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Tim Waggoner: The Last Mile

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Tim Waggoner The Last Mile

The Last Mile: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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All Dan wanted was to be a good husband and father, to provide for his wife and daughter, to keep them fed, warm, and safe. But then the malevolent godlike beings called the Masters arrived, and their darkness spread across the world, reshaping it into a twisted realm of savagery and madness. In exchange for his family’s protection, Dan now serves one of these alien gods, obtaining human sacrifices to feed his Master’s eternal hunger. Like so many people since the world changed, Alice has had to do unspeakable things to survive. Unfortunately for her, she’s Dan’s choice for his next sacrifice. Now Dan drives along the shattered remnants of an old-world highway, headed for his Master’s lair, Alice bound hand and foot in the backseat of his car. Dan may not like what he’s become, but he’ll do whatever it takes to protect his loved ones. Alice doesn’t intend to relinquish her life so easily, though, and she plans to escape, no matter the cost. But in the World After, everything—animals, plants, even the land itself—has become a predator, and the journey to the Master’s lair is an almost guaranteed suicide run. But Dan won’t give up, and he won’t stop fighting. Not until he makes it through the Last Mile.

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Dan wondered then why none of the other deer-things he’d seen had ever tried to attack him before. Maybe he’d been traveling too fast to make good prey on his other runs, and his Olds had finally gotten so beat-up and slow to attract this one’s attention today. Or perhaps there was no reason at all. There often wasn’t in the World After. Things—almost always bad things—just happened because they happened.

Dan’s thrall-mark still blazed with the heat of his Master’s summons, and he stood still, allowing the deer-thing to see the brand on his forehead. It was impossible to say how intelligent the creature was, but the deer-thing didn’t have to be a thinking beast to recognize a thrall-mark. The question was whether it would be deterred by the sight, or if it were hungry enough to try to kill him anyway and risk a Master’s wrath.

“I’m not worth the trouble,” Dan said. His voice was distorted by his injured tongue, and blood dribbled past his lips as he spoke, but that didn’t matter. The bulk of the message would be carried by his thrall-mark.

The deer-thing cocked its mutated head as if considering Dan’s words. But then from the backseat of the Olds the woman, who had managed to pull herself into a sitting position again and was staring at the deer-thing with wide, disbelieving eyes, said, “What the fuck is that?”

The deer-thing looked at Dan and gray-hide lips pulled back from its shark teeth in an obscene parody of a smile. The creature might be willing to forego one meal to keep from angering a Master, but two? The hell of it was, Dan understood. If their places had been reversed, he’d have made the same decision. The creature let out a cry that sounded like a baby’s scream, its fetid breath misting on the cold air. Then it lowered its antlers and came rushing toward Dan.

Dan stood close to the open passenger door, and as the creature ran at him, he feinted right, then moved left. The deer-thing was moving too fast to correct its trajectory, and it plunged antlers first through the open passenger door. The sharp prongs sliced into the upholstery of the seat, and the woman’s shriek rose to an ear-splitting pitch. Dan didn’t wait for the deer-thing to begin freeing itself from the upholstery; he slammed his shoulder into the door, smashing it into the creature’s side. The deer-thing howled in pain. Tough as its hide might be, but armored it wasn’t. Dan shoved his weight against the car door again, putting even more muscle into it this time, and the antlered monstrosity gave forth a cry that matched Dan’s captive for sheer volume. Dan was about to slam the car door into the creature again, but the sound of ripping fabric warned him that the deer-thing had freed itself. He moved out of the way as the beast extricated itself, the door swinging violently outward as the deer-thing backed away from the car.

Dan didn’t know if he’d injured the creature or merely annoyed it, but either way, he couldn’t afford to give it another chance to attack. As the thing rushed backward, Dan lifted his machete high and swung it back down with all the force he could muster. The blade bit into the beast’s right flank, but the thick pebbly hide prevented it from penetrating more than an inch. Even so, the impact sent pain jolting up through Dan’s arm and into his shoulder, but he didn’t release his grip on the machete’s handle. He leaned forward, pressing down on the weapon, hoping to cut farther into the deer-thing’s leathery gray skin. Dan knew he needed to do more than just hurt the creature if he wanted to survive; he had to hurt it bad.

