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

around looking to steal whatever you had and they didn't care a hell of a lot
if you got hurt. You carried a gun. It was a fact of life. The shotgun the
girl held on Hatchet was hers; it would have been like carrying a purse or a
wallet in the old days. Bonner knew his way through the dark streets, but
even if he had not, he would have been able to reach his destination by sound
alone. There was a bar in Chicago, called Dorca's-Dorca being a bear-sized old
smuggler who decided to settled down-and that was where you went for a drink,
a girl, information. It never closed and it was always just this side of a
riot. Dorca made sure though that things never got too much out of hand. But
he was tolerant. "Hell," he would say, "these boys deserve a little
relaxation." "These boys" were Chicago's elite citizens. Chicago was still
the center of the country-only no one called it a country anymore-now it was
known as the continent. Where the United States of America-the place forever
eradicated by the bomb- had been there were sow four or five little kingdoms
and all of them were bad places ruled by worse men. Leather called himself the
President of the Slavestates, and he was about as bad as you can get. The
survivors that lived there stayed because they were too scared to get out.
They figured that it was safer to put up with the troubles where they
were-even if that meant enslavement to thugs like Leather and Hatchet- than to
risk crossing the wastelands to get away. But, if you had the guts to go, you
headed for Chicago. Chicago was an open city and the men that lived there
were the only daredevils or free spirits or whatever you want to call them
that still lived on the continent. In the old days you would have called them
criminals. But hell, thought Bonner, everybody these days was a criminal, or a
corpse or a coward. It was in Chicago-or what was left of it-that you found
the smugglers and the border raiders and the road guides and the runaways. If
you made it to Chicago you were pretty safe from the enemies you might have
left behind. If the. Lightning Squad from the Snowstates or the storm-troopers
from Leather's Slavestates came looking for you, they would have to face every
gun in Chicago. Over the years the stormers and the squadsmen and the Devils
from down in the Hotstates, realized that if they didn't get you before you
crossed the city line they weren't going to get you at all. The permanent
residents, the regulars at Dorca's, figured that if you had made it that far,
you deserved to stay. Staying alive once you got there, well, that was a
different story. If you were smart and tough and had strong nerves and didn't
have too many qualms about taking somebody else's property or life you might
make a smuggler. All you had to know was where stuff had been hidden before
the bomb-and it might be deep in the Slavestates or in the middle of the
desert in the Hotstates-go get it, and blast your way back to Chicago. If you
came back with liquor, meat, ammunition or, best of all, gasoline, you could
sell it in the city and make a fortune. You got your money up front in gold or
silver only, but then you had to worry about keeping it. There were smugglers
who had fought storm-troopers or squadsmen for a thousand miles only to lose
their haul to some joker with an ancient Smith & Wesson they happened to meet
on the streets of Chicago. If you were dumb and liked to fight you could
settle for being a raider. All you had to do was get a bunch of boys together,
make sure they had enough ammunition and then wander into one of the States
and have a look around to see what was worth stealing. Smugglers knew what
they were going after and they had a fair idea of where it was; raiders didn't
care, they would bring back anything they thought might be worth something,