"Keith Laumer - Future Imperfect" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

sinister entrances under age-blackened signs offering clean beds one flight up. I slowed, looked
over what was left of a coffee and 'burger joint that had never made any pretense of sanitation,
spotted a two-customer-wide grocery store of the kind that specialized in canned beans and cheap
wine.
I eased off power, settled to the ground, gave a blast from the cleaner-orifices to clear the dust
from the canopy and waited for the dust to settle. The canopy made crunching noises as I cycled it
open. I settled my breathing mask over my face and climbed out, stretching stiff legs. A neon sign
reading Smoky's Kwik-Pick was hanging from one support and creak, creaking as the wind moaned
around it. I heard the distant soft buroom of masonry falling into the dust blanket.
As I reached the curb, the dust lifted, danced like water, settled back in a pattern of ridges and
ripples. I spun, took two jumps and the street came up and hit me like a missed step in the dark. I
went down. Through a rising boil of dust, a clean-cut edge of concrete thrust up a yard from my
nose with a shriek like Satan falling into Hell. Loose gravel fill cascaded; then raw, red clay was
pushing up, a foot, two feet. There was a roaring like an artillery bombardment; the pavement
hammered and thrust like a wild bronco on a rope. The uplifted section of street jittered and danced,
then slid smoothly away, squealing like chalk on a giant blackboard. I got to hands and knees,
braced myself to jump. Then another shock wave hit, and I was down again, bouncing against
pavement that rippled like a fat girl's thigh.
The rumble died slowly. The tremble of the ground under me faded and merged with a jump of
my muscles. There was not much I could see through the dust. A little smoke was curling up from
the new chasm that had opened across the street; through the mask I caught a whiff of sulphur.
Behind me, things were still falling, in a leisurely, ponderous way, as though there were no hurry
about returning what had once been the small city of Greenleaf, Georgia, to the soil it had sprung
from.
***
The car was my first worry; it was on the far side of the fissure, a ragged two-yard-wide cut
slicing down into the glisten of wet clay far below. I might have been able to jump it if my knees
had not been twitching like a sleeping hound's elbow. I needed a plank to bridge it; from the sounds
of falling objects, there should be plenty of loose ones lying around nearby.
Through the smashed front of a used-clothing emporium two doors down, I could see racks of
worn suits of indeterminate color, powdered with fallen plaster. Behind them, collapsed wall
shelves had spilled patched shirts, cracked shoes, and out-of-style hats across a litter of tables
heaped with ties and socks among which tones of mustard and faded mauve seemed to predominate.
A long timber that had supported the ends of a row of now-exposed rafters had come adrift, was
slanted down across the debris. I picked my way through the wreckage, got a grip on the plank,
twisted it free to the accompaniment of a new fall of brick chips.
Back outside, the dust was settling. The wind had died. There was a dead, muffled silence. My
plank made an eerie grumbling sound as the end scored a path through the silt. I found myself
almost tiptoeing, as though the noise of my passing might reawaken the slumbering earth giants. I
passed the glassless door of Smoky's Kwik-Pick, and stopped dead, not even breathing. Ten seconds
crept by like a parade of cripples dragging themselves to a miraculous shrine. Then I heard it again:
a gasping moan from inside the ruined store.
 I stood frozen, listening to silence, the board still in my hands, my teeth bared, not sure
whether I had really heard a noise or just the creak of my own nerves. In this dead place, the
suggestion of life had a shocking quality, like merriment in a graveyard.
Then, unmistakably, the sound came again. I dropped the plank, got the pistol clear of its
holster. Beyond the broken door I could make out crooked ranks of home-made shelves, a drift of
cans and broken bottles across the narrow floor.
"Who's there?" I called inanely. Something moved in the darkness at the back of the room.
Cans clattered as I kicked them aside. A thick sour stink of rotted food penetrated my respirator