Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War by Richard Ellis Preston Jr. Read Free Book Online Page A

family, slender and striped, the stars of the classroom and imperturbable behind their liquid-sloshing goggles.
    Buckle hated them. He hated them.
    Dead-eyed freaks.
    He remembered only fragments of the day that his parents had been attacked on the mountain. He mostly remembered running and pulling Elizabeth along. But he did remember that one of the attackers was a Martian.
    He was always after them, both Max and Tyro, taunting, teasing, insulting, and when the opportunity presented itself, willing to inflict bodily harm. Such things were not an immediate part of Buckle’s makeup—he had not been raised to entertain such impulses—but the rage within him drove him to it. It shocked him, but he could not control himself. It was as if the rage would take control of his body and mind, and he would be shoved back, a mere spectator to the mayhem, either unable or unwilling to referee his own actions.
    Balthazar, Calypso, and the governess, Catherine Flick, always did their best to separate Buckle from the Martian children, but he was always looking for an opening to pull hair, splash ink, or trip up. His punishments had increased in intensity, from being sent to his room to shoveling the dung out of the mews, but it deterred him little.
    He simply could not rein in his anger.
    One day, Buckle caught Max alone in the corridor of the house, without the company of Tyro or an adult. They were both on their way to geometry class, Balthazar’s leather-bound books tucked under their arms, and their paths from opposite ends of the house had somehow intersected.
    Buckle immediately pounced. He swiped Max’s books out of her hands, and they tumbled to the floor in heavy thuds. Her eyes flashed crimson in her goggles. He laughed, hating her, despising the slender, black-and-white striped hands that looked so out of place at the ends of her dress sleeves.
    “Look at me, you black-eyed zebe!” Buckle snarled. He ripped off her goggles, the aqueous humor spewing as they came free. Face dripping, Max stared at him, her big black eyes brimming with defiance. Brimming with hurt.
    “You look like a bug!” Buckle shouted, tossing the goggles aside. “Stinkbug!”
    Max stepped forward in a way she never had before. Jammed in her left fist was a geometry compass, which she now swung, driving the sharp point into Buckle’s right shoulder with surprising force, plunging it into the muscle deeply enough for the compass to remain stuck there even when she removed her hand.
    Buckle froze. The Martians never fought back. The Martians had always endured his attacks stoically, covering themselves as best they could and waiting for an adult or an older child, like the eldest son, Ryder, to step in for them.
    Not this time.
    Max stared at him, her eyes calm, victorious, condescending, and aquamarine.
    Buckle’s shoulder suddenly hurt like hell. He jerked the compass out of his flesh and hurled it against the wall, where it left a little splotch of blood before dropping to the floor with a clunk.
    Max turned and ran. Buckle sprinted after her.
    He was going to kill her.
    They ran and ran, down the long corridors of Balthazar’s grand Tehachapi house. Max dashed like a gazelle, veering through doorways with elegant speed, her skirt fluttering about her legs, but Buckle, coming on with his greater size and speed, closed the gap; he grabbed one of her long black braids, lovingly threaded by Calypso, and yanked her head back.
    Max lunged forward, jerking the braid out of Buckle’s grasp. She stumbled and slammed headfirst into the oak jamb of the parlor door frame. Her forward motion suddenly arrested, Max dropped in a fluttering pile of skirt. She lay on her back, legs twitching, blood, bright red, crimson as cherry pigment, spilling from the gash in her forehead, trickling across both the white and black stripes.
    Buckle could not take his eyes off her. Something strange worked inside him, a disconcerted, unspeakable, unfair remorse: something he had