All of this flashed through Jez's mind in the single instant it took her to look up and see the train bearing down on them. Its sleek white nose was only thirty feet away, and it was braking, but nowhere near fast enough, and this was it, the actual moment of her death, the last thoughts she would ever think, and the last thing she would ever see was white, white, white-
Blue.
It happened all at once, filling her vision. One second she could see clearly, the next the entire world was blue. Not just blue. Fiery, dazzling, lightning-shot blue. Like being inside some sort of science-fiction special effect. There was blue streaming and crackling and sizzling all around her, a cocoon of blue that enfolded her and shot past her and disappeared somewhere ahead. |
I'm dead, Jez thought. So this is what it's like. Completely different from what people say.
Then she realized that she could hear a faint shrieking sound beneath her. It was Claire. They were still holding on to each other.
We're both dead. Or we've fallen into some kind of space warp. The rest of the world is gone. There's just-this.
She had an impulse to touch the blue stuff, but she couldn't move because of Claire's grip on her arms. It might not have been safe anyway. Where it flowed over her, she could feel a sort of zinging and tingling as if all her blood were being excited. It smelled like the air after a storm.
And then it disappeared.
All at once. Not by stages. But it still took Jez several moments to see anything, because her eyes were blinded with dark yellow after-images. They burned and danced in front of her like a new kind of lightning, and she only gradually realized where she was.
On the train tracks. Exactly where she had been before. Except that now there was a huge, sleek BARt train two feet in front of her.
She had to tilt her head to look up at its nose? It was gigantic from this angle, a monster of white, like the iceberg that sank the Titanic. And it was stopped dead, looking as if it had always been here, like some mountainous landmark. As if it had never moved an inch in its history.
People were yelling.
Shrieking and yowling and making all kinds of noise. It seemed to come from far away, but when Jez looked she could see them staring down at her. They were at the edge of the platform, waving their arms hysterically. As Jez stared back at them, a couple jumped down to the tracks.
Jez looked down at her cousin.
Claire was dragging in huge breaths, hyperventilating, her whole body shaking in spasms. She was staring at the train that loomed over them with eyes that showed white all around.
A loudspeaker was booming. One of the people who had jumped, a man in a security guard's uniform, was jabbering at Jez. She couldn't understand a word he was saying.
"Claire, we've got to go now."
Her cousin just whooped in air, sobbing.
"Claire, we have to go now. Come on." Jez's whole body felt light and strange, and when she tried to move she felt as if she were floating. But she could move. She stood up and pulled Claire with her.
She realized that somebody was calling her name.
It was the other person who had jumped to the tracks. It was Hugh. He was reaching for her. His gray eyes were as wide as Claire's, but not wide and hysterical. Wide and still. He was the only calm person in the crowd, beside Jez.
"Come on. Up this way," he said.
He helped her boost Claire to the platform, and then Jez scrambled up and reached down to help him.
When they were all up, Jez glanced around. She knew she was looking for something-yes. There. The werewolves she'd knocked out. It seemed a hundred years ago, but they were still lying there.
"The other guy got away," Hugh said.
"Then we have to get out of here fast." Jez heard her own voice, sounding quiet and faraway. But she was beginning to feel more attached to her body. Hugh was guiding Claire toward the escalator. Jez got on the other side of Claire, and they both helped keep her on her feet.
The security guy was behind them, yelling. Jez still couldn't understand him and ignored him completely.
When they reached the lower level, she and Hugh began to walk faster, pulling Claire along with them.
They shoved Claire through the handicapped gate by the ticket window and vaulted over themselves.
From down here, Jez could see that the train was smoking all along its bottom. White smoke that sizzled up into the muggy air.
"We can't go on the street," Hugh said. "They've got cars out there."
"The garage," Jez said.
They both headed for it, a multi-story brick building that looked dark and cool inside. They were almost running with Claire, now, and they didn't stop until they were deep within the bowels of the garage, with emptiness echoing all around them.
Then Jez sagged against a brick pillar. Hugh bent over with his hands on his knees. Claire simply folded to the ground like a marionette with all its strings cut.
Jez let herself breathe for a few minutes, let her brain settle down, before slowly lowering herself beside her cousin.
They all looked as if they'd been in an accident. Hugh's shirt was ripped and there was drying blood all down one side of his face. Claire's hair was wildly disheveled, and there were scrapes and small cuts on her face and arms. Jez herself had lost a lot of skin to the tracks, and her forearms were bleeding where Claire had scratched her.
But they were alive. Beyond all hope, they were alive.
Claire looked up just then to find Jez gazing at her. They sat for several moments simply staring into each other's eyes. Then Jez reached out to touch her cousin's cheek.
"It was you," she whispered. "All that time-and it was you."
She looked up at Hugh and began to laugh.
He looked back, his face pale in the semi-darkness. He shook his head and began to laugh, too, but shakily.