"Michael A. Stackpole - Dark Conspiracy 01 - A Gathering Evil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stackpole Michael A)

longer locked in the grasp of paralysis.
I tried to move my hand under my conscious direction,
but still found myself unable to do so. Too ambitious, I
decided. I tried to open my eyes, but realized, in the dark,
in a body bag, I could not tell if I had been successful. I
made an attempt at breathing through my mouth, but
found I still could not open it.
Despair opened its jaws wide to swallow my spirit
whole, but the hope inspired by my shivering saved me.
Before you can run, you must learn to walk. Before you
can walk, you need to shiver. Shivering is good. Shiver-
ing is progress. Think cold. Make your body want to do
what you cannot make it do.
I abandoned myself to cold and panic, repeatedly
having to overcome unconscious efforts to control my-
self. I knew each burst of adrenaline that pumped into my
system was helping, yet I felt constitutionally averse to
admitting panic. It represented a total loss of control, and
that spelled disaster. It felt as if part of me believed that
by admitting I was in serious trouble, I would not find a
way out of it.
Though I knew I should have been paying attention to
the motions of the truck, I decided against it. I knew it
would have been simple—a child's game—to keep track
of twists and turns. By counting slowly and estimating
speeds, I could have easily cataloged our journey and
had an excellent chance of backtracking it. I had done it
before, but not knowing where we had started, and
unsure if I ever wanted to return there, I let it go.
I also found, for the brief time I did keep track of things,
that the driver was doing his best to take us through a
very evasive and difficult-to-follow route. We changed
levels several times and traveled both city streets and
highways. We made no more stops, which I pridefully
saw as a reflection of my own value, and ended the
journey with a long downward slope.
My shivering stopped instantly as the truck door
opened. I felt all my senses come alive as if I were trying
to project my mind outside the bag to see where I was.
I could not, of course, and my attempts were interrupted
by the jerk on the handle at my head. My body limply
slithered over other corpses, then I slid free of the truck
and my legs slapped stiffly on the ground.
"Key-ryest, Gord, don't let the legs hit!"
"Geez, Kenny, the guy ain't complaining."
"But the doctor will. Soft tissue damage, she calls it."
There was nothing soft about the way my legs and
heels felt as Gord hefted me up. Hitting the ground had
hurt and I would have screamed had my jaw not been
locked. Anger twisted my belly up and burned like fire.