"Alan Dean Foster - Jed the Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

It wasn't the people who caught his attention, however. Not even the pretty girls, of whomTexas had
more than its fair share. It was the ocean. He'd worked oil rigs out in the Gulf, but this different. Dark
green and slightly dangerous, far more wild and undisciplined,.it touched something deep inside him.

Going to be thirty and I still ain't seen thePacific Ocean , he'd thought to himself. Whereupon he'd called
in to his current place of employment and given notice.

That had beenтАж let's see nowтАж four days ago. So far he'd had no reason to regret his decision. He'd
bade farewell to a few close friends, listened politely to their suggestions and admonitions, checked out
the Caddy, tossed his few belongings in the trunk, and set out from Abilene.

Now, for the first time in his life, he found himself in real mountains, climbing a road flanked on both
sides by trees taller than the more familiar oak or mesquite. He considered the loaded boom box on the
passenger seat, decided to leave it be and listen to the air for a while longer yet.

Though he'd never been farther west than Sweetwater, he wasn't worried about getting lost. Pick any
highway heading west, keep going that direction, and sooner or later you'd hit the Pacific. The longer he
could avoid the frantic, monotonous interstates, the more of the country he'd be able to see. Like these
beautiful, uncrowded mountains, he told himself.

Twenty-nine and traveling, he thought. Just because you came from a poor family didn't mean you
couldn't see the country. You just ate cheap, slept simple, and got a job when your money ran out.

He accelerated to pass another vehicle. The car was new, streamlined, and just a little too big to fit in his
trunk. Ponderosa pines and the occasional fir hugged the paved shoulder. It wasn'tMaine orMontana ,
but it was the closest he'd ever been to a northern forest.

Slowing, he passed through the quaint mountain community of Cloudcroft. Ten minutes past the last
building he pulled off the highway into a well-marked picnic area. Ignoring the black-ened,
industrial-strength public steel grills and soot-stained barbecue pits which marked assorted pullouts like
so many fossilized robots, he drove to the farthest parking space and killed the engine. Birdsong replaced
the a cappela rush of moving air.

From the trunk he extracted a gurgling plastic ice chest and a cardboard bucket filled with deceased
fowl (fried, of course). Except for a couple of battered, transient trailers whose semi-permanent
occupants regularly tried the tolerance of the Park Service, the picnic pullout was deserted.

He was considering the most isolated of the concrete picnic tables and its accompanying oil-drum trash
cans when a brand-new minivan pulled up and parked not twenty yards from him. Via multiple doors it
explosively disgorged two brightly dressed adults and three hyperkinetic children.

He could tell from their footwear as well as their demeanor that they were from the city. Not a normal
city, either, likeFort Worth orAustin orLubbock , but some overly urbanized coast city. Instead of work
boots, the father wore imitation Tevas probably purchased from Kmart or Wal-Mart or some other
discount mart. The kids boasted designer sneakers. Mother wore combat boots.

Then there was the slick tablecloth, carefully spread out to separate sustenance from Nature. Expensive
plastic picnic uten-sils followed, laid out as neatly as scalpels in a surgery. Meanwhile the children raced
after each other, threw whatever they could pick up and kicked what they couldn't, and squealed