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

where the traffic light was still obediently blinking yellow, a skeleton in
jogging gear lay sprawled on the ground. Its Nike sneakers were too small
for Brad’s feet, too large for Kelly’s. They kept going, and Kelly cried for a
few minutes but then she hugged her doll tighter and stared straight
ahead with eyes swollen almost shut.
And then Brad heard it, and his heart pounded with fear again.
Off in the fog somewhere.
The sound of a phone ringing.
Brad stopped. The phone kept on ringing, its sound thin and insistent.
 “Somebody’s calling,” Kelly said, and Brad realised she was standing
right beside him. “My tel’phone number is 633-6949.”
He took a step forward. Another, and another. Through the fog ahead of
him he could make out the shape of a payphone there on the corner of
Dayton Street.
The telephone kept on ringing, demanding an answer.
Slowly, Brad approached the payphone. He stared at the receiver as if it
might be a cobra rearing back to strike. He did not want to answer it, but
his arm lifted and his hand reached towards that receiver, and he knew
that if he heard that silken breathing and the metallic recorded voice on
the other end he might start screaming and never be able to stop.
His hand closed around it. Started to lift it up.
“Hey, buddy!” someone said. “I wouldn’t answer that if I was you.”
Startled almost out of his skin, Brad whirled around.
A young man was sitting on the kerb across the street, smoking a
cigarette, his legs stretched out before him. “I wouldn’t,” he cautioned.
Brad was oddly shocked by the sight of a flesh-and-blood man, as if he’d
already forgotten what one looked like. The young man was maybe in his
early twenties, wearing scruffy jeans and a dark green shirt with the
sleeves rolled up. He had sandy-brown hair that hung to his shoulders, and
he looked to have a couple of days’ growth of beard. He pulled on the
cigarette and said, “Don’t pick it up, man. Doom City.”
“What?”
“I said ... Doom City.” The young man stood up; he was about six feet,
thin and lanky. His workboots crunched leaves as he crossed the street,
and Brad saw that he had a patch on the breast pocket of his shirt that
identified him as a Sanitation Department workman. As the young man
got closer, Kelly pressed her body against Brad’s legs and tried to hide
behind the Smurf doll. “Let it ring,” the young man said. His eyes were
pale green, deep-set and dazed. “If you were to pick that damned thing up
... Doom City.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because it is what it is. Somebody’s tryin’ to find all the strays. Tryin’
to run us all down and finish the job. Sweep us all into the gutter, man.
Close the world over our heads. Doom City.” He blew a plume of smoke
into the air that hung between them, unmoving.
“Who are you? Where’d you come from?”
 “Name’s Neil Spencer. Folks call me Spence. I’m a ...” He paused for a
few seconds, staring along Baylor Street. “I used to be a garbage man. ‘Til
today, that is. ‘Til I got to work and found skeletons sitting in the garbage
trucks. That was about three hours ago, I guess. I’ve been doin’ a lot of