unit. Gone.

House after house, all smoldering, all empty. Drag marks scar the gravel walkways. Past the Worship Place, across the Forum, to the Fire Hole. Roan hesitates, dreading his next few steps. Every year his father spoke where Roan stood now.

We stand for the Remembering. Fire Holes like this one opened when the Madness began. Earth, sickened by the Abominations inflicted on its surface, spewed its insides in an attempt to purify what was fouled in the world. Many died. When the scorched lands cooled, the First Ones arrived. Many holes had been filled, but this one was left untouched, its fiery waters unquenched. The First Ones constructed their village around it, the shrine at our center. So we would not forget what we were. Once a yeas during the Remembering, this stone gate is opened and a day is spent fasting and praying to remind us of why we set ourselves apart. This is the most sacred place in Longlight.

The most sacred place in Longlight. It didn't matter what we remembered. They still came to find us.

There's a foul smell. Pieces of scattered clothing in the wind. A woman's blouse, a man's torn shirt. A worn leather shoe, covered in patches. Roan, collapsing, clutches it, this shoe his father constantly mended. His father must be here. He must be close. Roan's eyes dart around the stones. Crows hover over the Fire Hole. Roan scrambles past the stone wall that surrounds the sacred site.

First he sees a mass of brown hair caught on the edge. A bit of flesh connects it to a white skull. Bobbing on the steaming surface, bones. Human bones. Rolling one over the other, hundreds of human bones. Roan's legs go weak. His vision blurs. Everyone he knew, everyone he loved. Roan staggers away from the pit, throat thick, eyes burning.

His legs buckle. He kneels, his face in the hard clay, trying to say the words his father taught him, the prayer of passing, the utterance of safe journey. His lips move but he can't speak, there are too many, he can't find air to make sound. There are too many, so many souls.

He cannot lift his face from the dirt, and the smoke hangs over him.

--

A sound draws Roan out, bringing him back to the world. He lifts his head and breathes. There, on his shoulder, a white cricket.

Time to go home.

Dazed, still gripping his father's shoe, Roan makes his way past the broken walls, down the gravel path, past the ruined houses of his friends and relatives. He knew every single dwelling, had eaten or played or visited inside them all. Now they were empty husks.

Unlike the others, his own house still stands, its walls intact. But the front door, so carefully crafted by his mother, has been smashed into jagged splinters. He'd taken so much pride in her artistry. It's difficult not to let grief overtake him as he cautiously steps through the defiled threshold. His grandmother's table and chairs, his great-uncle's fire-glazed bowls, all shattered. His father's bookcases upended, books strewn everywhere.

Roan slips into his bedroom. His bed's been thrown over, his belongings shredded, ripped, ruined. He reaches down and grips the bed frame. It's solid. His mother made it strong. He rights the bed, tugs the woolen mattress back onto it, picks up the crumpled blankets. He lowers himself onto the only bed he's ever slept on, pulls his knees to his chest, and stares at the wall.

His people had planted gardens to heal the earth, nurtured and loved one another, shared all that they had. There was nothing to rake, but the raiders had come anyway, and now everything was lost. Everything. Everything.

A SPECKLED BROWN RAT WITH A LONG PINK TAIL SITS ACROSS FROM ROAN. THEY ARE ON A PLAIN OF DRY YELLOW CLAY, THE SUN BELOW THE RED HORIZON. THE RAT RAISES ITS HEAD.

"IT'S TIME. GO. NOW"

Roan jolts up, startled awake by the strange vision. It was unlike any dream he'd ever had. Still, his mother taught him to always pay them heed. This dream said to go. He can still feel its urgency. He has to move, now.

He pulls up a floorboard, His stash box is still there. Inside are his great-grandfather's five silver coins, each more than two hundred years old. And in its sheath is the gleaming knife his father gave him last month for his fifteenth birthday. Roan straps it around his shin with a leather thong. With his pant leg slipped over it, the knife is invisible.

Moving purposefully, he spots his mother's rucksack and shoves in a blanket roll. He rushes to gather supplies -- fills his water bag, finds some scraps of dry food, carefully places his father's shoe and his sister's doll in the rucksack's side pocket -- until he's stopped by a peculiar sound.

