"Deaver, Jeffery - Lincoln Rhyme Series 03 - The Empty Chair(2000)[v1]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deaver Jeffrey)

and under them. "Oh, God," he cried, gasping, leaping up and staring in shock at the
dozens of hornets - vicious yellow jackets - clustering on his skin. He brushed at them in a
panic and the gesture infuriated the insects even more. They stung his wrist, his palm, his
fingertips. He screamed. The pain was worse than any he'd felt - worse than the broken
leg, worse than the time he'd picked up the cast-iron skillet not knowing Jean had left the
burner on.

Then the inside of the blind grew dim as the cloud of hornets streamed out of the huge
gray nest in the corner - which had been crushed by the swinging door when he kicked it
in. Easily hundreds of the creatures were attacking him. They zipped into his hair, seated
themselves on his arms, in his ears, crawled into his shirt and up his pant legs, as if they
knew that stinging on cloth was futile and sought his skin. He raced for the door, ripping
his shirt off, and saw with horror masses of the glossy crescents clinging to his huge belly
and chest. He gave up trying to brush them off and simply ran mindlessly into the woods.

"Jesse, Jesse, Jesse!" he cried but realized his voice was a whisper; the stinging on his neck
had closed up his throat.

Run! he told himself. Run for the river.

And he did. Speeding faster than he'd ever run in his life, crashing through the forest. His
legs pumping furiously. Go . * . Keep going, he ordered himself. Don't stop. Outrun the
little bastards. Think about your wife, think about the twins. Go, go, go ... There were
fewer wasps now though he could still see thirty or forty of the black dots clinging to his
skin, the obscene hindquarters bending forward to sting him again.

I'll be at the river in three minutes. I'll leap into the water. They'll drown. I'll be all right ...
Run! Escape from the pain ... the pain ... How can something so small cause so much pain?
Oh, it hurts ...

He ran like a racehorse, ran like a deer, speeding through underbrush that was just a hazy
blur in his tear-filled eyes.

He'd

But wait, wait. What was wrong? Ed Schaeffer looked down and realized that he wasn't
running at all. He wasn't even standing up. He was lying on the ground only thirty feet
from the blind, his legs not sprinting but thrashing uncontrollably.

His hand groped for his Handi-talkie and even though his thumb was swollen double
from the venom he managed to push the transmit button. But then the convulsions that
began in his legs moved into his torso and neck and arms and he dropped the radio. For a
moment he heard Jesse Corn's voice in the speaker, and when that stopped he heard the
pulsing drone of the wasps, which became a tiny thread of sound and finally silence.
Only God could cure him. And God wasn't so inclined. Not that it mattered, for Lincoln
Rhyme was a man of science rather than theology and so he'd traveled not to Lourdes or
Turin or to some Baptist tent outfitted with a manic faith healer but here, to this hospital in
North Carolina, in hopes of becoming if not a whole man at least less of a partial one.

Rhyme now steered his motorized Storm Arrow wheelchair, red as a Corvette, off the