"Nancy Kress - Oaths and Miracles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

was always bad. Her stomach ground and flopped. "Come on, Susie-"

They hurried, wild-haired, across two lanes of cars in the brightly lit
parking lot. Pain stabbed Jeanne's stomach. She faltered. "Listen, Sue
Ann, I just remembered, I have Tampax in the car, andT need-"
"No! Don't leave me-"

Jeanne peeled Sue Ann off her. "Just for a minute, I promise, I'm
bleeding like a pig, and the ladies' room is always out in places like this.
... I won't put it in until you're on the plane, I promise, but I have to get
it from the car. . . . Sue Ann, let me fucking go.'"

Sue Ann started to cry. Jeanne pulled herself loose and sprinted
between two parked cars, toward her Escort. Sue Ann wrapped her
arms around herself, shivering in the night desert air. It was 1:12 A.M.

The black car tore around the corner of the line of cars and barreled
toward Sue Ann. Jeanne, turning at the sound, her body whirling
slowly, slowly as if this were a dream, saw Sue Ann lift her face to the
oncoming car, the same way she'd lifted it to Jeanne in the toilet stall.
Cadoc. Verico. Cadaverico. Yellow floodlight gleamed on Sue Ann's
white lips. Overhead a jet screamed its descent.

The car hit Sue Ann without slowing down. Her body bounced off the
grille onto the hood, then flew backward. She hit another car, a green
Toyota spotted with rust, and slid to the ground. The black car, a
Buick LeSabre with California plates, disappeared around the lane of
parked vehicles.

Jeanne stood without moving, still in that eerie slow-motion dream.
When her legs did move, they carried her in a hesitant step, like a
wedding procession. Everything looked too bright, as if it had been
drawn by a child with new crayons. She saw, so sharp that it hurt her
eyes, the rust smeared from the Toyota on Sue Ann's yellow sweater,
at a precise point just above the left breast. Below the rust, a
blue-sequined pasty showed lumpy through the thin cotton. Sue Ann
hadn't zipped her fly all the way. Her eyes were still open.

Jeanne knelt beside the body and groped for a pulse in the wrist. She
didn't know how to find one anyway. She put her head on Sue Ann's
quiet chest, then yanked her head back as if it were burned. After that,
she couldn't think what else to do, so she did nothing.
From somewhere far, far away, someone shouted. Then there were
running footsteps, and the screech of sirens, and someone saying
"Miss? Miss?" Later, there were bright lights and coffee she didn't drink
and blue uniforms with gun belts and questions. Many questions. But
that was much later in this queer slowed-down time, and by then
Jeanne had already decided what she must not say, ever, to anybody,
anyplace, anytime. Not here, not at home in East Lansing, where she
was going as soon as they let her leave Las Vegas, nowhere. Not to