Dark Ages

Soon he had six shallow graves dug, but when he began hoisting the bodies into them he became sick, then choked on what came up. Remo had to descend from the tree to dislodge the rock; he achieved this by pounding Burgos on the back of the head.

“Happy vomiting,” Remo said, then went back up into his tree. As night closed in, the last slain researcher was buried in the jungle soil.

Burgos was exhausted, every joint was a point of pain and he craved sleep.

“Hey, no way, Jose,” Remo said, appearing out of nowhere. “That’s just phase one.”

Burgos was marched back to the village. The place was filled with rotting corpses.

“I suffered enough,” he slurred through his dangling jaw.

“Ha. You haven’t suffered nearly enough. You’ll never suffer enough. When you add up all the misery you caused—hell, maybe Smitty’s computers could come up with an answer.”

“I cannot go on. Kill me.”

“Too good for you.”

“You can’t make me do anything.” Juan Burgos lay down on the ground to sleep. “What can you do to a man who wants to die?”

“Let me show you.” Remo took the Colombian by the hand and squeezed the ball of his thumb, and the pain was like nothing Burgos had ever dreamed of—as vast as the universe.

“If you work hard, you’ll only get three of those an hour,” Remo said.

By dawn, Burgos’s strength was sapped. He flopped in the dirt and didn’t get up again.

“Good riddance,” Remo said. He did the last of the manual labor himself.

The macaw flapped noisily onto Remo’s shoulder and regarded the finished graves. It looked sad.

“The People,” the bird murmured.

Remo didn’t know what to say. “The People,” he agreed. How do you comfort a bereaved parrot?

“The People are coming,” the bird said. “Get ready!”

Chiun and the villager returned after noon, and they stood in silence before the long line of graves. The stench was diminished.

A few hundred paces away, Remo had just finished replacing the support poles holding up the roofs of the village huts—the old poles had turned to rubber when the steam came.

“I sent the drug lord upriver with all his buddies.”

“Downriver,” Chiun corrected him.

“Whatever. They’re piranha food.”

“My son, why have you repaired these buildings— and how?”

“How is easy. I jogged out of the steamed part of the jungle and got good wood from the uncooked part,” Remo explained. “Hey you, come look at this.”

He took the elbow of the sole surviving villager and led him through the huts. There was a place where a body had lain since the moment it fell in the catastrophic surge of superheated steam.

Now the body was buried, and green plants were sprouting.

The villager was stunned.

“Come on.” Remo guided the man to another spot, where another body had lain. It was small, the outline of a frail young person. Remo knew a skinny girl had died here— and now grass was pushing into the world where she had lain.

The villager was weeping.

“See, Chiun, this place never died. Because even when they died, their bodies were protecting some of these plants, so the plants lived.”

Chiun started to say something, but Remo held up a hand. “Wait a second. Come look at this.” He led Chiun and the weeping villager into the jungle for a hundred paces, where the rock formation had trapped countless jungle creatures.

The carcasses were gone and it was an oasis of green, thriving plant life.

“Slimy, but nice,” Remo said.

“You cleared all this away yourself?” Chiun asked.

“Had to. Burgos dropped dead on me. Ever hear the saying that a little hard work never killed anybody? Well, guess what? It killed Burgos. Is your skinny friend happy or sad?” Remo nodded at the villager, who was weeping and opening his arms to the sky.

“He is both. Remo, this has lifted his spirits to heaven. He sees now that the world will continue, and he hopes that he may be taken up now to be with his People.”

Remo shook his head. “Hey, no way. After all the home repairs I made?”

Chiun looked strange. He looked sad. “My son, do you not understand? The village is gone. All the People were killed.”

“No.” Remo walked away a few steps, turned and raised one finger. Very distinctly he said, “No.”

“No?” asked the villager.

“Come on.”

Remo led the way this time, and the villager trotted to keep up. He reached a tree that was near the edge of the brown jungle, where the steam cloud had finally lost its murderous heat. The sky-scraping upper branches were alive with a smattering of green leaves—and a flock of noisy purple birds.

At the base of the tree was a sleeping boy no more than eight years old.

The villager looked at the tree with wide eyes, muttering to Chiun.

“It is a tree of some significance,” Chiun said.

“Yeah. It’s the highest one around—you can really see for miles. They’re coming this way.”

“Who is?” Chiun demanded.

“The new People.” Remo shrugged.

The villager grabbed Remo by the biceps and looked into his eyes like he was seeing a vision. “The new People?” His English was imperfect and tremulous.