“See what I mean?” Doc asked.
For the next couple of hours, nobody talked much. Silence lay upon the arid vista of emptiness with a crushing hand. Then, from far off, came a sound, a faint, moaning wail. Jak jogged forward to join Ryan. He sniffed the air. Ryan glanced at the albino teenager, feeling worry grow within him.
“Storm coming,” Jak said. He pointed northward. “That way.”
Ryan sighed, his worst fear realized. “How long?”
“Hour, mebbe. More, mebbe. Less, mebbe.”
Ryan ground his teeth. He had been caught in desert storms before. The lingering effects of sky-dark still made the weather not only unpredictable, but vicious. Some peculiar geothermals in Deathlands attracted such bizarre weather as 250-mile-per-hour dust storms. Regardless, he knew that when a storm wind howled across the desert, the only thing to do was to keep moving. If you didn’t, you were dead and buried in minutes.
He announced a halt and directed his companions to drape themselves in the bed linens and told them to use belts and straps to keep themselves connected to one another.
“We’ll lose the trail when the wind hits,” Krysty said.
J.B. nodded tersely. “Yeah. But so far, it’s been heading northwest. We’ll just keep on moving in that direction.”
After everyone was attired in the makeshift robes, they got under way. This time, Doc kept up with the others. Inside of the hour, the distant moan built to a dry, shrieking wail that filled the whole sky. They saw the first tiny dust whirls, lifting and dancing across the terrain.
They moved in an erratic, jerking pattern, gathering strength from one another. The swirls merged, then the wind screamed, rising in pitch. Without warning, the storm struck them broadside, blinding the sky with dust, tearing at everything in its path with a clawing fury. Ryan covered his lower face with a scrap of sheet and turned toward Krysty, making sure she held on to her end of the belt in his hand. She was only a few feet away, but almost obscured by the veil of mingled sand and dust.
The wind roared around them, setting their sheets to flapping like the wings of giant, ungainly birds. At the top of his voice, Ryan roared, “Keep moving!” He doubted if anyone heard him.
The storm slapped at them, pushed them as they staggered and stumbled. Wind-driven grains of sand scoured the exposed part of their bodies like a fiery lash. Blinded, half-deafened and half-suffocated, they fought their way onward, struggling to gain a foot, then a yard. No sight of anything was possible in the swirling, howling inferno. The sand underfoot rolled like water, and it was all Ryan could do to maintain his balance. The ache of his bruises, which had faded somewhat over the past few hours, returned with a vengeance. His muscles throbbed, and he was afraid if he so much as paused, they would seize altogether.
They kept walking as if through a nightmare. Ryan focused on a single necessity: to survive, they had to keep moving. So they plodded onward, linked together, ears filled with the shriek of the wind, eyes slitted but seeing nothing but a never ending curtain of grit. His feet dragged, and he kept himself from falling only by a savage effort of will.
Ryan’s head began to flash visions of the snowcapped mountains and clear, rushing streams of Ti-Ra’-Wa. Krysty lurched into his back, and he reached behind him to give her hand a reassuring squeeze.
His body lost all feeling, numb to every sensation except putting one foot in front of the other. One minute, he was sure the wind was dropping; the next, it seemed to increase his ferocity.
After an eternity, he fancied the storm was crying his name. He paid no attention, shambling and reeling forward. A heavy weight dragged against the belt wrapped around his wrist, yanking him backward. He turned blindly to help Krysty up from where he was sure she had fallen. Then he realized it wasn’t the wind calling his name, but Krysty.
He pawed the sheet from his face and gingerly inhaled a deep breath. The air was clear and tranquil. The wind had dropped, and the air around him was no longer clogged with dust and sand.