His back and head began to sting as the rain turned to hail, pebbles of ice rattling viciously on the stones around him. Ryan’s mind turned to tales he’d heard around the campfires of the war wags, of hailstorms so cataclysmic that men had been killed, their bodies smashed to pulp.
This time it was unpleasant but mercifully brief, the hail turning back again to the torrential rain.
In the blinding storm Ryan was aware of something moving past him, catching a glimpse of a streaming neck and rolling eyes, hooves flailing at the slippery road, then vanishing into the murk. There hadn’t been enough time for him to make out which of the horses it had been.
He was also aware of something else. Though he was soaked from top to toe, there was a tugging chill around his ankles that whispered problems. Peering down Ryan was able to make out a stream of bloodred mud flowing over his boots, already halfway up to his knees.
It prompted him to think about the topography they’d been riding throughsteep slopes to the right and then falling away toward a riverbed on their left side. Classic territory for a flash flood.
He hung on to the reins, trying to stop his mount from spooking, only too aware that a lost horse in this harsh terrain would be more or less the same as a .45 round through the back of the neck.
Suddenly, like a faucet being turned off, the rain stopped and the wind eased. The lightning held its breath and the thunder was silenced. It was an eerie moment.
A moment that become almost supernatural.
In that great stillness Ryan distinctly heard a sound he’d only ever heard a few times in his life, on old vids, but a haunting noise that one could never forget or mistake.
Far-off, echoing, came the heart-chilling sound of a locomotive whistle.
But there was no time to try to think about that enigma as the eye of the hurricane passed over and the rain and wind came back with the same vicious force. Lightning again curtained the land in silver lace and the thunder beat at the stones.
The horse tugged at him, taking a few skittering steps forward, pulling Ryan remorselessly with it. His boots dug furrows through the muddy water, which was now only just below his knees.
He thought for a moment that he heard someone screaming, a man in desperation, or a woman calling for help. The others had been in front of him when the rains struck, but by now they could be anywhere. Certainly one of them had lost a horse. But the others weren’t likely to be in much better straits.
The long gun strapped across Ryan’s shoulders limited his movements and made him clumsy. He considered trying to swing himself back up into the saddle, but the risk of a fall was too great.
The horse jerked its head suddenly, heaving Ryan off his feet, trailing helplessly after the powerful animal.
Above the noise of the thunder he heard a pounding roar. Ryan knew what it meant, and there was nothing he could do about it. A moment later the horse was knocked off its feet and Ryan went with it, freezing water closing over his head.
Chapter Nine
“ME THINKS WHAT PAIN it is to drown,” Doc said in his usual sonorous, declamatory voice, the words ringing across the desert.
“Yeah. Fucking right,” Jak agreed, running his bony fingers through the matted sandy tangle of once-white hair.
“Never was much of an expert at swimming,” Mildred complained. “There’s something about the way the fat’s distributed through my body.”
Krysty was emulating Jak, muttering as her nails snagged in her lank hair. “I really thought I was done for.”
J.B. had laid his sodden hat to dry on a sunbaked boulder, rubbing at his shoulder where the force of the flash flood had ripped away his Heckler amp; Koch MP-7 SD-8 and carried it off. “Only just got that blaster,” he said, shaking his head. “Nice rifle. Integral silencer. Laser-optic sight. Nice feel. Still, at least I took off my glasses and put them safe before that big red wave came down the pike and hit us.”