"Ahern, Jerry - Survivalist 003 - The Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ahern Jerry)

"My first name is John. What do I think about the storm drain? Maybe a nice place to visit, but ..." Rourke let the sentence hang, his gloved left hand pushing away cobwebs at the top of the storm drain as he ducked his head to step inside.

He could feel his feet squishing the mud in the darkness. He closed the Zippo and reached into his belt under his leather jacket, snatching the Safariland Kel-Lite and pushing the switch forward with his thumb. As the light filled the storm drain, he could see it glinting on what looked to him like eyes beyond the light and in the shadow ahead, he could hear scurrying and the high-pitched scrat-chiness of bats.

"What the hell is that?" Reed asked, suddenly beside Rourke, stooped slightly as Rourke was.

Rourke started to answer, but Fulsom, there too, said, "Bats I think."

"Bats!"

"They're small, not the vampire kind. If you were a peach or a pear you'd be in trouble." Rourke added.

"Whew! That's a relief," Reed muttered.

"Yeah," Rourke told him. "Just don't let 'em scratch you or bite. They carry rabies sometimes." Rourke started forward, hearing the shuffling of feet behind him from the rest of the sixteen man commando force. Two of Reed's men and some of Fulsom's, including Darren Ball, were waiting with the boats.

"Bats! God, betcha there're snakes, too," Reed muttered.

"Most poisonous snakes won't kill you, just make you damned sick, unless you have a reaction to the venom," Rourke consoled Reed, flashing his light ahead across the reddish brown mud, swatting at cobwebs with his free right hand, the CAR-15 slung across his back, muzzle down.

The storm drain's height was six feet, the diameter, and there was a simple choice Rourke decided, either walk through the deepest and slipperiest of the squishing mud and duck your head a little or walk to the side on angle and move half-stooped. He chose the muddy water and mire.

Shuffling along through the storm drain with Rourke's flashlight and two others at intervals along the seventeen man single-file column the only illumination, Rourke paced himself, trying to judge the distance, not trusting wholly what Fulsom had described as a mile's walk. A rat scurried across Rourke's left foot as the tunnel the drain formed took a slight bend along an elbow of pipe then curved at a right angle, then started slightly upward.

Rourke stopped, his light hitting a swarm of bats hanging from the top of the drain, ducking as they whistled and whined overhead, one of the men screaming, Reed starting to bring his M-16 to bear and Rourke swatting it down, but saying nothing. They moved on, roaches everywhere on the floor of the drain near the edge of the mire, feeding on the bat droppings, perhaps, Rourke thought.

After several more minutes, Rourke stopped, flashing his light behind him, searching for Fulsom's face, seeing the terror in the eyes. Abner Fulsom said, "I'm a little claustrophobic. Place gives me the creeps."

"I don't think anybody exactly likes it," Rourke almost whispered. "I make it we've done a mile, no end of the tunnel is in sight. How much further?"

"My brother laid the drain, told me about it, said it was just about an even mile."

"And it lets out in a small culvert at the edge of the parking lot, then dips back under the lot toward the shopping center itself?"

"Yeah, that's what he said," Fulsom whispered.

"Where's your brother now?" Rourke snapped.

"Dead. He was in Atlanta when the bombs or missiles or whatever hit it, "

Rourke exhaled hard. "I'm sorry." He turned and shone his Kel-Lite back along the storm drain. Without saying anything else, he started walking again. If Fulsom's memory were correct, Rourke judged, then the culvert should be coming up soon. He swung the CAR-15 from his back, slinging it under his right arm, suspended from his right shoulder, his fist wrapped around the pistol grip.

After another five minutes, Rourke stopped, cutting the light.

"Back flat against the wall," he rasped, then started edging forward. There was light, dim, but light none the less, up ahead. He moved toward it. The smell in the drain had been bad, but here it was worse, the drain partially clogged and the water several inches deep. He edged up along the side and stooped as he went forward, grateful for the insect repellant he had used. There were swarms of small flies and mosquitoes, some of them, he wagered with himself, carried sleeping sickness.

The tunnel took a slight bend around a right-angle elbow joint, and Rourke stopped again at the mouth of the tunnel, a heavy-looking grillwork over the drain opening beyond and a V-shaped cement culvert visible in the moonlight ahead.

Rourke moved as silently as he could toward the grating, peering beyond it into the open, smelling the comparatively fresh night air, breathing it in deeply. The grille was set into the mouth of the drain, forming a grid of squares eight inches roughly on each side, a thin layer of cement holding it in place, a slightly wider opening at the top and bottom and each side where the grid of steel didn't quite fit, an afterthought, he guessed.