"Rog Philips - The Phantom Truck Driver" - читать интересную книгу автора (Phillips Rog)

THE PHANTOM
TRUCK DRIVER
By ROG PHILLIPS

"Hey, Frank! Heard the news? Captain Summers is back! Yeah, same old business: he's nutty
as a pecan orchard. 'Course who can blame him for goin' off his rocker? Up front there, sluggin'
it out with them screwball Junies. I never seen one myself, but the stories they, tell about 'em тАФ
brother! New kind of warfare, all right, when your enemy starts lovin' you to death!
"No, that's not what drove him batty. In the first place, you gotta understand that Captain
Summers is тАФ or at least was, anyway тАФ a mighty level-headed guy. And don't worry about him
havin' guts; he's got all any ten men could use. Way I hear it, he came up with some ridiculous
idea that's supposed to explain what them Junies are up to. He's got it written out, I hear, but I
never got a chance to read it. . .

It had started to rain during the night, and we learned why this place was called Glue Valley by the
native Junies. The muck clung to boot soles in thick layers that grew thicker by half an inch with every
step тАФ until unpredictably it broke off, making you trip and sprawl full length in it. You came up with the
mud coating your hands and clothes and equipment. And the smell . . .
But you kept on your feet in the trenches, and you used your handkerchief or your shirt tail to work
the trigger of your tommy gun with your mud-crusted fingers.
And when a wave of Junies looked like it was going to sweep up to the trench, you used one more of
your precious atom grenades, ducking down so the radiation didn't get you, and straightening up again to
watch them topple over dead тАФ dead even before they started to fall.
They were like vermin, the Junies. Intelligent vermin, with guns made in their factories, with faces that
portrayed bravery, fear, desperation, as they rushed against the wall of lead thrown at them.
Naked vermin. Not housebroken. Better informed on Shakespeare than you were, and having their
offspring in litters of eight to sixteen.
You couldn't do anything with them. That was the trouble. You couldn't do anything but wipe them
out. They learned your language and learned how to read in a matter of days. They overran your living
quarters and read all your books and messed your floors. Their I.Q. and aptitude tests made you look
sick. But they thought words were just words. They signed treaties and ignored them. They knew what
you wanted and did what they wanted to do.
You locked them out and they unlocked their way back in. You used combination locks and they
thought you were presenting them with a puzzle on another aptitude test.
They liked you. Fifteen or twenty of them adopted you. They slept with you, ate out of your plate
and even tried to eat out of your mouth, all the time keeping up a running chatter on literature or science
or anything they thought might interest you.
They'd mess beside your plate or on your shoulder and try to change the subject when you screamed
at them.

And so you shot them. You closed the doors and the windows and went around the house killing
them until you found the last one poring over a book on advanced calculus and wetting on your pillow.
And you shot him тАФ only to discover it was a she and she had just tucked her new litter under the
blankets, and the ten new Junies decided you were their mother.
Meanwhile, others had been looking in the windows. They liked this new game. They swiped a gun
and figured out how it worked. They built smelters and factories and made guns small enough for them to
carry. Then they came back and shot you.
That's why we were in trenches killing them. That's why they came in wave after wave killing us. And
the only good thing about it was that so long as you could hold them back you could eat and not have
them sitting in your plate. You could sleep without a dozen of them curled up against you for warmth.