"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Roadside Picnic (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

night, when you crawl past, you can see the glow inside, like alcohol
burning with blue tongues. That's the witches' jelly breathing in the
cellars. just a quick glance gives you the impression that it's a
neighborhood like any other, the houses are like any others, only in need of
repair, but there's nothing particularly strange about them. Except that
there are no people around. That brick house, by the way, was the home of
our math teacher. We used to call him The Comma. He was a bore and a
failure. His second wife had left him just before the Visitation, and his
daughter had a cataract on one eye, and we used to tease her to tears, I
remember. When the panic began he and all his neighbors ran to the bridge in
their underwear, three miles nonstop. Then he was sick with the plague for a
long time. He lost all his skin and his nails. Almost everyone who had lived
in the neighborhood was hit, that's why we call it the Plague Quarter. Some
died, mostly the old people, and not too many of them. I, for one, think
that they died from fright and not from the plague. It was terrifying.
Everyone who lived here got sick. And people in three neighborhoods went
blind. Now we call those areas: First Blind Quarter, Second Blind, and so
on. They didn't go completely blind, but got sort of night blindness. By the
way, they said that it wasn't any explosion that caused it, even though
there were plenty of explosions; they said they were blinded from a loud
noise. They said it got so loud that they immediately lost their vision. The
doctors told them that that was impossible and they should try to remember.
But they insisted that it was a powerful thunderbolt that blinded them. By
the way, no one else heard the thunder at all.
Yes, it was as though nothing had happened here. There was a glass
kiosk, unharmed. A baby carriage in a driveway -- even the blankets in it
looked clean. The antennas screwed up the effect though--they were overgrown
with some hairy stuff that looked like cotton. The eggheads had been cutting
their teeth on this cotton problem for some time. You see, they were
interested in looking it over. There wasn't any other like it anywhere. Only
in the Plague Quarter and only on the antennas. And most important, it was
right there, under their very windows. Finally they had a bright idea: they
lowered an anchor on a steel cable from a helicopter and hooked a piece of
cotton. As soon as the helicopter pulled at it, there was a pssst! We looked
and saw smoke coming from the antenna, from the anchor, and from the cable.
The cable wasn't just smoking--it was hissing poisonously, like a rattler.
Well, the pilot was no fool--there was a reason why he was a lieutenant--he
quickly figured what was what and dropped the cable and made a quick
getaway. There it was, the cable, hanging down almost to the ground and
overgrown with cot ton.
So we made it to the end of the street and the turn nice and easy.
Kirill looked at me: should he turn? I signaled: as slow as possible! Our
boot turned and inched over the last feet of human earth. The sidewalk was
coming closer and the boot's shadow was falling on the bramble. That's it.
We were in the Zone! I felt a chill. Each time I feel that chill. And I
never know if that's the Zone greeting me or my stalker's nerves acting up.
Each time I think that when I get back I'll ask if others have the same
feeling or not, and each time I forget.
All right, so there we were crawling quietly over what used to be
gardens. The engine was humming evenly under our feet, calmly-- it didn't