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

caught his breath, plunged forward unexpectedly as the ground beneath him
shelved sharply. For one moment he was totally submerged, then he was swimming
strongly, kicking and splashing, invigorated.

A natural swimmer, he turned on his back, floated, felt the slight pull of the
tide. From here he could make out the line of sand-dunes, the ragged
silhouette of the long grass against the deep blue sky. So remote, he might
have been swimming somewhere off a deserted Pacific island.

But he couldn't get his mind off Irey Wall. The quiet kind, all her sexual
urges bottled up inside her until she almost forgot she had them. Almost. He
laughed aloud, a guttural flat sound out here at sea. You pulled out the cork
and hey presto! - she was transformed into a raving little nympho who couldn't
get enough. The kind that became a nuisance sometimes because if you gave it
to them good enough they latched on to you like a limpet and swore they
weren't ever going back to hubby. But Keith Baxter would be on his bike long
before it reached that stage. He laughed again.

A peal of laughter that began in mirth and transcended into a shriek of pain.
Something had hold of his left foot, something that gripped and cut sharply!

He felt himself being dragged under, his screams cut off as he swallowed
water, kicking out wildly with his free leg, windmilling insanely with his
arms.

Out of his depth and then his back grazed the rough shingle of the bottom. He
tried to see but the murkiness of the water restricted his vision. His brain
screamed logic; he had caught his foot in something, probably the hull of some
old motorboat which had been lying just below the surface. It was . . . no, it
couldn't be!

A shape, one that moved and shifted for a grip on his other leg, a tiny face
embedded in the shell of a huge body, pincers the size of industrial acetylene
cutters, securing the hold they sought and closing viciously. Agony ripped up
into the man's guts, had him twisting and trying to scream so that he
swallowed more water. The foaming sea around him was turning from pink to
crimson, a watery hell in which the torment was only just beginning.

Baxter knew his foot was gone; he felt it go, the incision made by those
pincers so neat and efficient. A moment of freedom, panicking blindly and
striking upwards for the surface. He made it, gulped for air in the blinding
sunlight, trying to scream for help at the same time.

The crab, for surely that was what it was in spite of its colossal size, came
after him with unbelievable agility. A tearing and ripping, soft flesh this
time, crunched to a bloody pulp and then torn out by its roots, sheer agony
paralysing the threshing human, his hands clutching at the gaping wound where
only a short while previously flesh had swelled-proudly with thoughts of Irey
Wall.