Chapter Twenty

 

 

Mildred browsed around the first floor of the isolated house, while Krysty slowly climbed the stairs.

 

"We'll only have a quick look," she said, pausing halfway. "Best get Doc and the others up here as soon as possible. Before dark. Start a fire and we can all have a really good, warm, secure night."

 

"I saw some cans on shelves in the kitchen," Mildred said. "Depends on what they are, but some of them might still be usable and safe."

 

There were three rooms opening off the landing, and Krysty checked them all.

 

The first was a bathroom, with thick towels folded neatly on a chair. But when Krysty tried to pick one up, it crumbled into powdery dust between her fingers.

 

There was a dry smell in the house, a smell of stillness and antiquity.

 

The second of the doors was half-open, and Krysty pushed it all the way, revealing the sterility of what had obviously been a guest bedroom. A faded watercolor of Glenwood Springs hung on one wall, and a floral duvet covered a narrow double bed.

 

Krysty went to the last of the rooms, where the door was closed.

 

"You all right?" Mildred's voice floated up from downstairs. "Some of the electrics still work. Must be the solar panels, but they sure built them to last."

 

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just going into the last of the rooms up here to" Her voice stopped as though it had been sliced off with an ax.

 

"Krysty?" There was a note of worry in Mildred's voice.

 

"I'm fine. But I was wrong. The owners of the house are still here."

 

 

 

THEY LAY SIDE BY SIDE, wizened hands locked together, on a large bed beneath a picture window that looked west toward the setting sun.

 

The flesh had long, long gone and all that remained were the dark brown sinews that held together the loosened bones. She had been blond or gray, and he had been mainly bald. Strands of their hair had flowed together on the pillow, just as the juices of their decaying corpses had flowed together, staining the bed and the carpet beneath it.

 

She wore a pantsuit and sneakers. He was dressed in casual pants and a shirt beneath a patterned sweater. His feet were bare bones.

 

Mildred stood in the doorway. "Looks like they picked the time and place of their going." She walked to a glass-topped table that held a ceramic doll and picked up an empty bottle of pills, peering at the label. "Yeah. They knew what they were doing, all right. Is there a note?"

 

"Haven't seen one."

 

They found it in the living room in an envelope propped up by a photograph of a smiling couple, blinking into the sun on a ski slope, arms around each other.

 

To Whom It Might Concern was printed neatly on the outside. Krysty picked it up and weighed it in her hand. "I don't know whether we should open this."

 

"Let's see what the others think. Sun's well down. Be good to move those poor remains out of the room and bring in some wood. They left a fire ready-laid in the hearth, and we don't know how long the electricity'll hold out after all this time."

 

 

 

ALL OF THEM were fascinated by the house.

 

Jak brought in wood while J.B. got the fire going. Mildred and Krysty shared the task of bundling the desiccated corpses in the stained sheets and carrying them out back, laying them in a garage that held a large crimson wag. Krysty checked, but the engine was seized up solid as granite. They carefully remade the beds, using the fragile sheets and blankets from a closet on the landing.

 

Doc sat on the sofa, his knee boots resting on a piece of old towel he'd found in the kitchen, so as not to make the material muddy.

 

He was holding the envelope that Krysty had shown him. "What is the consensus of opinion on this?" he asked. "Should we read it or not?"

 

"Not," Mildred stated firmly.

 

"Read it," Jak said, crouching in front of the hearth and coaxing the fire into reluctant life.

 

"Yeah, sorry, Millie, but I don't see why not. It's a keyhole into the past. Don't get chances like this all that often. I say read it." J.B. avoided Mildred's eyes.

 

"Why do you think, Krysty?" Doc asked.

 

"I don't have strong feelings. One thing's for sure. It can't hurt the folks who wrote it."

 

They knew now that they had been a Mr. and Mrs. James Tickell, and that he'd been an orthodontist. They had three children, all in their twenties, who had left home and lived in Boston, New York and Albuquerque.

 

Doc tapped the envelope on the arm of the sofa. "Then I will open it."

 

The fire was beginning to blaze, and Krysty had brewed some coffee from a sealed, airtight tin she'd found in the larder. She handed out the mugs, everyone sighing and breathing in the wonderful aroma.

 

The only sound then was Doc's fingernail ripping open the envelope and extracting a single sheet of white paper. "Not very long," he said.

 

Krysty sat on the floor, tucking her feet under her. Jak leaned back against one of the padded chairs, while Mildred sat in another. J.B. stood with his mug in hand, by the window, looking out at the last speck of deep, deep red on the western horizon.

 

Doc began to read in his fine, orotund voice. "It is signed by both of them at the bottom. It begins,"

 

 

 

" ' May God forgive us, but we can see no point in trying to carry on. The phones and radio and TV are all down, as they have been for several days. Ever since the skies darkened .' "

 

 

 

"Interesting that they used that phrase 'skydark' so soon after the nuclear holocaust."

 

"Go on, Doc," Krysty said.

 

"Very well."

 

 

 

" ' We know now that the world has ended. The world we knew and loved is gone forever and we are alone in it. The road is blocked both ways, and no plows have come through. They will never come again. The last news was of the ruin of the great cities, which must mean the deaths of our beloved children. Some sort of radiation sickness is gripping us both. We are finding our nails and teeth are becoming loose and our gums bleed. We know enough to realize that the future is short and bloody and bleak. Best we do what we have decided now, before it becomes impossible. This way there can still be affection and dignity. A time and way of our own choosing .' "

 

 

 

"Oh, dear."

