James Axler – Trader Redux

The next room along the corridor had been for the two sons of the family. From the height and the approximate build of the mummified corpses, one had been around ten or eleven, the other probably in his early teens.

“No wounds,” Ryan commented. “Fireblast! This kind of tragedy always brings me down.”

“We’ll find their parents in the big bedroom at the back of the house,” Trader stated. He was right.

Even after the passage of so many empty years, it was still easy to reconstruct the last hours.

The father lay on his back on one side of the double bed, wearing stained pyjamas. It looked like his wife had been overtaken by some sort of pain or distress close to the end, and had tried to make it over to the neat bathroom across the corridor.

She lay doubled up on the carpet, nightdress rucked around her waist, knees drawn to her chin, one hand reaching out toward her husband, on the bed.

“Went wrong at the last,” Trader said quietly, stooping to pull the fragile material over the dark bones of the thighs and the pathetic patch of curling pubic hair.

“Sleepers,” J.B. said, picking up one of the two empty pill bottles on the trim cabinet at the side of the bed, along with a wristwatch and a pair of glasses.

And the note.

“THERE’S NEARLY ALWAYS a note, isn’t there?” Trader said, peering at the two sheets of paper as he sat in the living room.

“Like they know that there won’t be anyone along to read it, but they still feel a need to communicate why they did what they did,” J.B. replied.

Ryan put another log on the fire, and he reached out to Trader. “Mind if I read it?”

“Course not. Writing’s faded and it gets worse. Read it out loud to us.”

“Sure.” Ryan sat on the sofa. “Starts off ‘To anyone passing by.’ Guess that’s us. ‘My name is James Williamson, My wife’s name is Henrietta. Our boys are Stewart and Jim Junior. Our daughter is’ that’s crossed out’ was Darlene. Lived here in Seattle most all our lives.'”

The logs crackled and spat, burning fast, filling the cold, dead house with warmth and brightness.

” ‘We were lucky. Were we? Went camping when the missiles came in January, up in the Cascades. Kids didn’t want to come. Maybe, the way things have panned out, they were right. Roads blocked with stalled cars. No gas. Fires everywhere and the sky just smoke from sea to shining sea. Darkness at the edge of noon, like someone once said. All the time, dark. But we made it home after about ten days. Darlene was ill by then. Asthma from the smoke and fumes. All of us felt sick and coughing all the time. Mustn’t go off at a tangent. Gave the children their pills an hour ago. Watched to see it was going well. All deep asleep. Henrietta and I followed a few minutes ago. Think I can just feel them starting to work some.'”

“Remember that suicide letter we found up in Ohio?” Trader asked.

“Oh, you mean that real long one,” J.B. replied. “Filled three notebooks, didn’t it?”

Trader laughed. “Yeah. Joke was, but the time he finished writing it, the guy decided that he wasn’t going to chill himself after all.”

“Want me to go on with this one?” Ryan asked. “Near the end of the first page.”

“Sure,” Trader said.

“‘I’d read enough in papers and on TV to know about radiation sickness. But after the sky got dark with missiles from the Russkies, then But if anyone reads this a few months into the future, you’ll know all about the war to end all wars, won’t you? Henrietta got it first. Bleeding gums. Then Jim Junior got the same. Coughing. Played up his asthma as well. Fingernails started to drop out and’ Can’t read the next bit. Crossed out. Then he goes on about how they hadn’t seen the sun for weeks. Black all the time. He repeats about bleeding gums. Hair falling out. Sores around the mouth.”

“The usual,” Trader said.

Ryan tilted the paper toward the fire, struggling to read the increasingly uneven scrawl.