by James Axler
“Wayne, you with us?” Thornton queried, concerned at Corden’s expression, the like of which he had never seen.
“Yeah…oh, yeah…” Galvanized into action, Corden pulled himself to his feet and joined Thornton in his long-range recce over the cover of the wag’s hood. “They can’t move, and if we go to them, then we expose ourselves. Right?”
Thornton agreed. Corden glanced down the length of the wag at Chambers, who nodded.
“Right. Then we need to take ourselves to them. I’ll replace Jase. Just get as much firepower as you can and start blasting when we get in range.”
“What if we—”
Corden’s hard-eyed, ice-cold stare choked Thornton’s query in his throat. Corden’s voice was low, deep in his own throat, and had an edge that would brook no argument. “We chill those fuckers. I don’t care if it’s quick or slow. Slow’s better. But they buy the farm. If we get Hearne’s jack, then even better. But that don’t really matter now. They got one of ours. That’s what matters.”
With that, Corden pulled open the door of the wag and climbed in, keeping his head low. Thornton looked back at Chambers. The dark coldheart shrugged, gesturing helplessly. There was little they could do except go along with it. Corden was boss, and they were used to following without question.
Inside the wag, Corden gently closed Demetriou’s eyes. The young coldheart had slumped so that his torso had fallen into the well between the seats. Corden cradled his head.
“They won’t get away with this,” he whispered to the chilled man. Heaving the deadweight body upright, he reached across the bloodied lap and flicked the catch on the driver’s door. Pushing it open, he heaved the body so that it fell toward the gap, pitching off the seat and into a heap on the ground.
The engine was still ticking over, the gear preventing it from moving. Corden closed the driver’s door, then called to Chambers and Thornton.
Chambers entered the rear of the wag once more, while Thornton took Corden’s old post. Now he was riding shotgun, and would have a clear arc of fire through the shattered windshield.
“You know what we should do,” Corden said in a toneless, dead voice. “I’ll set her rolling, and then we just start blasting. Don’t give them a chance to fire back.”
“Wait—”
Corden looked back at Chambers. “Lost your nerve? If you have, then I’ll—”
“No need for us to do anything, Wayne,” Chambers interrupted him. “Stop a second…Can’t you feel it?”
Corden frowned. What was Chambers talking about? But wait…His grim visage cracked into a grin wreathed in malice.
“Yeah, I can, now. Looks like we won’t have to worry about anything. The spirits are gonna take care of ’em, right?”
Chambers nodded. “Spirits, nuke shit, call it what you want, Wayne. But it’s coming. And they ain’t been around these parts long enough to know anything about it. They won’t survive it.”
“Neither will we. Not if we don’t get the fuck out of here soon,” Thornton added, looking through the blasted windshield and up at the skies. There was no sign above them, but the air around was charged, like static electricity. The previously airless plains had the slightest of breezes, carrying that charge across the empty expanse.
Corden looked out of the wag, down at Demetriou’s corpse. Maybe a proper burial would have been good. Stop the mutie critters getting him, using him for carrion. But what the hell. Jase was gone. That piece of chilled flesh wasn’t him. Not anymore.
Corden smiled as he looked across at the wag that held their erstwhile opponents. “They’ll be expecting us to attack. Won’t know what the fuck to think when we hightail it outta here. Makes it kinda sweeter, doesn’t it?”
“Guess it does, Wayne,” Chambers agreed. He would have agreed to anything at that moment, as long as it got Corden turning the wag and headed back toward Brisbane.
Corden put the wag into gear and spun it almost 360, so that they headed away from the stranded wag and back toward the blacktop they had seemingly left so long ago.
“WHAT—” MILDRED FOLLOWED the progress of their one-time pursuers with a rising sense of bewilderment.
“That no way attack. Something wrong,” Jak commented tersely.
“Sure as shit is,” J.B. muttered. “Why come all this way, push it this far, and then…”
“Unless, my dear John Barrymore, there is a greater danger in the offing than perhaps they would wish to deal with?” Doc mused.
Krysty scanned the land around. There was nothing visible except the receding dust trail of the retreating wag. “Can’t see a thing. But…” She was aware of how tightly her hair was clinging to her neck, snaking down her back as though searching for cover.
“But?” Mildred queried.
“Feel it,” Jak whispered. “Not coldheart trouble. Something worse.”
A distant hum in the air, like the thrumming of a taut wire, was all the indication they had of anything amiss. There seemed to be no account for the coldhearts’ sudden withdrawal. Yet still that gnawing at the pit of the companions’ stomachs said that there was something very bad on the way.
Without a word, both Jak and Krysty got out of the wag, stiff, sore limbs protesting at the movement. Krysty winced as she could feel her ribs creak and tighten with every breath. Both she and Jak stood still and silent on the plain, looking slowly around. The air was moving more than previously. There was no reason why there shouldn’t be a breeze, so why did it feel uncomfortable and unnerving? It took both of them only a few minutes to realize that there seemed to be no direction from which the air moved. One second it seemed to be westerly, the next it was from the east. Or else it seemed to come from the north, only to switch south when confirmation was sought. Even more so, there was no pattern to these changes. They seemed to be ei ther random or in such an extended sequence that it was difficult to follow the pattern.
Jak and Krysty exchanged puzzled looks. The albino teen’s normally impassive face was twisted into a questioning look.
