"Geoffrey A. Landis - Hot Death On Wheels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

He'd left everything behind, and there, in the last hour before dawn, he
came on Death, waiting for him in the road; Death in a midnight black
coupe, paint so flat black you had to look hard to see it was even there at
all.
Death had the face of a skull; grinning, of course, but there wasn't any
humor in that grin, none, and wearing a dirty t-shirt with a pack of Camels
rolled up in a sleeve that just hung there, flapping limp on the bones. Den
recognized that gleaming skull instantly, he'd seen it a thousand times, seen
it even in his dreams: it was painted on the hood of his rod. The car,
though, the midnight coupe was a make that he couldn't quite recognize,
and that right there was more than a little odd, 'cause Den knew the lines of
every car ever built.

And when he saw Death waiting for him, just grinning and smoking and
waiting by his car, he knew that he'd ridden so fast he'd left behind Nevada,
and Wyoming, and even goddamn Iowa, and had left the roads of the living
so far behind that the only way he would ever get back was to run this race,
this last race, and by God win it.
 But he'd been looking for a race, spoiling for one, and if it was Death,
why then, he'd goddamn race Death, and win, too; he wasn't about to lose to
anybody, not Death, not anybody.

And Death only grinned and beckoned with one finger.

He probably should have stopped and checked his car, let his oil cool a
little, taken a look at the wedges he had on his springs, scoped things out.
But that's something that you just don't do, kid, you never shut the motor
when the adrenaline is pumping. And we'd had that car apart just last week
tweaking it up--him tweaking it up, that is, me handing him wrenches--and
it was running as sweet as we'd ever gotten it, smoother than twenty-dollar
whisky and rattlesnake fast. And, besides, he was spoiling for a race.

So he waved Death on ahead of him, and old Skull-face pulled up and
waited at a stoplight-- a stoplight right out in the middle of nowhere, not
even at a cross-roads, just a light. Nothing there but road and starlight,
and
maybe in the way distance two tall buttes, with the road disappearing
between them. So Den pulled up beside him, both of them racing their
engines, both of them smiling like rabid 'coons, and then the light turned
green, and he popped the clutch and they were gone.

And Death's car was fast, scary fast, faster than any car Den had ever
seen, and in that first instant he knew that every other race he'd ever run
was just chickenshit, but this was the real thing. They'd hit a hundred
before you could spit, and Death was even with him, maybe even a little
ahead, and then they both shifted into fourth, and Den put his foot down
and hammered it with everything he had.

He was neck and neck with Death, but his engine was running way hot; it