"John E. Stith - Manhattan Transfer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stith John E)

a stop, the floor seemed to tilt toward the rear.
As the screams and shouts finally gave way to angry and
panicked loud questions like, "What the hell's going on?"
directed to no one in particular, the car jerked several times
and came to a halt in blackness. A woman's voice split the dark,
yelling, "Get your Goddamn hand off me!"
The echoes from behind him had changed texture and
lengthened, as if they no longer came from an enclosed car.
People began spreading out, and suddenly a man cried, "Hey--" His
voice trailed off until an impact forced more air out of his
lungs. A few matches and cigarette lighters pierced the
darkness. At first all they revealed were the forward half of
the car and a confused throng of people. And Matt drew in a
breath as he realized what didn't show--the rear half of the car.
He pushed his way toward the back as more cries came from that
direction: "Oh, my God." "Harry, Harry! What happened?"
As he got closer, Matt realized that the back half of the
car was gone. He swallowed hard. People cowered at the sides of
the vehicle, hanging on tightly and looking into the blackness
behind the car. A man who apparently was the one who had just
fallen got to his feet on the floor of the tunnel and looked up
in surprise. Matt reached the severed edge of the car, and the
temperature from packed bodies dropped noticeably. He took a
deep breath and tried to control his fear.
The subway car had been sheared in half. The metal edges of
the floor, walls, and ceiling still glowed a dull red from the
heat of whatever had done this. Matt had once seen the edges of
a hole created by an armor-piercing missile smashing through a
tank wall. That hole reminded him of these edges, but here were
no curling can-opener edges, just the shaved nubs, looking like
plastic cut with a very hot knife, a hardware-store 3-D model of
how walls were made. On the floor of the car and on the clothing
of a couple of people apparently in shock, were splatters of what
could only be blood. In the air were musty smells of machine
oil, ozone--and fear.
In the tunnel behind the car, Matt could at first see only
faint reflections from the rails. He took a tiny penlight from
his bag. With help from the light, he jumped to the track bed,
careful to stay clear of the extra rail on the outside, even
though the power was almost certainly off. A couple of meters
from the severed edge of the car he found a man lying on the
tracks, moaning. Matt grabbed a hunk of fabric and pulled the
man's leg so it no longer touched the rail. His heart pounded in
his chest, but finally it began to slow as the initial adrenaline
rush faded.
The man's right hand was gone, cut cleanly at the wrist. He
heard gasps from behind him. The wound seemed to be partially
cauterized already, but blood oozed and pulsed into the cinders.
Matt took the man's belt, looped it a few times around the bare
wrist, and fastened it tightly enough to bar further blood loss.