Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [122]
And I’m scared.
Virgil is a silhouette in the glare of the headlights. He gets smaller and smaller and then he’s not there at all. And then he is again. His head pops out of the wall he just disappeared into. He doesn’t have the guitars anymore. He’s yelling at me. Reaching for me. I’m about twenty yards away from him now. The train’s about a hundred. But it’s going a lot faster. I can see it now. Perfectly clearly. I can see its headlights, its ugly metal face.
“Run, Andi, run!” Virgil yells. “Don’t look at the train. Look at me! Run! Run!”
I am running. Like I’ve never run in my life—arms pumping, legs pistoning into the ground. Garbage from the track is swirling all around me. Virgil is screaming. Jules and Charon are screaming. I’m screaming. The light is getting brighter. The train’s horn is blaring. Its brakes are screeching against the tracks.
“Don’t look at the train. Look at me! Run, goddamn you! Run!” Virgil shouts.
The train’s only a few yards away from me now. Fifty. Twenty. Ten. I’m almost there. Almost at the archway. But almost isn’t enough. I’m not going to make it. I’m going to die. Under the wheels of a Métro train.
And, suddenly, I don’t want to.
I put on a last desperate burst of speed. As I reach the archway, only a split second ahead of the train, Virgil lunges for me. His hands close on my jacket. He yanks me toward him, and my feet come off the ground and I’m airborne and screaming and hurtling through the archway. The train rushes by. I feel the displaced air slam into us and then I’m on the ground, lying on top of Virgil. He’s holding me tightly. He’s shouting at me. In French and English and Arabic. And then he grabs my face with both his hands and kisses me hard on the mouth.
And all I want to do for the rest of my life is kiss him back, right here, on the filthy ground, but I don’t. Because Khadija’s standing two feet away from us. Jules pulls me to my feet. Constantine pounds me on the back. Khadija puts her arms around me, which is really weird. I mean, her boyfriend just laid one on me. Everyone’s jumping up and down, screaming and laughing.
Except me. I’m too dazed to jump up and down. Not because I almost got flattened by a Métro train. Because Virgil kissed me.
63
Jules takes a bottle of wine from his backpack and opens it with shaky hands. We all slug from it.
“I think I pissed my pants,” Virgil says, feeling the back of his jeans.
“It’s tunnel water,” Jules says. “You were lying in it.”
“That’s even worse.”
The wine bottle makes its way around again. Virgil slugs from it and passes it to me. “Hey, you owe me,” he says. “I saved your life.”
“That’s twice,” I say. Without thinking.
“What?”
“Hmm?” I say back.
“You said, ‘That’s twice.’ ”
I force out a laugh. “I said, ‘That’s nice.’ ”
He doesn’t laugh. He gives me a look, picks up his guitar, and starts walking. I pick up mine and start walking, too. As we get farther away from the train tunnel, the light fades. He pulls out two flashlights from his backpack. He leads the way with one. Jules brings up the rear with the other. I have one, too. A mini one with a really strong beam. Vijay gave it to me last Christmas. I get it out and shine it ahead of me on the ground. After about ten minutes of walking through a narrow tunnel, we arrive at a rusty, dusty iron grille. A padlock is lying on the ground in front of it; its shackle’s been cut.
“The cataflics—the tunnel police—are always trying to keep us out,” Virgil says, kicking the padlock aside and yanking the door open. “And we’re always trying to get in.”
Jules makes ghost noises and walks through the door. We follow him. Virgil’s bringing up the rear now. A few yards in, something shatters under my foot. I yelp. The others laugh. Virgil shines his light on the ground. It’s a bone.
“Don’t touch it,” he warns.
“Oh, thanks. I was so going to,” I say.
“Some of the bones have quicklime on them. It burns.”
He shines his light on the wall of the tunnel. Except it’s not a wall. It’s a mass of skulls and bones. And these aren’t as lovingly