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more than the injury itself.
    I turned and lowered myself down the rocky cliff until I was able to drop to the floor of the caldera without breaking any bones myself.
    Looking down at the heads that were nearest to me, I saw that those which faced in my direction had fixed their eyes on me. Down here amongst them, their lamentations seemed even more stunningly loud. But I could still hear the individual cries from these heads at my feet.
    "Help me!" one screamed.
    "Dig me out! Please!"
    And one of them, a black man with his branded forehead glistening with sweat and pasted with ash, said, "Watch out for the Harvesters."
    I took a step closer to him, and crouched down a bit, but kept back a little as if I feared he might be luring me in to drag me down with him. I saw a tiny orange crab crawl up from the back of his head to perch atop it. It had kinky hairs stuck in its pincers that it had obviously plucked from his head. I reached out and flicked the thing off him.
    "Watch out for the what?" I said.
    "Listen," the man went on, rolling his bulging eyes frantically, "you have to get out of here. The ones who put us here have been gone a long time…I don’t know how long…but now the Harvesters are beginning to collect us. More of them will be coming…"
    "Please, mister, please!" a woman shrieked at me. I looked at her. Half of her skull was crushed, horribly indented like a deflated basketball. But despite the thick, drying blood I could see she was already mending. I realized that she, like many, had been struck with rocks hurled like missiles from the eruptions.
    "There’s nothing he can do for us!" another man bellowed at her. "He’s just like us! He’ll get his another way!"
    "Listen," the black man hissed, and I returned my attention to him. "There’s a town in the foothills, to the right of the volcano. Can you see them?" He tried to jerk his head over his shoulder. I glanced in that direction. I could see the foothills he spoke of, entirely black. "There’s a town there—Caldera. We all lived there…we built it. For years it wasn’t too bad. Demons would come into town, and Angels, but it was bearable. The volcano never made a peep. And then one day the volcano woke up and took Caldera. And the Demons gathered up the survivors and planted us here."
    "But the town is buried?"
    "Mostly. But go there. It’s as safe as you’re going to get. And beyond it, if you can make it, beyond it is a city. If you can get there, you’ll be a little better off. Towns and cities are less open, there are more places to hide. They’re usually safer—when you can find them. But for all I know, that city might be gone now, too. Just be sure you don’t go into a Demon city. Make damn sure of that…"
    In the distance, through the screams and the wind and the mounting sounds of the fire, which cast a glow on the cracked ground around me, I heard a new sound. Like a truck rumbling slowly across unpaved ground. And mechanical whines and rasps and gratings.
    "The Harvesters!" shrieked the woman with the crushed head. In glancing at her again, I saw another orange crab plucking at her healing wound. I swatted it off her. She didn’t seem to notice, so terrified was she of this Harvester we were hearing.
    "We’ll be freed, at least," the black man told her. "Finally freed from this lava…"
    "I don’t want to go through it!" she sobbed.
    "You’d better go, mister," warned the black man. "You’d better go."
    "He’s stupid," sneered another man. "He’s new. Look at his clothes. He still wears the uniform. He still carries the book bag like a good little school boy. Stick around, school boy! Learn something!"
    "Fuck you," I told him. "Thanks," I said to the black man. "Sorry," I said to the woman. Then I was bolting to my feet and running through the field of heads…weaving between them and leaping over them so as not to injure anyone. Though my concern was comical, really.
    The haze of the forest fire began to spread across