Strontium Swamp. James Axler

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 temporarily effective. At least it prevented the sand overhead from burying them, as they became aware of the weight increasing with the buildup of sand on top of their makeshift shelter. It was stiflingly hot, and sand still moved around their bodies. No one would say, but it occurred to all of them that they could possibly be making their own burial ground.

      As they seemed to fall deeper into the sand, it became difficult to tell when—or if—the storm subsided.

      KRYSTY AND JAK HAD stumbled blindly into each other as the storm began to hit, each searching for the other, and for the rest of their companions. With no place to hide, and no time to move, the storm had taken all of them unaware. Jak cursed himself for not realizing the changes in the air before the others. His instincts dulled just that little too far by the rigors of the day.

      Wordlessly, unwilling to waste energy in the middle of such a crisis, and unable to make herself heard above the roar of the storm, Krysty clutched at Jak, pulling him to her as they stumbled and fell. Feeling the acid rain hit her skin, her air coiled tightly to her neck and scalp as the danger increased, Krysty shrugged out of her long fur coat and draped it over herself and Jak, hoping that the chem rain would pass over before enough had fallen to eat through the fur and hide of the coat. They dug themselves into the sands, constantly fighting the shifts that threatened to overwhelm and bury them, rather than provide protection. The coat, just about covering the pair of them where it had been spread out, acted as a buffer between their prone bodies and the raging wind, sand and rain above. It grew heavier as the shifting surface began to cover them, and their arms ached from trying to hold it up just enough to give them some kind of cover without it smothering them.

      It was a question of playing odds. Would the storm subside before their muscles finally gave out under the strain?

      THE WHISPERING SANDS came from over his shoulder. Ryan whirled and scanned the dunes behind him, the light just good enough for him to be able to see any movement, the sand acting as a reflector to the crescent moon.

      About 150 yards away there was a shifting on the surface, as though a bank of sand was rising up out of the mass. Ryan began to walk toward it, unable to move at a faster pace because of the way his feet sank into the loose sand, up to and beyond his ankles.

      The sand wall dissolved in a cloud of scattering grains as two figures emerged from behind a blanket of fur, shaking off the sand that had sought to entomb them.

      â€œKrysty, Jak,” Ryan yelled, his voice sounding strangely alien and harsh in the silence of the night.

      â€œRyan, what fuck that?” Jak grinned, relieved to see at least one other of their companions was still alive—come to that, glad that he had managed to survive the storm.

      â€œWeirdest shit I’ve seen for a long time,” Ryan replied, shaking his head. “Come and gone, just like that.”

      â€œJust like us, almost,” Krysty put in, pulling the coat around herself to keep out the chill of the desert night. “Gaia, you look like shit, lover,” she continued, noting how Ryan’s exposed areas of skin had been blasted raw by the sand and the chem rain.

      â€œThanks for pointing that out,” he said wryly. “Feels like it, too. Just about managed to keep covered long enough to stop the worst, I guess. Lucky to make it out.”

      â€œYeah. Mebbe only ones,” Jak mused, looking around and flexing his aching limbs, trying to get the cramp out of them.

      â€œIf we did it, Mildred and J.B. must have. Mebbe they’re with Doc,” Krysty suggested, hardly daring to voice the opinion that Doc was the least likely to have made it on his own.

      â€œBastard thing of it is, where would they be?” Ryan asked, scanning the bland and unremitting wastes of the desert.

      â€œYou end up there,” Jak mused, indicating the disturbed sands where Ryan had dug himself out, “And us here,” he continued, indicating their own patch of desert. “Figure same radius others. Mebbe spread out, search.”

      Ryan agreed. “It’s all we can do, I guess.”

      The friends began to spread out and search in an arc, moving in wider spirals from their beginning. In truth, no one knew exactly what they were looking for. The lanes of the desert had been altered then smoothed by the storm, so unless their friends were attempting to dig out—assuming even that they were alive—then there was no way of knowing where they lay. Or even if they were together, or had been separated.

      Tired and aching, the search was a struggle. Tired legs tried to deal with the sucking sands