"Christopher Moore - Bloodsucking Fiends" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Christopher)

saw the thin white face before her. He was speaking to her. "Drink," he said.
Something warm and wet was shoved into her mouth. She tasted warm iron and salt and gagged
again. It's his arm. He's shoved his arm in my mouth and my teeth have broken. I'm tast-ing blood.
"Drink!"
A hand clamped over her nose. She struggled, tried to breathe, tried to pull his arm out of her
mouth to get air, sucked for air and nearly choked on blood. Suddenly she found herself sucking,
drinking hungrily. When he tried to pull his arm away she clutched at it. He tore it from her mouth, twisted
her around and bit her throat again. After a moment, she felt herself fall. The at-tacker was tearing at her
clothes, but she had nothing left to fight with. She felt a roughness against the skin of her breasts and
belly, then he was off her.
"You'll need that," he said, and his voice echoed in her head as if he had shouted down a canyon.
"Now you can die."
Jody felt a remote sense of gratitude. With his permission, she gave up. Her heart slowed,
lugged, and stopped.


Chapter 2
Death Warmed Over

She heard insects scurrying above her in the darkness, smelled burned flesh, and felt a heavy
weight pressing down on her back. Oh my God, he's buried me alive.
Her face was pressed against something hard and cold -- stone, she thought until she smelled the
oil in the asphalt. Panic seized her and she struggled to get her hands under her. Her left hand lit up with
pain as she pushed. There was a rattle and a deafening clang and she was standing. The dumpster that
had been on her back lay overturned, spilling trash across the alley. She looked at it in disbelief. It must
have weighed a ton. Fear and adrenaline, she thought.
Then she looked at her left hand and screamed. It was horribly burned, the top layer of skin
black and cracked. She ran out of the alley looking for help, but the street was empty. I've got to get to a
hospital, call the police.
She spotted a pay phone; a red chimney of heat rose from the lamp above it. She looked up and
down the empty street. Above each streetlight she could see heat rising in red waves. She could hear the
buzzing of the electric bus wires above her, the steady stream of the sewers running under the street. She
could smell dead fish and diesel fuel in the fog, the decay of the Oakland mudflats across the bay, old
French fries, cigarette butts, bread crusts and fetid pastrami from a nearby trash can, and the resid-ual
odor of Aramis wafting under the doors of the brokerage houses and banks. She could hear wisps of fog
brushing against the buildings like wet velvet. It was as if her senses, like her strength, had been turned up
by adrenaline.
She shook off the spectrum of sounds and smells and ran to the phone, holding her damaged
hand by the wrist. As she moved, she felt a roughness inside her blouse against her skin. With her right
hand she pulled at the silk, yanking it out of her skirt. Stacks of money fell out of her blouse to the
sidewalk. She stopped and stared at the bound blocks of hundred-dollar bills lying at her feet.
She thought, There must be a hundred thousand dollars here. A man attacked me, choked me,
bit my neck, burned my hand, then stuffed my shirt full of money and put a dumpster on me and now I
can see heat and hear fog. I've won Satan's lottery.
She ran back to the alley, leaving the money on the sidewalk. With her good hand she riffled
through the trash spilled from the dumpster until she found a paper bag. Then she returned to the
sidewalk and loaded the money into the bag.
At the pay phone she had to do some juggling to get the phone off the hook and dialed without
putting down the money and without using her injured hand. She pressed 911 and while she waited for it
to ring she looked at the burn. Really, it looked worse than it felt. She tried to flex the hand and black