CHAPTER ONE

THE DUCHESS

 

 

SKRR-RR-RETCH.

The knife was a combat knife, and it was sharper than a knife had any right to be. Put to use the right way, it’d cut bone; even in the hands of an amateur, it could gut a man from stem to stern and spill his steaming guts out on the dusty ground.

The trick was, when you sharpened it, to drag the blade over the whetstone, gentle-like. Cade was a man who could be gentle when he had to be.

Wasn’t what you’d call his main skill, however.

Right now, the knife was only cutting wood, but Cade gripped it like he was cutting through a man’s skull. And a man who was alive, at that.

Skrr-rr-retch.

Cade sat on the steps of his trailer, bringing the knife slowly up against the wood, letting it bite in and then flicking his wrist up so as to carve off one small shaving at a time. The work was slow and Cade’s body was still – an intense kind of stillness, like that second of quiet before the artillery tears into brick and slate and flesh and leaves nothing but mist behind. When Cade was still and silent like that, there was a danger about him. That ain’t to say clichés like ‘coiled spring’ could quite apply to the man – even the suggestion of potential motion was missing from him. But put your ear to his chest, the old-timers in Muldoon’s used to say before the bad times came, and you wouldn’t hear a heartbeat. You’d hear ticking.

Across the way, the Duchess was laying out solitaire. She’d found a poker set in Bill Aughtrey’s trailer after Cade had taken his body out to the back lot for burning and burying – once upon a time she might have felt a little out of kilter about playing with a dead man’s cards, but too much time had passed. They were just nice things going to waste, and the Duchess made it a point of pride to never let anything go to waste, especially not now Duke was in the ground more than two years.

Even in her middle sixties, even playing solitaire, looking at the Duchess was like looking into a burning fire. Every move she made, she shifted against her t-shirt – low cut and ugly pink, off the shoulder, what she called her ‘show-off’ top. She leaned – playing the ace of spades down into the space she’d marked for it – and the bounty of her breasts leaned along with her, heavy and gorgeous against the tight ugly pink cotton, moving just on the edge of Cade’s vision.

She knew what she was doing. They did the same damn thing every day.

Skrr-rr-retch.

The knife cut deep.

Pretty soon, Cade figured, he was going to have to stand up and turn that damn card table over. The Duchess would say something appropriate and Cade would say something appropriate back. Then he’d carry her into her trailer and put her down on the old mattress and they’d get to it. The Duchess knew it. Cade knew it. Hell, the rusty bedsprings in her trailer knew it. It was coming, it was inevitable, and Cade knew it because it happened every damn day.

Not that Cade was complaining, exactly. There wasn’t a hell of a lot else for either of them to do.

It was a routine they’d fallen into, on account of how routine was about all that was left for anybody after the bad times, unless you wanted to go stone crazy. But it was a pretty damn good routine for all that.

Cade just hoped she wasn’t playing a winning game when he sent the cards flying. Be a shame to wreck that.

The knife handle twitched. The blade cut.

Skrr-rr-retch.

Woody Dupree was due any time. Another ritual. Woody would come and bring the insulin, and they’d maybe play cards a little. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe Cade would knock over that card table first, and they’d be in the trailer getting to it when Woody arrived, and he’d just have to sit awhile. Cade wasn’t a rude man by nature, but sometimes it happened that way anyway.

But eventually they’d all be sat around the card table with a beer each and they’d talk about the weather, or about something Woody’d read in a book, or maybe about how the vegetable patch was doing.

The last three living people for miles. They’d sit. And they’d talk.

Mostly Cade and the Duchess and Woody Dupree didn’t talk about the bad times – mostly they skirted around it, like old rats around poison. But occasionally someone would say something. A subject that big, that black, someone had to say something. Woody might mention his mother, or the Duchess would make an off-hand comment about Duke, and all of a sudden all of those old ghosts would be back in the room and things would get colder. The night would end in silence and pain and a few tears, with Cade left to watch the other two feeling things he couldn’t.

Best to leave the past in the past, Cade figured.

Skrr-rr-retch.

More wood shavings fell on the ground, the fresh ones joining with old and rotting ones from the day before and the day before that.

The Duchess laid down another card, her body shifting on the edge of Cade’s eyesight.

Cade cut.

Skrr-rr-retch.

He didn’t even really know what the hell he was carving.

He just cut.

Skrr-rr-retch.

Cade was considering standing up and turning the damned card table over when he heard a rumbling noise from down the track, and turned his head to see Woody’s pickup rolling up next to one of the empty trailers, saving him from his thoughts. The Duchess looked over and waved as Woody opened the driver’s door and stepped out, then walked around to the back of the truck. Cade figured something was wrong right then.

Generally, Woody brought the insulin a box at a time, on the passenger seat. But now there was a big crate of the stuff in the back of the truck.

The Duchess’s smile left her face, and she looked puzzled instead – puzzled and a little fearful.

Woody was breaking the routine.

Woody still lived in the same house over in Muir Beach, a couple miles away from the trailer park, and he spent most of his time there. He was a solitary man, even before, and since his mother died along with the rest of the folks in Muir Beach he didn’t seem to need or want any company, beyond the time he spent with Cade and the Duchess. Sometimes he wouldn’t come to the park for days, and when they’d head into Muir Beach to find him and drag him out for a beer in what was left of Muldoon’s – another ritual they tried to keep to every week at least – he wouldn’t answer his door. Him bringing the insulin to the trailer park every week was a way for the Duchess to keep an eye on him.

