Mildred felt no wave of panic at this discovery. She wasn’t afraid of dying, and she wasn’t afraid of pain. She had already lived through both.
And through resurrection, thanks to Ryan and the companions.
Though she didn’t fancy dying again, she had hopes of a different kind of resurrection the next time.
Then she caught a flash of green out of the corner of her eye, out over the smooth surface of the lake, green that seemed to climb from water to sky. Even though she heard the crackle of the electrical discharge, she thought she had imagined it. She shook her head to clear it. Lightning didn’t travel in that direction. Not normal lightning, anyway. Perhaps the heat and the exertion were making her mind play tricks she thought.
But there were more flashes, much stronger ones. Even in broad daylight, they underlit the clouds of dense fog or mist that were rising like steam from the placid surface. The zapping sound of electricity was followed by a baritone rumble of thunder that she could feel in her guts.
“Did you see that?” she said to J.B., who had stopped twenty feet away with Doc at his side.
“Yeah, I saw it. Don’t understand it, but I saw it. What’s going on out there?”
Krysty, Dean, Leeloo and Jak had momentarily stopped, too, and were staring at the micro-weather system.
“It’s kind of pretty,” Leeloo remarked. “I like the green lights.”
“Look!” Jak said, pointing at the water under the cloud.
A strange sort of disturbance had appeared directly under it. A riffling on the water. A dark, churning circular patch about 150 feet wide, as if billions tiny fish were schooling. Or large predatory creatures below were herding them into a vast, panicked ball.
Something wasn’t right.
Something definitely wasn’t right.
“Everybody,” Mildred said urgently, waving her arms, “move back from the water.”
The others didn’t move. They all seemed mesmerized by the strange, localized electrical storm. All of them but Doc. The old man wasn’t even looking at the lake. He was staring fixedly at his own muddy boot tops and mumbling to himself.
Then a blast of withering heat sucked Mildred’s breath away as the low hanging clouds began to surge toward them.
“Triple red!” Mildred cried over the fresh round of rolling thunder. “Triple red! Run!”
Still nobody moved.
Deep shadow swept over them as the clouds blocked the sun.
Cursing, Mildred slogged over to Leeloo and Dean, grabbed their arms and tried to pull them away from the shoreline.
Too late.
The snow came down slanting, driven sideways by the scorching wind.
The pale yellow precipitation was the size of snowflakes, but it wasn’t snow, she realized at once. It was hard. More like tiny hail. Or bird shot. Hard enough to bounce a foot in the air as it hit the mud. The deluge of spores peppered Mildred’s plaited hair, head, face and shoulders. Instinctively she held her breath.
Dean and Leeloo went rigid under her hands. Though she used all of her strength, she couldn’t budge them. They seemed to weigh a thousand pounds each, their feet rooted to the earth. When Mildred took in the expressions on the children’s faces, she was horrorstruck. Their mouths hung down slack, their eyes open wide, the pupils hugely dilated.
There was something in the snow, she thought, or whatever the hell it was. Something bad.
Mildred knew if she was going to help Dean and Leeloo, if she was going to help any of her friends, she had to get clear of the downpour. She had to escape its effects and regroup. The deep mud sucked at her boots as she tried to run from the bank, which made her exert more energy and burn more of her limited air.
The cloud moved with her, tracking her.
And along with it came the pale snow.
Mildred looked back over her shoulder and through the blizzard saw Ryan coming, on the double. He had reached the start of the shoreline and was hurling himself through the muck. She wanted to wave him off, but what with the thunder and the heavy downfall, he was still too far away for her to warn. And he was way too far away to help her.