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

put his hands to his ears and screamed.
The phone’s ringing stopped.
Brad lowered his hands, his breathing as rough and hoarse as a trapped
animal’s.
He looked down at Kelly Burch, and saw that she was smiling.
“It’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to answer. I found you, didn’t
I?”
Brad whispered, “Wha –”
The little girl giggled, and as she continued to giggle the laugh changed,
grew in intensity and darkness, grew in power and evil until it became a
triumphant roar that shook the windows of the Seven-Eleven store.
“DOOM CITY!” the thing with pigtails shrieked, and as the mouth
strained open the eyes became silver, cold and dead, and from that awful
crater of a mouth shot a blinding bolt of blue-white lightning that hit Neil
Spencer and seemed to spin him like a top, throwing him off his feet and
headlong through the Seven-Eleven’s plate-glass window. He struck the
pavement on his belly, and as he tried to get up again Brad Forbes saw
that the flesh was dissolving from the young man’s bones, falling away in
chunks like dried-up tree bark.
Spence made a garbled moaning sound, and Brad went through the
store’s door with such force that he almost tore it from its hinges. His feet
slivered with glass, Brad ran past Spence and saw the other man’s skull
grinning up at him as the body writhed and twitched.
“Can’t get away!” the thing behind him shouted. “Can’t! Can’t! Can’t!”
Brad looked back over his shoulder, and that was when he saw the
lightning burst from her gaping mouth and hurtle through the broken
window at him. He flung himself to the pavement, tried to crawl under a
parked car.
Something hit him, covered him over like an ocean wave, and he heard
the monster shout in a voice like the peal of thunder. He was blinded and
stunned for a few seconds, but there was no pain ... just a
needles-and-pins prickling settling deep into his bones.
Brad got up, started running again. And as he ran he saw the flesh
falling from his hands, saw pieces drifting down from his face; fissures ran
through his legs, and as the flesh fell away he saw his own bones
underneath.
“DOOM CITY!” he heard the monster calling. “DOOM CITY!”
Brad stumbled; he was running on bones, and had left the flesh of his
feet behind him on the pavement. He fell, began to tremble and contort.
“I’m cold,” he heard himself moan. “I’m cold ...”


She awakened with the memory of thunder in her bones.
The house was quiet. The alarm clock hadn’t gone off. Saturday, she
realised. No work today. A rest day. But Lord, what a nightmare she’d
had! It was fading now, all jumbled up and incoherent. There’d been
thunderstorm last night – she remembered waking up, and seeing
lightning flash. But whatever the nightmare had been, she couldn’t recall
now; she thought she remembered Brad saying something too, but now
she didn’t know what it was ...