"Baker,_Kage_-_How_They_Tried_to_Talk_Indian_Tony_Down" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

_RRRrrrAOOM_, protested something, sounding seriously Big Cat in nature and quite angry. The sound echoed off the surrounding hills. Everybody froze. Jerry had lifted a big hunk of noodles and bean sprouts halfway to his open mouth, but now they slipped from his chopsticks, plop, on the hood of his truck.
Indian Tony began to gibber and scream. Killer Mikey observed that that had sounded like a goddamn tiger, man. His hands were shaking; not a good sign. Martha wondered if they maybe shouldn't call Animal Control?
Ricker volunteered. He jumped into his VW van and went puttering off in the direction of the phone booth out on Highway 37.
Killer Mikey staggered to his truck and leaned into the cab. He pulled the seat forward and rummaged among the various guns he had back there. Jerry finished his chow mein in a hurry and jumped down. Abby opened the trailer door and stood silhouetted against the light, calling out to know what was going on. Everyone told her to get back inside.
There was a crash up the hill and Indian Tony cried out that _they_ were coming up the tree after him.
Jerry grabbed the Hi-Beam and directed it at the tree, and those present could see the distant branches thrashing in a manner that suggested that something really was climbing up from below.
Killer Mikey found his AK-47 and pulled it out, and aimed it up the hill, but his hands were trembling really badly now. Indian Tony, shrieking, was trying to get higher up in the madrone and breaking branches in his efforts. Jerry shouted up to him to stop, to hold on to the trunk with his arms and legs or he'd fall and break his neck. He handed off the Hi-Beam to Martha and pulled a handgun from the glove box of his truck.
Then the Hi-Beam went out. So did the truck lights and the lights at the trailer.
Flash, a second later the madrone was lit again, blue-white as before but not by the Hi-Beam. A column of radiance was stabbing down from the bottom of some kind of black aircraft, hovering just above the hill.
Below, they saw Indian Tony turn his face up, staring in astonishment. He rose, pulled by the light, gliding with a few broken branches upward into the craft. Something fell fluttering down: the war bonnet he'd been wearing.
There was another feline roar, a distinctly disappointed sound. Something very large made a last lunge at Indian Tony and they caught a glimpse of it for a second in the light; and it wasn't any _Lynx rufus, _or _Lynx_ _canadensis, _either, though it was obvious why Indian Tony had been seeing three pairs of eyes.
There followed a moment of shock, in which all persons present quietly decided that they couldn't possibly have seen what they'd just seen.
Killer Mikey blinked rapidly and then took aim again, gamely trying to draw a bead on the aircraft, it being less of an insult to his rational mind. Jerry grabbed his arm and told him not to be an idiot; if the aircraft crashed the Government would be all over the farm, like what happened at Roswell.
Nobody wanted that, of course, because geraniums weren't the only plants grown on the farm. Killer Mikey lowered the gun and they all watched as the aircraft moved slowly off to the north, a darkness silently occluding stars where it passed. Something big was crashing through the woods below, following vainly after it. Gradually the sound died away.
The lights came back on, startling everybody, and Killer Mikey accidentally blasted hell out of Martha's lawn chairs. Nobody said anything, though, until Ricker came thundering back and leaned out of his van to announce that the Animal Control Department was sending a unit over as soon as possible. Then he realized they were all staring like zombies and wanted to know what had happened.
Jerry explained that Indian Tony had seriously offended something but that the Star Brothers appeared to have bailed out his sorry ass. Ricker thought that over and announced he was going back to his trailer. It seemed like a good idea. When the Amador County Animal Control Department van crossed the tracks and bumped along the farm's dark rutted access road half an hour later, they couldn't find a soul to direct them. Finally they gave it up and left.
Nobody ever saw Indian Tony again. His disappearance went unreported and, because he had no family or job, unnoticed.
That was the end of the matter, except that the inhabitants of the commune stayed well away from the hill after that. Abby and Martha, in fact, paid Jerry fifty dollars to hook up their trailer to his truck and move them over to the other side of the ridge. Everybody knew what had rescued Indian Tony, but nobody knew what it had rescued him from, and that was a little worrisome.
Abby and Martha liked the new place. There was room to put in a vegetable garden.

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