"Nancy Kress - Maximum Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

Until I realize what's going to happen next. Has to be. The guy has already disappeared into the
smokeтАФhe knows where he's going, all right, and how much time he has to get there. I don't. But I start
running for everything I'm worth, away from the windowless building, and every second I'm farther away is
a gift, a present, a fucking miracle. Another second I'm alive.
The building blows.
I dive behind somebody's brick barbecueтАФby this time I'm back among the housesтАФand crawl inside.
It's got a metal cover to keep rain off the grill, because the grill is jammed with terra cotta dishes and
wooden spoons and shit for cooking. The terra cotta shatters and rains down on me, but otherwise I'm
okay. I cover my head and wait and, sure enough, the building explosion ignites the closest of the train cars
and it blows, too.
Poisons. Toxins. Radiation? What is the stuff in those canisters?
I don't know and it wouldn't help me if I did. I'm screaming my throat raw until I notice and make
myself stop it. The noise all around me is like the end of the world. The black smoke makes it impossible to
see my own knees, even though I'm crouched so that my face is jammed up against them. I'm pretty sure
I'm going to die. If all the train cars blow, I'm probably going to die.
But they don't, and I don't.
From the sound, only one car ignites, and I ran away from that direction. I can't remember if I ran back
through the glow marker, out of the explosion zone. I didn't feel no marker. I don't feel nothing for a few
more minutes, except the fact that I'm fucking alive. Then I crawl out of the barbecue pit and stand,
wobbly.
My helmet switched itself to virtual vision, for better resolution. Around me it looks like a war movie,
something from the action in South America. Houses burning, houses fallen down. The gray building just
isn't there no more. Only rubble, and smoke, and noise that rings in my ears like it was far away instead of
practically on top of me.
I wobble my way between the fires and back toward the staging area. Somewhere I've lost my
direction because I approach the church parking lot sideways, from between two houses on its east side.
The parking lot don't even look real.
Old people everywhere, some still in suits without helmets, some out of suits, everybody smeared with
soot so you can't tell if they're black or white or purple. And pets. A dead cat lying on the pavement, with a
woman wailing over it, tears streaming through the wrinkles on her face. A live puppy, one foot crushed but
wagging its tail like Christmas morning, while another rusty fusty cries over it. A big Labrador retriever
racing around in circles, barking and barking. Cats spitting at the Lab. Vets with medical scanners
crouching over dogs. A geezer holding an empty dog dish, just standing there gazing at it, never moving a
muscle. The regular army soldiers trying to load the civvies back onto trucks: "It's not safe here, sir. Get on
the truck immediately. Leave the dead animal, pleaseтАФ"
Nobody listens. Vid crews maneuver their robocams, people wail and shout. And closest to my side of
the parking lot, a huge sooty parrot digs wicked claws into the shoulder of a grinning man who don't even
wince, the bird squawking over and over, "Access granted. Here we go! Access granted. Here we go!
Access grantedтАФ" And in the distance but coming closer, the scream of more fire-fighters and equipment
arriving by air.
My sergeant spots me. She's crossing the parking lot at double time, and she glimpses me between the
buildings and stops dead. Her face changes completely, and I know what I'm looking at. Relief. She thought
I was dead, and that she was the one who lost a precious NS, and that she would have to pay for that real
hard and real long. Only here I am, alive. Never mind that no civvy isn't with meтАФ the civvy isn't nineteen
years old and a national resource.
"Walders!" she snaps at me, and I know just how upset-relieved she is. Usually they call us by our first
names. "Report in!"
And I do. I wobble forward, on knees made of water, and not because I almost died. Not because I lost
my civvy, either, and fucked up the first hazardous-duty NS assignment I ever got. My knees wobble
because I have to report in, a full report, including exactly what I saw the running civvy carry away with