"Guy N. Smith - Night Of The Crabs 2 - Crabs Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

IREY WALL awoke with a start, clutching at her nakedness in an instinctive
action to cover it up until she had worked out exactly why she was lying here
with her clothes strewn all about her.

The events of the past few hours flipped back in a staccato-like
reconstruction of everything that had happened since she left the camp. Her
lover-no, her friend, because nothing had happened between them yet and maybe
it wouldn't anyway-had gone for a swim. She didn't know how long he had been
gone; it might have been a few minutes or it could have been an hour. There
was no way of telling because she wasn't wearing a watch.
Her emotions had cooled with sleep. She felt both guilty and foolish. Thank
God he had decided to go for a swim first otherwise she might have let him do
things she would have regretted later. She couldn't understand what had come
over her. She must've been crazy even agreeing to go out with him for the day.
Alan had his faults, and plenty of them, but she would never do a trick like
that across him. She'd better get dressed and when Keith came back she would
tell him that she'd changed her mind and would he please take her straight
back to the camp. She was sorry if she had let him down but . . .

A sudden noise like the snapping of a dry twig had her whirling around, her
pulses starting to race instantly. A movement, like a foot being lowered
gently on to a clump of dry grass. A faint cough.

Irey's mouth went instantly dry. She tried to tell herself that it was Keith
returning but he would have no need for stealth. Unless he was a secret voyeur
and hoped to catch her unawares, to study her from a secret vantage point. She
had heard about men like that, the sort of things they got up to. She went a
clammy cold in spite of the heat.

If Keith Baxter was intent on creeping up on her that was bad enough-but if it
was anybody else then that was a thousand times worse! She had to get dressed
whoever it was.

Her trembling fingers found a bra strap in the grass, lifted it; dropped it.
And at the very second she went to retrieve it she saw the face peering out of
the grass at her.

Irey Wall didn't scream. The sound somehow became stuck in her throat, died
away in an ignominious gurgle. Her muscles refused to function, became
jellified and useless. Only her eyes moved and saw, conveyed sheer terror to
her numbed brain.

It certainly wasn't Keith Baxter who crouched there watching her with grey
penetrating eyes. It was impossible even to guess at his age; he might have
been as old as sixty or he could have been a drop-out in his mid-twenties
whose body had aged prematurely. He seemed to be twisted from the waist
downwards, with thin wasted legs that were deformed through some disease;
perhaps he was a polio victim.