James Axler – Trader Redux

Low cloud had closed in with the evening, settling all around their campsite. Abe had lighted a small fire to warm up one of the cans of soup, knowing that the smoke wouldn’t be visible. He’d unpacked some of the provisions from the hearse and was settled in for a snug wait.

“Two days from now,” Ryan said. “Sundown, two days on. If we aren’t back by the dawn of the third day, then something’s gone badly wrong.”

“I’ll come looking,” Abe promised, wiping beads of fog from his mustache.

“Okay. But if we’re late, there’ll be a good reason. So step eggshell-light, Abe.”

The gunner nodded. “Sure, Ryan.”

“Come on,” Trader said. “Never do after sunset what you could’ve done before.”

J.B. patted Abe on the shoulder. “Don’t take any wooden jack.”

TRADER SET A GOOD PACE, striding into the shadowy suburbs of Seattle, past the abandoned wasteland of Renton Municipal Airport. He had the familiar Armalite slung over a bony shoulder. Ryan had left the Steyr SSG-70 with the wag, contenting himself with the SIG-Sauer. J.B. had placed the Uzi inside a layer of waterproof cloth in the hearse. He carried the deadly Smith amp; Wesson M-4000 scattergun, with its full load of eight of the 12-gauge Remington flechettes.

The light was fading, the coppery ball of the sun vanishing over the dull mirror of Puget Sound.

Not much time remained for them to find somewhere secure for the fast-approaching night.

Chapter Six

The friends traveled past a quiet row of suburban houses that showed the familiar ravages of a hundred postdark years, years that had brimmed over with unbelievable extremes of weatherwinters of a hundred below and summers of a hundred and twenty above. A fine layer of gritty ash lay in the corners of some of the gardens, revealing that the region around the ville had lain beneath the falling detritus of a major eruption in the Cascades sometime in the past few years.

They had seen nobody else as they picked their way along the deserted streets, coming down off the ruins of an elevated section of a highway.

“Best not to get too far in,” Ryan said.

Trader nodded. “Always a sight easier getting out when you haven’t gone too far in.”

It was beginning to drizzle a little, misting over the lenses of J.B.’s spectacles and making safe progress difficult for him. And dangerous.

The silent avenue had once been lined with elegant trees, but they had long vanished, all chopped down to rotting stumps for fuel by the ragged and starving during the bleak horrors of the long winters.

The three men spread out without a word being said, adopting the usual skirmish line, Trader ahead on the left side of the footpath, with Ryan just a little behind him, on the opposite flank of the road. J.B. was last, on the left, about fifty yards farther back, keeping in the deeper pools of shadow, guarding their rear.

Ryan wasn’t surprised to find most of the buildings in pretty good shape. Most had lost windows, some of them roofs, and a few had collapsed altogether. But at least ten percent seemed solid and secure.

It had been something that had amazed Mildred and, to a lesser extent, Doc, when they’d first appeared in Deathlandsthe fact that there were still tens of thousands of houses, scattered all across the continent, untouched and unentered since the faster-than-sound missiles raged from the empty skies and civilization died.

“How come refugees from the worst affected areas didn’t raid them and take them over?” That had been Mildred’s puzzled question.

Ryan knew the answer to that. His father’s father had been alive as the endless cold war finally turned white-hot. The deaths in the first forty-eight hours of the war that ended all wars were incalculable. Millions, without the least possibility of a doubt. Tens of millions for certain. Hundreds of millions? Probably.

The Russkies had used neutron bombs and missiles, which cleansed away all life, but left everything standing. The idea behind that had been that the winners could then march in and inherit a land instantly fit for heroes. It was a good plan, but with one overriding weaknessthere were no heroes and no winners, just cities turned to boneyards.