"Brad Ferguson - The World Next Door" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferguson Brad)

Big topic in the meeting tonight was how to ration out the meat supply.
The dairymen think it's time to rebuild their milking stock; the townies
say they're hungry for real, red meat, and since the rain's been good, the
meat will be good, too. We'll probably compromise on this again; a lot of
those bossies aren't going to make it through the winter anyway. And it
snowed like hell again today.
November 19
Jess came in from his farm to say he'd found a body by the side of the
road on his way in. It was a stranger, shot dead where he stood; there was
dried blood under him and nowhere else. Doesn't look like a bandit attack,
though; the kid still had his wallet on him. Maybe it was a hunting
accident, but the mayor's posted extra patrols, just in case it was bandits
after all. We'll go out and get the body tonight.
November 21
Nobody can figure it out.
The body's the damnedest thing anyone's ever seen. Doc went through
the kid's ID and came up with all sorts of stuff that didn't make any sense.
First off, there was a lot of ID, and no one here has any anymore. The
kid's name was John David Wright. He was just about to turn twenty.
There was a New York State driver's license dated this year; the kid's
picture was on it. It's a good sign things are returning to normal, if they've
begun issuing those again. Only problem is, it doesn't say where the seat of
government was that issued it. Was it in Rensselaer or Syracuse or what?
Wright's home town is given as this one, but he's a complete stranger to
us. The address on his driver's license is for a big house on Bates Road
that burned down right after the war. Jess says he thinks he remembers a
family named Wright who lived there around the time the war started, but
they all died in the fire.
The kid was wearing a wristwatch with numbers on it instead of hands;
Fred Crawthers says it looks a lot like the watch he saw in one of his
dreams. He had money, too тАФ bills and change both тАФ all with recent
dates. I was pleased to see the mint is back in business ... but there was a
half-dollar coin that bore the President's picture, which I think is
overdoing it. There were also a couple of credit cards called Mastercard
and Visa; it took me a while to recognize a credit card when I saw one.
Wright also had a receipt, dated three days ago, from a Howard
Johnson's restaurant. I remember those. They were on highways and had
orange roofs. But there aren't any around here and there never were.
Young Wright was wearing eyeglasses, but they weren't made of glass.
They had plastic lenses that scratch easily; Doc showed me. Doc's been
through the kid and reports nothing physically unusual except for his
teeth. He's got the usual fillings, but one of his front teeth was covered by
a tough white plastic. Doc says it covered a bad crack and looked
convincingly good. (I wish I knew where they were doing dental work these
days. Everybody in town needs some.)
The only other thing Doc said was that the kid was maybe too healthy.
He had good weight on him, no obvious signs of radiation impairment, no
nothing. About like we all were, before the war.
Well, the kid may be one of ours; we don't know. We'll treat him right,
anyway. We'll bury him tomorrow as best we can, with all this damn snow