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.”