"Aleksandr Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Horsemen from Nowhere ("ВСАДНИКИ НИОТКУДА", англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

There he was lying still. I gave him a kick, but he didn't move. Then I
shook him. His head just dangled. I dragged him over to my plane and thought
I'd get him to the base for help, but when I checked the gas, there wasn't a
drop. So I went to radio the news but the set wouldn't work. I must have
gone out of my head then, because I just jumped out and ran for all I was
worth, no direction, no aim, I just ran, because I couldn't stand the crazy
house any longer. I even forgot how to pray, all I could say was Jesus
Christ. Then I saw your tent and here I am."
Listening to him I recalled my own trials and tribulations and now
began to realize what had happened to Vano. What Tolya was thinking, with
his eyes bulging out, was hard to say; he was probably doubting and double
checking every word Martin uttered. He was about to start with questions in
his school English, but Zernov got in ahead of him:
"You remain here with Vano, Dyachuk, and Anokhin and I'll go with the
American. Let's go, Martin," he added in English.
Instinct or premonition-I don't know what psychologists would call
it-told me to take my cine camera, and I was thankful for that subconscious
idea. Even Tolya looked surprised-the body for the inspector or the
behaviour of the murderer at the sight of the body? The pictures I took were
different, however, and I began to shoot as we approached the site of
Martin's accident. There were no longer two planes, but one-Martin's own
silver canary, his polar veteran with swept wings. But right next to it the
familiar (to me) bubbling crimson hillock. It smoked, changed shades of
colour and pulsated in a strange manner, as if it were indeed breathing.
White elongated flashes broke out from time to time like sparks in welding.
"Don't go near," I warned Martin and Zernov as they ran past me.
But the upturned flower had already extended its invisible shield.
Martin who was in the lead strangely slowed down, and Zernov simply went
down on his knees. But both of them pushed forward overcoming the force that
pulled them groundwards.
"Jesus!" yelled Martin turning to me, and he fell to the ground.
Zernov retreated, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
Meanwhile I was shooting all of this; I moved round the crimson hillock
and bumped into the murdered man, or perhaps Martin's double who was only
wounded. He was lying in the same nylon jacket with synthetic fur covered
over with a fluff of snow some three to four metres from the airplane where
Martin had dragged him.
"Come on over here, here he is!" I cried. Zernov and Martin ran over
towards me, rather they seemed to skate over to me, balancing with their
hands, as one does when walking on ice without skates. Here too, the big
flakes of snow had powdered the smooth thickness of ice.
Then something utterly new happened that neither I nor my camera had
ever recorded. A crimson petal separated itself from the vibrating flower,
darkened, curled up in the air and stretching out into a living
four-metre-long snake with open jaws covered the body lying before us. For a
moment or two this snake-like tentacle sparkled and boiled and then tore off
the ground and in its enormous two-metre maw we saw nothing-only a violet
emptiness of an unnaturally stretched-out bell that before our very eyes
changed shape from cone to rippling petal. Then it merged with the cupola.
The only thing left on the snow was a trace-a formless silhouette of the man