"Charles L. Grant - X-Files 01 - Goblins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

Goblins
The X Files
Charles Grant
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as
"unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this
"stripped book."
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Harper Paperbacks A Division of HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022
Copyright ┬й 1994 by Twentieth Century Fox Corporation All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers 10 East 53rd
Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
Cover photograph copyright ┬й 1994 by Twentieth Century Fox Corporation
First printing: December 1994 Printed in the United States of America
HarperPrism is an imprint of HarperPaperbacks. HarperPaperbacks, HarperPrism, and colophon are trade-marks of
HarperCollins Publishers10 9 8
This is for Chris Carter, no question about it.
Because, quite literally, without his wonderful and addictive show, this book wouldn't exist, and I
wouldn't have anything to do on Friday nights but work.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many, many thanks, for reasons that would probably bore you to tears, to:
John Silbersack, editor and keeper of the edito-rial whip, for extreme patience under fire, and helping
me keep mine;
Howard Morhaim, fastest and best damn agent in the West;
The Jersey Conspiracy, whose enthusiastic sup-port kept me sane, and whose invaluable assis-tance
steered me away from making too many stupid mistakesтАФit isn't their fault if I made them anyway;
T. Liam McDonald, for the inside scoop;
Ms. Carolee Nisbet, Public Affairs Office, Fort Dix, New Jersey, who was always gracious and
helpful, especially when blathered memories of basic training kept getting in the way of intelligent
discussionтАФif you don't recognize some of the post as described here, the changes were made for story
reasons only, not because Ms. Nisbet steered me wrong.
And last, but never least, to Ashley McConnell, who called one night and ordered me to watch the
show, sent me information I couldn't do without, and still hasn't said, "I told you so." Yet.

ONE
The tavern was filled with ghosts that night.
Grady Pierce could feel them, but he didn't much care as long as the bartender kept pouring the
drinks. They were ghosts of the old days, when recruits, mostly draftees, were bused almost daily into
Fort Dix for basic training, scared or strut-ting, and hustled out of their seats by drill instructors with hard
faces and hard eyes who never spoke in less than a yell. The scared became terrified, and the strutters
soon lost that smug look they woreтАФit was apparent from the moment they were shorn of their hair that
this wasn't going to be a Technicolor, wide-screen John Wayne movie.
This was real.
This was the real Army.
 And there was a damn good chance they were going someplace to die.
Grady ought to know; he had trained enough of them himself.
But that was the old days.
This was now, and what the hellтАФif the ghosts of the boys who never came back wanted to stand