Fearless by Rafael Yglesias Read Free Book Online Page B

baby nested in an infant seat. The upper edge of its cradle had been caught and was suspended in a mass of wires and twisted metal. The baby was no more than a few weeks old. It was untouched and untroubled; its little fingers played in the air.
    Byron was talking; he seemed to be hitting Max in the side. Max ignored him and reached for the infant. Smoke covered him. He inhaled some of it and felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He got dizzy…The death tide pulled at him, wanting him to linger…
    Go Max, hurry!
    He sprang out of the morass. He had the infant seat and a part of Byron, hand or arm or foot, he didn’t know what.
    There was light off to the side where it shouldn’t be. But he pushed Byron that way.
    They passed unforgettable nightmares: bodies smashed or impaled. He shouted at Byron—“Don’t look!”—and it was then that Max saw the worst of all:
    Jeff’s greyhound face, eyes filled with blood, lying on its side without a body.
    Max looked no more and pushed Byron at the light. Everything, inside and out, screamed at him: Hurry! The yellow cloud filled their vision. They ran right into it and fell out of the plane…
    As he dropped, Max let go of Byron in order to hang on to the baby. He twisted while they went down, his back to the ground. He expected to be broken by it…
    He landed on straw. No. A sharp green leaf stuck him in the cheek. It was a cornfield. He faced where they had come from, a severed portion of the plane, gaping with torn wires, insulation and destroyed seats. A body was splattered against one edge, merged into the metal.
    They were out! They were alive!
    The joy of this knowledge coursed through him, electrifying his body with power.
    The jet could blow up, he realized, smelling its kerosene fuel and feeling heat from the ruins.
    “Come on!” he shouted at Byron, who seemed paralyzed, lying motionless, suspended above the ground by a hammock of cornstalks. On his feet, carrying the baby in the infant seat, Max was surprised that his own body worked so well. He glanced down at his jeans and white sneakers and saw no blood, no soot, nothing: he had escaped pure and untouched.
    A man in a white T-shirt and jeans caught Carla as she jumped down from a part of the plane she didn’t recognize. Nothing made sense. The airport was gone. Behind the man and the other people running at her was a farm field, nothing else.
    “My baby,” she told him and couldn’t talk, ashamed.
    Sirens and people answered her. She couldn’t stand up. Carla slid down onto the T-shirt, resting her head against the belly massed above the belt.
    He said something about her leg. But not to her.
    “My baby!” she screamed hard, because of all the noise and because she couldn’t be sure of how much volume she was producing.
    “Where’s your baby?” This question was asked by a different face, a young one, with shining brown eyes. He seemed to know the truth of what she had done.
    “I don’t know!” she begged him to believe her.
    “Move it. They’re going to douse her,” a different person answered.
    Why? Why do that to me?
    “My baby!” With this pronunciation she confessed her cowardice and also told him where to look. His brown eyes didn’t seem to get her meaning, but they grew lighter and forgiving.
    “I’ll find him,” he said and was gone.
    “From there,” said the belly carrying her, not talking to her. “Here, put your arm around—”
    She was lifted above the green trash which had swallowed her feet. Now she could see more. There was the airport and everywhere there were people and cars and fire trucks and openness. She could see the sky and the buildings and soon the ground turned hard underneath and the fact came running at her…Racing alongside all the people was the fact—
    Bubble is dead.
    “No!” she doubled over. She pushed at the T-shirt and looked back at the horror.
    The plane was smashed on the ground, broken in huge pieces like a great animal felled and dismembered