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

wouldn't hurt... but, on the other hand, extra weight would certainly slow him down. His lips were
thin, even cruel. And when he smiled you could never be sure there was any humour in it. Jake's
hair was long as a lion's; he kept it swept back, braided into a pigtail. His jaw was angular,
thinly scarred on the left side, and his nose had been broken high on the bridge so that it hung
like a sheer cliff (like a native American Indian's nose, Liz thought) instead of projecting. But
despite his leanness, Jake's shoulders were broad, and the sun-bronzed flesh of his upper arms was
corded with muscle. His thighs, too, she imagined ...
'The gas station,' he answered. 'Sign at the roadside says "Old Mine Gas". There's a track off to
the right from the road to the pumps ... or rather the pump. What a dump.' Another sign this side
of the shack says ... what?' He frowned.
'Well, what?' Liz asked.

'Says "See the Creature!'" Jake told her. 'But it's spelled C-r-e-e-c-h-u-r. Huh! Creechur ...' He
shook his head.
'Not much schooling around here,' she said. Then, putting a hand to the left side of her face to
shut out the last spears of sunlight from the west, 'That's some kind of eyesight you've got. Even
with binoculars the letters on those signs have to be tiny.'
'First requirement of a sniper,' he grunted. 'That his eyesight is one hundred per cent.'
'But you're not a sniper, or indeed any kind of killer, any longer,' she told him - then caught
her breath as she realized how wrong she might be. Except it was different now, surely.
Jake passed the binoculars, looked at her but made no comment. Peering through the glasses, she
focused them to her own vision, picked up the gas station's single forlorn pump and the shack
standing - or leaning - behind it, apparently built right into the rocky base of a knoll, which
itself bulged at the foot of a massive outcrop or butte. The road wound around the ridgy, shelved
base of the outcrop and disappeared north.
And while she looked at the place, Jake looked at her. That was okay because she didn't know he
was looking.
She was a girl - no, a woman - and a sight for sore eyes. But Jake Cutter couldn't look at her
that way. There had \>em a woman, and after her there couldn't be anything else. Not ever. But if
there could have been ... maybe it would have been someone like Liz Merrick. She was maybe five-
seven, willow-waisted, and fully curved where it would matter to someone who mattered. And to whom
she mattered. Well, and she did, but not like that. Her hair, black as night, cut in a boyish bob,
wasn't Natasha's hair, and her long legs weren't Natasha's legs. But Liz's smile ... he had to
admit there was something in her smile. Something like a ray of bright light, but one that Jake
wished he'd never known - because he knew now how quickly a light can be switched off. Like
Natasha's light ...
'Not very appetizing,' Liz commented, breathing with difficulty through her mouth.

14


'Eh?' He came back to earth.
'The dump, as you called it.'
'The name says it all.' Jake was equally adenoidal. 'Probably the entrance to an old mine. Hence
"Old Mine Gas".'
A great talent for the obvious, she wanted to tell him but didn't. Sarcasm again, covering for
something else.


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