“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.
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