JК
Desperation :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 405 из 422”
“Boss, what-”
“The tour’s over, Tex. Get them into the truck and up the road. If you want to be safe, I’d get going right now Johnny turned and went jogging down into China Shaft the light bobbing ahead of him into the black. Soon that was gone, too.
He tripped over something in spite of the flash—light, almost went sprawling, and slowed to a walk. The Chinese miners had dropped what stuff they had in their frantic, useless rush to escape, and in the end they had dropped themselves, as well. He walked over a littered landscape of bones, powdering them to dust, and moved the light in a steady triangle-left to right, down to the floor, up to the left again-to keep the landscape clear and current in his mind. He saw that the walls fairly jostled with Chinese characters, as if the survivors of the cave-in had succumbed to a sort of writing mania as death first approached and then overtook them.
In addition to the bones, he saw tin cups, ancient picks with rusty heads and funny short handles, small rusty boxes on straps (what David had called ’seners, he imag ined), rotted clothes, deerskin slippers (they were tiny, slippers for infants, one might have thought), and at least three pairs of wooden shoes. One of these held the stub of a candle that might have been dipped the year before Abe Lincoln was elected president.
And everywhere, everywhere scattered among the remains, were can tahs: coyotes with spider-tongues, spt ders with weird albino ratlings poking from their mouths spread—winged bats with obscene baby-tongues (the babies were leering, gnomish). Some depicted night-marish creatures that had never existed on earth, halfling freaks that made Johnny’s eyes hurt. He could feel the can tahs calling to him, pulling him as the moon pulls at salt water. He had sometimes been pulled in that same way by a sudden craving to take a drink or to gobble a sweet dessert or to lick along the smooth velvet lining of a woman’s mouth with his tongue. The can tahs spoke in tones of madness which he recognized from his own past life: sweetly reasonable voices proposing unspeakable acts. But the can tahs would have no power over him unless he stopped and bent and touched them. If he could avoid that-avoid despair that would come disguised as curiosity-he reckoned he would be all right.
Had Steve gotten them out yet. He’d have to hope so, and hope that Steve could manage to get them a good dis-tance away in his trusty truck before the end came. A hell of a bang was coming. He only had the two bags of ANFO hung around his neck on the knotted drawstrings, but that would be plenty, all they had ever needed.
“Boss, what-”
“The tour’s over, Tex. Get them into the truck and up the road. If you want to be safe, I’d get going right now Johnny turned and went jogging down into China Shaft the light bobbing ahead of him into the black. Soon that was gone, too.
He tripped over something in spite of the flash—light, almost went sprawling, and slowed to a walk. The Chinese miners had dropped what stuff they had in their frantic, useless rush to escape, and in the end they had dropped themselves, as well. He walked over a littered landscape of bones, powdering them to dust, and moved the light in a steady triangle-left to right, down to the floor, up to the left again-to keep the landscape clear and current in his mind. He saw that the walls fairly jostled with Chinese characters, as if the survivors of the cave-in had succumbed to a sort of writing mania as death first approached and then overtook them.
In addition to the bones, he saw tin cups, ancient picks with rusty heads and funny short handles, small rusty boxes on straps (what David had called ’seners, he imag ined), rotted clothes, deerskin slippers (they were tiny, slippers for infants, one might have thought), and at least three pairs of wooden shoes. One of these held the stub of a candle that might have been dipped the year before Abe Lincoln was elected president.
And everywhere, everywhere scattered among the remains, were can tahs: coyotes with spider-tongues, spt ders with weird albino ratlings poking from their mouths spread—winged bats with obscene baby-tongues (the babies were leering, gnomish). Some depicted night-marish creatures that had never existed on earth, halfling freaks that made Johnny’s eyes hurt. He could feel the can tahs calling to him, pulling him as the moon pulls at salt water. He had sometimes been pulled in that same way by a sudden craving to take a drink or to gobble a sweet dessert or to lick along the smooth velvet lining of a woman’s mouth with his tongue. The can tahs spoke in tones of madness which he recognized from his own past life: sweetly reasonable voices proposing unspeakable acts. But the can tahs would have no power over him unless he stopped and bent and touched them. If he could avoid that-avoid despair that would come disguised as curiosity-he reckoned he would be all right.
Had Steve gotten them out yet. He’d have to hope so, and hope that Steve could manage to get them a good dis-tance away in his trusty truck before the end came. A hell of a bang was coming. He only had the two bags of ANFO hung around his neck on the knotted drawstrings, but that would be plenty, all they had ever needed.