"Thomas A. Easton - Unto the Last Generation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

with
his stick. His cloak swayed with the motion. "Somebody to talk to, you know?"
The householder grunted. He was no cleaner or better dressed than the man in
his
yard, but he did not leave his doorway.
"Hey," said the stranger. He stabbed his stick into the ground and waved a
hand
toward the house's chimney, from which trailed a telltale wisp of smoke.
"You've
got a fire. I've got meat. Snared a rabbit this morning. Hit a pigeon with a
rock." He stepped forward, hand outstretched, smiling behind his beard. "I'm
Ron."
The householder was shifting his grip on the handle of his axe when a voice
behind him said, "Don't let him in!"
"You've got a woman?" Suddenly a knife was in the stranger's hand, the bushes
behind him were rattling as two other men came into view, and the householder
was staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
The axe came up, but by then it was already too late for defense. A hand as
hard
as fate seized and held it, frozen in mid-strike.
The householder screamed in frustration and fear. Then he screamed in pain,
as
the stranger's knife reached out and tore his shirt and chest and heart.
***
One of the house's four rooms was full of firewood. That meant it would burn
well when the rain finally stopped and the house's shelter was no longer
needed.

Another was just as full of boxes and bags of books and old clothes and
assorted
knick-knacks the couple or their predecessors had salvaged from the remnants
of
the world that had been. More fuel for the fire. There was very little worth
stealing.
There was no sign that the house had ever held a child.
The third room held a sink and a table and a rusty woodstove that gave off
heat.
An open cupboard revealed a cloth bag that held a pitiful few withered
potatoes.
Another bag, open to show dried apples, sprawled on the table, surrounded by
the
bones of the rabbit and pigeon the stranger had mentioned. A bottle supported
the candle that was the room's only source of light. The stranger himself sat
in
one of the two chairs and listened to the noises from the last room, the
bedroom: grunts, moans, whimpers, bedsprings, the bang of a headboard against
a
wall.
"She ain't as young as he was." The man on the other side of the table was
pinching the sides of his thin mustache between his fingers, trying to train