"Richard Harding - Outrider 02 - Fire And Ice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harding Richard)

Richard Harding - Outrider 2, Fire And Ice THEY WERE EXCELLENT
TARGETS Bonner opened up, the big.50-caliber telegraphing its
message-death-the weighty bullets slamming into the Lightning squadsmen with
fearful accuracy. The long white riding coats turned red. A bike skidded
across the road. An arrow exploded in the midst of a mass of men and machines.
The first few bikes were doomed, and Bonner and Starling dispatched them
quickly. But the snowmen were a disciplined group. The riders behind the
leaders had slowed down and formed up behind their fallen brethren. They had
no clear idea of where Starling and Bonner stood, but they fired back round
after round into the almost tangible gloom. The big.50-caliber reaped another
harvest of bone and flesh. A rearward squadsman picked out Bonner's position
and gunned his bike, careening down the corridor of death at high speed, one
hand guiding the bike, the other clutching an M3 grease gun. He fired as he
went. Bonner saw him coming and imagined that the man saw himself as something
of a hero. The wire was two inches into his neck before the snowman realized
what had happened. THE OUTRIDER; Volume Two: Fire And Ice by Richard
Harding Copyright 1984 by Robert Tine Chapter 1 Winter was coming on. Cold
swept in from the north, cutting into Chicago, blowing icily through the
broken streets. The city seemed to cower, like a captive before his captor,
waiting for the great snows that would bury the city, wrapping the ruins in a
cold white shroud. The snows were coming; they came every year, like an icy,
victorious army driving its enemies before it. It was the worst time of the
year in the lives of those who still lived on the continent that had once been
called America, in the area once known as the United States. Food would run
short, fuel would be consumed too fast, and foraging for more would be
difficult for the well-equipped raiders and smugglers and impossible for the
poverty-stricken remainder of the population. In the four feudal states that
existed where America once stood proud, a lot of slaves would die that winter,
while their jailers would rest warm and well fed through the season of ice,
having enriched themselves at their slaves' expense. In Chicago, as food ran
out, men would reach for their guns and kill to get their share. And as winter
wore on, the smugglers, raiders, road guides, pimps, whores-Chicago's diverse
and violent population- would begin to quarrel. Living cheek by jowl, cooped
up in the cold ruins, unable or unwilling to head out onto the ice-slick roads
to do battle with the Stormers from the Slavestates or the Devils from the
Hotstates, they would turn on each other. Dorca, the huge proprietor of a bar
that carried his name, spent each night breaking up fights. He had a rule: no
gunplay indoors. A lot of blood would stain the snow outside Dorca's. The red
flakes would stay there until covered by a fresh fall or the thaw
came.... Bonner was sure winter got longer each year. He lived in a few rooms
on the old South Side, a tumbledown building he shared with the rats and the
girl. Sometimes he looked up at the broken jagged remains of the old Chicago,
the city that had been made up of buildings that tore into the sky. They
amazed him. No one in the new world lived more than a few stories above the
ground. The scared, the prudent, the powerless looked for shelter underground,
where it was dark and cold, but safe, they thought. Bonner knew it didn't
matter where you lived; no one was safe unless he handled a gun well and
didn't hesitate to use it. Bonner was safe. Bonner had chosen his little
dwelling carefully. It was five rooms on the top floor of a four-story
building. Each room in the ancient house was served by a fireplace, and set