Chapter Two

 

 

 

Doc Tanner wasn't essentially a man of violent and furious action. But be was up and across the porch and had swung a good solid haymaker at Trader's jaw before anyone could try to stop him.

 

Trader parried it without much difficulty, though he was taken aback at the speed of the old man's response. "Just hold off," he grunted.

 

"You damned dog!"

 

"What was that for, Trader?" Abe asked.

 

Neither Ryan nor J.B. had moved. They'd ridden enough miles with Trader to know that he wasn't a man to do something like that without having a good reasonor at least thinking that he had a good reason.

 

Doc stood in front of Trader, his fists clenched, eyes wide with anger. "You dare to strike down a defenseless woman like that?"

 

"I'm all right," Sukie muttered. She was on her hands and knees, head down, a line of blood, black in the lamplight, trickling from either her nose or her mouth.

 

Doc was blind with anger. He looked around and saw his ebony sword stick lying by the bench seat. He snatched it up, twisted the silver lion's-head hilt and withdrew the slender rapier. "I'll cut your damned throat open," he snarled.

 

Trader held the Armalite in his left hand, offering no threat with it. "Back off, Doc."

 

"Back off! How dare you?"

 

"Just let me ask the woman a question. One question. If she gives me the truth straight off, then we'll all know just what has been going on around here." He paused. "And if she lies again, then I'll keep beating her until she decides to show some sense."

 

Doc took a shuffling step closer to Trader, the point of the sword weaving like the tongue of a snake. "And you consider that enough explanation, do you?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"Ryan?" Doc turned to his friends. "You go to the ends of the earth to bring back this this person and stand by as he insults my friend."

 

"Let him ask the question, Doc," Ryan said. "Then we'll all know what's happening."

 

Sukie had struggled into a fetal crouch. "Give me a hand up, Doc?"

 

He offered his left hand and pulled her upright, brushing dirt from her back and shoulders. He looked at the blood that came from a cut at the corner of her mouth. "Are you all right after that brutish attack?"

 

"Been better, Doc. Then again, I guess I also been a lot worse."

 

"What's this important question, Trader?" J.B. stared at his former leader. "You sure already?"

 

"Yeah. I'm sure already. Question's simple. What did you do with the note you found?"

 

"Upon my soul! This is intolerable, Trader. Susan has already told you there was no note back here."

 

"She lied."

 

"How do"

 

Trader was losing his temper. "Let her give me the answer, Doc. Let her look me direct in the eye and tell me that she didn't find some kind of message out here. Better yet, as it seems like she's your woman, you ask her, Doc. See if she can tell her lie to you."

 

"Sukie?" Doubt rode over the word. "Tell him the truth. Tell us all."

 

Her voice sounded flat and full. "I got a letter."

 

"How did you know, Trader?" Ryan asked. "You were looking at the door, real careful."

 

"Four small window tacks. One got a little bitty piece of ragged paper caught under it, like something had been ripped away. The nails weren't old or rusted, and it looked to me like the bit of paper was new."

 

Doc wasn't listening to the explanation. He stared at the woman, his mouth sagging, his whole body drooping. "You got the letter, Sukie? Then, why did"

 

"I saw it. Tore it down and stuck it straight into my pocket, Doc."

 

"You read it?" Ryan asked.

 

"No, sir, I haven't. There hasn't been a moment when I was able to do that."

 

"Why, Sukie?" Doc queried. "I find it impossible to come up with a satisfactory explanation."

 

"Easy. Liked you, Doc. You were kind to a lone woman. A woman wounded at that. You talked about your friends and how great they all were."

 

"I still do not really"

 

"Seemed like they'd gone. If you didn't know why, then you couldn't go after them. Then there'd be just you and me. What I wanted. That was what raced through my brain. Then Ryan and these other men came and it was too late. Caught in the teeth of my own stupe lie."

 

Doc turned away, shaking his head. "This is, I admit, a severe disappointment, madam."

