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

 "It ain't fair," the young woman gasped.
"Tad said he was the boss of this town and he'd take
care of us."
"What did you do with the people who refused to pay your
toll?" Ben asked.
"Kilt 'em," the young woman groaned.
All feeling of sorrow for her left Ben.
She closed her eyes and lapsed
into unconsciousness.
Tad screamed, his hands clutching his shot-up
belly.
Ben walked back to his pickup and pulled out.
"You
goddamned cock-sucker!" Tad screamed after
him. "My town! My road! Jimmy kilt
Lucas for it and I kilt Jimmy.
Mine!"
"You are certainly welcome to it," Ben said.
He rolled down the window and let the cold air
fan him. "Should be quite an interesting trip," he said
aloud. "Certainly starting out with a bang."
At an old truck stop just outside
Nashville, Ben pulled off the interstate and into the
parking lot, carefully maneuvering his way between
rusted-out rigs and stripped cars. He tucked his
truck between two rusting hulks that once were
eighteen-wheelers, and walked toward what used to be
the restaurant, his Thompson slung over his
shoulder, the drum refilled.
He liked to stop at these old truck stops because
sometimes he lucked out and could find, among the rubble,
playable cassette tapes; he had left all his
back in Georgia.
The first thing he spotted were two bodies, a man
and a woman. The man had been tortured, then shot
between the eyes. The woman had been raped, judging
by the still-visible bruises on her inner thighs and the
blood that had dried on her legs and buttocks.
Like the man, she had been shot between the eyes.
Ben knelt down between the bodies. He touched them
both. They were cold, but they had not been dead
for very long. Bugs had not found them, and rats and
dogs had not gnawed their flesh.
Ben walked the ruined and littered truck stop.
There was not another living soul-that he could see. He
stood and looked down at the man and woman. He
had
seen so many dead and rotting bodies that they had
long since ceased filling him with any emotion. They
were now merely a part of the way things were.