The Danger Is Still Present, in Your Time, as It Was in Ours

They watched the kid dig with manic intensity. The pile of dirt next to him had grown to maybe half his height. Some of the soil would tumble back into the hole with every frantic shovelful. The kid didn't care.

"They say he's going to die."

"People are always dying."

"They really meant it. They look scared. Talked quietly about it. They didn't want me to hear. But I did." A note of pride in her voice.

"Who's they?"

"Ma and da."

"Your ma and da are full of shit."

She punched him on the arm. "I ain't messing. I overheard. Was meant to be sleeping. They said his skin was 'peeling like ripe fruit.'"

Peeling like ripe fruit. Alien words from the girls mouth. Nothing she would make up. Maybe there was truth to the rumor. "Where is he now?"

"Nowhere good."

The kid was wheezing and panting by now. Still he dug, his blunt little shovel tearing through the ash and loam, hoisting it over a shoulder and spraying it onto the spill heap behind.

"Ain't nothing to find," the boy shouted across.

The kid paused for a moment, eyed the boy and the girl across the waste, blinked sweat from his eyes. He bent back to his labours.

"I said you ain't gonna find nothing," the boy shouted, louder this time.

"Who said I aimed to find anything?" the kid responded.

The boy and the girl looked to each other. "What kinda idiot goes digging without aiming to find anything? What's he doing?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders. "What else is there to do?"

"And why here?" the boy continued. "Ain't a damn thing to find here, is just waste and all. No plants, no animals, no buildings, no nothing. Sooner find treasure in the sky than digging here."

"He said he weren't looking for anything."

"Then why's he digging? And why here?"

"We're here."

The boy had no response to this. Just stared at the kid as he dug. "It's quiet here, is all. No one to meddle. Not even the deer come here."

The kid seemed satisfied at last. He climbed from his hole and dusted himself off. He wandered further across the field, angled the shovel into the ground, and leant his full weight on the haft.

"Six, that makes. At least. Six damn holes to nowhere." The boy shook his head. "I miss James. He wouldn't've put up with this nonsense." He gestured vaguely in the kid's direction. "'Peeling like ripe fruit'," he mused. "Think he's at home?"

"Naw, he ain't at home. His parents ain't either. They left couple nights ago."

"Went to see the shaman?"

"Don't know how he'd get there. He couldn't walk."

The boy wandered leisurely over to the kid's newly dug hole. He stooped and rummaged through the loose soil. It took him a moment to realise why the texture felt so strange.

"Ain't no damn thing in this soil."

"He said he weren't looking for anything," the girl offered.

"No, I don't mean like treasure. I mean like plants, or animals. Roots or stones. Anything. This is just powder." He let the fine soil fall through his fingertips. "Is weird, is all." He pressed a handful of dirt between his hands. It made a passing ball. He hefted it through the air in a long, soaring arc.

"Don't!" the girl said, but a smile flickered at the corner of her lips.

The boy pressed another mud ball between his hands, and another, and another. He sent a volley flying towards the kid, all missing their mark but earning the kid's attention. He jumped from the hole, tucked his shovel under his arm, and began the hike back towards the village. The boy prepared another barrage. The first clod connected, hitting the kid square on the back of his head. The kid dropped the shovel with a yelp and ran across the waste, disappearing into the tree line on the other side of the barren ground.

The boy wandered over to the abandoned spade and picked it up. "That's better. Peace and quiet at last." He lifted the shovel like a trophy. "Guess'n there was treasure to be found after all."

The boy and girl walked deeper into the waste, to the nest of concrete spurs where they'd made their den. The spurs jutted from the bare ground like barbs, an interlacing mass of weathered stone that looked like some ancient bur stuck to the skin of the earth. It was the only feature of note in the entire wasteland, and the children had adorned the pillars with scraps of plastic tarps and sheets to form a makeshift wigwam. The boy and girl wrested their way into the heart of the structure, draping the sheets closed behind them. The girl lit the stump of a candle from a battered lighter and settled into the soft dirt depression she thought of as her own. The boy sat across from her, shovel across his lap like an object of meditation.

