ColdScheme Read Online Free

moved to the other side.
    I wondered what I had compressed when I’d straddled Brick’s
body because I saw only remnants of tissue and bone, swimming in red mud,
drying up.
    This was not dissolution of nondurable parts of the body. It
was just as Joe said, instant liquefaction.
    “Could he have walked fifty feet after his chest exploded?”
Ken asked.
    Joe gave him a “You from Mars?” look and said, “One second
and his mind registers that there’s something amiss. Two seconds and whatever’s
happening in his chest is powerful enough to lift him of the ground and three
seconds later, he is lying like roadkill on the hood of your car.”
    “So he must have changed his mind when he got out at the gas
station and headed for the convenience store,” Ken speculated.
    Joe nodded. “He made it to your passenger side fender when
it hit.”
    “Would he be able to run and could he have been running?”
Ken wanted to know.
    “Sure—run, swim, climb—he probably lived a normal life.
Well, as normal as any man who has that kind of nasty shit planted in his
chest. It may have been a pacemaker but it wasn’t for medical reasons.”
    “How could you tell that he had a pacemaker?” I asked.
    His finger hovered above the chest, in the vicinity of the
victim’s heart. “This is the focus of trauma. It started from here and spread
quickly, whatever it was that consumed tissue and bone. I’d say thirty seconds
post activation the toxic agent was no longer the strength that would pose harm
to the living. I don’t think it was an aerial agent. It didn’t linger or mix with
blood. Your hands are all right and you did the CPR on him. It was flat by
then. What I saw happening was just the tail end of a chain reaction, the kind
you can’t stop once it starts. The substance reacted in a flash. It became
inert in an incredibly short span of time. I don’t know anything, medical or
experimental, that can do that.”
    “But why a pacemaker?” I insisted. Mysterious substances
were Joe’s territory. “Why not a bullet, or some other projectile?”
    “Too small. From the amount of damage, it would have to be a
very hefty bullet. I’m sticking with an implant device, explosive and filled
with unknown poison. No projectile.”
    “You just don’t want to be dragged into another argument
about walking ghosts,” Ken murmured. He had often argued with Joe about people
who lived for years with imbedded projectiles inside their body.
    “He could have been a walking ghost.” Joe tilted his head,
holding the drumstick. “That’s what it had to be. He had to walk with that shit
in him for some time.”
    I wondered whether I should spoil his midnight snack and
tell him that the victim had been missing for four years. I looked at Ken. He
blinked. I understood.
    “Have you read any good medical research journals lately,
Joe?” Ken asked. Keeping abreast of the latest bizarre medical inventions was
another one of Joe’s hobbies.
    Joe tossed the drumstick behind him. It landed on a gurney.
“Whatever that shit was, it didn’t come from Johns Hopkins, not legally that’s
for sure. I’m going to biop the tissues and send the blood samples over but I
don’t think there’s anything there to find anymore. You go and work on his
employment, hobbies, friends, family—a name might be nice to have too.”
    “Jonathan Anderson Brick, age thirty-five,” Ken said. “His
wallet was in his jeans. The car ownership, registration and insurance were in
his car.”
    “There you go,” Joe exclaimed happily. “You’ve got more than
enough to start pounding the pavement, looking for the nasty person who
executed him.”
    “Executed?” we echoed.
    Joe smirked. “What he had implanted into his chest wouldn’t
be cheap. It shouldn’t malfunction. Hell, our military would be rattled to know
that someone can do that sort of thing—you know, long-distance and on command.
He probably knew it was stuck in there but didn’t know how to get