"Newman, Kim - The McCarthy Witch Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

Carnovski was about to reply when the front of the building exploded. The
pikadon - what did that mean? - was huge now and composed of more than
flame. People burned and screamed inside its body, wrapped closely in
fire. Carnovski was right: there had been people in the cellar.
Lilith began conjuring.
Finlay just looked at the demon thing. Figures fell out of its limbs,
flesh melting like wax, polished bones shining through liquid skin, eyes
boiled blind. A stench wave hit him and he choked. The thumb-head swelled,
black cinder eyes smoking in its face of flame. Lilith was incanting now,
but the pikadon still grew, incorporating burning timbers, chunks of
masonry, a twisted iron lamp-post. As it burned, it expanded. A maw opened
in the fire, and a scream thundered through. Inarticulate rage and brute
cunning were in the scream.
The pikadon didn't want to go home.
The soldiers fell back, appalled. Finlay saw Stoner, who claimed to be the
only atheist in the foxhole, cross himself.
Lilith finished, and there was a pause.
The pikadon began to laugh, a philosophically scary, soul-scraping
laughter. Lilith had her bayonet out again. It was still blooded. She
drove it through her own hand, point into the palm, blade displacing meat
and bone, emerging through the back.
She made an iron-pierced fist and gestured at the demon.
The fire popped out of existence, leaving all that had been inside the
pikadon hanging in the air for an instant. Dying people, charred rubbish,
clouds of brick splinters.
Everything fell to the ground. A small body broke at Finlay's feet, life
knocked out of it. Finlay couldn't tell what sex it had been. He tried to
think of it as a dwarf - Hitler had plenty of those - but he was certain
it was a child.
A twisted spear of debris slipped out of the air and smashed into his
head, a hot end fishing for his eye. Yelling, he went down, feeling where
his face had been mashed.
The pain was an intense burst. Half his vision was red. The jagged length
had seared through his uniform shoulder, burning skin away.
'Quick,' he heard Lilith shouting, 'the chaplain's been hurt.'

1953
Most of the suburb was post-War development. It was a community of dream
homes, an upper-income Levittown for the grey-flannel set. The houses were
clean structures made of pastel squares and oblongs, with picture-book red
roofs. Laid out on perfect grids, with green grass between the blocks, the
neighbourhood had wide roads and spacious sidewalks, dotted with tall,
shady trees. Ideal for washing your '53 Chevrolet on Sunday morning, for
cycling a route delivering Life and Time, for canasta and kaffeeklatsches,
for raising kids and going to church.
It wasn't the neighbourhood Finlay had grown up in, that was for sure. But
it was America. Each home had its own underground chapel, stocked with
missals and canned goods against Armageddon.
The church was at the heart of the grid, a fresh-painted building like a
fairytale barn. Proclamations were posted on the board outside, stating