“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 distant. 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 indicated 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 thickening 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