Prophecy

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.