"Robert McCammon - Doom City" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCammon Robert R)

“HELP ME!” he screamed. “SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME!”
But there was no answer; not from the house where the Pates lived, not
from the Walkers’ house, not from the Crawfords’ nor the Lehmans’.
Nothing human moved on Baylor Street, and as he stood amid the falling
leaves on the seventh day of June he felt something fall into his hair. He
reached up, plucked it out and looked at what he held in his hand.
The skeleton of a bird, with a few colourless feathers sticking to the
bones.
He shook it from his hand and frantically wiped his palm on his
pyjamas – and then he heard the telephone ringing again in his house.
He ran to the downstairs phone, back in the kitchen, picked up the
receiver and said, “Help me! Please ... I’m on Baylor Street! Please help –”
He stopped babbling, because he heard the clicking circuits and a
sound like searching wind, and down deep inside the wires there might
have been a silken breathing.
He was silent too, and the silence stretched. Finally he could stand it no
longer. “Who is this?” he asked, in a strained whisper. “Who’s on this
phone?”
Click. Buzzzzzz ...
Brad punched the O. Almost at once that same terrible voice came on
the line : “We’re sorry, but we cannot place your call at –” He smashed his
fist down on the phone’s two prongs, dialled 911. “We’re sorry, but we
cannot –” His fist went down again; he dialled the number of the Pates
next door, screwed up and stared twice more. “We’re sorry, but –” His
fingers went down on about five numbers at once. “We’re sorry –”
He screamed and wrenched the telephone from the wall, threw it across
the kitchen and it broke the window over the sink. Dead leaves began to
drift in, and through the glass panes of the back door Brad saw something
lying out in the fenced-in backyard. He went out there, his heart pounding
and cold sweat beading on his face and chest.
Lying amid dead leaves, very close to its doghouse, was the skeleton of
their collie, Socks. The dog looked as if it might have been stripped to the
bone in mid-stride, and hunks of hair lay about the bones like snow.
In the roaring silence, Brad heard the upstairs phone begin to ring.
He ran.
Away from the house this time. Out through the backyard gate, up onto
the Pates’ front porch. He hammered at the door, hollering for help until
his voice was about to give out. Then he smashed a glass pane of the door
with his fist and, heedless of the pain and blood, reached in and
unsnapped the lock.
With his first step into the house, he smelled the graveyard reek. Like
something had died a long time ago, and been mummified.
He found the skeletons in the master bedroom upstairs; they were
clinging to each other. A third skeleton – Davy Pate, once a tow-headed
twelve-year-old boy – lay in the bed in the room with posters of Prince and
Quiet Riot tacked to the walls. In a fishtank on the far side of the room
there were little bones lying in the red gravel on the bottom.
It was clear to him then. Yes, very clear. He knew what had happened,
and he almost sank to his knees in Davy Pate’s mausoleum.
Death had come in the night. And stripped bare everyone and