"Aaron Wolfe - Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Aaron)

paperbacks at the cigar store across the street from the restaurant. That
was the full extentтАФaside from rare telephone calls and the occasional
letter we received in the weekly maildrop at the end of our laneтАФof our
contact with the outside world.

Initially, that was all we required. But once the snows came and the
trouble began, we damned our isolation a hundred times a day and wished
fervently for contact with people outside our family, with anyone at allтАж

The first major blizzard of the year began on the twelfth day of
December, late in the afternoon, when there was already eight inches of
early-season snow on the ground. Toby and I were in the woods to the
north of the house, tracking the foxes, snow rabbits, weasels, squirrels,
and the few cats that kept active until the snow was so deep, even under
the trees, that they were forced to remain in their caves, burrows, and
nests. Toby's favorite pastime was tracking and spying upon our animal
neighbors. I enjoyed the gentle sport as much as he didтАФperhaps because
it was gentle, perhaps because I was proud that my son had never once
suggested that we go up to the house and get a rifle and hunt down the
animals. We were deep in the forest that afternoon, hot on the trail of a
fox, when the snow began to sift heavily between the pine boughs, so
heavily that we knew a bad storm must be sweeping across the open land,
beyond the shelter of the woods. By the tune we had followed our own trail
back to the edge of the woods, a new inch of snow lay atop the old eight
inches; and the farmhouse at the top of the rise three hundred yards away
was all but invisible behind shifting curtains of flakes.

"Will it be deep?" Toby asked.

"I'm afraid so," I said.

"I like it deep."

"You would."

"Real deep."

"It'll be over your head," I told him. For a ten-year-old boy he was
somewhat slender and a bit short; therefore, I wasn't exaggerating all that
much when I held my hand over his head so that he could look up and see
how far it would be to the surface if he should become buried in new snow.

"Great!" he said, as if the notion of being buried alive in a drift were too
close to paradise to be borne. He ran off to the right and scooped up a
handful of new snow and threw it at me. But it was too dry to pack into a
ball, and it only flew apart and blew back on him when he tossed it.

"Come on, Toby. We better get back to the house before we're stranded
down here." I held out my hand to him, hoping that he would take it.
Ten-year-old boys usually insist on proving their self-reliance; but