"George Alec Effinger - All the Last Wars at Once" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

back inside. A voice called from the street, "You damn commie atheist Protestants!
We're gonna wipe you out and send your lousy heretic souls straight to Hell!" More
gunfire. The stained glass windows of the church shattered, and there were cries
from inside.
"They got one of the elders!"
"It's those crummy Catholics. We should have got them when we had the chance.
Damn it, now they got us holed up in here."
The next day a blue factsheet was circulated by the Jewish community explaining
that they had finally gotten tired of having their gabardine spat on and that
everybody'd just have to watch out. Around the world the remaining clusters of
people fractured again, on the basis of creed.
It was getting so you didn't know who you could trust.


Stevie was heading back toward the city when the car went. It made a few
preliminary noises, shaking and rattling slower, and then it stopped. For all he knew
it might simply have been out of gas. There were eight days left in the prescribed
thirty, and he needed a ride.
He took the rifle and the two pistols from the Imperial and stood by the side of
the road. It was a lot more dangerous to hitch now than it had been before for the
simple reason that the odds were that anyone who happened by would probably be
on the other side of one of the many ideological fences. He was still confident,
though, that he would be safely picked up, or be able to wrest a car away from its
owner.
There was very little traffic. Several times Stevie had to jump for cover as a
hostile driver sped by him, shooting wildly from behind the wheel. At last an old
Chevy stopped for him, driven by a heavy white man whom Stevie judged to be in
his late fifties.
"Come on, get in," said the man.
Stevie climbed into the car, grunting his thanks, and settled warily back against the
seat.
"Where you going?" asked the man.
 "New York."
"Um. You, uh, you a Christian?"
"Hey," said Stevie, "right now we ain't got any troubles at all. We can just drive
until we get where we're going. We only have eight days, right? So if we leave off the
questions, eight days from now both of us'll be happy."
"All right. That's a good point, I guess, but it defeats the whole purpose. I mean,
it doesn't seem to enter into the spirit of things."
"Yeah, well, the spirit's getting a little tired."
They rode in silence, taking turns with the driving. Stevie noticed that the old man
kept staring at the rifle and two pistols. Stevie searched the car as best he could with
his eyes, and it looked to him as though the old man was unarmed himself. Stevie
didn't say anything.
"You seen a factsheet lately?" asked the man.
"No," said Stevie. "Haven't seen one in days. I got tired of the whole thing. Now
who's at it?"
The old man looked at him quickly, then turned back to the road. "Nobody.
Nothing new." Stevie glanced at the man now, studying his face curiously. Nothing
new.