Alan Dean Foster To The Vanishing Point

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circular driveway.
As they entered, a vast shadow darkened the motor home. Frank leaned forward
and looked skyward, flinched as the monster attacked. It was all teeth and
claws and dripping toxins. The motor home rang like a bell when the thing made
contact with the roof, but the metal held and they managed to remain upright.
Flucca darted outside, popping away with his tiny pistol. Frank followed, then
Burnfingers. The Casull bellowed once, twice. Nothing tumbled to the ground
and there was no answering scream, but the shadow vanished.
"It will be back." Burnfingers holstered the now empty hand-cannon.
"Along with mother knows what else. The world is going crazy."
Frank leaned against the comforting side of the motor home, breathing a little
easier. He felt a lot better now than he had when his friends had dragged him
from the collapsing city below. The throbbing in his side was starting to
relent.
"Nothing's stable no more," Flucca avowed, still scanning the sky. "The fabric
of existence is really coming apart." Satisfied that the clouds shielded
nothing more than an errant pigeon, he looked over at Frank. "We're running
out of time, we are. That's what Mouse told us before we came looking for
you."
"That's what she's been telling us all along."
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"I was beginning to wonder if we could make it all the way to your office,"
Burnfingers told him. "Then we saw you lying in the water with that bunch
preparing to do you."
"Five more minutes." Frank straightened, able now to stand on his own.
"No, I didn't have that much. Three, maybe."
"We have to get her to the Vanishing Point quickly. She is the only one who
can stop this."
"You get her there. You and Nick. I'm all out. I'm staying here. I want to die
in my own house surrounded by what's left of my family. If things keep
worsening at this rate you'll never make it, no matter how close the Point
lies."
"That is not like you, Frank Sonderberg." Burnfingers put a big hand on the
other man's shoulder. "I have been in worse spots and it has always worked out
for me."
Frank was shaking his head. "How would you know if it worked out for you or
not? You're nuts, remember? Besides, how can you cope with a situation that
changes from day to day, minute to minute? How do you cope with a new reality
every time you turn around?"
"You change with it."
"Burnfingers, I ain't like you. You've been some weird places and done some
weird things. Me, I'm strictly middle-class straight and normal. I can't take
this anymore. I can't take it. I'm not the hero type. I knew that when I
was growing up, I knew it when I was going through school, and I knew it when
I was starting my business. I still know it. It's just not in me, understand?"
Burnfingers replied solemnly. "Sometimes, my friend, we are forced into
situations we don't like, that make us uncomfortable, that we think we haven't
a chance in hell of coping with. But people cope, Frank. They cope all the
time. From what I have seen of you these past many days I believe you can
cope, too. No more talk of dying in your hogan. This is not the day for it. If
you do go down, we all go down together fighting, if it be against the
Anarchis itself. People were not made so they could cower in their beds when
there was work to be done."
"You heard the man." Flucca headed for the front steps. "Let's get the others
out of there."
"What about it?" Burnfingers jerked his head in Flucca's direction. "He has
half your size and twice your guts."
Frank hesitated, took a step forward. Too late, he knew he was committed. But
according to Mouse, he'd been committed since that morning when he'd stopped
to pick her up. So why the hell was he beating himself to death worrying about
the inevitable? When he took the second step, Burnfingers Begay smiled.
"That's better."
Halfway to the front door the big hibiscus bush on the left wrapped leafless
branches around Frank's waist. He let out a yell as the branches pulled him
toward a mass of leaves that concealed something wet, green, and threatening.
What they needed was an ax or machete. Instead, they had to make do with [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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