"The Yokel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

THE YOKEL
By WALTER M. MILLER, JR.

The time: 1987. The place: Florida. America is struggling back from the effects
of World War III. It is a divided country now, with the big cities held by
scientists and technicians, and with all rural sections overrun by ruthless
gangs seeking plunder and the eventual conquest of the cities themselves.
Into this maelstrom comes Sam Wuncie, cynical, hard-bitten and with but one
ambition: to stay alive. Circumstance puts him deep in the hands of the deadly
Colonel MacMahon and the unfathomable Zella Richmond. It is from this strange
pair that Sam eventually learns there is far more to life than keeping death at
a distance.
No good science-fiction magazine should go to press without at least one
exciting novelette crammed with action. Here's a pip!

HE STOOD in front of the dimly lighted saloon idly rolling a half dollar across
the back of his knuckles, a dark young man in dirty overalls, unshaven and
unkempt. He gazed with dull eyes at the gloomy street, debris-littered, with
clogged sewers and rusting, flat-tired automobiles, with shabby loiterers and
tallow lamps burning atop the electric streetlight standards. The small city,
once of 15,000 population, had only recently gotten the tallow lamps. Progress,
real progress.
A dame wandered past and he glanced at her indifferentlyЧa frowsy tomato with
glint-eyes and rag-hair. She saw the half dollar dancing across his skilled
knuckles. She stopped.
"Got a light, Mister?" Her purring tone offered a proposition.
"Climb a light-pole, Sister. It's on the city."
She eyed the coin. "I've got change."
"Then use it to call a taxi. Scram."
She laughed; evidently it was a good joke. She gazed hungrily into the saloon
and moistened her lips.
"Buy me a glass of swill, huh?"
"I wouldn't blow you the foam off my beer. Beat it, Gertie. Your time's used up.
I'm a busy man."
She hissed an insult, spat at him, and darted away. He grumbled irritably and
wiped the spittle out of his eyes. He dropped the half dollar in his pocket and
shuffled into the bar. Customers were scarce. A rag-bag with a gray head was
asleep on the floor; nobody bothered to pick it up. A gaunt young man with a
festered neck and a blind eye was talking to himself at the bar. The sleazy
wheezer who committed the drinks shuffled to meet the newcomer.
"Hi, Wuncie. Got dough?"
"Yeah, gimme a Ч"
"Show me."
Sam Wuncie cursed and jingled his pocket. "Wanna bite one to make sure?"
"Nah, I trust ya. Who'd you roll for it?"
"Picked beans for Gardland, Nosey. Gimme a drink."
"What'll you have?"
Wuncie glowered at him. "Frozen Daiquiri!" he snapped.