"Michaela Roessner - Vanishing Point" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roessner Michaela)

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VANISHING POINT
Michaela Roessner

Dedication
for Richard as I promised



Ignorance about people who disappear
Undermines the reality of the world
тАФAnonymous, 1990


Prologue

Spring, Twenty-nine Years Post-Vanishment
тАФMilpitas, California
Although he'd been preparing for days, in the end he could hardly bring himself to go back inside the
home to fire it. From the crude shelter he'd built himself in the backyard of the house next door he peered
through the steady spring drizzle at the contaminated building and its surroundings, trying to decide if he'd
shorn the new grass close enough and cleared away sufficient brush so that the fire would stay contained.
Perhaps he should check out the adjacent houses, equally untenanted, one last time. Just to be
absolutely sure that the disease, the change, whatever it was, had not spread.
He chided himself for stalling. He already knew as much as he needed to of the neighboring houses.
When he'd searched through them he found almost thirty years of dust tranquilly blanketing their interiors,
as if keeping the furnishings safe and warm for their long-Vanished owners. He'd scraped the dust into
ugly piles to investigate what lay beneath. Except for the dust the buildings were clean. They were not
infected.
His neck and back ached. His whole body had stiffened from hunkering down too long. He interlaced
his long fingers and cracked his arthritic knuckles, but that didn't ease the pain. Nor did the thriving smell
of wet earth and cut hew grass. He'd spent hours scything and raking the grass clear, wanting to leave as
little fuel as possible for the fire.
Conditions would never be better for a safe burn. The drizzle fell straight down, unwavered by any
wind. It had been raining for three days, soaking ground, overgrown vegetation and the roofs of the
surrounding tract houses. He stooped to duck out of his shelter, craned his neck to look at the sky. It
hung oppressively low overhead; a dense, gray ceiling. Smoke from the fire wouldn't be visible to the
communal settlements down-valley. No one would come to investigate.
His equipment was stored in a gardening shed. He pulled a gas mask down and over the thick knit
cap he wore, slung it around his neck, and put on industrial gauntlets before hoisting two heavy, sealed
canisters. Their wire handles cut painfully into his palms in spite of the heavy gloves.
On the porch of the home he stopped for a moment to push the gas mask into place and seal his
coat's high collar up around it before shoving the back door open with his foot. He could no longer smell
the cut grassтАФjust the dusty rubber insides of the gas mask.
 He walked along a hallway past bookcases filled with bric-a-brac to the front of the home. Before
mounting the stairs to the upper level he set down one of the containers.
His itinerary for destruction was blueprinted onto his brainтАФhe didn't have to think. The gas mask cut
into his view and insulated him, an automaton guided by remote control. He wanted those limitations to
his visionтАФhe didn't want to see again the cans of paint he'd found stored in the laundry room, labeled