"David Gerrold - [SS] The Strange Disappearance of David Gerrold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

The air was cold and dry. The sky was cloudless. There was no wind.
Everything seemed to have stopped except the quiet murmur of my wheels against
the asphalt.

Sometime back, the music had faded. I was so lost in myself that I hadn’t
even heard its absence. The silence had swaddled me, comforting at first, then a
smothering blanket. I came through a series of curves, around the sharpest one, and
directly ahead I saw a sloping field strewn with red blocky boulders so closely
tumbled together, I doubted that any person or animal could have crossed that land.
The stones could have been painted with blood. But before I could register even that
fact, as the car came into the turn and I noticed the stand of woods beyond the field,
I saw the sign.

I don’t know if it’s true for all people, but I automatically read every written
word in front of me, and this was the first sign I’d seen since leaving Red Bluff.

No Trespassing

Private Hunting Club

Members Only

I’d heard about private hunting clubs, I had mixed emotions about hunting
anyway, but not because I’d wet the seat in the movie theater when Bambi’s mother
abruptly became venison; but more because I’d read “The Most Dangerous Game”
at a young and impressionable age. I knew there were people who depended on
hunting for their winter sustenance, but I doubted this was their domain. No, the very
existence of the sign announced that this land was someone’s personal pleasure
dome. Sans dome.

These thoughts, and others, tumbled in my head, as I headed up toward the
foothills. The well-maintained wire fences on both sides of the road told me I was
still driving through a place where stray bullets were a genuine possibility. That I was
now seeing enough trees in one place that I could start to use the word forest didn’t
comfort me. It meant I would be even less likely to see any hunters in time enough to
stop. I wasn’t sure if I should slow down or speed up, I let the car choose its own
speed.

The woods looked barren, mostly gray and dark, with an ominous sense of
blood-red brooding, the soil and rocks were uncommonly colored. Anywhere else,
the dry grass would have been waist-high and yellow. Here it was washed out and
colorless. I’ve always loved wilderness, but this place felt unpleasant, and I couldn’t
wait to get past it.

As I came up a long shallow slope, I saw an incongruous flash of color
directly ahead—a sparkle of blue and turquoise. At first I thought it was a T-shirt
caught on the wire, then maybe a scarecrow or a dummy—I took my foot off the
pedal to let the car coast—and then I was standing on the brakes, screeching to a
frightening stop. It was a boy, barely a teenager, slender, almost petite. He was
caught between the wires of the fence, frantically struggling to free himself. At the