"Zelazny, Roger - Damnation Alley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

The bell drowned his every seventh word, but since he had said his words more than seven times over, nothing was really lost upon the eight steadfast listeners who huddled on the benches before him: five women and three men in various stages of age and distress. Others came, stood in the distance near to the streetlight, listened for a time, hurried on, for a light rain was beginning to fall, and that which he was saying was not altogether new.
His clerical collar was frayed, and there was a bandage about his right hand which seemed dirtier each time that he gestured with it, which was often.
His beard seemed recent, his black suit ancient.
"The marks are upon my body, ...... they tell me my days are ......!" he said, his eyes as dark and moist as the night and the rain, as glistening as the streetlight. "And I say that it is ...... judgment. We are all of us, ...... and every one of us, man, ...... and child, judged in these, the ...... days, and found to be guilty! ...... is what caused this thing to ...... upon us, you may be sure! ...... and nothing else! You see it ...... day of your lives! And now ...... is angry, my brethren, for the ...... of which we are all mutually ......! You know this! I know it! ...... tells us of these days! Can ...... look about us and fail to ...... that the very words of the ...... are become an actuality in our ......? Of course not! This is because ...... ran like a beast too long, ...... and corrupting, and men turned to ......! No wonder then that the Beast ......, with seven heads and ten horns ...... them, rises up from the ocean, ...... the seven seals have been broken ...... the four horsemen out of the ......, whose names we all know as ......, that dreaded ravener of the countryside! ...... who followeth in the wake of him! ...... who lays his hand upon us! ......, the final, terrible one, who killeth! ......, all of these be here tonight! ...... has judged us, and now only ...... can save us from the awful ...... that lies upon all mankind! Yes! ...... is the answer, my brethren! True ...... may save us still, from the ...... into which will be cast all ...... who bear the mark of the ...... upon their hands and their foreheads! ...... has said so in the holy ......! Can we think otherwise? Can we ...... this? You know it in your hearts, ......! Let us join together and ......!"
He bowed his head then, winced as he clasped his hands, and continued to fight with the bell, for he knew that the odds were six to one in his favor.
"How long? How long? Oh my ......!" he cried. "Until mankind will see the ever-present ......?"
And the heavens were full of signs, cryptic and undecipherable, as the blue lightning stalked from pole to pole.
Wondering, he licked the rain from his lips and swallowed, to ease the dryness of his throat.

When Greg awakened him, it was night. Tanner coughed and drank a mouthful of ice water and crawled back to the latrine. When he emerged, he took the driver's seat and checked the mileage and looked at the compass. He corrected their course and, "We'll be in Salt Lake City before morning," he said, "if we're lucky... Did you run into any trouble?"
"No, it was pretty easy. I saw some snakes, and I let them go by. That was about it."
Tanner grunted and engaged the gears.
"What was that guy's name that brought the news about the plague?" Tanner asked.
"Brady or Brody or something like that," said Greg.
"What was it that killed him? He might have brought the plague to L.A., you know."
Greg shook his head.
"No. His car had been damaged, and he was all broken up, and he'd been exposed to radiation a lot of the way. They burned his body and his car, and anybody who'd been anywhere near him got shots of Haffikine."
"What's that?"
"That's the stuff we're carrying, Haffikine antiserum. It's the only cure for the plague. Since we had a bout of it around twenty years ago, we've kept it on hand and maintained the facilities for making more in a hurry. Boston never did, and now they're hurting."
"Seems kind of silly for the only other nation on the continent, maybe in the world, not to take better care of itself, when they knew we'd had a dose of it."
Greg shrugged. "Probably, but there it is. Did they give you any shots before they released you?"
"Yeah."
"That's what it was, then."
"I wonder where their driver crossed the Missus Hip? He didn't say, did he?"
"He hardly said anything at all. They got most of the story from the letter he carried."
"Must have been one hell of a driver, to run the Alley."
"Yeah. Nobody's ever done it before, have they?"
"Not that I know of."
"I'd like to have met the guy."
"Me too, I guess."
"It's a shame we can't radio across country, like in the old days."
"Why?"
"Then he wouldn't of had to do it, and we could find out along the way whether it's really worth making the run. They might all be dead by now, you know."
"You've got a point there, mister, and in a day or so we'll be to a place where going back will be harder than going ahead."
Tanner adjusted the screen, as dark shapes passed.
"Look at that, will you!"
"I don't see anything."
"Put on your infras."
Greg did this and stared upward at the screen.
Bats. Enormous bats cavorted overhead, swept by in dark clouds.
"There must be hundreds of them, maybe thousands . . ."
"Guess so. Seems there are more than there used to be when I came this way a few years back. They must be screwing their heads off in Carlsbad."
"We never see them in L.A. Maybe they're pretty much harmless."
"Last time I was up to Salt Lake, I heard talk that a lot of them were rabid. Someday someone's got to go, them or us."
"You're a cheerful guy to ride with, you know?"
Tanner chuckled and lit a cigarette, and, "Why don't you make us some coffee?" he said. "As for the bats, that's something our kids can worry about, if there are any."
Greg filled the coffeepot and plugged it into the dashboard. After a time it began to grumble and hiss.
"What the hell's that?" said Tanner, and he hit the brakes. The other car halted, several yards behind his own, and he turned on his microphone and said, "Car three! What's that look like to you?" and waited.
He watched them: towering, tapered tops that spun between the ground and the sky, wobbling from side to side, sweeping back and forth, about a mile ahead. It seemed there were fourteen or fifteen of the things. Now they stood like pillars, now they danced. They bored into the ground and sucked up yellow dust. There was a haze all about them. The stars were dim or absent above or behind them.
Greg stared ahead and said, "I've heard of whirlwinds, tornadoes, big, spinning things. I've never seen one, but that's the way they were described to me."