"Donald Malcom - The Iron Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malcom Donald)

whoosh: a huge, intensely bright, yellow monster, cartwheeling parallel to
George Street, came in from the west and exploded in the region of the
telephone headquarters, about two hundred yards up the street.

Sparks showered the milling crowds, but the screams around me were
nothing compared with the sounds from the point of impact. Following
the dreadful crash of masonry, flame and smoke exploded into view.

The woman was quivering in the seat beside me; I could see she'd been
crying and was wiping away the tears.

"How far is your house from here? Could we walk?"

"No. I live in Brookfield, about fifteen miles away."
 I gave her the appropriate map to chart our route. "Go up to Cathedral
Street and turn left," she said.

At least I knew where that was. As we moved off, the radio came to life
again. Part of my attention was diverted by driving, but I gathered that
damage and death were extensive. Robert Campbell, Scotland's Regional
Director, was calling for everyone's cooperation with the authorities.

We passed Love Loan and turned into Cathedral Street. Although most
of the traffic was going the other way, I still had to contend with the
gleaming, sharded carpet of glass that lay ahead of us; and hundreds of
pedestrians scurried about like rats in a maze. I kept my speed to around
twenty-five miles an hour. Compared with the other cars, we hardly
seemed to be moving.

We'd gone only a few hundred yards when an approaching van had a
blow-out. The vehicle was doing about sixty and it spun across the road
into the path of my car. The woman screamed. Realizing that braking
would be useless, I wrenched the wheel to the right. The tires screeched as
they grated through the glass. The van, which seemed about to go past,
suddenly spun again and smashed the passenger side of the car with the
force of a fighting galley ramming the enemy. Miss Field's second scream
was abruptly cut short. As my head jerked forward and hit the steering
wheel, I was vaguely aware of something hot spattering my face.

I regained partial, groggy consciousness, and floated up from the
depths of emptiness. A weight crushed against my left side. I tried to push
it away, but my hand encountered a hot stickiness. I glanced round and
was shocked fully awake.

Miss Field slid against the dashboard like a discarded puppet. The van
had plowed into the car at least two feet, demolishing the whole of the
front and most of the side. Miss Field had her back to me. I froze in the act
of easing myself away from her—an incoming meteorite seemed to shake
the world with its passage, then was gone, exploding somewhere behind
the university.