"Raymond Z. Gallun - Bioblast" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gallun Raymond Z)

"So let's find out," Hep said.

The roar of their engines echoed ominously in the cleft as they gunned ahead fifty meters and stopped,
their muscular legs spraddled, propping their rumbling bikes.

"Hey, buddy, want a lift?" Hep challenged the night-vagrant.

"The creep's scared shitless," Cheek sneered.

Still in the saddles, and with their booted feet wide apart, they walked their vehicles over toward the
graveled steepness, trapping their quarry inside a tight V. As the guy tried to slip away, Cheek reached
out a large hand to take hold of a thin arm. Hep grabbed the fellow's opposite shoulder.

The face that the two cyclists saw in the brilliant headlamp reflection from the cleft slope looked a little
crooked on the left side. It was also badly scratched. This weird character was panting; he seemed not
only scared but exhausted. His aspect was hardly impressive, though he was tall. His queer, pale eyes
looked dazed, yet disquieting.

Cheek Bossiter, irritated by the oddity and apparent weakness of this worn-out derelict, longed to smash
his fist full force into his silly face. Likely he would do better than that pretty soon.

But just now he declared mildly, "We're lonesome, chum. And bored. We think it might be entertaining to
talk to you. Exchange philosophical notes, so to speak. Maybe figure out some funny games. All right?"

Something dawned on Hep Arbow just then.

"Wups, Cheek, remember?" he said.


About forty minutes later, the owner of an all-night diner handed his phone to a flustered motorist, who
had demanded that he call an ambulance and the State Police.

"Yeah, officer--just like the boss-man here says," the motorist puffed. "Back a couple of kay-ems on
N-414 that's being fixed. Two big kids with motorcycles. Not a smashup, because their bikes were just
parked off the road, undamaged. Guess those kids are both finished--one with his head all sideways, the
other with his liver hanging out in the dirt. There was hardly any traffic, so I don't think they could have
been hit while standing. One had a bloody hunting knife, though. Maybe they just got into a fight with
each other. If they weren't murdered. There was that alert for a maniac..."

One of the men was already dead, his spinal cord entirely severed between two crushed cervical
vertebrae. Just before the other expired on the way to the hospital--advanced surgery might have
repaired his ruined viscera, but not the deep and diffuse hemorrhaging within his cerebellum or lower
brain--he gasped out three phrases:

"That raw-meat gobbling lunatic! He did this! A devil!"

His tone and choice of words were more those of some law-abiding and horrified grandfather than of
Cheek Bossiter as he had usually been.

Spruce Crest, a prestigious, well-endowed sanatorium for the disturbed, located some thirty kilometers