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

blockage. Eleni prodded the mass with a rubber-clad finger, finding it resilient and spongy to the
touch. It wasn't weed, and it wasn't a part


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NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS
of the human body-not unless it was some sort of grossly enlarged tumour.
Intrigued, she cut through the pectoral muscles to halfway down the chest and used an electrical
surgical saw to separate the upper sternum from the ribs and detach it. And finally, she cut
through the rest of the upper oesophagus, revealing more of the blockage. But still she hadn't
exposed all of it.
Manolis had been watching all of this while doing his best to ignore the smell of death and decay
that kept getting stronger all the time. Now, through ouzo-drenched gauze and the reek of aniseed
and rottenness, he mumbled, "What in hell ... is that?"
Looking back at him over the grotesque, somehow intimidating shield of her mask, Eleni's grey eyes
were wide and uncertain. But then she shrugged and answered, "We won't know, until we get it out."
The object, whatever it might turn out to be, completely blocked the dead woman's gullet. It was
grey blue, and corrugated like a concertinaed worm or slug. As for its texture:
"It seems firm enough . . . uhi." Eleni grunted, digging her fingers in to expand the gullet,
"that I don't think it's going to break up under pressure. Maybe I can get it out in one piece
without more butchery." And without further ado she dragged the thing free, holding it up for
Manolis's inspection.
He had backed off more yet, which was as well. For as with the dolphin in Phaestos, so now with
this poor dead woman.
It was as if the pathologist had shaken a bottle of champagne and loosened the cork. But what had
been released was anything but fine wine. Gasses and pus and mucus foamed out of the neck cavity,
and disturbed by internal convulsions, a stream of yellow shit and gooey cadaverine spurted from
the opposite end. The corpse seemed to writhe and nutter as it settled down into itself.
Manolis choked, "Good God!" and turned away. And: "I'll be back when I've been good and . . . and
. . ." But he couldn't finish it. Open his mouth again and he'd be sick right there, not that that
would spoil the looks of the room.
But in the toilets, throwing up, at least he had the dubious satisfaction of hearing Eleni doing
the same in the ladies' cubicle next door . . .


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"That rarely happens," she told him fifteen minutes later, when he came out of the toilet. "One
gets used to such things. Maybe it was the sight of your face that did it, its colour and awful
grimacing. Perhaps I ... came out in sympathy?" She was hosing down the white marble floor,
flushing the mess out through the front room of the police post into the street and down a drain.
Outside, there was no sign of the village policemen in the sun-bleached street, just two nuns of
some obscure order, wearing cowled cassocks that covered them head to toe. The pair had paused in
their strolling to stare, but in another moment their pale hands fluttered into view as they
covered their faces with handkerchiefs before turning and hurrying away.
Manolis couldn't blame them. Still very drawn and pale himself, he said, "This place is going to
stink forever!"

"No, no," Eleni answered. "Powerful antiseptics will clear it in no time. It will smell just like