"T. K. F. Weisskopf & Greg Cox Ed. - Tomorrow Sucks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weisskopf T.K.F)

rare item, the last dead man. All the other graveyards of earth have been blasted up.
This is the last graveyard and you're the last dead man from the centuries. These
people don't believe in having dead people about, much less walking dead people.
Everything that can't be used goes up like a matchstick. Superstitions right along
with it!"
He looked at the town. All right, he thought, quietly.
I hate you. You hate me, or you would if you knew I existed. You don't believe in
such things as vampires or ghosts. Labels without referents, you cry! You snort. All
right, snort! Frankly, I don't believe in you, either! I don't like you! You and your
Incinerators.
He trembled. How very close it had been. Day after day they had hauled out the
other dead ones, burned them like so much kindling. An edict had been broadcast
around the world. He had heard the digging men talk as they worked!
"I guess it's a good idea, this cleaning up the graveyards," said one of the men.
"Guess so," said another. "Grisly custom. Can you imagine? Being buried, I
mean! Unhealthy! All them germs!"
"Sort of a shame. Romantic, kind of. I mean, leaving just this one graveyard
untouched all these centuries. The other graveyards were cleaned out, what year was
it, Jim?"
"About 2260, I think. Yeah, that was it, 2260, almost a hundred years ago. But
some Salem Committee they got on their high horse and they said, 'Look here, let's
have just one graveyard left, to remind us of the customs of the barbarians.' And the
gover'ment scratched its head, thunk it over, and said, 'Okay. Salem it is. But all
other graveyards go, you understand, all!' "
"And away they went," said Bill.
"Sure, they sucked 'em out with fire and steam shovels and rocket-cleaners. If
they knew a man was buried in a cow-pasture, they fixed him! Evacuated them, they
did. Sort of cruel, I say."
"I hate to sound old-fashioned, but still there were a lot of tourists came here
every year, just to see what a real graveyard was like."
"Right. We had nearly a million people in the last three years visiting. A good
revenue. But—a government order is an order. The government says no more
morbidity, so flush her out we do! Here we go. Hand me that spade, Bill."


William Lantry stood in the autumn wind, on the hill. It was good to walk again, to
feel the wind and to hear the leaves scuttling like mice on the road ahead of him. It
was good to see the bitter cold stars almost blown away by the wind.
It was even good to know fear again.
 For fear rose in him now, and he could not put it away. The very fact that he was
walking made him an enemy. And there was not another friend, another dead man, in
all of the world, to whom one could turn for help or consolation. It was the whole
melodramatic living world against one William Lantry. It was the whole
vampire-disbelieving, body-burning, graveyard-annihilating world against a man in a
dark suit on a dark autumn hill. He put out his pale cold hands into the city
illumination. You have pulled the tombstones, like teeth, from the yard, he thought.
Now I will find some way to push your damnable Incinerators down into rubble. I
will make dead people again, and I will make friends in so doing. I cannot be alone
and lonely. I must start manufacturing friends very soon. Tonight.
"War is declared," he said, and laughed. It was pretty silly, one man declaring war