Now that they were inside the house, they could all taste the smell, a smell as familiar to each man as his own sweat. It was sour and bitter, flat and sharp, greasy and tart, all at the same timethe unmistakable taint of all-corrupting death.
“Where, Doc?” Ryan called.
“My room, I fear” His voice faded as he hurried the woman out through the front door, where they could all hear the sound of the big Volvo land wag, driven by Abe, drawing to a halt.
“Get a lamp going.” Ryan snapped out the command. “Got to have some light.”
There were just enough remnants of the day left for them to see the two figures lying on each of the twin beds in Doc’s room. It was even possible to make out that one of them was male and the other female.
But there wasn’t nearly enough illumination to see who they might be.
Ryan’s heart leapt in his chest at the thought that the woman might be his own beloved Krysty Wroth. J. B. Dix, the Armorer of the group, had the same fear that she might be his love, Mildred Wyeth, the black woman doctor, cryonically frozen way back in December of the year 2000, and brought to life again nearly a century later into the whirling madness of the post holocaust world that men called Deathlands.
Trader was fumbling around on one of the side tables. “Can’t find the self-lights,” he snapped. “One of you must know where they are. Your house.”
In fact the house more or less belonged to Jak Lauren, the teenage friend of J.B. and Ryan. He had ridden with the others for some time, then split from them to marry and start a family on a spread in New Mexico. Tragedy had destroyed his happiness, and now he had been living at this ranch, with Ryan’s eleven-year-old son, Dean, and Mildred, Krysty and Doc.
J.B. turned and picked his way past Trader, back into the kitchen. Ryan drew nearer the beds, stooping low, almost gagging at the terrible stench. Doc’s instant summary looked like it had been accurate enough. The man was still alive, though his breathing would hardly have fluttered a moth’s wing.
The woman was undeniably dead.
“Not Krysty or Mildred,” Ryan called, reassuring his partner as he came in with the self-lights. “Just about enough for me to see that.”
“And the man’s not Jak or Dean. Too big for the boy, and Jak’s white hair would blaze out in a privy at midnight. If it’s not them, then who? Dark night? Ah, got it.”
A sharp scratch was followed by a flicker of yellow flame, brightening as the wick of the oil lamp caught. J.B. clamped the gleaming glass chimney over it, adjusting the brass wheel to bring a steady light. He had pushed his fedora back from his high forehead, and his spectacles glittered.
“Hold it high,” Ryan said.
Trader coughed. “I never did too good with sickies. Knife or a bullet wound and I don’t flinch. You two know that well enough from all the long years you rode with me in the war wags.”
“Sure,” Ryan replied, only listening with half his attention. “It’s not a problem. You go check on Doc and the woman. See what they can tell us.”
Trader had clapped his hand to his mouth and nose. He walked quickly from the room, bumping into the edge of the open door in his haste to get out.
“Can’t blame the old man,” J.B. stated, holding the oil lamp at shoulder level. “Seen better sights, and I guess we’ve smelted better smells.”
“Woman’s been gone for around a day. Two days at the outside. Eyes are milky, starting to dissolve. Belly’s swelled with gas.” He lifted the bone-thin wrist. “Gone through stiff. Starting to relax again.”
The Armorer whistled, trying to breathe through his mouth. “Look at those sores around her lips. And the state of her hair. Ties in with the way our rad counters went off the scale outside the back there.”
The scream and the discovery inside the house had temporarily driven that from Ryan’s mind. Just as Doc and his friend had gone in, it had been J.B. who had noticed the miniature radiation counters, dating from the predark days. He and Ryan wore one on their lapels, and they were normally colored green, meaning that the ambient levels were completely safe.
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