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

A gleaming white orb was slowly rising along the highway. The rabbit watched it,
transfixed. Sometimes the rabbit would stand atop its dirt-mound burrow and
watch the white thing that floated high overhead; sometimes it was larger than
this one; sometimes it was yellow; sometimes it wasn't there at all; sometimes
there were tendrils across it, and it left in the air the tantalizing scent of
water that never fell. The rabbit was unafraid because it was familiar with that
thing in the sky, but the vibration it now felt rippled the flesh along its
spine. The orb was growing larger, bringing with it a noise like the growl of
thunder. In another instant the rabbit's eyes were blinded by the white orb; its
nerves shot out a danger signal to the brain. The rabbit scurried for safety on
the opposite side of the highway, casting a long scrawl of shadow beyond it.
The jackrabbit was perhaps three feet away from a protective clump of thorn-
brush when the night-black Harley-Davidson 1200cc "chopper," moving at almost
eighty miles an hour, swerved across the road and directly over the rabbit's
spine. It
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squealed, bones splintering, and the small body began to twitch in the throes of
death. The huge motorcycle, its shocks barely registering a shudder of quick
impact, roared on to the north.
A few moments later a sidewinder began to undulate toward the rabbit's cooling
carcass.
And on the motorcycle, enveloped in a cocoon of wind and thunder, the rider
stared along the cone of white light his single high-intensity beam afforded,
and with a fractional movement he guided the machine to the center of the road.
His black-gloved fist throttled upward; the machine growled like a well-fed
panther and kicked forward until the speedometer's needle hung at just below
ninety. Behind a battered black crash helmet with visor lowered, the rider was
grinning. He wore a sleek, skin-tight, black leather jacket and faded jeans with
leather-patched knees. The jacket was old and scarred, and across the back rose
a red Day-Glo king cobra, its hood fully swollen. The paint was flaking off, as
if the reptile were shedding its skin. The machine thundered on, parting a wall
of silence before it, leaving desert denizens trembling in its wake. A garishly
painted sign-blue music notes floating above a pair of tilted red beer bottles,
the whole thing pocked with rust-edged bullet holes-came up on the right. The
rider glanced quickly at it, reading JUST AHEAD! THE WATERIN' HOLE! and below
that, FILL 'ER up, PARDNER! Yeah, he thought. Time to fill up.
Two minutes later there was the first faint glimmer of blue neon against the
blackness. The rider began to cut his speed; the speedometer's needle fell
quickly to eighty, seventy, sixty. Ahead there was a blue neon sign-THE WAT RIN'
H LE -above the doorway of a low wooden building with a flat, dusty red roof.
Clustered around it like weary wasps around a sun-bleached nest were three cars,
a jeep, and a pickup truck with most of its dull blue paint scoured down to the
muddy red primer. The motorcycle rider turned into a tumbleweed-strewn parking
lot and switched off his engine; immediately the motorcycle's growl was replaced
with Freddy Fender's nasal voice singing about "wasted days and wasted nights."
The rider put down the kickstand and let the black Harley ease back, like a
crouching animal. When he stood up and off the machine, his muscles were as taut
as piano wires; the erection between his legs throbbed with heat.
He popped his chin strap and lifted the helmet off, exposing a vulpine, sharply
chiseled face that was as white as new marble. In that bloodless face the deep