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the caldera now, helping to mask me from whatever this Harvester was. Unfortunately, it might also be masking the Harvester from me.
    I stumbled on the rocks scattered by the volcano. I skirted around scraggly bushes set aflame by lava bombs. Here and there human heads were alight, flickering orange through the smoky mists. My lungs burned as I gulped at air full of stinging smoke and poisonous sulphurous gases.
    Ahead of me the curtains of fog thinned…for the moment I had outrun the worst of the smoke…and I could see across the caldera again. I didn’t seem to be much closer to the volcano’s foothills. And to make matters worse, there was a wave of lava flowing across the plain in my direction, a bright orange. Oddly, though, I saw no streams of lava on the flanks of the volcano itself.
    Well, I would veer to the right a bit, away from the coming wave, and hopefully still reach the outermost of the foothills before the molten rock spread in that direction as well. I launched myself forward again, trying to ignore the chorus of pleas that swarmed around my every footfall.
    I ran. I ran. I ran. My legs ached, my seared eyes streamed, I thought my heart would explode (if it did suffer cardiac arrest, it would probably heal pretty quickly, but I didn’t want the inconvenience). The volcano did, at last, seem taller to me. That meant it was closer. Pausing to look back the way I had come, I saw the reverse view was lost in low-lying smoke, but I judged myself to be about halfway across the circular plain. And while looking back, I heard the crack of a gunshot in that smoke. Another. A third. An Angel, I decided, not sure whether any Demons themselves used guns. I could picture a robed Angel wandering amongst the rows of heads, untroubled by the choking air, idly shooting down into them.
    Encouraged by my progress, I continued on. The Harvester’s sound dwindled and was lost behind me. There were more gunshots but at least none in front of me. But after I had covered a lot more ground, my fears about the spreading lava came back to me. It looked like my path to even the outermost of the foothills was going to be blocked, soon, after all. I wondered how thick the lava was and how far I could run through it before my melting shoes and then melting feet brought me down. I couldn’t afford to let that happen. I didn’t want to be entombed on this plain myself. I pitied the heads that were being covered in that advancing orange surf.
    I tried to pick up my pace. I must beat the lava to the foothills. I must…
    With an explosion of porous pumice and glittering obsidian, pulverized into glittering sand, the floor of the caldera burst open a short ways ahead and to the right of me. I thought it was an eruption of some lesser vein of the volcano. But then I saw a great hulking form lurch up over the lip of the hole, streaming that gray-black grit down its sides.
    A Harvester.
    It was facing away from me, and I was grateful for that as I skidded to a stop, wondering which direction I should flee in now. The thing pulled itself out of the pit on rows of wheels that rippled independently like the legs of a caterpillar. It was an armored black thing, seamed with rust, dented and scratched, and though I couldn’t see its front I heard the whine and swish of a blade or blades that swept across the ground.
    I heard screams. Screams abruptly choked off with a gurgle. Replaced by another row of screams. Another row of gurgles.
    It was harvesting the heads. When it had gone a little ways, I saw the gushing stems of the severed necks in its wake. Blood geysered and misted the air. There was a thunking rumbling inside the machine that I realized were the heads being gathered into some large receptacle.
    There was no cab on the front of the huge machine, and unless the driver was hidden inside it as if it were a tank, I decided the Harvester was more robot than vehicle.
    It didn’t seem daunted by the encroaching wave of lava, either, as