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Before Ryan had a chance to protest, J.B. had flung open the wag door, and both he and Mildred were swallowed up by the maelstrom. Jak struggled to pull it shut, needing Krysty’s assistance to secure the tarp once more, and let the dust and frogs that had blown in settle on the floor of the vehicle. The frogs that had survived the buffeting of the storm croaked contentedly in their new haven, at odds with the emotions of the three humans with whom they shared shelter.
Time seemed to slow to a drip as they waited for a signal that J.B. and Mildred were returning with the errant Doc. There was nothing.
“Have to risk another look,” Ryan said.
Jak agreed, and indicated to Krysty that she be ready to let the tarp fall for a second. When it had been returned, and they had coughed up the dust that had swirled in, they were also aware of a new problem: insects buzzing around the interior of the wag. Slapping them down, Ryan could see that they were locusts.
If these scavengers had been added to the swirl outside, then there was no knowing what they could do to Doc, or Mildred and J.B. They could eat anything in their path, living or chilled: they had all seen evidence of this in the past.
“They not back soon, go after,” Jak said. He looked at Ryan in a way that forbade any argument. Ryan simply nodded. He understood.
And yet, for a moment, it seemed that this wouldn’t be necessary. Cutting through the howling winds were the sounds of approaching footsteps and Doc’s keening, madness-inflected tones.
“I tell you…You know your scriptures better than any of us here in this place forsaken by the good Lord, my good doctor. You know what they foretell—plagues that will rain down upon those who are the unjust and the unrighteous. Locusts that will sweep through the land, stripping it back to the bare, glistening bones so that the way is paved for the fresh and the good to rise from the remains. This is what it is. At last, this could be the salvation for which I have so often prayed. This nightmare could at last be ending.”
There was the mumble of J.B.’s voice.
“Unhand me! I shall not go softly and gently. Unhand me, I say.”
The scuffling increased, there was a yell of pain, and Doc’s voice, raging incoherently, retreated into the distance, buried by the wailing of the winds. It was followed by the shouts of Mildred and J.B. as they followed.
Jak looked to Ryan. In the dim light, the one-eyed man could see the tension written in Jak’s scarred and weathered visage. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.
The albino youth needed no second bidding. Before Krysty had a chance to realize what was going on, Jak had opened the wag door a sliver and squeezed through. Ryan reached out and closed it behind him.
“Who’s next, you or me, lover?” she questioned, her voice dripping disbelief at the way in which they seemed to be breaking all their own rules.
“Whatever it takes. Sometimes we’ve just gotta stand or fall as one.”
Chapter Four
“Doc, Doc…” Mildred’s tone was half imprecation, half resignation. Her words were choked and strangled by the dust that swirled around her, frogs battering her head and shoulders, locusts buzzing and swarming around her, singing in her ears as she batted them away. She could feel the occasional plucking of a locust as it came close to her, experimentally prodding and poking to see if she should be a good source of food.
Why the hell had she and J.B. left the shelter of the wag to come out here after the crazy old buzzard? If he wanted to act like some fire-and-brimstone preacher and wander into the wilderness to meet his maker, then what business was it of theirs? Too many times he had endangered the group; too many times he had—
Even as the angry thoughts passed through her mind she knew that she already had the answer. Doc was like her: cast adrift on the choppy currents of time and fate, with no options as to when and where he would finally hit land. Hell, there were times when she had envied him his insanity. Sometimes it seemed a much more pleasant place to live than where they had actually come to rest. Like all of the people she traveled with, Doc was an outcast who had sought some sort of sanctuary among those who also sought survival with some kind of moral boundary.
When was the last time she had consciously thought of morality? She guessed that it was something that had informed her actions in the time since she had awoken, but to stop and consider would be madness. She became all too aware that these thoughts were a symptom of the terrible weariness that now swept over her, enveloping her like a blanket. It was warm, fuzzy, and she wanted to lie in the sand…
It felt soft and yielding beneath her, like something that rippled pleasantly. She remembered a water bed that Ed Stasium had. She was at college then, so that had to have been the late 1980s? She wondered what Ed was doing now. Yeah, he’d be chilled. Like everyone she knew….
