"MD Spenser - Humano Morphs 4 Air Morph One" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spenser M D)

Humano Morphs #4
Air Morph One: Ready For Takeoff


Chapter One

I gazed longingly at my poster of Mount Rushmore, sighed, grabbed my book bag, and headed out the door, moaning all the way.
My seventh grade class was going on a science field trip.
I love Mount Rushmore. I hate science. Science, if you want my opinion, really stinks. Big time. Plus, it's like really, really boring.
Mount Rushmore, in case you didn't know, is a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The heads of four U.S. presidents have been carved right into the cliff. Each head is sixty feet high, or about as tall as ten of my dads would be if each one were standing on the head of the dad below.
In other words, they're huge.
I know, because I've seen them in person. I bugged my parents so much they finally took me. Six times.
And why not? South Dakota is the next state north of Nebraska, so it's not that far. It's not as if I was bugging them to take me to Disney World or some other place in Florida.
Florida is about a zillion miles from Nebraska. It's so far that, if you drove, you could start the trip when you were a kid and not wind up getting there until you were a teenager. Or maybe even an adult.
Your parents would be positively ancient.
Besides, I don't want to go to Disney World. I know, I know Ч I'm a little unusual. "Quite odd, actually," is how my friend Freddy puts it.
But then Freddy is a little unusual himself. He likes science, for one thing.
Anyway, as I was saying, I love Mount Rush-more. The presidents carved into the mountainside are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
I hope that one day they'll make room for one more.
Me.
Because I'm going to be president sooner or later. Presidents don't need to know science.
We've had generals as presidents, and lawyers and farmers and even a movie actor. You know how many biologists have been president? None. Zee-ro.
I glanced once more at my poster of Mount
Rushmore, with the great stone presidential heads lit with the rosy glow of sunset, sighed again and headed out to meet my fate Ч a dumb old science field trip.
I didn't realize it then Ч I had no way of knowing Ч but this field trip would change my life, and come pretty darn close to ending it.


Chapter Two

There are some things you should know before you read any more of my story.
First of all, it's true. Every word. Believe me, there is no way I could make something like this up. They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and now I know they're right.
Second, I suppose I ought to introduce myself. My name is Melvin.
I'm not going to tell you my last name, because then some people would read this book and make fun of me. They wouldn't believe that this all really happened, and they'd call me a nut.
No one needs that. At least I don't.
It's like when people see UFOs and then tell the authorities. Everybody calls them crazy.
Just imagine that you had seen a flying saucer glowing in the night sky as plain as the moon, and you knew for a fact that you had seen it and that you weren't crazy. Then when you walked down the
street, people rolled their eyes and pointed at their heads and made circling motions.
Well, this story is a lot stranger than if I had just seen a plain old ordinary flying saucer. And I just don't need that kind of abuse.
Atkinson, Nebraska, is a small town. It's not like a big city, like Detroit or Los Angeles, where you can lose yourself in a crowd. You could take the entire population of Atkinson and you wouldn't even fill a football stadium.
Heck, you would barely even fill a barbershop.
So if I said something that sounded crazy, even though it was really the truth, everyone in town would make fun of me. There would be no escaping it. I couldn't move to a new block or go to a new school and start fresh.
Still, what happened to me is important. People need to know about it. That's why I'm writing this down but leaving out my last name. Atkinson, Nebraska, is a small town, but about twenty people here are named Melvin. It may be the most popular first name in town.
Atkinson sits on the banks of the Elkhorn River. Actually, when it floods, Atkinson sits under the surface of the Elkhorn River, which is darned inconvenient. All of us have to leave our homes and
sleep on the floor of the high school gymnasium.
That has only happened once since I've been alive. But the old-timers who gather at Melvin's Barbershop on Main Street (I told you there are a lot of people here named Melvin) always talk about all the times Atkinson has flooded in the past. They like to point to stains on the sides of buildings and tell you that this is how high the water rose in 1927.
That was the year the Mississippi River had a terrible flood that forced a million people out of their homes. You couldn't fit that many people in our high school gymnasium, I can tell you that.
The way I understand it, the waters of the Mississippi River that year backed up into the Missouri River. Then the waters of the Missouri backed up into the Platte River, and the waters of the Platte backed up into the Elkhorn River, and the waters of the Elk-horn backed up into Melvin's Barbershop.
A guy named Herbert Hoover handled the emergency for the federal government, and he did such a good job of it that he got elected president the very next year.
I know a lot about the presidents.
The year it flooded when I was alive, I remember a lot of dogs stuck on the roofs of houses, howling their heads off. They were scared and it was sad.