"Alexander Jablokov - The Fury At Colonus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jablokov Alexander)

THE FURY AT COLONUS
Alexander Jablokov
The only black ambulance in the city stopped in the littered area at the rear of Police HQ. The siren,
unsuccessfully repaired many times, sounded like a sobbing infant, one too tired or despairing to cry
properly. The dark-cloaked figure of the Fury rolled out of the back and fell to the pavement. Without
seeing if his unwelcome passenger had landed safely, the driver gunned the engine, and the ambulance
whimpered off.

"Nice to see you back, ma'am," the desk sergeant said from behind his bulletproof glass, scrolling a
schematic smile across the LEDs of the overhead announcement board. The Fury peeled a flattened
Coca Cola cup from her dark coat and dropped it on the floor. It was a hot day, the sunlight molten on
the worn squares of the floor, but the Fury kept her ankle-length coat buttoned up to her neck. Only the
ends of her thick fingernails stuck out of the over-long sleeves. Her hair was long and stiff with dried
blood.

She walked past the rows of desks and the whispers followed her.

"Back?"

"Long one, this time. Rough. Maybe next time she won't --"

"Shh! Bad luck. Did you hear what happened?"

"Popped Oedipus's head like a watermelon, when she finally caught up to him. Don't know why it took
so long, with those bad feet of his...."

"Popped his head?"

"Right between her hands."

"Oh, come on. A watermelon's impossible, much less a skull. Think you could do that?"

"Hey, I don't know. Maybe those empty eye sockets made it easier, gave a pressure release or
something. I saw the autopsy photos. Here, I got 'em in my desk."

"You are a swine. Can I see?"

The Fury opened the door to her office. She had already noted the absence of her name on the frosted
glass, and so was prepared for the empty room with its cracked plasterboard and Burger King bag
crumpled in a corner. Her heavy desk had left gouges in the floor. As she examined the abandoned
space, the one fluorescent remaining flickered and went out, leaving a dismal residual glow, like crushed
fire flies.

Her new office was five levels down into the substructure of the building, behind a stack of dented filing
cabinets with hand- lettered labels, the black ink faded almost to illegibility. There were two windows,
which implied a rise in status, but both revealed nothing but twisted layers of bedrock. They were the
sides of aquarium tanks, displaying trapped seas of stone.

They'd moved her collection and arranged it in order on her walls: dangling jump ropes, crow bars bent
by the frantic force of their homicidal use, pieces of stained cloth, even her favorite, a