"Foster, Alan Dean - Alien Nation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

years seeming to fall away from his muscles as he built up speed in
pursuit. He wasn't worried. Not yet. It was difficult for Newcomer
fugitives to find places to hide. The department learned that early on.
Size wasn't always an advantage to a mugger or pursesnatcher. They made
nice, big, fat targets. The gun in his hand was light as a feather.
By the time he rounded the comer they'd vanished. The
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street ahead was open and uncluttered, well-lit by bright overheads. The
shops were closed, the storefronts mute and dim. Despite the absence of
parked cars there were plenty of shadows and hiding places. He advanced more
slowly now.
Cops who'd survived years on the street didn't have the sixth sense, but
they had something else: caution developed through fear.
It was a small noise, insignificant. Anyone else would have paid it no
heed. Sykes immediately turned toward it, toward the base of a high,
overbearing billboard mutely advertising beer clenched in an alien fist.
The tall alien had given himself a difficult angle for the shotgun. Without
thinking, Sykes dove to his left.
What was brutally effective at close range was hard to aim with distance.
The blast blew apart the top of the crate the detective flopped behind, but
not the part he'd chosen to use as cover. Still intact, he scrambled on his
belly, cursing the inventors of all shotguns, moving deeper into the pile
of empty crates like some hyperkinetic centipede high on speed.
A new sound caused him to rise to his knees. It was a sharp click, loud and
metallic in the quiet night: the sound of a hammer dropping on an empty
chamber. His grin turned feral as he rose.
Dropping from the bottom of a fire escape and tossing the empty shotgun
aside, the alien took off up the street. Sykes followed. He was closer now,
a good deal closer. Close enough to see the Newcomer turn the next comer.
He followed without slowing. The robber had sacrificed his lead for a
failed ambush. Sykes wouldn't lose him now.
There was a pedestrian tunnel ahead, a black gaping hole punched through a
concrete wall. No other way out, no other way in. He slowed, his nerves
screaming with tension, his brain flashing that big red caution sign.
The concrete was cold and damp against his back as he started inside, his
finger taut on the handgun's trigger. Then he realized it was the usual dry
L.A. night and that the dampness came from the perspiration that was
pouring down the back of his undershirt.
The murkiness inside the circular opening expanded to
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engulf him as he edged slowly inward, trying to control his breathing so he
could hear clearly. It was drier inside the tunnel than out. The only sound
was the scuffing his shoes made on the ground.
Very dark but not completely so, shadows distinguishable but not shapes.
That's when he heard the footsteps. Not subtle or cautious like his own,
not trying to conceal their presence, but loud and pounding. The only
problem was that in the darkness he couldn't tell which direction they were
coming from because the sound bounced like mad off the concrete walls of