"William Mark Simmons - Undead 1 - One Foot in the Grave" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons William Mark)

I hadn't missed much; the lead story was the national economy. Again. Congress still hadn't figured
out that it was fiscal madness to spend more money than it was taking in every year.
I brushed my teeth as world and national events gave way to regional and local news.
New reports of cattle mutilations a couple of counties to the north. And, between there and here, a
couple of people had disappeared in Linn and Bourbon counties. Any day now the local news outlets
would start running a short series on UFOs or Satanists. Oboy.
Tonight's icing on the cake: a mysterious murder just across the Missouri state line but considerably
closer to home. An orderly had turned up murdered on the night-shift at St. Peter's Regional Medical
Center. The Joplin copshop was tight-lipped (as usual) but rumors were circulating that the remains were
found "filed" in various parts of the hospital records room.
The news ended with the announcer observing that while no motive or suspects had been established,
yet, last night was the first night of the full moon.
Nyuck, nyuck.
 Well, actually, it wasn't that facetious a sign-off. The Midwest seems relatively benign to most of the
big-city Coasters, but we make up for our lack of urban angst and high crime rates by occasionally
producing monsters that make Dave Berkowitz and Jeff Dahmer look like the Hardy Boys. Come to
think of it, Dahmer was one of ours as well.
Southeast Kansas has a particularly ghoulish history with more than its share of bloodbaths,
hauntings, and just plain weirdness. They run the gamut from the Marais des Cygnes massacre to the
Bloody Benders of the pioneer days to the purported hauntings of the Lightning Creek bridge, the ghost
in Pitt State's McCray Hall, and the stories that linger amid the crumbled remains of the old Greenbush
church. Even today those big, empty fields by day aren't always so empty by night. Nope, when the news
ends with unusual and unexplained death, the observation of lunar phenomena, and the exhortation to
lock your doors and windows, you'd better listen up, friends and neighbors; it's a good night to stay
indoors and clean and oil your guns. And listen to Yours Truly on the radio.
Shaving was never the high point of my evening ablutions and, lately, it had become a major nuisance.
In spite of slamming 150 watters into the bathroom fixtures, it was getting harder and harder to see what
I was doing with the razor. I'd heard of the wasting effect of certain illnesses but, with each passing day,
my own reflection seemed to fade before my own eyes.
"To be or not to be," I murmured, peering into the uncooperative mirror. What else had the Bard
penned? O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew. . . .
Hamlet was a butthead.
Tonight I decided "hell with it" and made the three-day-old beard official. Additional UV protection,
I figured. I wouldn't miss my face in the mirror. Dark hair, dark eyes, a slight Slavic caste to otherwise
bland features: it was not the kind of face that distinguished its owner in any definable way. Why Jenny
had ever given me a second lookтАФ
I threw my razor across the bathroom and stalked back into the bedroom. It was shaping up into a
good night for throwing things.
Questions, I coached myself, staggering into a pair of white chinos and a tan short sleeve shirt: Is my
eyesight affected? Will I eventually go blind? Is it treatable?
Is it terminal?
I pulled on a pair of white canvas deck shoes.
Oh hell, let's cut to the chase: have I got AIDS, Doc?
The mirror might play tricks on me, but there was no problem in reading the bathroom scales: I was
still losing weight. Which wasn't hard to figure. Since my appetite had deserted me, I'd managed a dozen
meals over the past two weeks.
What are you hungry for when you don't know what you're hungry for?
Nothing on a Ritz.
***
After dark it's only a fifteen-minute drive from one end of Pittsburg, Kansas, to the other.