"George A. Stewart - Earth Abides" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart George A)

The afternoon wore on. He did not feel like eating anything when it came


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toward supper-time, but he made himself a pot of coffee on the gasoline
stove, and drank several cups. He was in much pain, but in spite of the
pain and in spite of the coffee he became sleepy...

He woke suddenly in half-light, and realized that someone had pushed open
the cabin door. He felt a sudden relief to know that he had help. Two men
in city clothes were standing there, very decent-looking men, although
staring around strangely, as if in fright. "I'm sick!" he said from his
bunk, and suddenly he saw the fright on their faces change to sheer panic.
They turned suddenly without even shutting the door, and ran. A moment
later came the sound of a starting motor. It faded out as the car went up
the road.

Appalled now for the first time, he raised himself from the bank, and
looked through the window. The car had already vanished around the curve.
He could not understand. Why had they suddenly disappeared in panic,
without even offering to help?

He got up. The light was in the east; so he had slept until dawn the next
morning. His right hand was swollen and acutely painful. Otherwise he did
not feel very ill. He warmed lap the pot of coffee, made himself some
oatmeal, and lay down in- his bunk again, in the hope that after a while he
would feel well enough to risk driving down to Johnson's that is, of
course, if no one came along in the meantime who would stop and help him
and not like those others, who must be crazy, run away at the sight of a
sick man.

Soon, however, he felt much worse, and realized that he must be suffering
some kind of relapse. By the middle of the afternoon he was redly
frightened. Lying in his bunk, he composed a note, thinking that he should
leave a record of what had happened. It, would not be very long of course
before someone would find him; his parents would certainly telephone
Johnson's in a few days now, if they did not hear anything. Scrawling with
his left hand, he managed to get the words onto paper. He signed merely
Ish. It was too much work to write out his full name of Isherwood Williams,
and everybody knew him by his nickname. .

At noon, feeling himself like the ship-wrecked mariner who from his raft
sees the steamer cross along the horizon, he heard the sound of cars, two
of them, coming up the steep road. They approached, and then went on,
without stopping. He called to them, but by now he was weak, and his voice,
he was sure, did not carry the hundred yards to the turn-off where the cars
were passing.