"It's probably nothing," the boy said, "just a bug. Something bad, no doubt. But just a bug."

The girl seemed unconvinced. "He looked pretty ill. He was throwing up and all. Shaky. His skin did look kinda... loose."

"How can skin look loose?"

"Baggy, I guess. Like it didn't fit him properly no more."

The boy sat and stewed for a while. Eventually he stood, suddenly, as tall as he was able in the concrete nest, before pushing the sheets aside and carrying the shovel outside.

It was cold this time of year, but the air about the den felt warm. The boy prodded the earth with his shovel and began to dig. The ground was soft and yielding, far easier to work than the root-wracked dirt of his parents’ fields. There was something satisfying in the way the ground cooperated. Maybe he understood what the kid was about.

After a few minutes the girl came out to watch. The boy found a steady rhythm. He was bigger than the kid, stronger from years of labouring, and he soon carved a deep channel in the earth, far deeper than the kid had ever managed. He heaped the soil behind him too, but with greater care and precision.

Chink.

The sound of metal upon stone. He repositioned and tried the shovel again.

Chink.

"Well I'll be damned. I found something."

The girl leant over the hole to watch. The boy widened the pit and was met with the same clinking sound each time. He tossed the shovel aside and began sweeping the loose earth away with his hands.

The stone surface was black as night, perfectly flat and smooth. It seemed to radiate warmth into his hands. He hit the surface, tried to break through it with the sharp edge of the shovel blade, but it made no impression.

He climbed from the hole and loped a dozen yards away. He bent to digging again and didn't stop until he heard the sound.

Chink.

The same black stone beneath.

And another hole. Chink. Then another.

He and the girl were on their hands and knees, scraping soil back from the stone surface at the base of the fifth hole, when the boy saw a shadow drift over them.

A figure stood watching them at the edge of the pit. A thick coat of many layers shrouded his figure. He wore a tall hood about his head. A mask obscured his face.

The children stared silently at the man, frozen by fear. They waited for him to speak. The sound of rapid clicking carried to them on the wind. The man took something from his pocket, checked it, and returned it with a shake of his head.

The girl spoke first. "You're a shaman, ain't you? You here for James?"

The figure turned to stare at the nest of concrete spurs, draped with tattered plastic sheeting.

"He ain't here," the boy voiced. "He left, his family left too. They cain't be far. He couldn't walk. You'll find him at the village I reckon."

"You have to come with me. We don't have much time."

"Come with you where?" the girl asked. "Are you taking us home?"

The figure crouched, drawing nearer to their eye level. "Yes," the man replied, "but not the home you came from." He reached out a gloved hand. "You can't go back."

The children recoiled. "What?" the girl replied. "My ma's expecting me. She'll be angry if I'm late again."
The boy put an arm around the girl in a show of solidarity. His hand shook like a leaf. "We ain't going nowhere," he said, "we ain't supposed to go with strangers."

"We are not strangers," the main said. "And you cannot return home." He nodded then, and as if on command, a second figure materialised upon the waste behind them, swept down into the pit and plucked the children from it, one under each arm. The boy and girl kicked and screamed as the figure bore them implacably away from the hole, away from the concrete nest, and out across the flat, circular expanse of the waste, away from the forest and the village beyond.

The first shaman watched as the children were borne swiftly away. When they were almost out of sight he picked up the small shovel from where the boy had dropped it. He walked to the concrete spurs and tore the plastic sheeting from it. With the shovel he stooped to dig a trench in the earth. When it was deep enough, he swept the candle, the lighter, the children's meagre few possessions into the hole and bundled the plastic sheets on top. He threw the shovel in and kicked the mound of dirt back over the top, stamping it flat with thick rubber boots.

Eventually the figure followed the soft footprints out of the waste and into the hinterlands beyond, leaving the silhouette of the jagged spurs erupting from the unnaturally bare earth behind him. The click click click of his Geiger counter faded slowly into nothingness.