It's faint, but quickly growing louder. Roan rushes to the window. On the gravel path, three hundred yards away, a man is riding something Roan's seen only in pictures: a motorbike. The driver, flowing black cloak and long braided hair whipping behind him, is heading straight for Roan's house. Roan dives under a bookcase that's collapsed against the wall. As he hides himself, he feels something in his pocket. The white cricket. Just then the driver walks in the door. Roan holds his breath and silently pulls the knife from its sheath.

"What a waste, the man mutters, and Roan hears him shuffling through the books heaped on the floor. The stranger's hands reach under the bookcase, feeling around. Roan clutches his knife as the fingers grasp a torn-in-half volume and pull it our.

"My name is Saint. What is yours?"

Roan freezes.

"Terrible thing that happened here. Are you alright, boy?"

Roan lurches out of his hiding place and bolts for the door.

"Hey, hey, you don't need to -- " Saint calls out, reaching for Roan. He's the biggest man Roan's ever seen. Roan wildly swings his blade before charging our the door. Not to the bramble, no time to conceal himself there. Instead, Roan runs the way he always ran with his friends, straight to the eastern wall. He's headed for the Hollow Forest.

--

The forest goes on for miles, the tall trees still standing despite the fact the only green they sport is moss and lichen. According to his grandfather, the trees were drained of life when a chemical plant far upriver was bombed. Planting new growth, specially chosen to aid and detoxify the earth, was one of Roan's favorite chores. He devoted many long hours to it. But nothing seemed able to resurrect the Hollow Forest.

The engine! Nor much time. Roan's fingers dig into the trunk of Big Empty, a massive, hundred-foot tree more than three centuries old. Like the other trees in this forest, it is completely hollow. Roan pulls at a perfectly matched piece of bark and squeezes through the entry hole he and his friends carved a few summers before, then carefully plugs it behind him.

Roan reaches for the first carved handhold and then works his way up, aiming for the top, where the light streams in. Beside each handhold is the mark of one of his friends: Max, Esta, Lem, Rolf, Aiden. He remembers how the six of them would clamber up together, a knot of warmth and laughter. No more. At the very top he sees his sister's spot, her name carved in big letters. Stowe. That was her place, always. He reaches across, sliding his finger through the S. Where is she now? His hand burns where hers was torn from his grip.

Soaked with sweat, his pockets heavy with rocks, Roan pokes his head cautiously from the broken treetop. With the sun pouring down on him, he sits on the rope seat they all strung together so long ago. He strains his eyes, searching. Has the stranger given up the chase? Roan decides to stay as long as it's light, nor start traveling until the cover of night. But travel where? He's never been outside this valley. He has no idea what's out there. All he knows is he can't stay here. Home is dead. Then he sees him.

A hundred feet below, Saint drives slowly through the trees, eyes on the ground. Roan knows the stranger will spot the broken lichen, the grass crushed by his feet. He was running too fast to cover his tracks.

As Saint rides straight to Big Empty, Roan lowers his head and presses his back against the tree wall, heart thumping. Will the man find the entrance? A rush of air from below answers his question.

"I have no wish to hurt you," the man calls up, his head masked in shadows far below. "I saw the smoke. Was that your home?"

"Yes."

"I can feed you, clothe you. After what you've been through, I'm sure you can use a friend."

"I'm fine. Leave me alone."

"I can't do that," says Saint. "You'll die our here alone."

But when Roan looks down, he sees that Saint is gone.

The tree sways. But there's no wind. Roan feels it move again. It creaks, irs whole length trembling. He anxiously grips his handhold with the realization: Saint is pushing on the tree. Can a man push a tree of this size over? Nor a live, healthy one, but a long-dead tree with rotting roots is fair game for two or three very strong men. This is one man. But no ordinary man. Saint is twice the size of Roan's father.

The old roots snap and the tree buckles. Big Empty starts to fall. Roan falls too' his hands flailing uselessly, his body bouncing against the sides of the hollow.