 

He stopped and blew his nose loudly. Mildred wiped tears from her cheeks with her sleeve.

 

"This sort of thing must have been repeated thousands of times," J.B. said. "Perhaps millions. Once they realized there was no hope at all"

 

Doc tucked away his kerchief and sipped his coffee. "There is just a little more."

 

 

 

" ' As soon as I finish writing this, we will go upstairs and take the drugs, perhaps washing them down with our last bottle of good brandy. No point in leaving it behind. It is a pity, but I do not think that I can write any more. God bless America and God bless you all. Try to understand and to forgive. May those who come after remember us in their prayers .' "

 

 

 

"And then they've both signed it."

 

"And they went up to the bedroom and drank the brandy and took the pills. Lay down together and held hands and slipped gently away from the horror that life had become." Krysty shook her head. "Best way out."

 

Mildred sighed. "Brave and intelligent. If they'd waited another day or so"

 

Doc stood and moved to the fire, crumpling the letter and the envelope and throwing both onto the flames, where they were consumed in seconds.

 

 

 

MILDRED PICKED OUT some food she thought was safe, mainly in freeze-dried or package form. A number of the cans had blown and split, but some of them still held firm and smelled all right when opened.

 

So supper was a mixture of several kinds of soup with some added beans and canned carrots. And some reconstituted potato that tasted passingly edible when mixed with powdered milk and water, and well-spiced with salt and pepper.

 

Afterward they all sat around drinking more of the exquisite coffee. "Forgotten just how good it used to taste," Mildred said. "In fact I'm sure it never used to taste quite this good in my previous life."

 

"Everything's relative." Krysty added a little sugar to the dark brown brew, savoring the flavor. "Compared to most coffee subs, even mule piss is better."

 

Conversation faltered, everyone touched by the tragedy of the owners of the house, and they agreed to retire early and make a good start after dawn.

 

Mildred and J.B. had the main bedroom, opening a top fanlight window to air it.

 

Doc was allowed the bed in the spare room, which he went to early.

 

Krysty picked the sofa for herself while Jak scavenged in the garage and found a camp bed with an inflatable mattress. It revealed a very slow leak but it held up enough for him to have a reasonable night's sleep in a corner of the living room, close to the window.

 

 

 

KRYSTY STARTED AWAKE once in the middle of the night, reaching out automatically for Ryan's comforting hand, feeling the cold shock of desolation when she realized where she was, and that she was alone.

 

For some time she was unable to slide back into the warm comfort of sleep, and she found herself thinking of the tragic ending of the owners of the beautiful house. And how that same tragedy had to have been repeated countless times, as J.B. had said, all through Deathlands.

 

A phrase she'd heard Doc use came to her. Something about people leading lives of quiet desperation.

 

With that doleful thought she finally fell asleep once more, not waking until dawn light broke through a gap in the dark brown velvet draperies.

 

And she could smell the glowing embers of the night's fire and the wonderful scent of fresh coffee coming from the brightly lit kitchen.

 

 

 

EVERYONE HAD SLEPT pretty well, and Doc, in particular, seemed a new man, back to his old form. He sang an old song in a hearty voice as he helped Jak prepare breakfast for everyone.

 

Mildred had given her approval to some sealed foil packages of scrambled eggs with ham and peppers, and Jak and Doc served them piping hot from a pair of skillets. They'd opened some cans of dough that they heated in the electric oven, finding that they came out as crescent-shaped rolls, soft and buttery.

 

And more coffee.

 

The only major failure was some self-bake pecan pie, which turned into foul-smelling sticky cardboard.

 

"Think it would be possible to actually live up here and get the house going again?" Krysty asked.

 

J.B. considered the question for several seconds. "Need reliable transport. Come the winter you could be locked in here for three or four months. Doubt the electrics would cope if they were used too much. Heating would be difficult with only one fireplace. And you wouldn't be able to grow too much fruit and vegetables at this altitude and on an exposed scarp like this. Plenty of game. But, on balance, it'd be rad-blasted hard."

 

It was an unusually long speech from the sallow little Armorer.

 

"Guess in those technodays the road would have been swept clear, and you could get groceries and stuff delivered from Leadville or Glenwood Springs," Krysty said. "And all kinds of repairmen the other end of a phone."

 

"Die here in winter." Jak had just had a hot bath upstairs and come down with his long white hair plastered to his skull and shoulders.

 

"I'll do the washing up," Mildred said. "Maybe we should be going."

 

"The hot-bath idea seems admirable." Doc laughed. "Though I see little point in washing the plates. It has been a century since anyone came this way last. And it will probably be another hundred years before anyone returns. By then I think that the old house will be a mass of tumbled timber."

 

Mildred stared at him. "You can live like a pig in muck, Doc, but I was raised not to leave dirty dishes around. There's plenty of hot water from the boiler to the fire if we all want hot baths."

 

The thought of that was too tempting, and they agreed to postpone their departure for Leadville and beyond until after lunch, by which time they would all have used the deep tub and be ready to face the trail once more.

 

"Ryan'll wait for us up at Fairplay," Krysty said. "Like we arranged."