"Jeff VanderMeer - A Heart For Lucretia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

her drugged so she could not feel the pain. Could she even recognize
him
anymore, caught as she was between wakefulness and sleep, sleep and
death?

Flesh Dog, eyes hidden beneath the rolls of raw tissue which were its
namesake, stayed always by his side. Flesh Dog shared few words with
Gerard, but every twitch of its muzzle toward Lucretia or the squat
metal
autodoc reminded Gerard she would die soon--too soon, like their mother
 before her. Unless a miracle arose from the desert.
"The city, she has parts..."
And, finally, he had gone, taking Flesh Dog with him.

Thus it begins. The ending is another matter, a creature of fragments
and glimpses which pieced together only tease...

That summer, as the stars watched overhead, an angel descended to the
desert floor. And, when it departed, Lucretia arose from the dead and
danced like a will o' whisp over the shifting sands; a fitful dance,
for
she often dreamed of Gerard at night, and they were unpleasant dreams.
That winter, Flesh Dog and Gerard limped back to the creche. He did not
speak now. Always, he looked toward the south, toward the great sea and
the city with no name, as though expecting strangers.

And the middle, finally, in which meat is placed upon the bone.

For twenty days and twenty nights, Gerard trudged the sands, subsisting
on
the dry toads which Flesh Dog dug up for them. They encountered no one
on
their journey, listened only to the dry winds of the desert.

Finally, at dusk of the twenty-first day, they climbed a dune and
stared
down upon the city. The sun lent the city with a crimson glare,
silhouettes burnt into the sand. Gerard saw that the walls had crumbled
in
places and the buildings within, what could be glimpsed of them, had
fallen into disrepair. Although Gerard looked for many minutes, he
could
discover no sign of life. The only movement came from the west, where a
vast ocean glittered and rippled, red as the dunes which abutted it.
Though tired and disappointed at the city's abandoned appearance,
Gerard
would have plunged forward under cover of darkness. But Flesh Dog
sniffed
the air, sneezed, and counciled against it.
"Strange smells," it ruminated, "strange smells indeed..."