Mildred realized that her mind was beginning to wander, and at the very back of her brain a survival instinct was screaming at her to get the hell up, shake her head clear and find shelter. Or Doc. Preferably both. But her body didn’t want to obey.
Why the hell did the plains feel like a water bed? Through her clogged nostrils there was a dank, earthy smell. Then one of the frogs croaked, loud and sonorous as it lay near her ear.
Mildred cursed and, still feeling like she was in a strange dreamworld, tried to scramble herself to her feet. The frogs were slippery, moving under the grip of her boots. The palms of her hands felt the cold skins slip and slide as those frogs that survived the fall from the sky sought to move from under the weight of her hands. Every time she thought she had purchase, she found herself slipping and falling once more to the ground.
And then she felt a hand grip her upper arm, an iron band around her biceps that squeezed tight as it pulled her up. She winced at the pain but appreciated the assistance. She had a scarf wrapped around her face, as much as was possible, so that she could keep out the worst of the flying grit. Still she had to squint. Was that Doc?
No, it couldn’t be. The grip was too firm, the momentum of the lift too strong. She could see J.B. standing beside her. His glasses were almost entirely obscured by dirt, although areas of his face had remained clean, protected by the brim of his battered fedora. In that way the dazed and confused had of putting inconsequence before all else, she wondered how it was that he had managed to keep the hat secured to his head. She opened her mouth to ask and somehow—by bizarre chance—a locust managed to penetrate the mask of her scarf and fly into her mouth. She choked and bit down hard. The buzzing, which she had felt amplified in the cavern of her jaws, ceased suddenly as she clamped down and bit the insect in two. A foul, bitter taste filled her mouth, and she spit it out. Part of the insect became trapped in the scarf, and she pawed frantically to pry it loose.
J.B. pulled the scarf away, shaking the partial insect remains loose, and then he slapped her sharply across the face.
Instinct told her to hit him back, yet as she made to raise her arm another part of her kicked in—that which had remained alert and yet trapped at the back of her mind, screaming, now burst through the barriers.
“Doc,” she said simply.
J.B. shrugged and indicated in the direction from which she assumed he had appeared.
“Gone,” he said simply. “Too much shit. Shelter.”
She nodded. It had been misguided to try to find Doc, no matter what their motives. All they could do now was to try to find somewhere to sit out the rest of the storm. To try to work out direction right now would be pointless. In this world of dust, frogs and locusts there was little indication of what was up or down, let alone east, west, north and south. Doc could be anywhere. So, for that matter, could be the wag in which the others were waiting for them.
The only thing they could really hope for right now was that this bastard storm would soon abate.
Still clinging to J.B., her own limbs jellied and refusing to respond to her command, Mildred moved through the whipping storm. It occurred to some part of her that the locusts were nowhere near as destructive as she would have expected. She recalled stories from her predark days of fields stripped within minutes. From more recent times, she could remember animals and people stripped to the bone by postskydark mutie locusts. If these, too, were muties, then thank God that the mutation had made them seemingly less vicious and harmful. Although it did seem so contrary to the way of the world as to be remarkable.
The frogs still rained down on them, enough to form a slithering cover across the ground, yet not enough to drive Mildred and J.B. down with sheer weight of numbers. Still, the battering was enough to make shoulders and necks sore, to hit with such force as to occasionally make them stumble. Balance was also disrupted by attempts to swat away the locusts that still buzzed in and out. And there was the dust and dirt, still moving in crosscurrents. That was another puzzle: surely the weight of dust that clogged nostrils and throats should have suffocated them by now? Yet still they were able to breathe, labored though it was.
By now, they had no idea of direction. J.B. was leading her blindly, she realized, just hoping that, by sheer blind instinct—and maybe luck—they could find something or somewhere in which they could find shelter.
They almost stumbled over it. The swirling, dark brown to black atmosphere made it impossible to see more than a yard or two in front of them, if that. Distance was something for which they now had no yardstick. Under their feet, the carpet of amphibians ceased, replaced by a ledge of something hard and jagged.
Remembering what she had observed shortly before the storm came down on them, she realized that if they had reached the scant cover of small rock outcrops, then they had to have strayed some distance from the wag. Could they have really trudged that far, in this kind of storm?
