"William W. Johnstone - Ashes 05 - Alone in the Ashes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

"Hey, Dads!" one of the young men called.
"They's a toll for passin" through here."
The young man was tall and slender and blond. He
was dressed in dirty jeans, heavy boots, and
wore a black leather jacket. His hair was very
long and very dirty and very unkempt.
The knot of young men and women around the punk were,
except for coloring and size, his mirror image.
Punks.
Ben was dressed in tiger-stripe field clothes.
His field pants bloused into jump boots. He
had already stopped along the road and fixed a meager
breakfast, boiling water to shave.
Even after a worldwide tragedy and a nation swarming with
anarchy, the generation gap still holds true, Ben
thought.
"Public road," Ben said.
"Not no more," the spokesman said. Ben pegged them
all as in their late teens to early twenties. "We
took over the road. Now you shut your mouth and pay
up."
"You want money?" Ben said with a smile. Money
had been worthless for years.
"You a real smart-ass, ain't you?" a pouty young
woman popped off.
"At least my ass is clean," Ben told her.
"Dads," the tall young man said, reaching for a
pistol on his belt, "you just bought yourself a world of
hurt."
"Kill "im, Tad!" the young woman cried.
"Shoot his legs out from under him and let's watch him
flop around."
"Yeah," Tad smiled.
Ben dropped the muzzle of the Thompson, heavy
in his hands with its full drum of .45-caliber
ammunition, and pulled the trigger.
The quiet morning air was shattered by the hammering
of the old Thompson and the screaming of the dead, dying, and
badly wounded.
Ben knelt down beside the young woman who had
wanted Tad to shoot Ben's legs out from under
him so she could watch him flop around.
The young woman had managed to pull a .38 out of
her belt before Ben's Thompson had very nearly cut
her in half.
Despite the events that had prompted the shooting,
Ben felt some small waves of pity wash over
him. The young woman was really, under the grotesquely
and amateurishly made-up face, a very pretty
woman.