John Birmingham: After America

"A risk of flash flood, you think?" the Mormon asked.

"There is a lot of rain in that storm," Miguel said.

The protests of the cattle grew more insistent as lightning strobed through the huge, evil-looking bank of cloud and the trailing thunder grew noticeably louder than before. Miguel could see all the riders turning in their saddles to examine the spectacle as the shadow of the front fell over the tail end of the herd. His dogs began barking, and he called out harshly to them to be quiet. He did not need them spooking the herd any worse than it was already. Sofia, he was glad to see, gave him a querying glance before edging her horse onto slightly higher ground. She appeared to call to Miss Jessup to follow her, and the former restaurant woman did just that.

The rapid clip-clop of thudding hooves preceded Willem D'Age's approach at speed. He and Aronson acknowledged each other with brief nods before D'Age spoke up.

"I think it might be best if we moved the herd and ourselves to the nearest high ground," he said.

"Miguel feels the same," Aronson replied, "but of course on high ground we'll be exposed to the danger of lightning strikes."

Miguel waved off that point.

"That is a concern, Aronson, but a very small one. There is a chance of being hit by lightning but a certainty that many of these animals will drown, and us with them, if this valley floods."

The storm seemed to emphasize his point by unleashing a cannonade of thunder and lightning at that moment.

"How far is the nearest town or settlement; do we know?" Miguel asked. A cold breeze started up, bending long stalks of grass and a few scattered saplings to the west as the giant cell began to draw air into itself, as if to fill its lungs. The cattle, he noticed, had picked up their pace, trotting now, to match the increased urgency of their protesting calls.

"There is nothing close, nothing on high ground for a good twelve or thirteen miles," Aronson said, without consulting a map. "There's a small crossroads village there. I don't know whether it's on the floodplain, but the land does appear to rise in that direction."

He dipped his head to the north.

"Then we should hurry," Miguel said, looking to D'Age for support. He often found the younger Mormon to be the more cautious and reasonable of the two, perhaps as a result of the encounter at Crockett. Miguel snapped his reins and sent Flossie forward at a canter to match pace with the herd and the other riders.

The storm front passed over the sun then, snuffing it out and causing an almost startling drop in temperature. The first real crack of thunder split the sky, and the cattle started moving at speed, the drumming of their hooves becoming a frenzied tattoo. Another quick glance across the vast, seething river of mottled brown cowhide and bobbing longhorns found Sofia and Trudi turned around in their saddles, watching the storm race toward them. His daughter caught him staring at her and gave him a thumbs-up. Whips cracked and outriders yelled, attempting to keep the mob together. Adam and Orin galloped past him, doing their bit. It was no small thing herding thousands of cattle that were already spooked and this close to stampeding in panic. He wished he was over with Sofia. And Trudi, too. She was unusual. Not at all right, yet he could not help but warm to her. The Mormons were good men and women, but by the Blessed Virgin they were a tightly stitched bunch, and Miguel, for all his own hard exterior, did enjoy the company of people who knew how to enjoy themselves.

The flash of lightning and the hard-edged peal of thunder were nearly simultaneous. He felt rain on his face, a few droplets at first but quickening to a downpour that slapped down on them with real force. He was drenched through within seconds by the cold, stinging rain. And then it stopped abruptly, and a sickly green light lay over the valley floor, flattening the scene, as though he were riding into a photograph in a book.

Uh-oh, he thought.

The first hailstone fell as a single white rock, bouncing off Flossie's sweat-streaked shoulders. He just had time to hunker down and cinch the drawstring on his Stetson so that it sat tightly before a huge white fist smashed down on them all, a sudden roaring storm of ice that slammed into the earth, raising a shrieking, braying protest from the cattle, and nearly unseating the rider in front of Miguel with shock.

The vaquero spurred forward at a gallop, ignoring the stinging, burning pain of an Old Testament stoning from above. He recognized D'Age ahead of him, about to tumble from the saddle. Flossie was streaking forward at her top speed now, and Miguel was drawing on decades of horsemanship to maintain his balance. He drew up beside the Mormon and saw the fear in his face, the terror of having lost control of a big beast, compounded by the pounding riot of the stampede a few feet away.

Yes, the cattle had gone over now. No longer a controlled herd but a fear-shot panicking mob, barreling forward, plowing under any of their own number that fell, their cries like the horns of a thousand ghost trains. Miguel leaned across the gap between his horse and D'Age's, precariously teetering on the edge of his balance. He grabbed at the other man's reins and took a firm grip on the first attempt, applying hard but steady pressure, letting the animal know that it was under the control of a higher power. Calming it. Steadying it.

The horse never slowed. It was caught in the flow of the great mass of flesh up the valley floor, but after a few moments Miguel felt its wild terror and abandon subside noticeably.

"Take the reins," he yelled at D'Age, and for a wonder, the man did so, getting his own fear under control, too.

He tried to find Sofia in the storm, but there was simply no chance. He could see no more than a few yards in any direction. He prayed as he had not prayed since the murder of his family that she would be all right. Truthfully, he had no faith in prayer anymore, but the Hail Marys and the pleas to look after his only surviving child arose unbidden, anyway.

Without warning, the hailstorm transitioned to a ferocious downpour, and visibility contracted to just a few feet. A howling banshee wind bit down on them, blowing the gray sheets of water horizontal. Miguel could feel himself being pushed forward by the strength of the wind and water. It shrieked in his ears and lashed at every exposed inch of skin, burning like acid.

Even the uproar of the stampede faded beneath the monstrous assault of the storm.

He looked about for his dogs but could see them nowhere. He could see very little indeed.

He hoped they had just fallen behind, unable to keep up. They were well trained and would not have let themselves get close enough to be trampled, but he could not still the anxious rodent of fear he felt gnawing at his guts.

A fat white bolt of pure electric energy speared into the ground not fifty yards away. He was certain he heard the wet air fizzle and split apart a microsecond before the blinding light seemed to turn the whole world into an X-ray display. The crash of thunder was enormous, enough to swallow whole planets, let alone the tiny creatures running back and forth across the land. He felt the reverberation of the sonic boom deep inside his chest, like a cathedral bell tolling, making his nuts contract in fright.

A single longhorn peeled away from the mass and took off at a right angle to it. Flossie all but reared up and dismounted him, but at the last moment she veered and threaded herself around the moving obstacle. He flowed with the horse, gripping with his thighs. So closely bonded was he with the animal that he felt the ground change under her hooves. Her grip on the soil became less sure, and he looked down and saw that Flossie was throwing up great geysers of water as she hammered up the valley.