"Hansen, Michael - Ten Minutes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hansen Michael)
Buzz-Cut's eyes were wide, and his wicked eyebrows crawled like frightened caterpillars. He looked down in disgust at himself, at the red welter Slash had left sliding down the front of his clothes. He started to waggle his useless weapon, then seemed to catch himself. "Don't shoot me, man! I'll put the gun down, okay? Just don't shoot, please!" He was preparing to set the shotgun down in front of me, his knees bent, when the little gunman with brown hair stuck his head out a doorway farther down the hall.
"Shit!" the little man said, and ducked back into the room. It was Sam's classroom.
The vision in my remaining eye suddenly blurred, and there was a buzzing in whatever was left of my head. The pain from my wound was peeking through the initial shock in a ripple of agony, a hint of things to come. My hand crept up to hover in front of my face in a rigid claw and my remaining eye screwed shut as my fingertips stroked the air - but I refused to touch the hole in my head, refused to explore its extent. I grunted as the pain welled up like an overflowing toilet, and Buzz-Cut continued babbling in terror, yapping like a kicked dog, as the pain rose to cloud my mind until I could take no more. My only eye opened with a snap and I raised the pistol whip-fast to aim at Buzz-Cut’s face. Buzz-Cut flinched back from me, still gabbling away, his whole face twitching uncontrollably.
"Shut up!" I bellowed at him. "Shut up! How can I even think with you talking?" Buzz-Cut went prudently silent. He had seemed afraid before, but now he looked as if he could barely stand. He sort of sagged as he stood there in front of me, without quite falling down.
I stepped over Slash's body into the school building, and dragged Buzz-Cut to his feet. I snatched the guy's empty sawed-off away and flung it behind me over my shoulder. I heard it clash and clatter on the asphalt but did not turn.
I giggled, somewhat inappropriately I thought, as I reached out to clutch Buzz-Cut’s shoulder. "You’re my passport," I explained, my face stretched into a grin so tight it hurt, a grin I was powerless to turn off. Then I spun my hostage around. One hand knotted in the shoulder of the guy's shirt, the other hand jamming the pistol into his spine, I propelled Buzz-Cut ahead of me as we walked slowly down the hall to Sam's room.
I knew I was walking a tightrope here, and one miss-step would spell disaster for the children. Part of me wanted to charge at these bastards in trembling berserker fury, but I knew they'd just pop me in the face and the children would be at their mercy. Another part of me wanted to retreat, to huddle up in a fetal ball and let this evil circus act go on without me. But that would mean failure as well. I kept moving forward.
As we neared Sam’s classroom, Buzz-Cut suddenly awoke to the full extent of his predicament, being the only barrier between his trigger-happy friends and me. "Guys!" he blurted out suddenly, voice a little shrill. "Guys! It's me, Mark! Don't shoot! Guys!"
Mark/Buzz-Cut got his reply at once: a grenade came skittering out into the hall and banked off the wall to roll toward us, spinning and clinking. Apparently Mark’s friends didn't like him as much as he thought.
My heart skipped a beat in dread, and my single eye bulged. I let go of my hostage and leapt clumsily through an open doorway into an empty classroom; Mark remained behind, staring down in horrid fascination as the grenade bounced off his feet.
In the split second before the grenade went off, my gaze fell on the classroom’s other door, the one leading to the exterior. I could see the empty playground out there, and the clear blue sky. It seemed I had never seen a sky so lovely, or a shade of blue quite so beautiful. It drew me toward it like a magnet: all I had to do was step out that door into the heavenly sunlight, and I'd be out of this. The hell with that, I thought, and began to turn my head back to look through the doorway into the hall, towards the children. Then the grenade exploded, rocking the floor under my feet and deafening me as a hot shock wave of air slapped my whole body. Almost simultaneously, the wall I was leaning against rippled askew from its foundation with the force of the blast, shoving me roughly to stagger away a step.
I was back in the now sagging doorway as soon as the blast was over, back on top of things again. The air in the hallway reeked of cordite, hot blood and shit. I looked all around at Mark’s remains: the explosion had splashed parts of him against the walls, floor and ceiling in that horribly familiar old Rorschach. Then I looked across the hall toward my son’s classroom as I braced my gun hand against the doorframe. The vision in my sole eye was foggy, and I was feeling none too steady by now, but I had no trouble seeing the other two gunmen crowd the open doorway. My first round smashed into the shoulder of the little brown-haired weasel carrying the .45 and the canvas bag. The weasel whirled like a top and lurched back into Sam's classroom.
The only things that existed to me now were the door to Sam's classroom and the sobbing of the children leaking out now to goad me into action. My skin crawled as I left the cover of the doorframe and started slowly across the open kill-zone of the hallway, the .38 extended in front of me. I knew that Sam was waiting for me.
Through the doorway, I could see the brown-haired little weasel leaning heavily against the teacher’s desk. His right arm hung down limply from his smashed and bloody shoulder, shattered by the bullet from my .38. His pistol lay on the desk, but his other hand was out of sight. I kept my pistol pointed at him as I approached the doorway; several of the children were in view now, kneeling against the far wall.