Guided by J.B.’s hand, hardly able to even see him as the winds howled around them and the dust whipped and scoured at their skin, Mildred found herself being laid down in the shallow shelter of the outcropping. Even lying flat, feeling the jagged edges of rock bite through her clothing, she was barely below the parapet formed by the uppermost points of the rock. She felt J.B. lay down beside her, pulling some kind of sheet over them. Following the lead of his touch, she tucked the edges of the material under her body, as some kind of attempt at anchoring it in place. She felt the material go taut as he did the same.
Like a tightened drum skin, the material reverberated as frogs bounced off it. Beneath, although it was dark and hot in the enclosed space, it was a little easier to breathe. The absence of dust and dirt in the air was a welcome respite. Mildred felt her chest ease, and her raw throat found some relief. She still had the sour taste of the locust in her mouth. Right now, she would give anything for water. Her canteen was pinned beneath her; she could feel it pressing beneath her ribs. To try to get at it, to pry it free and find the room to move her arms and drink from it, would demand that their shelter be moved. There was the risk that it would be whipped away by the wind.
Mildred could wait.
Her right arm was raised, her hand by her face. Numbness spread through it as the blood supply was staunched by her own body weight. To try to keep it alive, to stop the pins and needles that began to irritate under the skin, she prodded experimentally at her face.
She was shocked. Even with the scarf, there had been enough of the swirling dust and dirt to scour away the top layer of her skin. Numb from the cold of the winds, she had figured that this was why her face did not pain her. And yet, to her surprise, the skin still felt smooth and unblemished. No warm, wet blood. No grazing or roughness. No sudden, sharp tingling of pain when the exposed flesh was touched.
There was something here that made no sense, that indicated a strangeness that she would have to master to ensure survival. Whatever it was, she knew that it was vital she keep it at the forefront of her mind.
But it was so hard. Weariness crept over her, the numbness in her arm spreading throughout her body, sleep beckoning to her.
She could feel J.B.’s body heat against her, and it lulled her weary mind all the more. Fighting it became harder and harder.
Consciousness slipped away.
“REVELATIONS. THE time of the beast is upon us, and we shall face up to the consequence of all the actions that have led us to this point. The plagues have been sent to teach us the error of our ways and we shall atone. We shall be forced to face up to that which we have perpetrated.
“And why not, I ask of you? By the Three Kennedys, mankind shall speak to Mother Earth and be forced to account for the way in which she has been raped and violated. She has struck back, at the behest of her—and our—Father, and we shall perish in the flames of her wrath.”
Doc’s ranting voice, already lost to all hearing in the maelstrom around him, tailed off into a cackle of manic laughter that degenerated into a hawking, coughing fit as dust and locusts clogged his nose and throat. He retched and spit phlegm onto the ground, spattering a frog that strayed too close to his range.
Rubbing his eyes and looking down, Doc saw the frogs that moved around the toes of his boots, obscuring the ground in a carpet of crawling, leathery skin. Remembering, somewhere in the fevered depths of his imaginings, something he had once read about the hallucinogenic properties of the mucus that oiled the backs of a particular species of frog or toad—he could not recall which, and did not at that moment care to differentiate—he bent to the winds that holed around him and picked up an amphibian from the floor of the plains.
He lifted the creature and turned it to face him, so that the impassive, dark eyes of the frog met his own.
“So, my friend,” he said softly, “we find ourselves, both, little more than pawns at the mercy of an unseeing, unfeeling hand. Our destinies are preordained for us as, at this moment, we are witnesses to the greater powers seeking to flex their metaphysical muscles. But why am I bothering to explain this to you, little friend, as you are nothing more than a frog. I wonder what I shall see if I lick your back…by God, it is some time since I was able to say that to anybody, let alone to anything.”
With which, Doc turned the frog and raised it to his lips. Flicking his tongue out in a manner that was, in itself, reptilian, he licked the back of the creature. It tasted foul. He grimaced, threw the frog to the ground and spit the resulting sputum from his mouth with haste.
“So much for that,” he muttered. Then he laughed once more and threw his arms wide, beginning to spin in a circle. He threw his head back and began to cackle wildly as he spun, trying to catch the insects, dirt and frogs in his mouth. He wished to drown in the excrescence of the storm. It had come to them as a punishment, so let it punish him. He wished to be claimed by the elements, to be negated and wiped from the earth. If the end times were here, then let him welcome them with these open arms.
