"McCammon Robert R. - They Thirst" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCammon Robert R)

And in that instant both boy and woman saw that he did not bleed.
"Szornyeteg!" Mama screamed, her back pressed against the door. The word ripped
through the boy's mind, tearing away huge chunks that left him as mute and
frozen as a scarecrow in winter. Monster, she'd screamed. Monster.
"Oh, nooooooo," the hideous face whispered. And the thing shambled forward,
claws twitching in hungry expectation. "Not so easily, my precious wife . . ."
She gripped her son's arm, then turned and unbolted the door. He was almost upon
them when a wall of wind and snow screamed into the house; he staggered back a
step, one hand over his eye. The woman wrenched the boy out after her into the
night. Snow clutched at their legs and tried to hold them. "Run!" Mama cried out
over the roar of the wind. "We've got to run!" She tightened her grip on his
wrist until her fingers melded to his bones, and they fought onward through
whiplash strikes of snow.
Somewhere in the night, a woman screamed, her voice high-pitched and terrified.
Then a man's voice, babbling for mercy. The boy looked back over his shoulder as
he ran, back at the huddled houses of Krajeck. He could see nothing through the
storm. But mingled with the hundred voices of the wind, he thought he could hear
a chorus of hideous screams. Somewhere a ragged cacophony of laughter seemed to
build and build until it drowned out the cries for God and mercy. He caught a
glimpse of his house, receding into the distance now. Saw the dim red light
spilling across the threshold like a final dying ember of the fire he'd so
carefully tended. Saw the hulking half-blinded figure stumble out of the doorway
and heard the bellow of rage from that mangled, bloodless throat-"I'LL FIND
YOU!" And then Mama jerked him forward, and he almost tripped, but she pulled
him up, urging him to run. Wind screamed into their faces, and already Mama's
black hair was white with a coating of snow, as if she'd aged in a matter of
minutes,
17
THEY THIRST
or gone mad like some lunatic in an asylum who sees nightmares as grinning,
shadowless realities.
A figure suddenly emerged from the midst of a stand of snow-heavy pines, frail
and thin and as white as lake ice. The hair whipped around in the wind; the rags
of its worm-eaten clothes billowed. The figure stood at the top of a snow mound,
waiting for them, and before Mama saw it, it had stepped into their path,
grinning a little boy's grin and holding out a hand sculpted like ice.
"I'm cold," Ivon Griska whispered, still grinning. "I have to find my way home."

Mama stopped, screamed, thrust out a hand before her. For an instant the boy was
held by Ivon Griska's gaze, and in his mind he heard the echo of a whisper.
Won't you be my playmate, Andre? And he'd almost replied, Yes, oh yes, when Mama
shouted something that was carried away by the wind. She jerked him after her,
and he looked back with chilled regret. Ivon had forgotten about them now and
began walking slowly through the snow toward Krajeck.
After a while, Mama could go no farther. She shuddered and fell into the snow.
She was sick then, and the boy crawled away from the steaming puddle and stared
back through waving pines toward home. His face was seared by the cold, and he
wondered if Papa was going to be all right. Mama had no reason to hurt him like
that. She was a bad woman to hurt his father, who loved them both so dearly.
"Papa!" he called into the distance, hearing only the wind reply in frozen