"Carrie Richardson - A Dying Breed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Richardson Carrie)

The red pickup matched the description Jesse had given us. I wondered if Englethorpe had heard
us arrive, if he was watching from behind one of the curtains. I wondered if he would surrender
peaceably, or if someone would get hurt. I wondered if I was doing the right thing.
George fetched boltcutters from the trunk of the patrol car and applied them to the chain. Angie
caught the cut ends and eased them to the ground. The hinges bleated mournfully as George pushed
the gate open just enough for the four of us to slip through. George and I took the two shotguns;
Angie and Kyle drew their revolvers. Some instinct told me the house was vacant. I didn't want
to waste time on it, but I didn't dare skip checking it out. I waved George and Angelina around
to the back. Just as I started up the steps someone spoke behind me. "He is not in the house."
The sibilant whisper was familiar by now. I slapped a hand over Kyle's mouth to keep him from
screaming and turned around.
There were three of them, of various sexes, ages, and states of disrepair. As I watched, a
fourth came striding slowly out of the cornfield. The cornfield. Of course.
My glare told Kyle he could join the ranks of the freshly dead if he squealed. I sent him around
back to fetch George and Angelina. He could get his vomiting over with, quietly, before he
returned. He was white to the gills, but he managed to keep it under control until he was out of
sight.
The three of them caught up with me and my entourage of the dead a few yards into the cornfield.
Dry stalks had been uprooted and tossed aside to form a small clearing, invisible from the edge of
the plot. The dead and the living clumped at separate sides of the clearing. Perhaps the
deceased regarded us with the same wonder, revulsion, and lack of understanding we felt for them.
George was almost as white as Kyle. He must not have believed Angelina after all, but he held his
ground like a Spartan when the crude grave at my feet began to open.
First a fissure spread along its center, as though an invisible hand had scooped a trough through
the clods. Grains at the edge of the crack tumbled inside, then suddenly began to leap out again
as the dirt started to flow and ripple away from the centerline. The five open trenches beside it
were outlined with standing waves that looked like the result of the same process. The body that
rose up from that hole, dirt cascading from its shoulders, was very fresh -- and very young.
At first I thought he was still alive. Then I saw the marks on his body, and he turned his
ruined eyes toward me. I knelt so he wouldn't have to stare upward. Maybe it made a difference.
"Hello, son. What's your name?"
"Jeffrey. Jeffrey Thornton." Missing persons bulletin out of San Antonio, two days ago. "Are
you a policewoman?"
"A kind of policewoman, Jeffrey. I'm a sheriff, and these are my deputies." He didn't react to
the dead bodies standing about. "Do you know how you got here?"
"I was at the store with my mama. A man made me get in his car. He brought me here. He did
things that hurt me." A thoughtful pause. "I'm dead now. Your face is wet."
"I know. I'll be okay in a minute." A dead little boy who missed his mama. I hugged him, very
gently. "Do you know where this man is now?"
He turned and pointed. "He's in the barn. He has a lady in there now."
Oh Christ.
We stormed the barn like an assault team. I pumped two shotgun loads into the door at bar level,
and George and Kyle threw an old feed trough through what was left of it. We hurtled inside --
and were just moments too late.
I don't know ... maybe if I'd believed sooner, or spent less time deposing Jesse, or less time
comforting Jeffrey, or .... I've spent every night since then second-guessing myself, and I'll
take my guilt to my grave. Along with the vision of Hell that Robert Englethorpe had created in
that barn.
He leaped off her as we burst in. He must have slashed her throat just as he climaxed. I knew
we were going to lose her when I saw how her head lolled on her neck; he'd damn near cut all the