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

She shook her head. "We don't know anything beyond the fact that he claims to be a Bassarab.
News from the East Coast has become unreliable these past several years and all we have to go on is
rumor and innuendo. But, as you said, his enforcers did seem more inclined to bring you in dead rather
than alive. In fact, I'm sure they had something to do with last night's murder in that Joplin hospital."
 "Why?"
"I believe Dr. Marsh relayed some of your blood samples through the Missouri labs and the New
York team was backtracking your records to find you and destroy all existing evidence. The fact that a
hospital employee was killed means that they were either desperate or sloppy. But still very, very deadly.
You're lucky that we found you first."
I digested these words with the remainder of my soup. "Thank you," I said finally. "For everything, I
guess, if I'm to believe even half of what you've told me." I pushed the bowl across the table. "The soup,
too. My appetite hasn't been too normal, lately. I'd forgotten how good tomato soup could taste."
"Tomato soup?" Mooncloud smiled.
I frowned. "There was something else in it—kind of tangy, like V-8 juice. Secret herbs and spices?" I
asked hopefully.
Her smile grew broader.
I considered the coppery aftertaste in my mouth and suddenly felt my legs go rubbery. "You're not
going to tell me . . . to tell me. . ." Fortunately I was sitting down.
"Some of it was tomato soup, Chris. And, yes, I did add some V-8 juice and a dash of salsa to the
mix. But . . ." Her smile grew terribly wide.
I looked down at the remnants of my meal coagulating at the bottom of the bowl.
The worst part was that I had actually enjoyed it.




Chapter Three
Give me monsters. . . .
Crazy-quilt renderings of mismatched flesh with bolted necks stalking through mazed corridors.
Demonic beasts of hunched fur and poisoned talons slavering in steaming pits and crawling forth,
unhindered by pentagrams and mystic seals. Lunatic shapes that caper and gibber and reach out for you
in ways that suggest that there are worse things than death and you can take a long time in getting there. .
..
I'll take monsters any day. Or night.
Because monsters can be run from. Or fought.
But how do you escape when that monstrous, stalking doom is part and parcel of your own
anatomy? When it pursues you through the looping corridors of veins and arteries, and nests in the four
bedroom chambers of your own heart?
For months my dreams had been scored to background threnodies and funereal winds moaning like a
macabre Greek chorus. In time the wailing had changed and I recognized the voices as they took on new
tonal qualities.
The sound of my own blood.
Singing.
 A vast, choral paean of the Dies Irae reverberating through my body: Day of Wrath. . .
There had been no solace in waking up. In time I had discovered the nightmare requiem was but a
reflection of my waking reality: shadows were gliding through my bloodstream like sharks turned loose to
hunt in a watery theme park. . . .
But now I awoke feeling somewhat rested for the first time in months. Lying in the dark confines of
the makeshift bed, I listened to the drone of tires on pavement and then reached out to feel the wooden
walls that enclosed me like a coffin. Surprisingly, the panic signs of claustrophobia were absent and I felt