"Brian Lumley - E-Branch 2 - Invaders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

free hand to the back of Hinch's thick neck. 'No one and nothing can help you now.'
'You're a fucking madman!' Hinch jerked and wriggled, but he couldn't pull free. The other's
strength was unbelievable.
'And you ... you are nothing!' Milan told him, continuing to smile, or at least doing something
with his face.
Hinch saw it, but didn't believe it: the way Milan's lips curled back and away from his elongating
jaws, the teeth curving up through his splitting gums, his ridged, convoluted nose flattening
back, while his nostrils gaped and sniffed. And the red blood dripping from the corner of his
mouth.
Then Milan freed Hinch's hand in order to clench his fist and

hit him in his ribs - such a blow that Hinch, burly as he was, was lifted from his feet. At the
same time, Milan hoisted him by the scruff of the neck and tilted him forward; concerted movements
designed to topple him into space.
And as the shrieking Hinch flipped out into the night, so the Thing that looked like a man
released him.
Hinch fell, but only for a moment. Then his shriek became a gasp as he came down on his belly and
cracked ribs across the safety rail of a painter's platform slung between twin gantries. From
above, seven or eight feet to the open window, Hinch heard Milan's cursing. And struggling to his
feet inside the platform he looked up - to see that hideous, livid face looking down on him!
Then, moving like liquid lightning, Milan was up onto the window ledge, and light as a feather
came leaping to the bouncing, rocking platform. His intentions were unmistakable, and as he landed
Hinch went to kick him in the groin. Milan caught his foot, twisted it until the ankle broke, then
reached out with a long arm to grab the other's throat. And without pause, lifting Hinch bodily
into the air, he thrust him out beyond the rim of the safety rail - and let him fall.
As Hinch fell - grasping at thin air and failing to catch it - he was aware that Milan was
speaking to him one last time. But whether it was a physical voice he heard, a chuckling whisper
in his head, or simply something imagined, he couldn't have said. And he certainly didn't have
time to worry about it.
Paid in fully the crazed voice whispered. For your insults if not for your work. So be it!
And below, crashing down head first, Hinch was dead before the pain had time to register. Like an
egg dropped on the floor, the contents of his skull splattered at first. But the grey was soon
drowned in a thick, night-dark pool that formed around his shattered head.
While up above, that terrible face continued to smile down on him... for a little while, until
Aristotle Milan's features melted

7


PART ONE
back into a more acceptable form, and he gave a careless shrug, and grunted again, 'So be it!'
Then he returned to listening to his music, and no other's thoughts to disturb him now, in the
solitude of a strange place in a strange land ...
An 'unfortunate accident,' was how local newspapers would later report the matter. They also
reported Milan's generous offer to pay all of the funeral expenses, and his very generous donation
to Derek Hindi's widow ...

The How Of It