"John E. Stith - Memory Blank" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stith John E)

Awareness returned in a series of minute steps as fragments of information came into focus. He sprawled
facedown. For no reason he could think of, beneath him lay dirt and rocks.

He tried to prop himself up on his elbows and open his eyes, but the shooting pains from his lower back
forced him to clench his eyes shut.

Sweat broke out on his forehead. Fighting the growing fear, he resigned himself to a more gradual
investigation. With one eye open, he could make out dark shapes that looked like outlines of bushes.
Blades of grass brushed his cheek, and he smelled the musty odor of earth. A constant breeze cooled his
face.

He lifted his head, more gently this time. His jaws tightened as the pain lanced back, but it didn't seem so
bad this time.

He rolled carefully onto his back. In the process, he found another sore spot above his knee. His breath
came heavily.

He was alone, outside somewhere in the dark, and hurt. He couldn't remember what had happened the
night before, and, as he strained to recall, an overwhelming feeling of fear hit him.

With effort, he found he could summon disjointed impressions of a college campus, but they seemed
distant. The harder he tried to retrieve images, the more his head hurt. It felt as if a tattoo artist were busy
engraving a mural on the inside of his skull.

His eyes felt gritty. Momentarily he was unable to focus. He must hurry. Something within him made him
feel the need for haste. But why?

Stars shone off to one side. They grew brighter as his eyes adjusted to the scene, and he decided that he
must be in a wilderness area. The stars couldn't possibly be that bright anywhere near Atlanta or any
other city. Atlanta. He hadn't remembered Atlanta until now. Was he somewhere in the Blue Ridge
Mountains?

It was as though his memory lay before him, a cavernous darkened warehouse. Far into the smoky
distance, unseen hands switched on one dim light, and he felt a link to Atlanta. Now that he had at least a
fragment of past knowledge, the panic lessened.

What had happened last night? His memory was foggy, as though from disuse. He looked at one of the
brightest stars as he tried to force his memory to disgorge more facts. But they wouldn't come. He shifted
his leg to avoid a rock that ground into his hip. And then he realized something else was wrong.

The stars lay along a straight path, perhaps forty-five degrees wide. It was as though he were in the
middle of Peachtree Street, seeing the stars between the parallel rows of building tops.

He moved his head so he could better see what bordered the stars. Now in his field of view layanother
strip of sky. His stomach knotted. His memory loss couldn't possibly have been for merely a day or even
a few days. He knew where he must be, and he knew the points of light he saw were not stars. He was a
long, long way from his college days and the Chattahoochee River Valley.

He swung his gaze back in the opposite direction for confirmation. Two corridors of “stars” radiated