"William Mark Simmons - Undead 1 - One Foot in the Grave" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons William Mark)

Gravel crunched as the RV eased over on the road's shoulder and coasted to a stop. Mooncloud
killed the lights. Garou opened the door and swung down. Brandishing the crossbow, she gestured to a
clump of bushes straddling a barbed-wire fence. "Two minutes, no more. You run and I'll shoot. I can
put a bolt through your leg at thirty feet."
I forced a smile as I stepped down, noting that the shrubbery was no more than twenty feet away.
The crossbow came up and tracked me all the way across the ditch and over to the fence. "Where are
you going?" she demanded as I spread the strands of fence wire.
"Behind the bushes, madam. Or would you prefer an 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours'
arrangement?"
Garou looked back at Mooncloud who nodded. I eased my body through to the other side of the
fence.
I had already decided to make a break for it in spite of the crossbow. The odds had to be better than
getting back in the vehicle with two escaped lunatics. Now that I was behind the bushes, on the other
side of the fence with a cornfield maybe thirty feet beyond, it almost looked too good to be true.
The real danger would be those first ten yards without cover.
"Hurry up," Garou called.
"Hey, sweetheart," I called back, "I need to relax for the plumbing to work, and you're not helping
any. These things take time, so shut up and let me concentrate!" I crouched down, hoping that would end
any dialogue for the next couple of minutes.
 "Lupé, we might as well give Mr. Csejthe some slack right here," Mooncloud was saying, "or else
how are we going to convince him of the truth?"
A dark shape glided overhead, an owl hooted, and I missed her reply.
"Here, give me the crossbow," Mooncloud said. "You can climb into the back and change now. It
will save us all time."
I parted the foliage and peeked back at the road, surprised at how well my night vision was
operating, especially with so little moonlight escaping the barricade of clouds. Garou scowled but finally
acquiesced, handing the medieval weapon to Mooncloud. I didn't wait to see any more but dropped to
my hands and knees and began crawling toward the perimeter of the cornfield.
"Mr. Csejthe," Mooncloud called, as I left the hiss and crackle of dry grass and began creeping
across the quiet dirt, "this is to prove to you two very important points. One: you cannot escape. And
two: that we are not mad but know very well of that which we speak."
That did it. It's the crazy ones that make just that kind of speech.
I slipped between the cornstalks with nary a rustle and rose halfway to my feet. Rogers &
Hammerstein wrote a little ditty in which "the corn is as high as an elephant's eye" but, by midsummer in
Southeast Kansas, it was only as high as a man's shoulders. I hunched over and made like Victor Hugo's
bellboy of Notre Dame, hoping I was far enough in to prevent any rustling stalks from targeting me.
"Don't hurt him, Lupé," Mooncloud called as I moved deeper into the field. Another thirty feet and I
dropped to my belly and began crawling at a right angle to the rows, working my way through columns of
cornstalks. Suddenly, I stopped crawling and pressed my cheek to the dirt, listening. There was a
susurrus of leaves as something else entered the rows of greenery. And the patter of feet.
Two pairs of feet.
Very light, somewhat small feet.
A dog running loose, I thought, following the trail I had made into the heart of the corn. Did these
women keep bloodhounds in the back of the camper for such exigencies?
I raised my head and reached out to crawl through the next row.
My hand encountered a shoe.
Empty?
Groping upward, I encountered an ankle, a leg.
Looking up, I saw a giant white spider dropping toward my face: a hand. Cold, implacable fingers
closed on my collar and I found myself suddenly ascending, rising into the night sky to hover with my feet