"ab Hugh, Dafydd & Linaweaver, Brad - Doom 03 - Infernal Sky 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (ab Hugh Dafydd)

Now was the time to adapt or die. Now was the time
to really send in the marines!
2
"I almost brought you some iced tea," said
Mulligan, "with lots of lemon."
Arlene and I both grimaced. "He's getting mean,"
she said.
"A sadist," I agreed. We'd told the master gun
plenty about our adventures, and he had fixated on
the way Albert, Jill, Arlene, and I had passed our-
selves off as zombies by rubbing rotten lemons and
limes all over ourselves. The odor of the zombies had
forever spoiled the taste of citrus for me.
" 'Course I could let you have one of these instead,"
Mulligan continued, holding out two frosty Limbaugh
brews, one in each paw.
"The man's getting desperate," I said.
"Who goes first?" asked Arlene, ready to spill the
beans; and Mulligan hoped they would be tastier than
the typical MRE.
The admiral had left us. He looked like an old
beachcomber as he wandered down the beach. I
thought about what he'd said—how he'd tied the past
and future together with these precious islands as the
center of his universe. Maybe they were the center of
the universe for all humanity.
"Beers first," I volunteered, holding my hand out.
Mulligan looked as happy as Jill when I let her drive
the truck. He passed out the brews and settled his
considerable bulk back in his beach chair.
"Once upon a time ..." I began, but Arlene
punched me so hard it made her breasts jiggle very
nicely. With that kind of encouragement, I got plenty
serious.
"We had to take down the energy wall so Jill could
fly out of L.A. and get here," I began. "In the Disney
Tower we located a roomful of computers hooked into
a collection of alien biotech—"
"Yeah, yeah," Mulligan said impatiently. "I re-
member all that. Get to the window already!"
So I did.
We were too high. I'd never liked heights, but it
seemed best to open the windows.
"We took down the energy wall, at least," I had said
over my shoulder. "Jill must notice it's gone and start
treading air for Hawaii."
Arlene nodded, bleak even in victory. I didn't need
alien psionics to know she was thinking of Albert.
"The war techies will track her as an unknown rider,"
added Arlene, "and they'll scramble some jets; they