"James Swallow - Judge Dredd 4 - Eclipse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swallow James)

pumped it back out, used it to supplement the raw oxygen that was flown
in by astro-tankers, and channelled it back down to where Calvin could
breathe it again. Back down to here, to Kepler Dome on the outer rim of
Luna-1's conurbation. The top-level domes, places like Kennedy,
Armstrong and Lovell, of course they would get the pure new air straight
away. Not the reused gases he was breathing - no sir, those rich fat cats
with their thick stacks of credits, they got the fresh air. Spinker hated
them too, now that he considered it.

Sometimes Calvin would get giddy thinking about how many times the
breath he was taking in right now had been recycled, scrubbed and sent
around the system. How many lungs had it already gone through? What
sort of people had tainted it before he got it? How the hell was anyone
going to stay sane when all they had to live on was second-hand air?

For what must have been the millionth time in his life, Calvin thought
about going home, getting back to Earth and starting over somewhere
where you didn't have to pay to breathe in and out. Okay, maybe the air
wouldn't be that clean, but at least it would be free. You see, he hadn't
chosen to live in Kepler. He'd been on the Moon reluctantly clearing up a
divorce settlement with his stupid ex-wife when Judgement Day had
happened. Spinker had been trapped here, stuck without a place to stay or
anywhere to go. He didn't know the ins and outs of it, but Calvin
understood in his vaguely moronic way that back on Earth, some weirdo
from the future - this guy called Sabbat or something - this dingus had
made the dead rise from their graves and start tearing up stuff. He still
remembered the day he walked into the Luna-1 starport only to be told
that all flights to Earth had been cancelled "due to zombie infestation".
When he asked the robo-clerk when the next shuttle to Mega-City Two
would be leaving, the machine told him simply: "That destination no
longer exists."

It wasn't until a day later he found out what that actually meant. MC-2,
his home, a massive city-state that covered most of North America's
Western Seaboard, was gone, nuked out, vaporised. Overnight, he was a
refugee. So Calvin was forced to stay in Luna-1 and eventually the city
council found him a one-pod hab in Kepler. And there he sat, day after
day, nursing his hatred and breathing in this repellent, germ-laden air.

But today, Spinker looked up from his cup of cold synthi-caff and
something like confusion crossed his greasy knot of a face. Confusion,
because he couldn't detect the stinky stale smell any more. Confusion,
because the oxymeter in the ceiling of his hab that rattled around the
clock had gone silent. Calvin stood on a chair and held his hand
underneath the air vent, feeling for the telltale trickle of cool breathing gas
that forever cycled through it.

Nothing. Not a single breath.

Then Calvin Spinker started to panic, and as his vision started to fog as