The chem storm that they’d glimpsed ahead of them seemed to be moving slowly closer, with the lightning more frequent and the claps of thunder following more closely on its heels. The wind had risen, sighing dustily through the open windows of the cautiously advancing 4×4.
“Think we should stop?” Krysty asked, sitting on the far end of the spacious front seat, the occasional flashes bringing out the fiery reds and golds of her unique hair.
Ryan shook his head. “Haven’t seen anything worth a spit for shelter for the rest of the night. Wag like this’ll be strong enough to take any kind of weather. We get flash floods, then we just halt for a while until it subsides.”
Doc had been sleeping in the back, snoring like a distant buzz saw. Now a bump from the front axle jerked him awake. “By the Three! I thought myself in the famed city of Eldorado, reclining upon a couch of beaten gold while dusky maidens fed me iced grapes.” He wiped ineffectually at the dusty window. “Are we there?” he asked. “Then again, I think that I am not certain just where ‘there’ is. Or whether it is the same as ‘here.’ Or whether both are metaphysical concepts being far beyond the reach of most Cro-Magnon anthropoids.”
His weird, typically muddled pronouncement silenced everyone, and for the next three or four miles nobody spoke.
THE FIRST HEAVY DROPS of rain puddled on the windshield, drumming on the reinforced roof of the wag.
“Here it comes,” Mildred said, leaning forward, resting her arms on the back of Krysty’s seat. “Least it might lay the dust and clean the air a little. Been too hot and too dry for too long for me.”
“Yeah, me too,” Krysty agreed.
The storm intensified. “Hey, Ryan! Think we should”
“Stop?” He eased off the gas and slipped the vehicle into Park, pulling on the brake and switching off the engine. “Yeah, I think we should stop.”
The thunder was suddenly all around them, shaking the vehicle with its shocking force, and the lightning was so bright and constant that you could have read a book through it. Purple, pink and silver, in sheets and jagged daggers, it forked all around them, dropping the temperature by fifteen degrees and filling the air with the unforgettable stench of ozone.
And the rain came down in a pounding shroud, cutting visibility to less than ten feet. Ryan leaned forward and switched off the lights. “Might as well save the battery,” he said. “Nothing to see out there.”
THE WAG HAD BEEN BUILT to handle all sorts of rough, off-road terrain, but it wouldn’t cope with suddenly slipping into a black hole in the highway or sliding off the gradient into some unseen foaming river.
The storm showed no signs of passing; indeed, it seemed to be still gathering strength. The wind was howling like a banshee, making the vehicle roll and rock from side to side, like an aspen in a hurricane. It felt as though some demonic forces were beneath it, trying to turn it over. Ryan could just make out a wide stream, inches deep, flowing beneath the wag, occasionally strong enough to move it a little. There seemed to be a sheer drop to the right, but he couldn’t be certain.
The thunder was constant, the lightning slicing into the hills op both sides of the muddied trail.
And the rain sheeted down, in a ceaseless roar on the metal roof of the wag, streaming over the windows.
“Might as well try and get some sleep here,” Ryan said. “We’re going nowhere for a spell.”
HE HAD BEEN in a dark dream, walking through a forest with no sunshine and a ceaseless drizzle of fine rain that soaked through the clothes and chilled the bones.
He blinked his good eye open, sitting upright for a moment, wondering what it was that had jerked him awake.
“Whoa,” he whispered, glancing around in the dazzling bursts of lightning to make sure all the sec locks were snapped shut and everyone was fast asleep.
He checked the chron, seeing that it was a few minutes after one. He’d been asleep for less than a quarter hour, and the storm still raged all around them.