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overlooked the street, keeping them safe from chance passersby.
Candles were set up on shelves and tables, and they filled the first floor with their
golden, flickering, shifting light. Their burning seemed to swallow up a part of the
other smell that Ryan had noticed as soon as he'd entered the kitchen, the smell
that both J.B. and Trader had also noticed as soon as they were in the front hall.
It was likely that nobody had entered the deserted house for nearly a hundred
years. All of its doors and double-glazed windows remained closed tight.
The scent of decay had gradually infiltrated every inch of the old building, so that
even the walls seemed to be contaminated by it.
"Not down here," Ryan said, catching the unspoken question in Trader's eyes.
There were five.
J.B. found the first of them, in a small room to the right at the top of the dusty
stairs. It had obviously been the bedroom of a little child. The wallpaper portrayed
a superhero that none of them recognized, the design echoed on the comforter that
covered the bed.
"Little girl," Trader observed.
That was about all they could guess, basing it on the long blond hair that was
spread out like a tracery shell across the smudged pillow.
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."
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"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.'"
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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.
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