"Laymon, Richard - The Traveling Vampire Show" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laymon Richard)

Grinning, he boomed, "CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE?"

Slim pinched his side.

He gasped, "OWl" and twisted away. "That hurt!" "Keep it down," Slim
said. "Jeez."

"We're gonna have to be sneaky going in," she explained, "or they'll
toss our butts out and we'Ll never get a chance to see Valeria." "Or
don't you want to see her?" I asked Rusty. "Jeez, guys, I was just
screwing around." "Let's hope nobody heard you," Slim said. "Nobody
heard me. We're miles from Janks Field." "More like a few hundred
yards," I told him.

"And sound really carries around here," Slim added.

"Okay, okay, I get the point."

The dirt road wasn't as wide as Route 3, so we didn't walk abreast.
Slim took the lead. Rusty and I stayed pretty much beside each
other.

There was no sunlight. Of course, there hadn't been any sunlight
before we entered the woods--just a gray gloom. But now, with trees
all around and above us, the gloom was deeper, darker. Things looked
the way they do when you're out after supper on a summer night and you
can see just fine, so far, but you've only got maybe half an hour
before it'll be too dark for playing ball.

"If it gets much darker," I said, "Valeria won't need her casket."
Rusty put a finger to his lips and went, "Shhhhh." I gave him the
finger. He smirked.

After that, I kept my mouth shut.

Our shoes were almost silent on the dirt road except for sometimes when
one of us stepped on a twig. Rusty was breathing fairly hard. Every
so often, he muttered stuff under his breath.

A very quiet tune seemed to be coming from Slim. "De dum, de doo, de
do-doo " It blended in with the sounds all around us of buzzing flies
and mosquitos and bees, bird tweets, and the endless flutters and
rustling scurries of unseen creatures. "De-dum, de do, de doo." Rusty
made no attempt to shush her. But suddenly he said, "Wait up." Slim
halted.

When we caught up to her, Rusty said in a hushed voice, "I gotta take a
leak."

Slim nodded. "Pick a tree," she said.