"Richard Harding - Outrider 01 - Premier Volume" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harding Richard)

Richard Harding - Outrider 1, Premier Volume Copyright 1984 by Robert
Tine AFTER THE APOCALYPSE Hard to believe, but once the burn victims were
gone and those who were going to go crazy had lost their minds, the ones that
remained, the hardiest survivors, began to rebuild. Slowly, life had been
reborn. Men stopped living in their caves and burrows and they began to adapt,
to fit their lives to their new world. They built shelters, they planted what
crops they could, but they still lacked the courage to walk over the hill, to
trail down the road to see what lay just over the horizon. Bonner had been
the first. The first to get an old Dodge motor running well enough to venture
out into the world. He had traveled, cautiously at first, through the
continent finding groups of survivors-not many but enough to convince him that
his work was worth doing. Slowly he began linking the bands together, building
a network, trading information for supplies. Others had joined him. Leather
came riding out of the dawn one morning and said he had been all the way to
New York. Gradually people had come to trust the Outriders, they were the
closest thing to heroes the new world had. Bonner began to coax the survivors
out of their little enclaves- they were like nervous puppies-trying to get the
bands to join together, to unite, to rebuild. It wouldn't be the old America,
but it would have been a land that might have been free of fear and that would
have been a good enough start for Bonner. THE OUTRIDER; Volume One: Premier
Volume by Richard Harding Bonner's eyes opened and he lay still, staring into
the darkness, giving himself a moment to accustom himself to the night.
Gently, he slipped off the weight of the woman who lay in the crook of his
shoulder, her long hair trailing across his chest. She did not stir. He swung
out of the bed and pulled on a pair of pants and quickly laced his holster to
his hip. In the faint light, the handles of the three knives he carried
gleamed dully. Noiselessly, he crossed the room and stood by the door. On the
other side of the door he heard the tentative step of a man, walking so slowly
and placing his feet so carefully, that it was plain that he was approaching
Bonner's lair stealthily. Bonner wondered who was being so stupid. Outside
the man paused. A second later, the door-frame shattered and Bonner caught a
quick glimpse of a man, a big man, plunging into the room. Bonner was on him
in a flash, throwing his weight at the intruder, scything his legs out from
under him. The man fell heavily, and wheezed as the full strength of Bonner's
foot slammed into the space between his shoulder blades. The wind was knocked
from his lungs and he gasped for breath, his head spinning. He was not so
disoriented, though, that he did not feel one of Bonner's knives lying with
menacing weight at the nape of his neck, where the spine met the skull. The
girl was sitting up in bed, spotlighted by the light shining through the door.
Her dark hair fell down her shoulders and curled around her breasts. Her eyes
were wide with surprise, her mouth open, but she emitted no sound. "Fuck,
Bonner, Christ..." gasped the man. "Who are you?" "It's me, man,
Hatchet." "Hatchet?" Bonner should have known. Only someone like Hatchet
would have been so dumb... "Yeah man, Christ, will you get that fucking blade
out of my neck." Bonner put a touch more pressure on the knife. "What are you
doing here?" "Leather sent me. I got a message from Leather..." Hatchet was
the kind of person who lied even when telling the truth would have served him
better. Bonner didn't believe him for a second. He also knew that Hatchet was
no coward, he wasn't smart enough to figure out fear. "Leather? What does he
want with me?" "Shit, man, let me up and I'll tell you." "Tell me now."