"William Mark Simmons - Undead 2 - Dead on My Feet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons William Mark)

up shop shortly and I needed to find a broom closet if I was going to stay. As I straightened up, I glanced
down into the open casket. An elderly black man wearing a brown suit lay in repose. "You wouldn't
happen to know where they keep the broom closets around here, would you?" I murmured.
Wrinkled eyelids twitched, slid upwards; yellowed eyes rolled in the corpse's sockets, focused on
me.
"Uh!" I said. The question had been implicitly rhetorical.
A skinny arm shot up and dark, cold fingers closed on my wrist before I could react. "Bairrr," the old
man croaked, "rrunnn . . ."
"Oh mama!" I said.
" 'Tect . . . of enge . . ."
"Say what?" I tried to pull back but the old corpse's grip was like refrigerated iron.
"Baarronnn . . ." The dead jaw creaked audibly as it tried to form the words.
"Hey!" said a voice from behind me.
"Pro-tect," the dead guy was saying.
"What are you doin'? Get away from there!"
I glanced over my shoulder. It was one of the consolers from next door. He was a lot bigger than me
and looked more angry than anguished, now. "What the hell you doin', man?"
I turned, trying to show that I wasn't the one doing the doin'. Maybe he couldn't believe his eyesтАФI
knew I couldn't.
"Moses! Elvin! Some cracker is messin' with Mr. Delacroix!"
Maybe it was one of those perspective-based optical illusions: the two guys who appeared in the
doorway behind him looked big enough to push the first guy around in a stroller. The only way this could
get any worse was if the vampire came back.
There was a blur of black and white at the edge of my vision and my luck for the evening was just
about complete.
No one is here. Although the creature's lips did not move, his thoughts echoed through the room like
a public address system on the edge of feedback. Leave this room and close the door behind you.
The three mourners shuffled backward like extras in an extremely corny zombie movie from the '40s.
Forget what you have seen. . . .
Or as Oz, the great and powerful, had once thundered: "Pay no attention to that man behind the
curtain!"
The door closed and it was just the two of us. Or three, counting Mr. Delacroix. Who I suddenly
realized had released my wrist. Trouble was, the vampire was now between me and the two exits from
the room.
"Nice," I said. "A real 'Men In Black' sort of thing. How about I forget what I've seen, too? I'll go
close the other door." I took a step.
 Instantaneously, he was across the room, slamming into me like a freight train. I went down with the
thing on top of me, Mr. Delacroix and his casket landing on top of us both.
Then, just as suddenly, he was off of me. I didn't waste time looking around to see why. I took off on
all fours, plowing through a clutch of folding chairs on my way to the other exit.
I almost made it.
The vampire caught me three feet from the doorway and threw me into the wall. Or through itтАФit
was only double Sheetrock with two-by-four bracing, after all. But I was in luck: I had found the broom
closet.
A taloned hand reached in and clutched my leg.
Yanked.
I grabbed a mop on the way back out and slammed it across the newly made opening, halting my
momentum. Momentarily. As I chinned myself into a sitting position, he yanked again and the mop handle
snapped in two with a loud crack. As I exited the closet, feet-first, it seemed obvious who was going to
mop the floor with whom. But as he climbed on top of me and bared his fangs, he got careless. He also