"Richard Paul Russo - Just Drive, She Said" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russo Richard Paul)

console, a rolling series of figures that made me think of a time counter.
I drove along the river road, trying to figure out what seemed different,
but unable to pinpoint anything. About fifteen minutes after we'd crossed
the bridge, the console display stopped changing, and flashed a single
figure.
"All right," the woman said. "Bring the speed back up."
The gun was gone from my head, but I wasn't about to argue. I accelerated
until we were back up near eighty. The woman punched buttons, then again
jammed the big switch on the front of the console.
We lurched sideways without moving again, and this time I thought I was
really going to be sick. Everything in my vision began to tilt, and I had
a hell of a time keeping the car on the road. I hit the brakes and brought
the car to a stop, no longer caring what she would do to me.
I left the engine running, put my head on the steering wheel, and breathed
slowly, deeply, until the spinning stopped. I straightened and looked at
the woman. She now held the gun in her lap.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Sure," I said. "Terrific."
"We won't have to go so hard now," she said. "Just coast along at twenty,
twenty-five miles an hour."
"Does that mean I start driving again?"
She nodded.
I looked down at the gun in her lap, and nodded back. "Give me another
minute or two, will you?" I held up my hand, which was shaking. "I can't
drive like this."
"All right."
I sat there, trying to relax, trying to cut down the shakes. The street
was nearly deserted; only a few cars drove by, and there were no
pedestrians. The cars looked odd, but there wasn't enough light for me to


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figure out why. Then I leaned forward over the steering wheel and looked
at the front end of the Mazda. It was still an ugly brown, but the nose
had become more elongated, sharper. The retractable headlights were gone,
replaced by conventional stationary lights.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked.
"If it was daylight, you'd see even stranger things," she said.
Which made me look more closely at our surroundings. The nearby
streetlight was mounted on an unusually thick metal pole, and gave off a
sharp, emerald glow I'd never seen before. The lights in the buildings
were brighter, harsher than I would have expected.
"Let's go," the woman said.
I breathed deeply a few more times. Then I put the car into gear, let out
the clutch, and swung back onto the road.
We drove slowly, and I kept searching for changes in my surroundings, but
it was too dark to see much. The woman directed me through several turns,
then onto a freeway.