"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Hell on Earth (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора

DON'T LOOK DOWN! We gazed upon white clouds
so beautiful that they reminded me of what we'd been
fighting to save.
Were we too late? Part of me hoped so, a part that
just wanted to sit down and rest.
We'd fought those damned, ugly monsters until we
were too tired to fight—and now it was looking like
we had to do it all over again.
All at once I noticed a sprinkling of the flares all
over California, my home state. "Oh, God, Fly," I
said, my stomach contracting.
"Yeah. Terrible." Jesus, couldn't my best bud think
of anything stronger to say when Armageddon came
to your hometown?
I shook my head. "You don't understand. That's
not what I meant. I mean I don't feel anything." I
trembled as I spoke.
Fly put his arm around me; well, that was more like
it. "It's all right," he mumbled. "It's not what you
think. There's nothing wrong with you. After what
you've been through, you're just numb. Your brain is
tired."
I let my head rest on his shoulder. "So my mind is
coming loose. What about body and soul?"
Right then and there I decided we needed a new
word to describe the state after you've reached ex-
haustion but had to keep going on automatic pilot.
Wherever that state was, Fly and I had been there a
long, long time.
2
I put my arm around Arlene's shoulders,
hoping she would understand it meant nothing but
friendship. Oh don't be silly, Fly; of course she
understands!
Where to begin? I was born at an early age, in a log
cabin I helped my father build. I grew up, joined
the UnitedStatesMarineCorpsSir!—went to fight
"Scythe of Glory" Communist leftovers in Ke-
firistan, punched out the C.O., was banged up in the
brig and sent to Mars with the rest of my jarhead
buddies.
We up-shipped to Phobos, one of the moons of
Mars—well, now the only moon of Mars—and dis-
covered a boatload of aliens had invaded through the
used-to-be-dormant "Gates," long-range teleporters
from . . . from where? From another planet, God
knows where. Arlene and I battled our way into the
depths of the Phobos facility of the Union Aerospace
Corporation . . . who started the whole invasion,
turns out, by monkeying with the Gates in the first