A Hidden Place by Robert Charles Wilson Page B

toward him across the denuded wheatfield. Archie had stopped weeping, but his face was set in a rictus of grief, his eyes heavy-lidded and bruised-looking.
    “It’ll do,” Archie said. He looked at Bone. “Come help me.”
    They moved back through the darkness to the Darcy farmhouse. A single kitchen lantern was burning, and Bone navigated through a gloom of shadows. “Here,” Archie said tonelessly. He put his hands under Paul Darcy’s shoulders. Bone took the feet, spreading the legs until he was able to grasp the body under the knees. This was death, all right. Always the same, Bone thought, that rag-doll pout, as if the farmer were holding his breath to protest the injustice of it. Bone looked without curiosity at the broad red stain across Darcy’s midsection. They lifted up the body and carried it into the wheatfield, to the hole Bone had gouged there.
    The body looked up at them from the hole. Archie, breathing in gasps, poured a spadeful of earth over Darcy’s face, as if he could not bear that silent recrimination. There was something prudish in the gesture, and Archie straightened hastily, shaking his head. “One more,” he said.
    This one was more difficult even for Bone. The Darcy woman lay at the opposite end of the kitchen, spreadeagled next to the iron stove (the stove Deacon had called a “puffin’ belly”), and though her wound was similar to her husband’s the expression on her face was even more reproachful. Maybe the indignity was worse for a woman: this nasty business of lifting and burying. By the time they reached the grave Archie was weeping again, a dry weeping that seemed to come from deep inside the cavity of his chest. Mrs. Darcy lay in the shallow hole in her yellow print dress, and Bone saw that the rain had made her expression quizzical, as if she were surprised to be here, staring so fixedly up at the night. Bone suppressed an urge to apologize.
    “Bury ‘em,” Archie said. He wiped his hands on his pants. “Bury ‘em fast as you can.”
    Bone drove his shovel into the dirt pile: chuff. It was easier work than the digging had been.
    Now the bunkroom was full of light. Deacon was there, filling up his kitbag and Archie’s with oddments from the Darcy household: forks, spoons, canned food. He did not look cheerful exactly, Bone thought, but there was a feverish redness to his cheeks, a wildness in his eyes.
    “A night’s work,” he was saying. “All in a fucking night’s work. Right, Archie? All in a night’s work—right?”
    “For Christ’s sake,” Archie pleaded, “shut up about it.”
    Bone stood in the doorway, waiting.
    “We move out tonight,” Deacon said. “Find us a train. Moving out, Bone! Find us a train out of here.”
    Bone nodded. It was all he had really wanted. He gazed at Deacon hefting his kitbag and wondered for the first time whether these men were really his friends, whether the killing of the Darcys had been, as Deacon insisted, “necessary.” Deacon feeding him in California, Deacon offering him a smoke— that Deacon had smelled trustworthy and Bone had invested his trust accordingly.
    This Deacon—literally twitching with nervous energy, his eyes wild with lantern light—smelled very different. There was an air about him of cordite and revenge. He had killed. He had killed with calculation and without mercy. He could do so again.
    Deacon motioned to Bone, and the two of them stepped outside for a moment. “This is just between us,” Deacon said, hooking his arm over Bone’s stooped shoulder. “Not that I don’t trust Archie. Don’t get me wrong. He’s my buddy. But he’s a little wild right now—you understand? I got something I want you to hold onto for me, and maybe don’t let Archie know you got it. Understand?”
    Bone shrugged.
    “Good,” Deacon said hastily, “great,” and he pushed something into the deep pocket of Bone’s blue Navy pea coat.
    “Archie!” Deacon yelled. “Time to move out! We want to get down