"Allen Steele - The Tranquillity Alternative" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

back from the door. For an instant he thinks Mister Mom
simply tripped over something, but then the cardboard

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slips out of his hands and topples to the floor, pizza spill
sloppily across the burnt-orange carpet as Mike Momph
falls against the dresser, his hands clutching at a large
stain spreading across his chest, colliding with a heavy br
table lamp and knocking it over as he ...
He doesn't get to see the rest. In the next instant, two
rush through the door before he has more than a fleeting 1
pulse to run into the bathroom and lock the door. The
have wool ski masks pulled over their faces: this is the o
impression he has of them before they tackle him and c
him face-down against the floor, knocking the breath out
his lungs.
He gasps, unable to shout, as he feels the carpet burn agai
his face. His arms are savagely yanked behind his back;
glasses are dislodged, leaving his vision blurred and obscur
He hears a thin plastic rip; then a length of duct tape
wrapped tightly around his wrists, lashing them together.
fore he can scream for help, gloved hands wrench his ja
open and a wadded linen napkin is shoved into his mouth.
In blind panic now, tears streaming down his face, he beg
to flail his legs in an absurd attempt to crawl to safety.
an instant he remembers, in a crystalline moment of pa
induced recollection, the time Eddie Patterson beat him
the playground back in third grade for calling him some st
name-if only because this moment of utter physical he
Icssness so closely resembles that one ... except that w
Eddie Patterson whaled the daylights out of him, two do
kids had been standing around, screaming their lungs
until the teachers arrived to pull Eddie off him.
This assault, on the other hand, is totally silent. No
says anything; everything being done to him is as methodi
as it is violent. Unde-r othe-r circumstances, he might have
tually admired their professionalism and efficiency. The o
voice he hears is that of the TV news anchor, resuming
teleprompted monologue Dow that the commercials ...
Final countdown is underway at the Kennedy Space Ce
in Florida for what may be the last manned American

', 4i




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