"Steven Gould - Jumper 03 - Griffin's Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

holding something over me, which shaded my face from the sun. It was a black umbrella and I
could see the sun shining through the black cloth and the spokes, spotted with rust. The hand
holding it was thin and wrinkled. I followed the arm to a woman with jet black hair, wrinkled
brown skin, and dark eyes like still pools of night.
She saw me watching her and said something in Spanish, to the side. I started to sit up again
and a hand, not hers, pressed me back down.
"Let's not and say we did." It was the bearded man from before. "Unless you want to pass
out again. There's a nice puddle of dried blood here. Didn't see it before–you were lying on it,
but I'd say you're better off lying down, okay?"
The wracking sobs came then. I remembered it all, every bit, flashing over and over, from
Mum screaming "Go!" to the blood and the motionless eyes staring into nothing.
I think I passed out again.
The light was different–the sun had shifted halfway across the sky and the wind had picked
up. Instead of an umbrella, a blue plastic tarp shaded my entire body, flapping gently in the
slight breeze. A clear plastic bag half filled with fluid twisted and bounced with the
movement of the tarp. A tube dropped from the bag and I watched it for several minutes
before realizing it was running into my arm.
Crunching footsteps crossing the gravel came closer and then the light changed again as
someone stuck his head into the shelter.
"Estas despierto?" It was the woman from before, the one with the umbrella. She watched
my face for some sign of comprehension, then tried, "You okay?"
"Okay? Yes, uh, si. No hablo espanol."
"Okay. Good. Okay." She pointed to a plastic bottle lying beside me, mostly full of water.
She mimed tilting a bottle up to her mouth. "Okay?"
"Right. Uh, okay."
I tried to sit up but she shook her head. "No. Descanza. Estate quietecito."
I dropped back. My head spun from the slight effort to sit up. I explored my side and found
a mass of gauze and tape on my hip. I found a smaller bandage on my forehead, running up into
my hair, the tape tugging painfully when I touched it. I wasn't on the ground, I realized, but
lying on a stretcher, one of those canvas things with two poles locked apart. Turning my head
without lifting it, I realized we were no longer in my gully but on some raised hillside. I could
see miles across desert, over gullies and low hills.
They'd moved me.
Driven me? Carried me?
I thought about the night before and it was as if I were stuck, frozen. My mind just stopped
working. I didn't pass out but I lay there staring at the ceiling trying to think but it was too
much–my mind was just shying away from it. I knew it had happened. It was the gauze on my
head. My brain was wrapped in gauze–white, fuzzy gauze–and it was hard to feel stuff through
it.
I heard someone shout from far away, "Hey, Consuelo! Un poco ayuda!" The woman sitting
beside me patted me again on the shoulder and ducked out under the edge of the tarp.
As soon as she was standing upright I heard her footsteps go from a walk to a jogging run.
After a minute footsteps returned, more than two, but there was a dragging sound, too, and
then the bearded man and Consuelo were back, a man supported between them. His face was
bloody and swollen and though his limbs twitched as if to help support him, he was helpless
as a baby.
The bearded man glanced at me, watching, and said, "Hey, pardner, think you can get out of
that stretcher? Got someone here who needs it worse."
I blinked, then sat up carefully. The bandages at my hip tugged and my head swam just a bit
but my vision didn't dim like it had before. I edged off the stretcher away from the newcomer,