"Ellison-SensibleCity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

Mickey bobbled his head rapidly, his eyes widened in frightened memory.

"Okay. So now, you remember that part where the guy who was a mechanic, the guy
with the baseball cap, he goes off looking for a cat or some damn thing?
Remember? He left everyone else, and he wandered off by himself. And he went
into that big cargo hold with the water dripping on him, and all those chains
hanging down, and shadows everywhere . . . do you recall that?"

Mickey's eyes were chalky potholes. He remembered, oh yes; he remembered
clutching Gropp's jacket sleeve till Gropp had been compelled to slap his hand
away.

"And you remember what happened in the movie? In the theater? You remember
everybody yelling. 'Don't go in there, you asshole! The thing's in there, you
moron! Don't go in there!' But, remember, he did, and the thing came up behind
him all those teeth, and it bit his stupid head off! Remember that?"

Mickey hunched over the wheel, driving fast.

"Well, that's the way people are. They ain't sensible! They go into places like
that, you can see are death places; and they get chewed up or the blood sucked
outta their necks or used for kindling . . . but I'm no moron, I'm a sensible
guy and I got the brains my mama gave me, and I don't go near places like that.
So drive like a sonofabitch, and get us outta here, and we'll get your damned
Grape-Nuts in Idaho or somewhere . . . if we ever get off this road . . . "

Mickey murmured, "I'm sorry, Lieuten'nt. I took a wrong turn or somethin'."

"Yeah, yeah. Just keep driv --" The car was slowing.

It was a frozen moment. Gropp exultant, no fool be, to avoid the cliche, to stay
out of that haunted house, that ominous dark closet, that damned place. Let
idiot others venture off the freeway, into the town that contained the basement
entrance to Hell, or whatever. Not he, not Gropp!

He'd outsmarted the obvious.

In that frozen moment.

As the car slowed. Slowed, in the poisonous green mist.

And on their right, the obscenely frightening town of Obedience, that they had
left in their dust five minutes before, was coming up again on the superhighway.

"Did you take another turnoff?"

"Uh . . . no, I . . . uh, I been just driving fast . . . "

The sign read: NEXT RIGHT 50 YDS. OBEDIENCE.