"Gardner Dozois - Flash Point" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

This wall had been built by the Black Death, a haphazard but grandiose architect. The Black Death had
eaten these people up and spat out their remains, as casual and careless as a picnicker gnawing chicken
bones. When the meal was over, the people who were still alive had dug a huge pit under the Cathedral
and shoveled the victims in by the hundreds of thousands. Strangers in life, they mingled in death, cheek
by jowl, belly to backbone, except that after a while there were no cheeks or jowls. The backbones
remained: yellow, ancient and brittle. So did the skullsтАФupright, upside down, on their sides, all grinning
blankly at the tourists.

The doorbell rang.

It was Dave Lucas. He looked like one of the skulls Jacobs had been thinking aboutтАФhis face was
gray and gaunt, the skin drawn tightly across his bones; it looked as if he'd been dusted with powdered
lime. Shocked, Jacobs stepped aside. Lucas nodded to him shortly and walked by into the parlor without
speaking. "тАж stuff about the Factory is news," Sussmann was saying, doggedly, "and more interesting
than anything else that happens up here. It sells papersтАФ" He stopped talking abruptly when Lucas
entered the room. All conversation stopped. Everyone gaped at the old game warden, horrified.
Unsteadily Lucas let himself down into a stuffed chair, and gave them a thin attempt at a smile. "Can I
have a beah?" he said. "Or a drink?"

"Scotch?"

"That'll be fine," Lucas said mechanically.

Jacobs went to get it for him. When he returned with the drink, Lucas was determinedly making small
talk and flashing his new dead smile. It was obvious that he wasn't going to say anything about what had
happened to him. Lucas was an old-fashioned Yankee gentleman to the core, and JacobsтАФwho had a
strong touch of that in his own upbringingтАФsuspected why he was keeping silent. So did Amy. After the
requisite few minutes of polite conversation, Amy asked if she could see the new paintings that Carol was
working on. Carol exchanged a quick, comprehending glance with her, and nodded. Grim-faced, both
women left the roomтАФthey knew that this was going to be bad. When the women were out of sight,
Lucas said, "Can I have another drink, Ben?" and held out his empty glass. Jacobs refilled it wordlessly.
Lucas had never been a drinking man.

"Give," Jacobs said, handing Lucas his glass. "What happened?"

Lucas sipped his drink. He still looked ghastly, but a little color was seeping back into his face. "A'n't
felt this shaky since I was in the a'my, back in Korea," he said. He shook his head heavily. "I swear to
Christ, I don't understand what's got into people in these pa'ts. Used t'be decent folk out heah, Christian
folk." He set his drink aside, and braced himself up visibly. His face hardened. "Never mind that. Things
change, I guess, c'n't stop 'em no way." He turned toward Jacobs. "Remember that nighthunter I was
after. Well we got 'im, went out with Steve Girard, Rick Barlow, few other boys, and nabbed him real
neatтАФcity boy, no woods sense at all. Well, we were coming back around the end of the pond, down
the lumber road, when we heard this big commotion coming from the Gibson place, shouts, a woman
screaming her head off, like that. So we cut across the back of their field and went over to see what was
going on. House was wide open, and what we walked intoтАФ" He stopped; little sickly beads of sweat
had appeared all over his face. "You remember the McInerney case down in Boston four-five yeahs
back? The one there was such a stink about? Well, it was like that. They had a whatchamacallit there, a
covenтАФthe Gibsons, the Sewells, the Bradshaws, about seven others, all local people, all hopped out of
their minds, all dressed up in black robes, andтАФblood, painted all over their faces. God, IтАФNo, never
mind. They had a baby there, and a kind of an altar they'd dummied up, and a pentagram. Somebody'd