“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.
Chapter Three
The ruins of the bauxite diggings were just visible in the ghostly gleam of the rising moon, as were the stark ribs of ancient wagons, sunk deep in the drifted sand, with the rusted rims of the old wheels.
Only one of the front lights on the land wag was working, and Abe, in the cab, kept the speed down to a little over a brisk walking pace.
“Better arrive a little late, but all in one piece, than run early and end up in little pieces,” Trader said, amending one of his war wag sayings to suit the moment.
He was sitting in the back of the rebuilt Volvo, next to Sukie, but they hadn’t exchanged a word since the sudden burst of violence over the purloined letter.
“Here comes the fork,” Ryan warned. The blacktop had turned into a dirt trail a mile or so behind them.
“Which way did Krysty say?” the little gunner asked.
“Left. Watch out for the remains of an old dam someplace around here.”
“Then what?”
Ryan thought about it. “Didn’t really say. The others are going to be up there anyway and it’s full early. They’ll hear us coming miles off.”
THE MOON WAS GROWING and brightening, casting sharp-edged shadows from the towering saguaro that dotted the sides of the track.
“There’s the dam,” J.R said, pointing with the muzzle of the scattergun. “Or what’s left of it. Looks like it split clear down the middle with a quake.”
It had once filled the broad valley, three hundred yards across and close to two hundred feet high. Now it barely hindered the progress of a fast-running river that coursed ahead of them, crossed by a sturdy wooden bridge.