Woody was a fella who needed taking care of, she figured.

His hands shook as he tried to get a hold of the big crate. They shook most of the time, these days.

“Gimme a hand with this, Cade? I don’t want to drop it.”

Cade stuck his knife in the ground, got up and walked over. The crate wasn’t that heavy, but Woody wasn’t much of a physical specimen and besides, he had the shakes pretty bad. Cade figured it was best he took hold of it.

By now the Duchess was looking worried. She was scratching lightly at the needle marks on her arm, saying nothing as Cade laid the crate down inside her trailer. Cade figured he’d best ask the question.

“Woody?”

Cade was a man of few words.

Woody sighed, looking down at the ground.

“That’s the last crate, Cade.”

Cade narrowed his eyes. The Duchess spoke up, a tremor in her voice.

“Now, that can’t be right, Woody. I – I thought there was plenty left in Brenner’s...”

Woody shook his head, not looking her in the eye. “I thought so too, I did. But, uh, the crates in the back room of the store, the ones that have insulin written on the side, they’re... well, they’re all full of eye drops. I guess they ran out of eye drop crates at the factory, or there was some sort of mix-up or something... anyway, that’s the last. There’s sixteen boxes in there.”

The Duchess shook her head, getting to her feet. She was blinking slowly as it dawned on her.

The Duchess had known the insulin would run out eventually, but she figured they had enough for a year, maybe two. Long enough to work something out.

“Woody, that’ll only last about four months. What happens after four months?” There was an edge of panic in her voice.

Cade shrugged. No sense he could see in panicking. “We get more.”

The words hung in the air for a moment. Woody swallowed. “Um, yeah, that’s why I brought the whole crate up in one go. See, uh... I figure there’s going to be more in the city, so I’m taking the truck down that way, and loading some boxes up...”

He tailed off.

The Duchess looked at him, blinking. “Jesus Christ, Woody, you wanna go down to Sausalito?”

Woody shook his head. “Sausalito’s gone. I was thinking Frisco.”

Cade looked at Woody. Woody who was out of shape, who still lived with his mother’s ghost. Woody and his shaking hands and his twitch that wouldn’t go away, talking about how he was going to take the pickup truck down all the way into San Francisco.

Ed Hannigan had taken a car down that way to see how things were there, about a couple of weeks after the last broadcasts finished and even the emergency band on the radio wasn’t giving anything but static. He never came back.

After a couple more weeks, Woody had driven after him a ways. He’d stopped when he came to a skeleton hanging from a sign by the side of the road. He told Cade later there was an orange glow lighting up the horizon.

Sausalito on fire.

Since then, the three of them had pretty much given the cities up for lost, and now Woody Dupree wanted to go down and load up a few crates of insulin, because he felt guilty. He was terrified. You could tell just by looking at him.

Cade shrugged his great shoulders once, reaching to scratch the hairs at the back of his neck. It was pretty damned obvious Woody was about to get his fool self killed.

Hell with it.

“I’ll go.”

Woody looked at him like a drowning man looking at a rope. He shook his head, licking dry lips. “No, it’s okay. I should have checked the crates earlier. It’s my fault, I’ll...”

“I’ll go, I said.”

Cade wasn’t a man you felt comfortable arguing with, at least not when his voice carried that tone to it. Woody looked down at the ground. “Are you sure?”

The Duchess spoke, her voice dry as Martini. The scare had gone out of her, and Cade was glad of that. “If it’s my life on the line, I want Cade to go. No offence, Woody.”

Woody nodded. “I’ll...” – he swallowed hard, unable to keep the relief off his face – “I’ll leave the truck here. If... if you drive down to the town tomorrow morning, I’ll help you load up with stuff.” He licked his lips again. Nervous. “You know. From the gun store.”

“Sure.” Cade said. He didn’t smile, but he probably would have made an attempt if he’d thought of it, for Woody’s peace of mind as much as anything else.

Cade was never what you’d call the smiling type.

Woody looked at his shoes for a bit, and then waved, feeling foolish. His face was red as wine, and his eyes were wet, and Cade couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the man. The bad times had left their mark on him and he wasn’t ever going to be the same, but he was a decent fella who wanted to do the right thing, and Cade knew that he hated himself right then for passing the buck along. Cade almost wished there was a way he could take that off the man’s shoulders.

There wasn’t, though. Not a way Cade could figure, at least.

Woody finished waving and turned. “I’d... I’d best get moving, if I want to get home before the sun...” The sentence trailed off, and then Woody turned and trudged back down the hill, leaving the truck where it stood, looking foolish.

They watched him leave, and when he was out of sight the Duchess eased the fullness of her body back into the picnic chair she’d been playing solitaire in and made a show of picking up her cards. Her hands trembled, just a little.

Cade went to pick up his knife.

“Hey.”

Cade turned. The Duchess was smiling, or trying to. She was still scared, he could tell. It wasn’t just the possibility of losing her insulin supply – or her life. It wasn’t even losing him – he knew a lot better than that. She didn’t much like Cade, except in bed.

What scared her was that tomorrow would be the end of the routine.

The Duchess shot a glance at the card table, and then a glance at him. Then she half-lowered her lashes, leaning back and raising her hands up into her dyed-blonde hair. “You want to come turn this over?”

Cade nodded, and went.