"George R. R. Martin - WC 4 - Aces Abroad" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

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candles, or to even wonder about their mysterious rescuers, if, indeed, the band
that had ambushed their kidnappers had meant to rescue them.
She walked through the darkness.
It was difficult going. Right at the start of her trek she'd taken off her right
shoe to even her stride, and sometime soon afterward she'd lost it. The ground
was not without sticks and stones and other sharp objects, and before long her
feet hurt like hell. She cataloged her miseries minutely so she'd know exactly
how much to take out of Tachyon's hide if she ever got back to Port-au-Prince.
Not if, she told herself repeatedly. When. When. When. She was chanting the word
as a short, snappy little marching song when she suddenly realized that someone
was walking toward her on the trail. It was difficult to say for sure in the
uncertain light, but it looked like a man, a tall, frail man carrying a hoe or
shovel or something over his shoulder. He was headed right toward her.
She stopped, leaned against a nearby tree, and let out a long, relieved sigh.
The brief thought flashed through her mind that he might be a member of
Calixte's odd gang, but from what she could discern, he was dressed like a
peasant, and he was carrying some sort of farm implement. He was probably just a
local out on a late errand. She had the sudden fear that her appearance might
scare him away before she could ask for help, but quenched it with the
realization that he had to have already seen her, and he was still steadily
approaching.
"Bon jour," she called out, exhausting most of her French. But the man made no
sign that he had heard. He kept on walking past the tree against which she
leaned.
"Hey! Are you deaf?" she reached out and tugged at his arm as he passed by, and
as she touched him, he stopped, turned, and fixed her with his gaze.
Chrysalis felt as if a slice of night had stabbed into her heart. She went cold
and shivery and for a long moment couldn't catch her breath. She couldn't look
away from his eyes.
They were open. They moved, they shifted focus, they even blinked slowly and
ponderously, but they did not see. The face from which they peered was scarcely
less skeletal than her own. The brow ridges, eye sockets, cheekbones, jaw, and
chin stood out in minute detail, as if there were no flesh between the bone and
the taut black skin that covered them. She could count the ribs underneath the
ragged work shirt as easily as anyone could count her own. She stared at him as
he looked toward her and her breath caught again when she realized that he
wasn't breathing. She would have screamed or run or done something, but as she
stared he took a long, shallow breath that barely inflated his sunken chest. She
watched him closely, and twenty seconds passed before he took another.
She suddenly realized that she was still holding his ragged sleeve, and she
released it. He continued to stare in her direction for a moment or two, then
turned back the way he'd been headed and started walking away.
Chrysalis stared at his back for a moment, shivering, despite the warmth of the
evening. She had just seen, talked to, and even touched, she realized, a zombi.
As a resident of jokertown and a joker herself, she'd thought herself inured to
strangeness, accustomed to the bizarre. But apparently she wasn't. She had never