Prophecy by James Axler

material, and there was silence beyond the veil it provided.
    One good thing—the storm had ceased. As the sheet slid down her body, she propped herself up on her elbows and looked around.
    The sun was on the rise. It had to be morning, she thought. The sky was as it had been the afternoon before, clear, yet tinged with strange coloring. There was no sign that a storm had swept across them.
    More importantly, there was no sign of the wag or their fellow travelers.
    Mildred got to her feet. Cramp ached and bit into her calves, but she stamped it out. The sound of her feet roused J.B., who mumbled and grumbled his way to the surface of waking while she looked around.
    â€œI’ll tell you something, John. We’re well and truly screwed.”
    â€œI’ve always liked your positive outlook,’ the Armorer husked wryly as he, too, rose to his feet and joined her.
    The land that spread in a vista around them was empty and impassive. Flat plainlands spread to all corners of the horizon, broken only by the distant plateaus of hill and mountain ranges, spread unevenly. In between these distant markers and the place where they stood was little except the occasional patch of scrub and rock, and those ridges in the earth that were invisible to the naked eye.
    â€œHow the hell did we manage to come so far that we’ve lost sight of the others?” Mildred whispered.
    J.B. didn’t answer for a moment. He scanned the horizon, turning a full 360 degrees.
    â€œIt shouldn’t be possible,” he said finally.
    â€œYeah, well, I don’t see anyone else. And what happened to us yesterday shouldn’t have happened, either. But it did. The question now is how we’re going to find them again. Or anything, come to that.”
    J.B. was lost in thought, gathering in the sheet that had served them so well. Replacing it in his backpack, he pulled out his minisextant.
    â€œI’ll see if I can work out how much we’ve moved,’ he murmured as he took a reading and ran calculations in his head. Then, after a short pause, he added, “It doesn’t add up. According to my calculations, we must have walked about four miles. And we should still be able to see the wag.”
    Mildred stared at him. J.B. was rarely mistaken on such matters.
    â€œHow can we have come that far? There wasn’t enough time…at least, it didn’t seem like it was that long.” The more she thought about it, the less sense the previous day was beginning to make. “So where’s Doc? Where the hell can that wag have been hidden?”
    J.B. just shook his head. He was as baffled as Mildred. The only thing he could think of was to take action. Experience taught him that action usually started a chain of events.
    â€œI dunno about Doc. Mebbe we’ll find him, mebbethe old bastard really has got himself lost this time. But if we start to go that way—” he indicated a south-southeast direction “—and keep on going, we should hit where the wag is supposed to be. Mebbe Ryan got it going again, and they’ve headed off in the wrong direction trying to find us. If so, then mebbe we’ll find some tracks to follow.’
    Mildred shrugged. As a plan, it wasn’t the best she’d ever heard. But right now, she couldn’t come up with anything better.
    Stopping only to eat from some self-heats that they carried as emergency rations, and sipping sparingly from their canteens, they began the long trek back in the direction that J.B. had determined had been their point of departure.
    With every yard that they covered, Mildred expected to see a dust-covered bump on the ground that would turn out to be Doc, alive or having gone to face the judgment of which he had been ranting when last seen. She scanned the land around with every step, but there was no sign. Perhaps the old buzzard had managed to survive yet again.
    They trudged across the hard-packed plain, small zephyrs of