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.