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

Holding onto it with one hand, she waved at me with the other. My
throat went thick and tight.

I waved back furiously and yelled, "See ya later!"

And a voice in my head whispered, Oh, yeah?

But who pays attention to those voices? We get them all the time. I
do, don't you? When someone you love is leaving the house, doesn't it
occur to you, now and then, that you may never see him or her again?
Flying places, don't you sometimes think What if this one goes down?

Driving, don't you sometimes imagine an oncoming truck zipping across
center lines and wiping out everyone in your car? Such thoughts give
you a nasty sick feeling inside, but only for a few seconds. Then you
tell yourself nothing's going to happen. And, turns out, nothing does
happen.

Usually.

I lowered my arm, stared at my friends for a couple of seconds longer,
then turned and hurried down the dirt road.

I ran, but not all-out. Not the way you run with a dog on your rail,
but the way you do it when you've got a long distance to cover. A
pretty good clip, but not a sprint.

Every so often, I had an urge to turn back.

But I told myself they'd be fine. Up on the roof, they were safe from
the dog. And if strangers should come along--like some punks or a wino
or The Traveling Vampire Show Rusty and Slim could lie down flat and
nobody would even know they were there.

Besides, if I returned, we'd all be on the roof again a couple of miles
from home and no way to get there without Slim bleeding all over the
place.

Going for a car was the only sensible thing to do.

That's what I told myself.

But the farther away from Janks Field I ran, the more I wished I'd
stayed. A couple of times, I actually stopped, turned around and gazed
up the dirt road to where it vanished in the woods.

And thought about running back.

Maybe I would've done it, too, except for the dog. I hated the idea of
facing it again.