"Brian Lumley - E-Branch 1 - Defilers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

one, in the expectation that we'd find principal targets at three centres of maximum infection,
and that then we'd be able to hit back in a massive military raid followed by the world's longest
cleanup period lasting maybe a hundred years! So we prepared, but we didn't tell everyone. And by
everyone I mean most of you.


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"We didn't tell you that the extraps had v/orked it all out in their mechanical minds and given us
between a year and eighteen months, to a maximum of three years, until Armageddon,- and that by
then, as I've said, the remaining human half of the population would be at war with the vampire
half and probably with each other.
"We didn't tell you because first of all our Minister Responsible had forbidden it,- you are human
after all, and many of you have wives and families, and while we may be E-Branch, we're just as
prone to panic as anyone else in the face of the ultimate disaster. In short, we needed you here,
not running off to take care of your kith and kin. And we also didn't tell you because that
doomsday scenario I painted a minute or so ago was just one of a handful of scenarios, and as the
old saying goes, 'Where there's life , . .'

c. r i L- c. ix o
"But mainly we-myself and one or two others who were in the know- mainly we stayed silent because
right from the beginning we'd seen signs of some kind of strategic cover-up, I mean by the
Wamphyri. What they'd done to the Refuge, they'd made it look like vandalism on the grand scale.
Maybe the three missing members of staff had gone crazy, wrecked the place and murdered everyone
else before running off? Maybe that's what they wanted us or the world to think. And in any case
surely the last thing we would think-in a world that doesn't believe in vampires-was that we had
been invaded by them! And remember, only six of those Refuge kids had actually been . . .
depleted, and even then they showed no external signs of vampirism. Even if some Romanian doctor
had got there before we torched the place, it would have seemed 'obvious' that the children had
been suffering from some form of pernicious anaemia. But pernicious? That isn't the word for it.
And those kids . . . my God, those poor kids!
"And here we see something of Malinari's evil intelligence at work. He left no one alive to tell
the tale, no one to alert the world to what had really happened. But after . . . after examining
Zek, surely he would know that we- that E-Branch-would be on to him anyway?
"Well, I believe Malinari knew precisely what our world and its peoples are all about. I believe
he'd got it all from General Mikhail Suvorov and his expeditionary force long before he ever set
out to come here, and then that he'd had it corroborated by poor Zek and Bruce Trennier at the
Refuge. He knew first from Suvorov that the people of our world didn't believe in his kind, that
vampires are considered a myth born of ignorance and ancient superstition. But while that is
generally true, he also learned from Zek that certain people do have all or most of the facts,
which of course would tend to make E-Branch and its espers his deadliest enemies.
"So now let's look at it from his point of view, if that's at all possible. If Malinari and the
others commenced vampirising every human being with whom they came in contact, how long before we
people who know the truth broke silence? And how long then before mankind in its entirety fought
back-and with what terrible weapons?
"Malinari, Szwart, and Vavara, they were Wamphyri . . . they are Wamphyri! But they are only
three. Three of them, and oh so many of us. And so much still to be learned about the Earth and
its peoples, this very different world that they would conquer, with all its many diverse races.
"Zek, my Zek, was the real key. She was a powerful mentalist, a telepath who knew others with