The deer-thing reared up onto its hind legs, the motion yanking the machete from Dan’s hand. The blade remained stuck in the creature’s hide for a second before dislodging and falling to the broken asphalt with a metallic clatter. Dan was gratified to see the blade was smeared with blood—a normal red, surprisingly enough. He only wished there was more of it.

The beast came down on its front legs once more and whirled to face him. Its eyes were still an emotionless dead-black, but its chest heaved with a combination of exertion and fury, and mad froth dripped in thick white gobs from its muzzle. It stood for a moment, regarding him, as if to say, I WAS gonna make it quick, asshole, but not anymore. Now I’m gonna do you as slow and nasty as I can.

Blood dripped from the machete wound on the deer-thing’s flank, but the cut wasn’t deep enough to slow it down, let alone stop it. Dan considered making a grab for the machete, or maybe trying to get back into the car so he could snag one of his other weapons. But he knew he was just indulging in the last wishful fantasies of a soon-to-be-dead man. There was no way in hell he could hope to move fast enough to avoid becoming a post-apocalyptic shish kebab.

Then Dan noticed the thorn-stalks around the deer-thing were quivering, as if something had excited them. The deer-thing noticed, too. It moved its head first right, then left, then back again, and it pawed the broken surface of the road with one of its front hooves in a way that Dan could only perceive as nervous. The deer-thing seemed to hesitate and a shiver ran along its body. Dan thought the creature was going to bolt, and maybe it would have, but before it could take a step, one of the thorn-stalks shot toward it with the speed of a striking viper. The stalk slithered into the wound on the deer-thing’s flank, turning as it invaded the creature’s body, thorns acting like a miniature rotary saw and widening the hole as it sank deeper into its victim’s flesh. Blood sprayed from the growing wound, and the deer-thing threw back its head and opened its mouth wide to release an agonized bellow. But as soon as the sound left its throat, another thorn-stalk attacked, this one lengthening as it stretched toward the deer-thing’s open mouth, wriggled past its shark teeth, and continuing on down its gullet, spinning thorns shredding the beast’s insides into hamburger. Dark blood gushed from the deer-thing’s ruined mouth as its legs buckled, and then it fell with a heavy dull smack onto the broken asphalt of the road.

The thorn-stalks’ poison began to go to work immediately. The deer-thing’s gray hide become mottled black, as if the creature were afflicted with rapidly accelerated gangrene. Its sides swelled like a balloon attached to a helium tank with the nozzle turned wide open. The deer-thing wasn’t dead, though, not yet. Its glossy black eyes darted back and forth in confusion, as if it couldn’t bring itself to believe what was happening. And then the creature’s gaze focused on Dan, and there was no mistaking the utter hatred that now blazed from those previously dead eyes.

Dan smiled grimly. “Fuck you, too.”

And then the deer-thing’s sides burst open as it popped like a red, wet piñata.

Instantly, scores of thorn-stalks writhed forward and covered the grisly remains of the deer-thing, so numerous and so tightly woven that they made a domelike covering over the carcass. And then loud, greedy slurping sounds filled the air as the thorn-stalks began to feed.

“Jesus Christ, are they eating that thing?”

Startled, Dan turned to look back at the Olds. For a moment, he’d forgotten about the woman. He walked toward the passenger-side back door, moving slowly so as not to excite any more of the thorn-stalks. Those stalks surrounding the car that hadn’t joined the others in feasting on the deer-thing’s corpse quivered with what seemed to Dan to be excitement, as if they were eager to get in on the fun, and he didn’t want to draw their attention. He leaned in the front and saw the hunting knife and the 9mm on the floor of the car. He grabbed both, sliding the gun into the back of his pants barrel-first and holding on to the hunting knife with his left hand. He turned and cast a longing gaze at the machete, but it lay too close to the mound of feasting thorn-stalks, and he wasn’t about to risk retrieving it. He’d make do with what he could salvage.

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