“Impregnated with fallout,” Dan murmured. “Suicide.” Rita’s hands crept upward to her neck and Randy noticed an oval mark in the hollow her throat, as if the skin were painted darker there. Then her hands flew to her ears. The diamond ear clips fell to the rug beside the ring. She moaned, “Oh, God!” “What did you have to give Porky for those diamonds?” Randy asked softly.
“For the ring, hardly anything at all. For the rest of it we gave him canned meat and cigarettes and coffee and chocolate
“Is that all?” Dan asked.
“No, those are just the watches,” Rita said. “Pete’s been amusing himself, admiring them and winding them every day. There’s more stuff in my room-a couple of necklaces and a ruby and diamond brooch and-well, all sorts of junk.”
“Pete,” Dan said, “throw that kit in the corner, there. Rita, don’t touch anything you may have in your bedroom. There’s no point in your absorbing even another fraction of a roentgen. We’ve got to figure out a way to get the stuff out of here and get rid of it without damaging ourselves. We’ll be back.”
Rita followed them to the door, whimpering. She snatched at Dan’s sleeve. “What’s going to happen? Am I going to die> Is my hair going to fall out?”
“You haven’t absorbed nearly as much radiation as your brother,” Dan said. “I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen because radiation sickness is so tricky.”
“What about Pete? What’ll I do if Pete-”
“I’m afraid,” Dan said, “that Pete is slipping into leukemia.” “Blood cancer?”
“Yes. I’m afraid you’d better prepare yourself.”
Rita’s hands fell from Dan’s arm. Randy watched her diminish, all allure, all bravado falling away, leaving her smaller and like a child. He said, quietly, “Rita, you’d better keep this, here. You’ll need it.” He gave her the bottle of Scotch.
As he pressed the starter Dan said, “Why did you give her the whiskey?”
“I feel sorry for her.” That wasn’t the only reason. If he had owed her anything before, he did no longer. They were quits. They were square. “Is she going to be all right?” he asked.
“I think so, unless a malignancy develops from the burn on her finger. Improbable but possible. Yes, she should be all right so far as radiation goes. The dose she absorbed was localized. But after her brother dies she’ll be alone. Then she won’t be all right.” “She’ll find a man,” Randy said. “She always has.”
Porky Logan’s house stood at the end of Augustine Road, in a grove that rose up a hillside at the back of the house. It was a two-story brick, the largest house in Pistolville, so it was said. Porky’s sister and niece had been caring for him, but he lived alone. His wife and two children had departed Pistolville ten years before.
They found Porky on the second floor. He was sitting up in bed, unshaven chin resting upon blotched bare chest. Between his knees was a beer case filled with jewelry. His hands were buried to the forearm in this treasure. Dan said, “Porky!”
Porky didn’t raise his head. Porky was dead.
Dan stepped to the bed, pushed Porky’s body back against the pillows, and pried an eyelid open. Dan said, “Let’s get him out of here. That’s a furnace he’s got in his lap.”
Randy tried not to breathe going down the steps. It was not only the smell of Porky’s room that hurried him.
Dan said, “We’ve got to keep people out of this house until we can get Porky and that hot stuff underground. How do we do it?”
“What about a sign? We could paint a sign.”
They found an unopened can of yellow paint and a brush in Porky’s garage. Dan used the brush on the front door. In block letters he wrote:
“DANGER! KEEP OUT! RADIATION!”
“You’d better put something else on there,” Randy said. “There are a lot of people around here who still don’t know what radiation means.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I’m positive of it. They’ve never seen it, or felt it. They hear about it, but I don’t think they believe it. They didn’t believe it could kill them before The Day-if they thought of it at all-and
I don’t think they believe it now. You’d better add something they understand, like Poison.” and reached under the bed and snatched the boot. All she said as she went through the door was, `I hope you croak, you sneaky bastard. I’m going back to Apalachicola’.”
Fascinated, Randy asked, “How does she expect to get to Apalachicola?”
“I keep-kept the Plymouth in the shed. It was nearly full with gas, what was in the drum I had to service the outboards. I hope she wrecks.”
Dan picked up his bag. His huge shoulders sagged. His face was unhappy behind the red beard. “Do you still have that ointment I gave you?”
“Yes.” Bill turned his head toward the table.
“Keep using it on your hands. It may give you relief.”
“It may, but this will.” Bill tilted the rum bottle and drank until he gagged.
Riding back on River Road, Randy said, “Will Cullen live?” “I doubt it. I don’t have the drugs or antibiotics or blood transfusions for him.” He reached down and patted his bag. “Not much left in here, Randy. I have to make decisions, now. I have drugs only for those worth saving.”
“What about the woman?”
“I don’t think she’ll die of radiation sickness. I don’t think she’ll keep that hot gold and silver and platinum long enough. She’ll either swap for booze or, being stupid, try one of the main highways.”
“I think the highwaymen will get her if she’s headed for Apalachicola,” Randy said.
It was strange that the term highwaymen had revived in its true and literal sense. These were not the romantic and reputedly chivalrous highwaymen of Britain’s post roads in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These new highwaymen were ruthless and evil men who lately had been choking the thin trickle of communications and trade between towns and villages. Mostly, according to word that filtered into Fort Repose, they operated
So under “RADIATION,” Dan printed “POISON.” He said, “One other. Bill Cullen.”
Bigmouth Bill was as they had left him, except that he held a bottle of cheap rum in his misshapen hands, and had been hitting it. Randy hovered at the door, so he could listen but not be submerged in the odors.
Dan said, “Bill, we’ve found out what’s making you sick. You’re absorbing radiation from the jewelry Porky traded for the whiskey. Porky’s jewelry is hot. It’s radioactive. Where is it?”
Bill laughed wildly. He began to curse, methodically and without imagination, as Randy had heard troops curse in the MLR in Korea. The pace of his obscenities quickened, he choked, frothed, and pulled at the rum bottle. “Jewelry!” he yelled, his yellow eyeballs rolling. “Jewelry! Diamonds, emeralds, pearls, tinkly little bracelets, all hot, all radioactive. ‘That’s rich!”
“Where is it, Bill?” Dan’s voice was sharper.
“Ask her. Ask the dough-faced bitch! She has ‘em, has the whole bootful.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been hiding the stuff, figuring that if she got her hands on it she’d swap it all for a bottle of vireo. The jewels in one boot, the rum in the other. Believe it or not, this is the last of my stock.” He sucked at the bottle.
“Go on,” Dan said.
“I kept the boots, these boots here-” he gestured at a pair of hunting boots-”hid under the bed. It was safe, okay. You see, my woman she never cleaned anything, especially she never cleaned under the bed. Well, when she went out for a while I thought I’d take a look at the loot. You know, it was nice to hold it in your hands and dream about what you were going to do with it when things got back to normal. But she was watching through the window. She’s been trying to catch me and just a while ago she did. She walked in, grinning. I thought she was going to tell me the war was over or something. She walked in and reached under the bed and snatched the boot. All she said as she went through the door was, `I hope you croak, you sneaky bastard. I’m going back to Apalachicola’.”