And yet the insects that buzzed around him did not attack, did not fly into his gaping maw. The frogs missed, hitting him on the shoulders and outstretched arms, yet not in the face. The dirt that swirled in the crosscurrents of the storm whipped across his skin, yet did not block his air passages nor settle on his tongue. He wished to be claimed, yet the elements refused.
Tears of frustration replaced the manic laughter. They coursed down his cheeks, making runnels in the dirt that covered his face. The constant whirling began to make him dizzy, the ground uncertain beneath his feet as his inner ear became confused and his balance became unsteady. The circles he proscribed on the floor of the plain became wider, more elliptic and erratic. He stumbled sideways, felt the ground seemingly move beneath his feet. His outstretched arms windmilled wildly as he tried to keep his balance.
But it was of little use. One eccentric circle too far, and he found the ground shift beneath his boots just a little too much for him to compensate. Momentum pulled him over, and he found himself falling to the ground, his head still spinning as though he were whirling. Nausea pitched in the pit of his stomach, and he thought that he might vomit.
It was his last thought before his head cracked against the hard ground, squashing unsuspecting amphibians beneath him, their flimsy skeletons providing no cushion against the hard-packed earth.
Doc, like Mildred in another place, also lost consciousness.
JAK WAS LOST—physically, and also inside his head. The former was nothing: a temporary loss of bearings had happened many times before, and all it took was time, and the chance to stop and take bearings. In a situation like this, where it was now impossible to see anything—up, down, forward, backward—because of the clouds of dirt that swirled around in the crosscurrents, it was a matter of shelter, rest and wait until such time as it was clear. Even the frogs and the locusts didn’t bother him. The way they buzzed and bounced around him was irritating, sure, but Jak had experienced a whole lot worse over his life. This was nothing. Find shelter, hunker down, wait.
No, it wasn’t any of that that caused him to feel the dark clouds of fear edging into his consciousness. It was something else. Something that was, for the most part, alien to him. A feeling that he had only rarely experienced, and then only in the relative safety of dreams.
Dark doubts began to assail him. He had left the shelter of the wag to find J.B. and Mildred; and, in turn, to help them get Doc to safety. But now he was wandering in a storm, with no sign of shelter and no sign of those he had set out to find. Tracking, hunting, finding people and animals: that was Jak. He was a hunter. A good one. Without that he was nothing.
And he was failing. Had failed. He was alone.
Failure.
Jak stopped walking. He stood simply, with no defensive or offensive posture. There was no point. He could sense no danger: in truth, he could sense nothing. The hearing, smell and sight that served him so well had been reduced to nothing. He was nothing.
Looking slowly around, trying to focus those senses that had served him so well, he became aware that he had no notion of anything living that was near to him. He had no idea of where his friends might be, where the shelter of the wag may be, or even if they were alive or chilled.
He had no idea of where he was. It was as though the storm had formed a cocoon of dust and dirt around him. He was contained within it, and had no idea of what may exist outside the immediate area that was all he could see, hear or feel. Even the locusts that buzzed around him, and the frogs that fell at his feet, seemed to have no real substance. His awareness of them had become reduced so that they were little more than the vaguest of distractions. He could no longer smell the earthy scent of the amphibians, nor feel the flutterings of the insects as they passed his face, ears and eyes.
Such a complete negation of his being made Jak feel empty and alone. Alone was not such a new feeling: Jak had never been a person who was close to anyone—at least, not for so long—but this was more than that. This was a complete desolation.
And if there was nothing—not even himself—then what was the point of continuing to exist?
Jak sank to his knees. For what was possibly the only time in his life, Jak paid no heed to anything around him. There was no need to keep triple red. No need to be aware of any dangers. No need for anything other than to just give in to the darkness that was beginning to envelop him.
Without any resistance, Jak allowed it to take him.
“ANY SIGN?” Ryan asked as he rubbed the aching area over his good eye. Zigzag lines in white crossed his vision, each line accompanied by a searing pain in his skull.
Krysty risked another look beyond the tarp at the swirls of dirt that now seemed to constitute the very air.
