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

Ignoring the rules of probability, the emergency lights remained off-line, preferring some variant of the
chaos theory, instead.
"From ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggity beasties," Mooncloud whispered.
"Nocturnal volleyball teams." I groped my way across the room in the darkness.
"I beg your pardon?" I would have sworn that the disoriented quality in her voice was not entirely due
to the sudden blackout.
"Things that go 'bump' in the night."
"Marsh warned me about you," she said.
"Yeah? What did he say?"
"That I could look up 'attitude' in the dictionary and find your picture."
I bit back a curse as I barked my shin on a tape console that had been moved out of its place for
servicing.
"That you?"
"Of course it's me!" I was trying to keep my temper from erasing my mental map of the studio's
layout. "The building's locked up tighter than a drum. Who else would it be?"
There was another sound, then, from the other end of the building. It took a moment to place it: the
rattling of a metal security grate. "I stand corrected—someone must have left a door unlocked."
"Is there a back door?" Mooncloud's voice was decidedly unsteady.
"Doctor, there's no need to panic. It's probably one of the campus security guards checking the
building. We'll just sit here until the power is restored—"
The security grating rattled again.
And then it screamed.
The sound of rending metal groaned and shrieked, echoing down the hallway like a slow-motion
freight train braking in a tunnel. I fumbled for Mooncloud's hand in the darkness, aiming for the luminous
dial of her watch. "The back door's this way, Doc. Last one out's—"
"I know," she said grimly. "Far better than you, in fact."
I led her around the consoles and fumbled open the sliding glass door that led to the engineering
section. Groping across a bank of demodulators and telemetry panels, we maneuvered through the
stacks of equipment toward the back door. A workbench caught my hip, bruising it and turning us
around so that I was disoriented for a moment.
"Hurry," she whispered.
"A moment," I hissed, waving my free arm around in search of a blind man's landmark. I suddenly
realized that the exit door was before me, a vague, grey rectangle in the deeper blackness. Glancing back
over my shoulder, I saw a dim glow through the tiny window inset in the main studio's outer door.
"Don't look back!" Mooncloud shouted, pushing at my shoulder. "Go! Go!"
The glow was mesmerizing, intensifying, but I turned my attention to the fire door in front of us. I
slapped the crash-bar but the door would not budge.
"Break it down."
 "What?"
"Break it down!" she insisted.
I was going to say something about the weight and immovability of a fire door, but the sound of
exploding glass from the main studio derailed that train of thought. I whirled and kicked the door just
above the bar: the metal panel buckled and the door erupted out of its frame, sailed over the concrete
porch and steps, and went surfing across the rear parking lot.
Outside, the night seemed preternaturally bright despite the fact that the streetlights that normally
illuminated the north end of the campus were dark. A van—no, one of those mobile homes on
wheels—was swinging around a concrete median and heading right for us. It didn't seem to be traveling
all that fast, which was fortunate as the driver had neglected to switch on his headlamps.
Dr. Mooncloud was also moving in slow motion, looking somewhat like Lindsay Wagner in a grainy
rerun of The Bionic Woman. It felt as if Time, itself, had perceptibly tapped its own fourth-dimensional