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

Cold. A vast tableau of the unburied and unburnt.
"So many dead," Gerard muttered. Once, he had been told of the legend
of
the Oliphaunt's graveyard. Was this the human equivalent? Would his
Lucretia soon find her way to this city, against her will, because he
had
failed?
Flesh Dog sniffed the air as they skirted the nearest pit.
"Dead?" it said. "They smell as if they never lived..."
"Hush," replied Gerard, respectful of the silence.
And so they shuffled forward through the army of bodies, some appealing
with outstretched arms, but all quiet as run-down clockwork mice. The
eyes
seemed to have lost the hope of blinking away deep sleep, the skin of
feeling dappled sunlight upon it.

Beyond the pits lay the city proper: a maze of half-buried
fortifications
and jumbled buildings. In places, it appeared wars had been fought
among
the ruins, for the ground was burnt and some walls had melted into
slag.
All Gerard could do was remind himself that Con Newman had said,
"people
live there, underground." It was obvious none lived above. Not even
grass
grew in the pavement cracks. They trudged on to the sound of their own
belabored breathing.
Finally, they came upon a strange sight amongst the wreckage: the top
of
 an exposed elevator shaft some fifty meters ahead; the tower which had
once housed the device had fallen away entirely, leaving only a rough
rectangle of regular stone embedded in the ground. The shaft, which had
all the looks of a bony arm, vein-like girders naked to the sky, the
mortar peeled away, revealed a compact glass box, intact, which was the
elevator. Gerard recognized it from The Metal Dragon. Jessible had
escaped
using an elevator. That something so fragile could have survived for so
long amazed him.
Standing by the shaft were three creatures, each larger than Gerard by
a
third. They resembled giant weasels but no fur grew upon their clawed
hands and they stood upright as though it was their birthright rather
than
some carnie show trick.
"What are they?" he hissed to Flesh Dog. "I have never seen them
before."
"Meerkats," it replied. "Distilled somewhat with other species, but
still
meerkats. Your father used to read you tales of the meerkats and the