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

hadn't done that, Savage thought, Bonner had. "Wait," he shouted. But it was
too late. As soon as the raider turned off the big engine, the connection was
made. The bike, layered with explosives, detonated. The boom was deafening and
the pans of the bike blown asunder by the force of the blast scythed through
the mingling raiders with a ferocious flash of death. The raider who had
stopped the bike vanished in a metal storm of forks and spokes. The
next-closest person to the death machine was poor Savage.... A piece of the
old Harley's frame caught him mid-gut and he doubled over it, as if trying to
stop the twisted metal from burrowing into his big body. The pain of the cut
tore an impassioned scream from his throat. A dozen other raiders went down
when the bike went up. Some were killed instantly, others lay groaning on the
packed cold earth, their staring shocked eyes watching as their lifeblood
pumped out onto the hungry dirt. Franklin was spared. He couldn't believe his
good fortune. Around him lay the dead or dying members of Savage's once-proud
force. Those still alive, perhaps twenty of them, couldn't believe that their
numbers had been taken apart without even having seen the enemy. They looked
to Franklin as the new leader. "So what the fuck do we do now?" asked one
raider. Franklin wiped his hand through his hair. The boss was dead and
half-more than half-his force was gone. "I say fuck it," said Franklin.
"Let's go home." "Good idea," said one of the raiders. They slowly turned
around and left their dead for the snows and the cold. They headed back to Chi
with Franklin leading the way. He wondered if the boss had even thought of the
chance of his getting killed when he kicked Franklin awake that morning.
Probably not. But now he was dead. Stupid fuck. "I knew this was a bad idea,"
said Franklin into the wind. Chapter 7 Riders called it Trash Alley. It was
a former superhighway jammed with the rusting ruins of thousands of old
automobiles. Every lane of the old dead roadway was packed with cars, all of
them, in every lane, facing in the same direction: west. Bonner figured they
must have been running away. Running away from a war that had somehow started
in the east and was sweeping west. The scared citizenry had taken to the road,
and in their panic they had trapped themselves there on the highway, a highway
that ran nowhere, except to death. Trash Alley was tough passage for Bonner,
Starling, and the other riders that dared to go into the Slavestates, but it
was the path they took because it was just about the only way in. South of
them lay the firelands, the burning border of the Slavestates. The firelands
were a continuous belt of fire that shielded most of the Slavers' western
flank from attack. A few men, Bonner among them, knew their way through the
firelands, but no one, not even Bonner, traveled willingly through that
burning flame swamp-except Seth. He reveled in the smoky fire pits, traveling
through them as easily as a rider on a wide-open stretch of desert highway in
the Hotstates. Bonner and Starling traveled slowly along the fifty dirty
miles of the alley. They had to take it slow as they were guiding their
vehicles between the rusty steel reefs that were the brokendown cars and
trucks of drivers long dead. The alley always depressed Bonner, seeing in
these decaying pieces of transport the whole scenario, the complete, violent
picture of the death throes of the old world. Behind every wheel had been a
panicked driver, a terrified family huddling by his side; a darkening sky,
flat, unemotional instructions on the radio; incomprehension, disbelief,
anger, fear turning to terror then giving way to mass hysteria. Riding up
swiftly behind them came terrible history, fate-the massive movements of