“Nothing. Can’t see or hear a thing. Sweet Gaia, I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”
She was finding it hard to think. Those few locusts that had penetrated the tarps were buzzing annoyingly around the inside of the wag. Each time she smacked one down, it seemed that there were two more to take its place. The rain of frogs beat an insistent and arrhythmic tattoo on the roof and hood of the wag. And always, in the back of everything, there was the moaning of the winds that drove dust and dirt at them.
In the midst of all that, how the hell did Ryan expect her to hear the cries of Jak, J.B., Mildred and Doc? Maybe they had found one another. Maybe they were all wandering around, close to one another yet unable to see or hear in the confusion. Maybe they’d all bought the farm…This latter she did not wish to consider, yet it still prodded at her consciousness.
Why had it happened this way? Not the storm: that was just one of those things, the kind of hazard that they encountered almost every day of their lives. No, what she wondered was why, when Doc had wandered off, Mildred and J.B. had been so quick to get after him. Why Jak had followed seemingly without any thought or consideration. Why Ryan had let them. Why she had let them, come to that.
Ryan was concussed, not thinking clearly. Confused at the very least. As she looked at him, she could almost see the struggle manifest itself physically as he moved uneasily, rubbing his head and grimacing in pain.
None of them had acted totally as themselves—even herself—and it was getting worse. Both Ryan and she were trapped in this wag as surely as if it had been a locked room. Unable to move, caught in an agony of indecision.
They would sit it out until the storm abated. Not because that was the best course of action, but because they could think of nothing else to do. While, outside, their friends may be facing the farm on their own.
Krysty tried to move. Nothing. Her limbs were heavy, almost paralyzed. Yet it was a paralysis in which there was still feeling. A heavy torpor washed over her. She had no strength
It was such an alien feeling that it should have terrified her. Yet even this capacity was now beyond her grasp.
She felt all awareness begin to recede into an infinite distance.
Chapter Five
Mildred was aware, first, of the tingling ache in her arm. It stirred her, deep in her slumber, and she moaned softly as she tried to move her arm, to relieve the symptom. But it refused to budge. Penetrating deep into her subconscious, it made her slip from the warm blanket of unconscious and into the cold of the conscious.
And hell, was it cold. As she rose to the surface, she felt the cold that had seeped into her limbs. It was only then that she realized that her arm was beneath her, hand still raised to her face. Not that she could feel it.
She shuffled in the tight constraint of the sheet that covered both herself and J.B. The Armorer was quiet beside her and did not immediately stir as she moved against him. For a moment she wondered if he was alive, but his steady breathing reassured her. For such a small, wiry man he was proving to be one hell of a deadweight.
Heaving, Mildred managed to move him enough to free her arm. She gasped as the tingling fled, a weakness spreading through the limb as she tried to flex it. She paused, counted to twenty, then tried again. This time, it felt more like normal.
She took a chance at sitting up, moving the edges of the sheet from where it was tucked beneath her body. A wan light penetrated the thin material, and there was silence beyond the veil it provided.
One good thing—the storm had ceased. As the sheet slid down her body, she propped herself up on her elbows and looked around.
The sun was on the rise. It had to be morning, she thought. The sky was as it had been the afternoon before, clear, yet tinged with strange coloring. There was no sign that a storm had swept across them.
More importantly, there was no sign of the wag or their fellow travelers.
Mildred got to her feet. Cramp ached and bit into her calves, but she stamped it out. The sound of her feet roused J.B., who mumbled and grumbled his way to the surface of waking while she looked around.
“I’ll tell you something, John. We’re well and truly screwed.”
“I’ve always liked your positive outlook,’ the Armorer husked wryly as he, too, rose to his feet and joined her.
The land that spread in a vista around them was empty and impassive. Flat plainlands spread to all corners of the horizon, broken only by the distant plateaus of hill and mountain ranges, spread unevenly. In between these distant markers and the place where they stood was little except the occasional patch of scrub and rock, and those ridges in the earth that were invisible to the naked eye.
“How the hell did we manage to come so far that we’ve lost sight of the others?” Mildred whispered.
J.B. didn’t answer for a moment. He scanned the horizon, turning a full 360 degrees.
“It shouldn’t be possible,” he said finally.
