Strontium Swamp. James Axler

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      Chapter Two

      Ryan Cawdor shuddered and groaned as he raised himself slowly, painfully, from the tomb of sand he had made for himself. Every part of his body was in pain, and parts of his skin felt as though they would slither from his flesh at the slightest touch. He was thankful that there had been no open wounds for the rain to run into, which would have been too painful to contemplate.

      He looked around, trying to locate the others, there was no sign of them. No sign of any other life at all. And no sign of the storm, which had blown over as quickly as it had arrived. The sky above was clear, the stars illuminating the dark, the crescent moon casting a pale light over the sands, which now seemed as calm as they had before the storm hit, as flat and undulating, and showed no relation to the whirling clouds of flaying grit that had battered him just a short time before.

      They were also completely unrecognizable as the sands on which he had stood before the storm. Although there had been no real landmarks by which to judge, the shape of the dunes had become familiar as they had recced the area. Now, the landscape was unrecognizable, the sands whipped into new contours by the currents of the mistrals and gales of the chem storm. Ryan could be in the same place as before, or he could have been swept along in the tide of the sand, landing miles from where he began. He had no way of knowing. He hadn’t felt as though he had been moving, and yet the sands had been shifting around him. Where would his movement begin and the sands end? Or vice versa?

      â€œFireblast and fuck it,” he murmured to himself, sinking to his haunches. He was tired beyond belief, every muscle ached, and his head felt as though it had been pounded by a thousand hammers: a legacy of dehydration and salt loss as much as the storm.

      He was alone, with no sign of his companions. The quiet of the night was eerie and unearthly. If he could get past the pounding in his skull, the sound of blood hammering in his ears, then there was nothing beyond. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard the sounds of silence…if ever.

      It meant that the slightest sound would register, however, so Ryan’s body tensed, and he whirled around as quickly as his protesting muscles would allow when he heard the whispering of shifting sands from somewhere over his left shoulder.

      WHEN THE STORM HIT, Mildred’s first thought was not for herself, but for Doc Tanner. For all that she would argue with, and insult the older man, she was aware that he was the most vulnerable of them at this moment. And more than that, she shared with Doc something that none of the others could ever truly understand. Neither of them belonged to this time; they had been thrown into the Deathlands by freaks of chance and designs of evil, both taken from their own times in differing ways and made exiles against their wills. It wasn’t something they ever spoke of, but Mildred knew that if Doc bought the farm, she would feel just that bit more alone in a way that could never be truly explained.

      Doc had been raised on one elbow when the storm hit, and before the first heavy drops of rain hit him, Mildred had thrown herself down to cover him.

      â€œMadam, contain yourself,” Doc yelled in bewildered tones. “I am not that much of an invalid that I need to be treated this way.”

      â€œShut up and dig, you old fool, as deep as you can,” Mildred replied, her eyes flashing at him.

      â€œThat’s more like it,” he countered in a milder tone, as he turned to join her in digging into the sand. “I fail to see that this will be of much practical use to us, but I suppose it is all we can do,” he continued, raising his voice above the rapidly growing winds.

      â€œSave your breath for when you need it,” Mildred snapped back.

      J.B. stumbled on them by chance. Blinded by the flying sand, trying to shield his face from the rain as it suddenly roared from the heavens, he turned and stumbled over the backpacks they had earlier set up to act as a sun-break for Doc, falling into the hollow trench that Mildred and Doc were digging for themselves.

      â€œNice of you to drop in, John,” Mildred yelled, unable to prevent herself cracking the gag despite the situation.

      â€œNo time to be funny,” J.B. snapped sourly. “Lost the others. Dig and use these to cover us,” he yelled as tersely as possibly, pulling one of his canvas bags over the top of them as they scrabbled in the sand.

      It was hard to tell exactly what was happening in the narrow trench, but all three of them used their backs to try to reinforce a sand wall, giving themselves a small, clear area of breathing space in the middle. The bags were dragged over the top of them to form a makeshift roof, not as stable as any of them would like, but nonetheless СКАЧАТЬ