Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War by Richard Ellis Preston Jr. Page A

Buckle pulled her coat-blankets up to her chin, but she still trembled with enough force that her teeth chattered and her breathing rattled—where her hip pressed against his thigh, the sensation was jarring.
    “I am cold,” Max said, her words whispered so weakly Buckle almost did not hear them.
    “It is all right, Max,” Buckle whispered. “It is all right. I shall warm you up.” Buckle tore his shirt open—sending mother-of-pearl buttons skittering across the floor—and swung under the parka to press his bare chest against her freezing skin.
    She was as cold as death.
    It was like being shoved into a snowbank. Max’s body was icy at every point, as if her biological engine could no longer generate its own heat; even her bandages were warmer against his skin than her flesh. Buckle pinned Max’s legs under the crook of his knee, wrapped his arms around hers firmly but gently, so as to not unsettle her dressings, and tried to expose her skin to as much of his as he possibly could.
    They were face-to-face, her breasts soft against his chest. Her breathing, cool against his chin, rose and fell in erratic chokes, a wheeze sounding in the depths of her chest cavity. A weird fear crept into Buckle; he had never considered a scenario where he might lose Max, and the idea was unsettling to a depth that startled him. She was his friend, yes, an adopted sister raised partially in the same house, but he had never been all that attached to her.
    “Do not you fear, Max,” Buckle whispered. “I shall warm you up. Sabrina says I never fail at warming up the girls.”
    Max stopped shivering. She held very still. Her heart struggled to beat, fluttering erratically.
    “Max?” Buckle asked reflexively. He waited, watching her face, so close to his. The stove crackled with heat; a spark popped, flinging a wave of reddish light, illuminating the numbers haunting the shadows with an endless question Buckle did not understand.
    But Buckle cared nothing for the numbers now. He smelled the warm sweetness of the burned wood and the carnivore mustiness of the bearskin, but he railed against their inability, and that of his own warm body, to impart any heat to Max. She still felt frozen against his chest, and he fought the urge to shiver. She was very still.
    Death crept into the chamber of numbers, slouching over Max, investigating.
    “Max,” Buckle whispered. “Be a good girl, you hear me? You just hang on.”
    Buckle rubbed Max’s back. He was slicked with cold dampness from her body, but beneath the dark blankets he could not tell whether it was sweat or blood.
    Max bucked, the new fit of shaking so violent it knocked Buckle loose.
    “Max! No!” Buckle shouted, snatching at her hands. He clambered atop her thrashing body, pinning her down with his weight.
    Her eyes flung open, all black, unfocused, unhinged, alien. Buckle did not see himself in their reflection.
    “There is a good girl,” Buckle said, having a difficult time holding on to her arms. “Max…Max—try, try to lie still, girl. Try your best, aye?”
    Max wrenched her arms and legs until her right arm twisted free, slamming into the table leg, breaking the old wood away in a spray of spinning splinters.
    “Max! It is me, Romulus!”
    Max’s clawing right hand snatched up the broken end of the table leg, which had struck the wall and rolled back, and before Buckle saw it coming she had swiped it upward in an arc, striking him across the left side of the head.
    Stars and chunks of soft wood exploded in Buckle’s vision; he fell to his right, and as he dropped, he felt Max lurch under him, throwing him off, escaping his weight. His right cheek slapped the cool stone of the floor, the pain balanced against the ache in his left ear, and before he regained his senses, Max was on him, straddling him at the waist, shoving him onto his back, one hand gripping his throat, the other gripping what was left of the half-split table leg.
    Buckle had a knife strapped against