"Keith Laumer - Catastrophe Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

CATASTROPHE PLANET
Chapter One
I held the turbo-car at a steady hundred and forty, watching the strip of cracked
pavement that had been Interstate 10 unreel behind me, keeping a sharp eye ahead
through the dust and volcanic smog for any breaks in the pavement too wide for the big
car to jump. A brand-new six-megahorse job, it rode high and smooth on a two-foot air
cushion. It was too bad about the broken hatch lock, but back in Dallas I hadn't had time
to look around for the owner. The self-appointed vigilantes who called themselves the
National Guard had developed a bad habit of shooting first and checking for explanations
later. True, I had been doing a little informal shopping in a sporting goods storeтАФbut the
owner would not have cared. He and most of the rest of the city had left for points north
quite a few hours before I arrivedтАФand I needed a gun and ammunition. A rifle would
probably have been the best choice, but I had put in a lot of sociable hours on the Rod
and Gun Club thousand-inch range back at San Luis, and the weight of the old-style .38
Smith and Wesson felt good at my hip.
There were low volcanic cones off to my right, trickling black smoke and getting
ready for the next round. It was to be expected; I was keeping as close as the roads
allowed to the line of tectonic activity running along the Gulf Coast from the former site
of New Orleans to the shallow sea that had been northern Florida. Before I reached
Atlanta, sixty miles ahead, I would have to make a decision; either north, into the relative
geologic stability of the Appalachians, already mobbed with refugees and consequently
drastically short on food and water, to say nothing of amusementтАФor south, across the
Florida Sea to the big island they called South Florida, that took in Tampa, Miami, Key
West, and a lot of malodorous sand that had been sea bottom until a few months before.
I had a hunch which way I would go. I have always had a fondness for old Scotch,
sunshine, white beaches, and the company of sportsmen who did not mind risking a
flutter at cards. I would be more likely to find them south than north. The only station
still broadcasting dance music was KSEA at Palm Beach. That was the spirit for me. If
the planet was going to break upтАФall right. But while I was alive I would go on living at
the best speed I could manage.
The map screen had warned me there was a town ahead. Just a hamlet which had
once had ten thousand or so inhabitants, it would be a better bet for my purposes than a
big city. Most of the cities had been stripped pretty clean by now, in this part of the
country.
The town came into view spread out over low hills under a pall of smoke. I slowed,
picked my way around what was left of a farmhouse that had been dropped on the road
by one of the freak winds that had become as common as summer squalls. A trickle of
glowing lava was running down across a field from a new cone of ash a quarter of a mile
off to the right. I skirted it, gunned the turbos to hop a three-foot fissure that meandered
off in a wide curve into the town itself.
It was late afternoon. The sun was a bilious puffball that shed a melancholy light on
cracked and tilted slabs of broken pavement. In places, the street was nearly blocked by
heaps of rubble from fallen buildings; hoods and flanks of half-buried vehicles, mud-
colored from a coating of dust, projected from the detritus. The downtown portion was
bad. Not a building over two stories was left standing, and the streets were strewn with
everything from bedsteads to bags of rotted potatoes. It looked as though the backlash
from one of the tidal waves from the coast had reached this far, spent its last energy
finishing up what the quakes and fires had started.
Clotted drifts of flotsam were caught in alley mouths and doorways, and along the
still-standing storefronts a dark line three feet from the ground indicated the highest reach