"Jack Yeovil - Comeback Tour" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yeovil Jack)

kicking them with steel-toed boots. The CAF were yelping as they took their punishment. Chickenhearts
to a man, the Op guessed.

Ellroy Kettle, the Mayor of Yazoo City, was laying into the head of a fat man in a muddy once-white
sheet.

"How yo like that, massah?" Kettle shouted, tears running into the brown creases of his face. "That 'nuff
cotton plucked fo yo, Mistah Rhett Freakin' Butler? Yo want some iced lemonade on the freakin'
verandah, massah?"

Earlier, the Mayor had spoken with a cultivated Harvard accent. Now, he sounded like a cross between
Stagger Lee, the badass dude who took his razor to every whitey sheriff who came after him, and Stepin
Fetchit, the scaredy-cat pop-eyed slave of all thoseHollywood movies.

"Hold on there, Mr Mayor," the Op said. "The fight's over."

A couple of younger men tried to hold Kettle back, but he was carried away. The last time the CAF
flew againstYazooCity , they had harvested a crop of "indentees," young people conscripted to work as
cheap labour in the corp-run factories and fields ofAlabama andGeorgia . Kettle's daughter Rosaria was
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




one of those indenture girls, and she had died from a smacksynth overdose in a whorehouse in the
Montgomery NoGo. Some Japcorp honcho had been dissatisfed with the services and shot her up with
enough Hero-9 to cardiac-arrest an elephant. The Confederates had managed to bring back at least one
of the South's cherished antebellum traditions: indenture was just a gussied-up name for slavery. Old
times, they were not forgotten.

Kettle kicked the fat sheet wearer in his hood. There was blood dribbling from the eyeholes.

The Op stepped in, and laid his hands on the Mayor's shoulders. The man stopped kicking, and his face
fell. He was crying uncontrollably, now.

"My little girl... my little girl..."

The Op hugged the Mayor, and let the man cry, feeling his chest-heaving sobs run through both their
bodies. The Yazoo Krewe stood around, sobered, the exhilaration of battle sapping away. The Op had
seen this before, in South and Central America, in theMiddle East and in the Good Old U.S. of A. There
were lots of people crying, with pain, fear or fatigue. It had all been over in less than twenty minutes, but
everyone alive would carry the marks for the rest of their lives. Either the marks on their bodies, or the
marks on their souls.

Dr Ali Bales, the nearest thing to a medic inYazooCity , was going around looking to the wounded. She
was passing out squeezers of morph-plus to everyone who showed her blood. Soule took Kettle away
from the Op, and the Mayor went along quietly.

The hoodhead on the ground squealed, his flabby fingers clawing at his mask.