Twilight Hunger. Maggie Shayne

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ And besides, they wouldn’t get hurt. She wouldn’t let them get hurt. Maxine Stuart took care of her friends.

      Movement drew her attention. “There they go!”

      As the fire truck rolled ahead, Max ran forward, cutting off to the left and moving rapidly away from the pool of firelight that spread like an aura from ground-zero. The trees ended there, and she paused at the very last one. She tried not to feel a huge sense of relief when she realized Jason and Storm were still at her side. But she felt it anyway. God, they were loyal.

      The distance from the front to the back of the rubble that had once been the main building was at least half a football field, without so much as a shrub for cover. But it was dark. Getting darker with every cloud of thick smoke that wafted from the fire.

      “We can make it,” Max said.

      “They’re gonna haul our asses to jail for this, Maxie,” Jason said.

      “Ready?”

      Neither of them answered her. Max licked her lips and trusted them. “Go!” And she ran.

      She was never certain they were following until she stopped when she reached what had been the far end of the building and they bumped into her in the darkness. Hands gripped shoulders as they steadied each other. Then they stood for a moment, catching their breath, squinting into the darkness. There were fifty feet between where they stood and the smoldering remains at the rear of the building. It no longer much resembled a building at all. It wasn’t tall or square. It was a heap. Flames leaped up here and there, although most of the real fire had moved hungrily toward the front, having had its fill here, it seemed. There were glowing red shapes forming mounds underneath the charred forms of the skeletal underpinning. There were ashes, smoke. Were there people in there? she wondered. Bodies?

      “This is close enough,” Stormy whispered.

      Max looked around. “You see that shrub over there? It’s out of the smoke.” She pointed. “You two wait for me there. I promise I won’t be long.”

      “Don’t, Max,” Jason warned. He sounded pissed off. “Just … don’t.”

      “Five minutes,” she said. “Just five freaking minutes. This is once in a lifetime, Jay.” She didn’t wait for him to argue. She ran, instead.

      They didn’t follow this time.

      It was hot. Damned hot, and the smoke was burning her eyes and her nose, and she kept trying not to cough too loudly and give herself away. She ran until she reached the rear of the building, and then she moved closer and closer to it, as close as she could stand to get. She figured her hair was probably getting a little singed, and she had to watch where she put her feet to keep from stepping on smoldering embers that would have melted right through the soles of her shoes.

      She looked around, squinting through the veil of smoke and the shimmering heat waves. There were several things on the ground in one area. Large broken boxes—computers. Smashed to bits. Some burned and charred, others just smashed. Had someone thrown them out the windows in an effort to save them? Or maybe to destroy them? She kicked at one. What she wouldn’t have given for a hard drive from one of those machines. God only knew what she might find. Bending, she reached out to pick through the pile of rubble, but the pieces were so hot they seared her fingers, and she jerked her hand away, sucking air through her teeth.

      “Shit.” She put her burned fingers to her lips, blew on them, drew them away and shook them in the air as she kept on walking. Her foot kicked something that rolled, and she looked down, frowning, looking closer. When she realized she was bending over a charred forearm and hand, she pulled back so suddenly she almost fell over. “Jesus!”

      Her breathing quickened now, her lungs sucking in more smoke with every breath, but that couldn’t be helped. She continued her search, spotting other evidence of human remains in the wreckage. More and more of it. Bodies. Parts of bodies. It was as if she had stepped into hell’s dumping ground. Jesus, why hadn’t anyone been able to get out alive? What the hell had happened here?

      This was stupid. She had been a fool to come here. She started to turn, to go back, when movement caught her eye. Movement in the smoky distance. She went still, squinting, staring.

      Gradually, the movement took shape. A man, his clothes burned, his skin so sooty she couldn’t tell if he was black or white. He was hunched over, walking unevenly, bending and straightening over and over again. It looked as if he was picking things up, dragging himself away from the wreckage and picking things up as he went. She was about to offer to help him when she heard her name shouted from a distance.

      The man heard Stormy’s call, too, and he went stiff, jerking his head toward the voice. A tongue of flame leapt to life somewhere near him and illuminated his face for just an instant. His hair had been burned completely away from one side of his head, and the scalp and one side of his face was charred. Black, with pink showing through here and there. She tried to memorize his features, the rounded face, the shape of his chin. He tucked whatever he had been holding into his pockets and ran in a lumbering, uneven gait away from the voice and right toward Maxine.

      She ducked down low, held her breath, willed herself not to move. She didn’t know for sure that the man was dangerous, but if he were up to anything good, he wouldn’t be running away. Maybe he was just a snoop, like she was. But probably not. He’d been inside that burning building. That much was obvious.

      He limped past her, never even looking down at her as she sat there fighting not to shiver in fear. He moved so close she could smell his charred flesh, and it made her stomach clench reflexively.

      Something fell from his jacket. Something—no, two somethings—dropped to the hot, rubble-strewn ground right at her feet. He never noticed, just kept going, dragging one leg, lunging with the other, until he vanished in the smoke.

      Swallowing hard, Maxine reached for the items. One was a CD-ROM. The other, some kind of ID badge. She swore every nerve ending in her body tingled with electricity as she tucked the two still-warm items carefully into her pocket and, turning, ran back the way she had come. She refused to look again at the carnage. Refused to look behind her, even when she swore she felt the disfigured man’s gaze burning into her back. She just hurried as fast as she could back to where she’d left her friends and fell to her knees near the shrub where they waited.

      “God, thank God, you’re back!” Storm said. She bent over Max, stroking her back. “Are you all right? What happened back there?”

      “Did you find anything? What did you see?” Jason asked.

      Maxine lifted her head, looked at them. “It’s … there were … bodies.”

      “Oh, God,” Storm said, closing her eyes.

      Max gripped Jason’s forearm, and he helped her to her feet. “Let’s get the hell out of here, okay?” he suggested.

      She nodded. They fell into step together, with Max in the center, her two friends flanking her almost protectively. They had made it almost all the way to the front gate when the sounds of rumbling motors flooded the night and vehicles came roaring along the street and into the drive. They ducked into the nearby pines, watching as camo-painted trucks and Jeeps with spotlights mounted on them bounded past. At least one vehicle had a machine gun mounted on a tripod in the back. Soldiers armed with weapons came spilling out of the trucks and fanned out onto the grounds.

      Ten feet ahead of Max, a cop stood СКАЧАТЬ