 

"Doc, I" But he had stepped away from the porch, out of the circle of frail light from the oil lamps, and walked slowly into the darkness.

 

"Best that you give me the letter," Ryan said quietly. "Right now."

 

 

 

THE WRITING WAS undeniably Krysty Wroth'sthe neat, clipped letters, with a forceful lean forward. The note was written in dark blue ink on unlined handmade paper, with crinkled deckle edges, and dated the day before.

 

 

 

Hi, lover. You read this and you're home. So, welcome back. Or, it might more likely be Doc. Either way, you see we're gone. You read this and you might not yet have gone into the house. There'll be at least one corpse, a woman, whose name is Raelene Warren. Dead of untreatable rad sickness. Husband is Ronny Warren. Too sick to move. Mildred offered to put him beyond pain, but he refused. Seems he's in some kind of Christian-linked sect that doesn't believe in that stuff. So Jak left the over-and-under. He might still be this side of the black river. Might not.

 

 

They came a day or so ago with a wag that's out in the barn with two dying horses. We guessed it was advanced rad cancer, and the cause is what they called their "treasure," in the wag. Kind of sick, Ryan. (Or Doc.) It's a nuke missile, rotted and rusted and split from here back to sky dark, leaking a trail from the old silo where they found it. Dean reminds me that if it's Ryan or J.B. reading this that you'll mebbe have spotted your rad counters are going crazy.

 

Anyway, this place is poisoned. Too late to move the wag and the missile. Jak said we should go right away from here, and Mildred and I agree with him. So does Dean. We've already been exposed for too long as it is. We're packing and traveling light with saddle and pack animals, some supplies and blasters and stuff. We're heading south and west, into the hills.

 

Jak says to go eight miles south, past the old bauxite working. Trail west goes up, partly on a blacktop. Becomes a dirt road and forks. Take left fork, and it'll bring you out higher up, by the remains of a predark earth dam. Good water and pasture. We'll go straight there and wait a week before moving. If we move, we'll leave a message there. Doc, you might be along sooner. See you all soon, we hope. No time to bury the body. Sorry. Now get away as quick as you can. That's become a place of death and will be for a long while. Lots of love from us all, Krysty.

 

Ryan finished reading the note, then carefully folded the two pages and tucked them into a pocket. "Well, least we know the worst," he said.

 

"And the worst could be worse," J.B. agreed.

 

"I'm sorry," Sukie said quietly. "If I'd have read it myself, then I wouldn't have kept it hid."

 

Doc walked back into the light. "I heard what Krysty said. The longer that we remain here, the worse are our chances of getting away free from sickness."

 

"She say it was a nuke out in the barn?" Trader asked. "Might just go take me a look."

 

"I'll come with you," J.B. said. "Probably it isn't as badly damaged as they reckon."

 

Abe grinned, tugging at one end of his mustache. "Could trade it to some baron, someplace?"

 

"Probably what those two strangers were thinking," Ryan said. "Got them death."

 

"We should go, Doc," the woman whispered, taking a hesitant step toward the old man.

 

He looked past her, staring at the door of the house, with the four tiny metal rails. "We will go, madam. We will go and rejoin my friends."

 

"How about me?"

 

"Leave her to go her own way," Trader snapped. "Never trust her again."

 

"No." Ryan gave Sukie Smith one of his smiles, as rare as July snow. "Everyone can make a mistake. Krysty taught me that. You want to come along?"

 

"If Doc will"

 

"By the three Kennedys! While we stand here like Nantucket fishwives, the radiation is seeping into our eyes, hair, gums, blood and bones. Of course you are welcome to accompany us, Sukie."

 

Trader spit in the dirt, inches from her boots. "Damned if I understand this nicely-nicely shit! Comin' to look at this nuke, J.B., and you, Abe?"

 

"Sure," the Armorer replied, taking an oil lamp off the wall. "Then we move out. Best leave any food. It'll be tainted. Water in the well should be all right. Stock up on spare ammo, and then get out."

 

"I'll check on the dying man," Ryan said. "Doc, get what you want from your room."

