“What the hell is happening?” Carver shouts.
Prakesh can barely hear him. It’s not just the roaring wind: it’s the trees. The trunks are creaking, the branches grinding together. The cacophony is unbelievable. The air is a swirling maelstrom of twigs and dead leaves, scratching at his face.
Microclimates, Prakesh thinks. Extreme weather. We should have expected this. We should have prepared for it. He wants to shout all of this to Carver, but there’s no point. They have to find shelter, and they have to find it soon.
All three of them–Prakesh, Clay and Carver–are bent over, leaning hard into the wind. Prakesh glances back at Clay. The man’s eyes are screwed shut, his mouth set in a thin line, like he’s trying to pretend this isn’t happening. Prakesh takes a step, then another, willing his frozen muscles to work. How strong is this wind? Sixty miles an hour? Seventy?
Carver is the first to lose his footing. He skids backwards, his feet sliding along the ground as if it’s turned to ice. Then he tumbles over backwards, somersaulting, face frozen in surprise. Prakesh throws himself to the ground just before Carver smashes into him–he feels Carver’s feet thump across his back, a hand scrabbling at his jacket.
He looks up to see Carver slam headlong into Clay. Somehow, Carver manages to hold on, grabbing him by the ankle. It stops him moving. He motions Clay to stay put, so they expose as little as possible to the wind. Smart, Prakesh thinks. If they don’t freeze to death, then they might just make it through this storm. He makes himself stay down, too, tries to control his shivering.
There’s a crunch. Prakesh raises his head a fraction, squinting against the icy rush of air.
A huge branch is tumbling towards them. It’s coming end over end, ripping up the ground, and it’s heading right for Carver and Clay.
They haven’t seen it. They’ve both got their heads down. Prakesh shouts a warning, but it’s lost under the wind. The branch is bouncing off the other trees, gaining momentum, smashing its way towards them.
For a second, he’s amazed that they can’t hear it, that they haven’t noticed the presence of something that big and that destructive. Then he’s moving, staying low, leading with his shoulder. A second later, he connects with Clay, his numb body barely registering the impact. Then he and Clay collide with Carver, and all three of them tangle up, a chaotic mix of limbs and dirt and wind. The crunching and cracking is deafening now.
The last thing Prakesh sees is the branch, rushing towards them. He closes his eyes, waiting for it to hit.
A bough rips across Prakesh’s cheek, scratching his skin, drawing blood. Then the air rushes back into the space above them. The branch crashes further into the forest, finally wedging itself against another tree, ten feet off the ground.
The wind drops a fraction, just enough so that Prakesh can raise his head without feeling like the muscles in his neck are going to snap.
“Come on!” he shouts. He doesn’t know if the other two can hear him, and he doesn’t wait to find out. The ground is still a gentle slope, and Prakesh propels himself down it, the wind at his back. It’s all he can do to keep his balance. There has to be a dip in the landscape, a large rock, anything that will get them out of the wind. Carver and Clay have caught up, running alongside him.
Abruptly, the ground levels out. Prakesh looks around, and for a moment he doesn’t understand where they are. The uneven forest terrain has given way to hard-packed ground. It’s a strip, around ten feet wide, stretching away into the darkness on their left and right.
Prakesh’s body is firing on all cylinders, his heart hammering in his chest. He knows the strip is man-made, but he can’t seem to think beyond that. Doesn’t matter. They won’t find shelter, not here, not out in the open. He yells for Carver to keep going.
Lights explode out of the darkness.
Two huge yellow circles, four feet off the ground, heading right for him. It’s such a strange sight, so alien, that all three of them freeze. It’s only in the last instant that Prakesh moves. He throws himself to the side, his hands out in front of him, but he’s much too late. It’s going to crush them.
There’s a grinding screech. The lights swing to the side, and whatever is behind them turns sideways. Prakesh sees wheels spinning, kicking up huge clouds of dust which are instantly whipped away by the wind.
The thing comes to a skidding halt, rocking gently from side to side. It’s solid enough to resist the wind–Prakesh can almost see the air skating over the top of it. It’s like the vehicle that Carver put together on Outer Earth, only bigger. This one has a fully enclosed body, squat and boxy, with a slightly angled back. The wheels are enormous, resting in the tracks the thing made when it skidded sideways.
One of the doors on the side of the vehicle flies open. The figure in it is silhouetted by the interior lights.
“Get in!” the figure shouts.