JК
Desperation :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 414 из 422“Ohplease go! For God’s sake get us out of h-”
She was thrown back in the seat as the wheels found purchase again. Just enough. For a moment the headlights went on stabbing at the lightening sky, and then they were rushing across the rim, headed north. From behind them, out of the pit, rose an endless flume of dust, as if the ear-lier freak storm had started up all over again, only con-fined to.this one location. It rose in the sky like a pyre.
The trip down the north side of the embankment was less adventurous. By the time thcy were running across the two miles of desert between the pit and the town, the sky in the east was a bright salmon-pink. And, as they passed the bodega with the fallen sign, the sun’s upper arc broke over the horizon.
Steve jammed on the brakes just past the bodega, at the south end of Desperation’s Main Street.
“Holy shit,” Cynthia murmured in a low voice.
“Mother Machree,” Mary said, and put a hand to her temple, as if her head hurt.
Steve could say nothing at all.
Until now he and Cynthia had only seen Desperation in the dark, or through veils of blowing sand, and what they had seen had been glimpsed in frantic little snatches, their perceptions honed to a narrow focus by the mortal sim-plicities of survival. When you were trying to stay alive, you just saw what you had to see; the rest went by the board.
Now, however, he was seeing it all.
The wide street was empty except for one lazily blowing tumbleweed. The sidewalks were drifted deep with sand-drifted completely under in places. Broken windowglass twinkled here and there. Trash had blown everywhere. Signs had fallen down. Powerlines lay snarled in the street like broken distributor beads. And The American West’s marquee now lay in the street like a grand old yacht that has finally gone on the rocks. The one remaining letter-a large black R-had finally fallen off.
And everywhere there were dead animals, as if some lethal chemical spill had taken place. He saw scores of coyotes, and from the doorway of Bud’s Suds there ran a long, curving pigtail of dead rats, some half-covered with the sand skirling about in a light morning breeze. Dead scorpions lay on the fallen leprechaun weathervane. They looked to Steve like shipwreck survivors who had died badly on a barren island. Buzzards lay in the Street and on the roofs like dropped heaps of soot.
“And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about,” David said. His voice was dead, expressionless. “And you shall say, ‘Take heed to yourselves that you go not up into the mount.
She was thrown back in the seat as the wheels found purchase again. Just enough. For a moment the headlights went on stabbing at the lightening sky, and then they were rushing across the rim, headed north. From behind them, out of the pit, rose an endless flume of dust, as if the ear-lier freak storm had started up all over again, only con-fined to.this one location. It rose in the sky like a pyre.
The trip down the north side of the embankment was less adventurous. By the time thcy were running across the two miles of desert between the pit and the town, the sky in the east was a bright salmon-pink. And, as they passed the bodega with the fallen sign, the sun’s upper arc broke over the horizon.
Steve jammed on the brakes just past the bodega, at the south end of Desperation’s Main Street.
“Holy shit,” Cynthia murmured in a low voice.
“Mother Machree,” Mary said, and put a hand to her temple, as if her head hurt.
Steve could say nothing at all.
Until now he and Cynthia had only seen Desperation in the dark, or through veils of blowing sand, and what they had seen had been glimpsed in frantic little snatches, their perceptions honed to a narrow focus by the mortal sim-plicities of survival. When you were trying to stay alive, you just saw what you had to see; the rest went by the board.
Now, however, he was seeing it all.
The wide street was empty except for one lazily blowing tumbleweed. The sidewalks were drifted deep with sand-drifted completely under in places. Broken windowglass twinkled here and there. Trash had blown everywhere. Signs had fallen down. Powerlines lay snarled in the street like broken distributor beads. And The American West’s marquee now lay in the street like a grand old yacht that has finally gone on the rocks. The one remaining letter-a large black R-had finally fallen off.
And everywhere there were dead animals, as if some lethal chemical spill had taken place. He saw scores of coyotes, and from the doorway of Bud’s Suds there ran a long, curving pigtail of dead rats, some half-covered with the sand skirling about in a light morning breeze. Dead scorpions lay on the fallen leprechaun weathervane. They looked to Steve like shipwreck survivors who had died badly on a barren island. Buzzards lay in the Street and on the roofs like dropped heaps of soot.
“And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about,” David said. His voice was dead, expressionless. “And you shall say, ‘Take heed to yourselves that you go not up into the mount.