"Jailbait Zombie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Acevedo Mario)CHAPTER 2I recognized the smells. Ditch water. Smoke. The stink from under my uniform and body armor. I was back where my private hell had begun. Iraq. Four shadows moved cautiously through the evening gloom. They lurked toward me along the bank of the canal. Only I knew they approached annihilation. I was certain they were insurgents sneaking to attack my soldiers and me. Only later would I discover the gruesome truth. They weren’t insurgents: they were civilians. A man, two women, and a little girl. The family I helped slaughter years ago. I didn’t want to see this again. Once in a lifetime, even an immortal lifetime, was more than enough. My The Iraqis took timid steps, moving like hunted deer. I tried to shout a warning but my mouth was dry and breathless. I tried to jerk my hands up but my arms were cinched down as if in a straitjacket. I tried to close my eyes and turn away but could not. My eyes were pinned open and my head locked in place, forcing me to watch the despicable horror. Automatic gunfire burst loud as thunder. Red tracer bullets crisscrossed the air in a red net of death. The Iraqis started to fall even as grenades exploding at their feet made them dance like grotesque marionettes. Gun sights materialized before me and centered on the smallest of the figures, the little girl. The recoil of an invisible carbine pushed against my shoulder. Silence. The huge eyes of the little girl bloomed with pain, the irises forever ringed with terror, dark as the night I last saw her alive. The little girl fell onto her back. In that moment, the joy and hope was sucked out of my life. Shame bore upon me like the weight of a mountain. My legs weakened and I collapsed to my knees into a pool of blood spreading from the little girl. A woman whispered my name and it echoed in the darkness. Then became louder. A plume of vapor wafted from the little girl. The plume rose and twisted, creating her ghostly twin. A filmy gown clung to her youthful form. When I first saw her years ago on that terrible night in Iraq, she might have been twelve at most. Now as she hovered in the air, she grew through adolescence, becoming taller, her face longer, her figure ripening from little girl to young woman. My name echoed even louder. It echoed again and again until the sound reverberated in my skull like the deafening crash of a drum. My My hands suddenly wrenched free. I clutched my face and balled up into a fetal position. I sat upright in my coffin. My nerves were raw and electric and my throat hurt. The echo in my head faded as the nightmare receded from my consciousness. I blinked. I was alone in my apartment, surrounded by a smothering quiet. My Homey smells comforted me, a lingering aroma of incense, a trace of yesterday’s dinner-rib eye with lots of onions and type A-negative-and the dregs of bourbon and vermouth in the glass on the table beside my coffin. I swung my legs out of the coffin. I slid off the table and lowered myself to the floor. Once upright, I paused for a moment to get my bearings, then proceeded in a bleary shuffle to the bathroom. I thought that as a supernatural I’d be immune to nightmares, but apparently not. I’m the legendary undead monster in human form, yet the ghost of this child tormented me like a fever. Why the girl? What did it mean that she rose as a young woman like a phoenix from her fallen body? I thought I had paid my cosmic penance. The girl and her family had forgiven me during a hallucination when I was close to a second death. After their blessing, I was complete as a vampire and felt free to drink human blood. Maybe this was a new bout of post-traumatic stress. A lot of war veterans never get out from under it. A headache throbbed behind my forehead. I ran the tap, leaned over the sink, and rinsed my face. Out of habit, I stared into the mirror, and in my place saw what I always did… Nothing. I am a soulless immortal with the potential to accumulate wisdom over the centuries. I’m privy to the great mysteries of the universe. So far I’d learned that vampires can be as na#239;ve or as treacherous as humans, and that the corporate vermin who run this planet would sell out their entire race for an extra bump on the bottom line. I’ve barely held my own in those fights and I’ve lost one big one. I failed my friend and fellow vampire, Carmen Arellano, and now she’s a hostage of alien gangsters somewhere deep in outer space. If wisdom comes from making stupid mistakes, then someday I’m going to be a genius. Behind me, morning light filtered through the drawn blinds. I had work to do-even the undead have to make a living-and that meant keeping a human daylight schedule. But this nightmare exhausted me. Why was the little girl coming back? What did I have to fear? Was this simply the memory of that tragedy escaping from a dark place in my subconscious, or was there something else waiting for me? |
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