"James Maxey - The Final Flight of the Blue Bee" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maxey James)

sagging. "This future world is a rough place."

Honey wiped the tears from her face, smudging her fingers with mascara. His use of the word whore
sobered her. So blunt--and so accurate. What did it matter that this was her first time? What did it matter
that she'd been in New York for six months without a job and all of her money was gone and she was
forty-eight hours away from eviction? Nothing erased the fact that she'd made the decision to rent her
body for money. She could have been approached by any number of horrible creeps. This old man was
strange, but he didn't seem dangerous. She needed to be more professional.

"About the costume," she said. "I'm cool with it. Whatever floats your boat."

"This isn't some sexual thing," Stinger said. "Back then, there were whispers, of course. You'd have to be
blind not to see I was a lot younger than Blue Bee. He was thirty-five, I was twenty, but looked younger.
I remember when our archenemy the Hatchet called Blue Bee a pedophile. That really set Blue Bee off. I
thought he was going to cripple the Hatchet. He beat him for ten minutes. There wasn't a tooth left in that
bastard's mouth afterwards."

"You were, uh, some kind of superhero? A real one?"

"Yes! My God, forty years isn't that long. You remember the Beatles, don't you? You remember Ed
Sullivan, and JFK, and Vietnam?"

"I've heard of them, sure."

"But not of Blue Bee and Stinger?"

"Sorry."

Stinger stared into the mirror. Honey got on her knees behind him and rubbed his shoulders.

"We saved the world," he said. "And the world's forgotten."
****
They'd reached Mr. Mental before the police. They were always a step ahead of the police.

Mr. Mental stared at the captive Blue Bee, a touch of madness in his eyes, as he announced:

"I control the H-bombs. All of them." He'd tapped his silver helmet. "I have the launch codes in here. I
have the detonators primed. A single thought, and I trigger Armageddon."

"You fiend!" Blue Bee said, straining against the bars of the cage that had dropped from the ceiling. Blue
Bee looked terrific in his skin-tight navy costume. He had a Charles Atlas build, and when he was angry
his eyes took on a fiery, determined cast that made Mick feel that he was in the presence of a true man, a
hero.

And that day, climbing through the window behind Mr. Mental, listening to him brag about the bombs,
Mick stood in the presence of a true villain. He could have tried something clever. A tap on the shoulder,
a quick quip, a punch to the jaw. He could have somersaulted across the room with acrobatic grace and
kicked open the bars of Blue Bee's cage. He could have commanded that bees swarm Mr. Mental, and
told him to stay still or get the stinging of his life.