“What a load of stinking shit,” muttered Finnegan. “They look like little fucking boxes, right next to some more fucking little concrete boxes and some more right over there.”
Doc continued on. “The community center at O’Brien and Stewart features Miami Beach styling with swimnasium, tennisarium, sun deck and crafted gabled shingled roofs. Live Oak Crescent is simply the state of the top art in living convenience. Realistically priced, beginning at 250,000.”
“Is that a lot of jack, Doc?” asked J.B, “Seems so to me,” replied the old man. “Upon my soul, but this must have been going on just before the ultimate madness wiped away our world. Toward the end of the year 2000. Yes, Mr. Dix, I should have said a quarter of a million greenbacks was a lot of jack, even then.”
Ryan was trying to make sense of three or four lines at the bottom of the notice, set in tiny print. He read the lines over to himself.
“Qualified buyers, based on 3.2 deposit monthly Pamp;I payments for years one thru fifteen oflow 1.8 loan fee. The APR is 17.35. Ask our salespersons for details of zoning, fees and state and federal association costings and taxes. Where applicable.”
It might as well have been written in Russian for all the sense it made to him.
“You can see where we are and where the place stretches out. There’s the center of the ville,” said J.B., pointing to where the roads seemed to converge on something called the Senator Fitzgerald Hackensacker Memorial Shopping Mall.
Most of the main landmarks in West Lowellton were on the map the Counselor Zak Robbins Playpark, near the narrow river that wound through the ville; the Charles C. Garrett Olympic Pool and Tennisarium; the Neal R. Langholm Golf Course, straddling the river. The main shopping area was shaded with a faded purple overlay, and the location of several motels was shown, including the Snowy Egret on the far side of town, near where West Lowellton oozed out from the edges of Lafayette. A Holiday Inn was only a half mile or so from the dramatic crimson arrow with the message YOU ARE HERE.
“First time in years I’ve known where I am,” commented Ryan Cawdor.
The houses around them were mainly single-story, stained green with mosses and lichen. Most of their windows and doors were still intact, though several of the roofs had collapsed where damp had seeped in and rotted the supporting timbers. “Where do we go?” Lori asked. “I figure that one of them motels could be our prime target,” replied Doc. “From the excellent state of these buildings, it’s reasonable to believe they might be more than adequate for shelter.”
Ryan shook his head. “I just don’t believe this place. Doc, you got knowledge like no man I ever met. I never seen houses all together like this from before the long cold time. How come it? How?”
“Neutron missiles, like we figured. They seed the land with them, and the physical structures aren’t hardly touched. Within about ten days, ninety-eight percent of living creatures are on their way across the dark river from which there is no returning.”
“You mean they fucking die, Doc?” said Finn. “Yes, Mr. Finnegan. That is what I mean.”
“Then what’s happened to all the fucking bodies?”
AS THE BRIGHT, dry summery morning progressed, they , saw them everywhere. Tumbled, scattered bones on the edges of the sidewalks. On porches. In gardens. Bits of ivory among the overwhelming shades of green. Here and there some creatures of the nearby wild had feasted on the bodies, ripping apart the skeletons. There might be a single long, straight femur, its end gnawed smooth. Or a skull, grinning emptily, yards from the skeleton it had once topped.
“It’s a boneyard,” said J.B,
“Yeah. I seen bodies, dried up like old leather, in some of the redoubts we found over the years with the Trader. You know?”
“Sure. Like husks. Lips peeled off yellow teeth. All of em grinning at us. I recall that. But this is just bones, white as snow.”
It was an unusually long speech for the phlegmatic Armorer. But it was a sight to stir anyone’s imagination.