 

"Can I help?" Sukie asked.

 

"Gas in the land wag. Fill her up. Probably be enough. Should be women's clothes in the house. Get what you want. We won't ever be back here."

 

 

 

J.B. LED TRADER and Abe back to the house in less than ten minutes.

 

"Krysty was ace on the line," the Armorer said. "Damaged, all right. Sooner we all get away from here, the better it'll be."

 

"The wag's fueled," Sukie announced. "But it took all the spare gas from the cans."

 

Ryan nodded. "Fine. Fifteen minutes for anyone to get what they want out of the house, then we leave here to find Krysty and the others."

 

"What about that poor devil in my room, Ryan?" Doc asked.

 

"I'll go see him."

 

"Burn the house," Trader suggested. "Best with a plague hot spot like this."

 

"Yeah," Abe agreed eagerly. "Want me to start setting the fires?"

 

Ryan shook his head. "No. Leave a notice on both doors. And nail one to the barn. Put them where the weather won't touch them. Big red warnings. You set a fire, and it'll spread the radiation for a hundred miles or more."

 

"Could bury the missile," J.B. said doubtfully. "Cut the rad emissions."

 

Doc snorted. "Stuff and nonsense, John Barrymore Dix! You know so much about weapons and yet you can suggest something as crassly foolish as that."

 

"Wouldn't take more than a half hour if we all got to it," Trader argued.

 

Doc pointed an angry finger at the other man. "I saw secret files on a big rad leak before skydark. They brought in eight hundred and ninety-two soldiers. Most of them were youngsters, in their teens and early twenties. There was a pile of radioactive material piled on the edge of a river. The lads were each given a pair of goggles, gloves and a shovel, then ordered to go out and run to this mound of rubble. Each man to take a single shovelful of the dirt and throw it into the river, then run back. That was all. One shovelful."

 

Trader sniffed. "So, what're you sayin' about it? I don't get you."

 

"Eight hundred and ninety-two young men."

 

"I heard you."

 

"Within less than two years seven hundred and sixty-eight were dead of various radiation-linked diseases. Virtually all of the rest were sick. Does that answer your question, Trader?"

 

"Sure. Yeah, sure it does," he replied, holding up both hands as though warding off a physical attack.

 

Ryan moved to the kitchen door, hesitating with his fingers touching the cold metal of the handle. "Doc, you and Sukie get some paper and do the notices. The rest of you check the wag and bring a couple of lamps. I'll go see to the man."

 

After the evening chill outside, the house retained the stuffiness and warmth of the day. The smell of decay and death seemed even stronger.

 

Ryan held the oil lamp in his left hand, entering what had been Doc's room. Ronny Warren lay in precisely the same position that he'd been in before, on his back, eyes shut. For a moment Ryan thought he spotted a glimmer of reflection from beneath the closed lids, but when he leaned nearer he decided that he'd been mistaken. After standing the light on the bedside table, he reached and tested the dying man's pulse.

 

He waited for several seconds, counting to himself. Even in the past half hour or so, it had slowed appreciably.

 

"Wasn't much of a treasure, was it?" he asked quietly.

 

The rise and fall of the chest was so slight as to be almost imperceptible.

 

Ryan weighed the options. There were only two, and they were both very simple. One was that he turn down the wick and walked out to join the others, the second choice to speed the man's passing.

 

Ryan's hand dropped to the butt of the SIG-Sauer, but bullets cost. It would take only a moment to draw the panga and slide it across Ronnie Warren's emaciated throat. But the one-eyed man felt an almost superstitious fear of having rad-poisoned blood on the clean steel of the cleaver.

 

He pulled up a handful of the blanket, careful not to touch any of the stains, then pressed it down hard over the man's face, pinching the nose between finger and thumb, the ball of his hand smothering the mouth.

 

The struggle was very small and very short.

 

Once it was over, Ryan turned down the wick of the lamp until the room was in total darkness. Then he turned on his heel and walked out to rejoin the others.