Before either could say anything, sounds from behind them indicated that the others had come out into the open. Krysty turned to see Doc stretching, black-clad limbs twisted against the empty backdrop of the sky. J.B. stared, puzzled, at the sun as the breezes plucked at the folds of material on the backpack that held his ordnance stash. Mildred was making Ryan lean forward so that she could check his good eye for any signs of concussion.
“How you feeling, lover?” Krysty asked.
Ryan grunted. “Like shit.”
“But not concussed shit,” Mildred added dryly. “You’ll be okay. What’s with the coldhearts?” she added, indicating the direction in which their attackers had fled.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Krysty murmured. “Doesn’t feel like it’s good, though.” She looked around, aware that even as she spoke, the winds had begun to pick up. There were no clouds in the sky, yet the air was becoming charged with the kind of energy that preceded a storm.
“We find cover, quick,” Jak said matter-of-factly. Ryan looked around. Apart from the battered wag, there was precious little else that could provide cover. The black-and-green dappled hills of the plains were dis tant. The scrub within a radius of about five hundred yards was sparse. A few clusters of rock dotted the spaces between, but these were low to the ground and of little substance.
The wag had a windshield, but no other glass to provide protection from the elements. But they had tarps covering the supplies. Just maybe…If it was an electrical storm, the frame should conduct any lightning hits. If it was strong enough to blow the wag across the plains, well, it could do that, and it could buffet them wherever else they sought shelter out here.
Even as those thoughts raced rapidly through his mind, he was aware that tracers and eddies of dust were beginning to swirl around his feet, reaching up past his ankles.
Looking up, he could see that J.B. had reached the same conclusion and was already heading back to the wag. Ryan indicat
ed that the others should follow suit. It was only when he saw that Doc had stopped that he turned to face where the old man stared.
“Fireblast,” the one-eyed man whistled softly.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc murmured.
In the distance, a column of dust had risen into the air. As they watched, it grew in height and width from a zephyr to a tornado, then shrank again before rising once more. It seemed to pulse, as though with a life of its own. It was moving toward them at speed. The dust eddies around their ankles had now risen almost to their knees. The breezes that had raised the dust plucked at their calves.
The others were already in the wag. The window openings facing the oncoming storm had already been blocked out by the heavy, dark tarp. J.B. was covering the rear opening. Krysty looked at Ryan and Doc.
“Come on—what are you waiting for?” she yelled.
Ryan was shaken from his reverie and moved toward the wag. The dust eddies were now bigger, stronger. He blinked and coughed as dust began to clog his nose and throat.
Then it hit him. Rain he would have expected, perhaps a rock or stone picked up in the force of the zephyrs that crossed and recrossed to make the approaching maelstrom. But while the object was not as hard or as sharp, it still dealt a heavy blow to his shoulder, but not enough to cause pain. Another of the objects hit him on the side of the head, thrown sideways and kept aloft by the counterflows of the air currents. As it slapped against his head, Ryan was shocked to hear it make a noise.
He stumbled forward, hit time and again by these objects, sure that at times they made deep noises that seemed familiar. Ryan felt soft squelching underfoot, the hard-packed surface of the plain now a shifting, uneasy and uneven mass that seemed to move, give, then be uneven again. As he reached the wag, the one-eyed man looked down, and through the murk of the dust motes, he was sure he saw…
Frogs?
Momentarily he faltered, unsure if that blow on the head had affected his senses in some way. Then he heard Krysty and Mildred calling to him through the thicken ing swirls of dust, and he pressed forward. Already, any sense of depth or distance was rendered a matter more of luck than judgment, and he almost ran into the wag before he saw it. Hands clutched at him, pulling him into the wag’s quieter, less dust-riddled interior, as the heavy rain of frogs splattered around him. Inside, they sounded loud and booming on the roof, a constant tattoo against which it was almost impossible to make yourself heard.
J.B. and Jak had secured every window opening except that on the door through which he had been dragged. Tendrils of dust snaked around the barely secured tarp, which the two men now held over the opening while Mildred helped Ryan into the rear of the wag. It was possible to breathe in the wag’s interior, and he took several deep breaths, his head swimming. It was dark, as J.B. had secured a tarp over the windshield, too, as a precaution against the storm shattering it and showering them with glass. But even in the gloom, Ryan could see Mildred’s amused expression, her eyes torn between trepidation and amusement.
“I know. It’s raining of frogs. Go figure. They used to have myths about that when I was a kid, but I didn’t think I’d have to wait until I’d been frozen, defrosted and seen the future before I’d witness it. Now I really have seen everything.”
“But how—”
“I don’t know. Maybe the crosswinds have whipped them up from some river running across the plains. Let’s face it, it’s so weird out there it could have brought them from anywhere.” She shrugged.
Ryan looked around. “Doc?”
“Stupe bastard still out there,” Jak said shortly. “Quick recce.”
J.B. nodded, and the two men let the tarp drop for a second before slamming it back into place as frogs and dirt slewed through the gap.
As the darkness came down once more, they were all left with one image searing their collective retinas. Through a swirl of dust and dirt that made him seem as though he were painted on parchment, Doc was whirling in the winds, moving with the currents, laughing maniacally as he was bombarded by frogs. It seemed as though he didn’t even notice the impact.
“Crazy old buzzard’s going to get himself killed,” Mildred muttered. “I’m going after him—”
“If anyone does it, it should be me,” Ryan said, preparing to move out before being stayed by a hand from the Armorer.
“I’ll go with Millie,” he said. “You’re still not up to speed, and it’ll take two of us to get that mad bastard in here.”
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
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.