"duane,.dianne.-.spider.man.-.octopus.agenda" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

beneath its tires. It showed no lights, and even the moonlight
reflected only dimly from its black surface. Approximately the size
and shape of a big three-axle truck, it had no windows, not even a
windshield. The front was a smooth, unbroken surface, and there seemed
to be no doors, either, until it stopped and an oval section swung up
and away from the thing's dark hide.

Out of the darkness within the black truck stepped a shape that made
Jim Heffernan's stomach twist within him, a shape from a childhood
nightmare.

Years ago, when he was just a kid, he had been exploring through the
woods near his home and had found a dead squirrel. He had known it was
dead from the smell, if nothing else. But the squirrel had been
moving. When he looked closer, he found that its body was alive with
maggots, literally heaving with them. The sight had made him throw up
his lunch, and ever afterward, something moving in a way that eyes and
sense and reason said was wrong had always produced the same gut-clench
reaction.

He felt that reaction now.

A man had climbed from the truck; a big man, broad across

the shoulders and heavy through the waist, looking not fat but
massive. But something else came out with him. At first it looked as
though he was carrying two armfuls of wide-bore tubing, but then, as
Jim watched with increasing horror, he realized that the tubes weren't
tubes at all. They were arms.

No. They were tentacles, and they writhed and squirmed as if each one
had a life all of its own, rearing into the air or coiling back down
again, like snakes, huge pythons like the ones Jim had once seen in the
zoo, unwilling to bite the person they were constricting. Unlike the
dark metal of the truck and the black clothing of the alien figures,
these shone in the moonlight with the unmistakable gleam of polished
steel.

Jim stared, swallowing hard to prevent himself from throwing up again.
He had a feeling that retching would be regarded as an insult, and that
this weird, ominous creature was not one to take insults kindly. All he
could find to say was, "Please, Mister---don't hurt him. He's got
kids."

The aliens moved away, and it was extraordinary how perceptions could
change in the space of a few seconds; now Jim saw that they were no
more than people in funny costumes, not frightening at all. Not when
compared to something really frightening like the broad man-shape
stalking toward him, framed by the writhing silhouettes of its
tentacles.