"Castro, Adam Troy - Locusts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Castro Adam Troy)

As was the little monster itself, who turned in mid-air to face me. It was a
rare thing to get this close a look at a living one; mostly, the only ones we
got to see were smashed and broken corpses. We'd never actually seen an ugly
one, not even once in all the months since the skies first turned dark with
them, but this one was a knockout, blessed with more than her share of the
ageless, innocent, and utterly androgynous beauty they all possessed. Some of
them had always been marginally identifiable as males, others as females; this
one was lithe and athletic and cute and looked exactly like any other
pre-adolescent mall brat, except that she was six inches tall, covered head to
toe with a light pink down, and flitting through the air on colorful butterfly
wings. As she giggled with high-pitched helium delight, I could have easily
found myself too charmed into immobility to react. But her eyes -- -- the Locust
smiled winsomely and went for me at full speed, a raindow blur cracking the air
behind her like a whip.

I lit the bug spray and let the little bitch have a jet of white flame right in
the face. She screeched and fell back, trailing black smoke. I kept the flame
steady, even as she spiralled toward the floor, incinerating her, burning even
the ashes, all the while screaming at the top of my lungs.

My friends and neighbors were still cowering under the remains of the tarpaulin
when the can ran out of propellant, God alone knows how much later. I dropped
it, knelt by the blackened smear on the basement floor, covered my face with my
hands, and sobbed.

Sharon was the only one to come out of hiding to get me. She walked stiffly, and
hesitantly, as if unsure the ground wouldn't open up under her feet. The
Rorschach stains left by Claudette's blood were already beginning to dry on the
remains of her blouse; they'd already dried on her prematurely graying hair,
dying the silvered brown a shinier shade of black. She put a sticky hand on my
shoulder and croaked, "That took balls, Stu."

I looked at my empty hands and said nothing.

"You saved us," she said.

The thing had had my daughter Rachel's eyes.

One of their favorite tricks: looking like somebody you loved, and wouldn't hurt
in a million years.

But Rachel was gone. She wasn't dead. At least, I didn't think she was dead; she
certainly wasn't human, but I didn't consider that dead. Those distinctions
didn't mean as much as they used to. Suffice it to say that she wasn't exactly
my daughter anymore . . .

I said, "So what?"

Sharon sat down beside me, respecting my need for silence, but unwilling to