"Barry Longyear - Dark Corners" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

“I saw him get it.” He moistened his lips and swallowed. “I saw Leroy die.” He glanced up and looked at
Mark. “It was a night straight out of Hell. The noise. People dying, fires and gun flashes everywhere,
smoke, screams, damned mortar rounds falling all around, the dirt down my shirt and in my eyes. They
were all over us. Leroy and me shared a fighting hole near the wire. We could hear the damned sappers
talking to each other. Leroy, he touched my shoulder and pointed. I could see the silhouette of someone
cutting through the wire. I aimed and dropped him. I looked back at Leroy and he was leaning up against
the side of the hole, his head open at the neck. Like a rubber doll his head was back.”

Johnny’s face drained of color as he touched the fingers of his left hand to his throat. “An arm. An arm
grabbed me. Strong. An arm grabbed me and there was a sharp pain in my chest.” His eyes focused on
the polished black granite surface as his fingers moved down the names; past the names he knew, his
friends, his enemies, past the names he didn’t remember, and the names he never knew, until at eye level
his fingers stopped on the name John V Nolan.

The edges of the letters were clean and sharp. As he felt them beneath his fingertips, he thought he could
read them through his fingers, through the back of his hand. Taking his hand from the wall, he turned it
over and saw through his palm the tiny American flag that someone had left at the foot of the wall.

“Mark, my hand!” He faced Mark and saw that Mark’s eyes were filled with tears.

“It’s okay, man. Just let go. It’s way past time. Let go.”

The soldier was a mist, a vapor, then only a memory. A few scratches in a black granite slab.

Mark was alone. On the snow at his feet was a photograph of eleven young soldiers standing, squatting,
and sitting before a burned out piece of North Vietnamese artillery. The young men were grinning and
waving. The young Johnny Nolan stood in the center at the back. He had his arms over the shoulders of
the two men who stood at either side. Mark picked up the photo and stuck it in the crack to the left of
Johnny Nolan’s name.

Back at the bus stop, Mark climbed the stairs into the bus, took a seat, and closed his eyes. He was
happy to be riding back from the wall all alone. And sad.




The Death Addict
Code blue, code blue.
Stat time. Lights flashing, crash wagon rolling, an ominous flat tone from Room 301, the ICU nurses
quietly and efficiently hurrying through their well practiced routine: strip, drip, ventilation, clear the mouth
of obstructions, insert the air passage, blow, pump, pump, pump, pump, blow—
“Here’s the wagon. Clear! Clear, dammit!” Panic, rather than urgency, in the doctor’s voice. New
resident.

The whump of multiple volts passing through still living tissue, the muscles contracting and relaxing, lifting
a frail old form from the bed.

“Still flat!”