"Christopher Moore - Our Lady of the Fishnet Stockings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Christopher)

Shrine of the Blessed Bullets in two weeks.



Part III: The Martyring

Since the miracle the village had grown into a city and the villagers had grown rich selling their land to
developers and peddling souvenirs to pilgrims. On every corner villagers set up booths and sold Blessed
Bullet medallions and Blessed Bullet plaques (bullets suspended in Plexiglas over a photographs of
Estrella and Sister Octavia). In every alley a villager in a trenchcoat sold nude pictures of Estrella buffing
herself with a scarf (bootleg stills from Ninja Babysitters).
 When the wedding was announced the hotels near the shrine began filling up with jet-setters and royalty
from all over the world hoping to get a good spot in front of the shrine to view the wedding of the miracle
girl. (The wedding was to be even more grand than those put on by the British royal family, who refused
to attend and instead ate sour grapes at tea and read aloud from The Joys of Inbreeding). The networks
established satellite hook-ups and rubber company blimps cast their rotund shadows over the shrine
while proclaiming that "the third world rides safer on all-weather radials" in thirty-foot letters.
 On the day of the wedding well wishers lined the boulevard leading to the steps of the shrine. The bride
arrived in a gilt antique carriage from which she emerged wearing black fishnet stockings, a white gown
with a twenty-foot long train, and headband advertising her favorite sports shoe. B. Sneed Banducci and
the Archbishop waited at the top of the steps where the bullets hung in the air at their backs. Security
guards cleared a path through the crowd for Estrella and Sister Octavia, who had been temporarily
excused from her duties at the Vatican when the Pope consented to get by with wash-and-wear robes in
her absence.
 The wedding march concluded and the crowd fell silent except for the few reporters who murmured
the obvious to their viewers in their best golf-match whispers. The Archbishop was adjusting his
microphone when the first shot rang out and ricocheted off the steps.
 The wedding party turned and looked into the crowd. At the bottom of the steps an old, somewhat
wall-eyed man in black beret was taking aim at Estrella with an automatic pistol. Sister Octavia threw the
girl to the ground and fell across her to shield her from the bullet. When the second shot sounded and
there was no pain, Sister Octavia turned to see Colonel Mendez clutching his chest with bloody hands.
The security guard who had fired the second shot ran to Mendez to restrain him but the Colonel had
already fallen and was watching his life run red over the white steps of the shrine.
"It was to stop me from doing it, not to save you," he said.
 As Mendez died there was a thumping noise behind the wedding party. They turned to see the Blessed
Bullets falling one by one to the floor of the shrine, like the leaden tears of a giggling God.