Brainquake Read Online Free Page B

baby—and it blows?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    The three men rose, stretched their legs. Zara followed them to the van twenty feet away. Charlie gave her an auxiliary suit and the four donned their padded gear. They returned to the carriage. The crying of the baby grew louder, the repetitive earknifing squeal of a trapped and wounded cat.
    Charlie moved to one side of the carriage, George beside him. Joe squatted across from them on the other side and gestured to Zara who squatted beside him. All wore protective gloves but Charlie.
    Silence fell over the crowd as they watched. They didn’t know what was happening, but they knew something was.
    Zara watched Charlie lowering his hands. His nails were cut short. She saw Charlie’s flesh vanish and then, through the baby’s ribs, his finger bone-tips appear, creeping along the squirming skeleton toward the small round object under it.
    This time she could make out part of the mechanism inside the object…a mechanism like the works inside a tiny watch.
    “One inch right,” Joe said.
    Zara watched Charlie’s bone-tips moving right in direct line with the object. Seeing them through the bomb, through the baby, made Zara hold her breath.
    Charlie sneaked five finger bones, palm up, under the skeleton as he sneaked his other finger bones toward the object. Bonetips touched it. The skeleton shifted partially off the object.
    “Careful!”
    Charlie’s bone fingers in unison stopped the shifting.
    “Back one,” Joe said. “Left three quarters of an inch.”
    Zara watched finger bones move the squirming skeleton back above the object.
    “On target,” Joe said.
    Finger bone-tips repeated the procedure, slowly shifting the skeleton with one hand, slipping the other hand toward the object. The skeleton of a fly landed on the tiny jaw bone, at the corner of the skull’s mouth. Zara watched finger bone-tips coming at her, creeping over the object until it was completely covered.
    Then she saw the bone fingers pressing down hard on the object.
    “Now,” Charlie said.
    George lifted the baby. The skeleton fly took off. Flesh returned.
    George hit the ground face down, covering the baby with his body. Zara hit the ground on the other side. Charlie raced with the object in his cupped hands to the van, Joe running beside him. Charlie thrust his hands into the van. Joe carefully closed the door until it reached Charlie’s hands.
    Charlie jerked empty hands out as Joe slammed the door shut. The blast shook the van. Earth trembled. The crowd shook.
    Joe swung the door open. Smoke burst out from the van. Zara heard the siren. Through the swirling black and gray smoke she caught a flash of the ambulance coming toward her. Shedding suit and gloves swiftly, Zara took the baby from George, still howling, but free now, safe. She hugged him to her breast.
    “Get that carriage to the lab!” Zara said.
    Paul saw her running with the baby toward the ambulance, climbing in, saw Ivory Face reach for her baby as the doctor, inside with them, pulled the rear door shut. The crowd’s silence broke, sound erupting again, some applause, some cheers, some shouts. But the balance shifted quickly, away from euphoria. Resentment swept the people, escalated as the police raised batons and tried to disperse the crowd. All the tension, pent up, had to go somewhere. One man stepped past the barricade, demanding something loudly of the policeman in front of him. Then another. Then all the barricades were going down.

6
    One of the first swept up in the press of bodies, Paul crashed into the Blood Bay, which reared, throwing the cop. Hoofs missed Paul by inches.
    Dodging them cost him his footing. Paul rolled and skidded and crashed into others buffeted like leaves in a cyclone.
    Panic took over.
    Paul ran, slipped, ducked behind a bench. Took an elbow to the eye. Through a haze he saw the ambulance carrying Ivory Face speed away, siren screaming. People were chasing after it on foot. Journalists, maybe. Maybe