I was feeling pretty punch drunk by now; my thought processes weren’t as clear as they might have been, and I was just entering the classroom when it occurred to me to wonder where Skinhead was. That was the instant he made his move; he'd been plastered against the wall inside the doorway like a lizard, waiting. If I’d still had both eyes I would have seen him out of the corner of my vision. As it was, I couldn’t see, and the only warning I had was when I heard my son Sam’s voice screaming in terror: "LOOK OUT DAD!" Startled into alertness, I sensed the motion of the attack barely in time as Skinhead lunged in from the left, grabbing the wrist of my gun hand in a vise-like grip and stabbing a hunting knife up at my belly, a snarling grimace on his bearded face.
Time slowed to a crawl and a cry of dismay blurted out of me as I desperately swept my left arm down, redirecting the knife so that it stabbed into the front of my thigh and embedded itself marrow-deep in the bone. I hissed, then put my left hand up to the knifer's face, stuck my thumb in the guy's eye, and pressed with all my weight. The guy shrieked, and let go of my gun hand and the knife. Both of Skinhead's hands shot up to scrabble futilely at my wrist as I gouged my thumb deeper into the socket, all the way to the second knuckle. My gun hand now free, I stuck my .38 against the guy's leather-clad chest and fired twice, ending his squealing struggle. I almost fell as I lurched around to face the room, wondering why the last gunman hadn't blind-sided me while he had the chance.
The children were crowded against the far wall, sitting or on their knees -- Sam was there in their midst, unharmed. They were squirming and crying in terror, snot and tears streaking most of their faces. Hard as I squinted, I could see no blood or signs of injury on any of them. The school janitor, a small man with wavy brown hair, lay on the floor in front of them. His mop was still clutched in his outstretched hand as he sprawled there, shot dead.
Sam's teacher gasped as she saw my face, and several of the children whimpered even harder as they stared wide-eyed at me. I knew I must be an awful sight, with half my face a bloody red ruin and a knife stuck in my leg. I felt obscurely embarrassed, like in one of those dreams where you’re wearing underwear in public - but at least I was becoming numb now. I wrenched my gaze away from my son's staring eyes and turned to face the Weasel, still leaning on the teacher's desk. The Weasel was a barely contained bundle of nervous energy, bandy-muscled and intense. His previously hidden hand was now revealed, holding up a grenade as if for my inspection, the pin pulled -- only the pressure of his hand kept the spoon from flying off to ignite the fuse.
He glared wildly at me. "Think you're bad, motherfucker? You back off, right now, or all these kids go spl-ASH!" He looked on the edge of hysteria.
I could hear someone outside now, barking something into a megaphone. The cops, of course. But they were out there. It was a whole different world in here. I limped stiff-legged toward this last threat, aiming at Weasel's face. "STOP! STOP RIGHT THERE OR I'LL DO IT, MAN, I'LL DO IT!" the last gunman screamed, spittle flying from his mouth as he clutched the grenade like some sort of talisman.
I stopped, the muzzle of the .38 about a foot from Weasel's sweating face. I was wobbling on my feet now, and I knew I had to finish this before I fell down for good. I figured Weasel would drop the grenade or throw it any second now. Without turning I spoke to the teacher. "Have the children lie down, right now!" My croaking voice didn't sound human, even to myself. "Do as he says, children," I barely heard the teacher say through the growing roaring in my ears. I sensed rather than heard all the kids stirring around as they obeyed. I stole a quick glance over at Sam and saw him pressed bellydown to the floor. I returned my gaze to Weasel, though I had to squint just to see him now.
Weasel was staring at me in confusion. "What -- ?" he began to ask. Then I shot him, right between the eyes. Blood and brains squirted out the back of Weasel’s head onto the floor, and he dropped like the sack of shit that he was. His grip loosened as he fell, and the spoon flew off the grenade with a tinkle. Then I was toppling forward on top of him, fumbling for the grenade as if it were a loose ball in the championship game, and then I grabbed it with my numb fingers and pulled it in tight to my stomach and landed heavily on my side, body curved to shape the blast away from the children. I lay there, and waited forever.
When the detonator cooked off with an explosive whooshing hiss, punching me in the stomach hard enough to knock the wind right out of me, I didn’t realize at first that the grenade was a dud, that the main charge hadn’t gone off at all. When realization came, I lay there with my shirt on fire and my hands and abdomen fried to the color and consistency of over-cooked bacon, stunned for the second time since the start of this thing by the mere fact of my survival. I rolled onto my back, eyes watering from the pain, and feebly patted my burnt hands at my burning work shirt. Then Sam was there, skidding on his knees to reach his dad. His small hands beat at the flames until they were out. Sam stared down at me, lying there in my burnt, smoking shirt, with my charred gut & hands and the knife in my leg; I looked back at him with my one eye. Then Sam sobbed and hugged me close.
I could hear the cops coming into the building now, baying at each other like hounds as they cleared each room by the numbers. I looked up at the darkening ceiling, then peered fuzzily down at Sam. I looked around at the children, all of them unharmed. Despite the pain, I felt a blissful smile creep onto my features. This was as close to heaven as I'd ever hoped to come.
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