Mia shakes her head. “I’msure. They have a way of moving—there’s a way they walk, and look, these two weren’t confused like everybody else around them. They weretalkingto each other, and none of the other victims looked like they were even capable of speech. And if they were healthy, there’s no way they’d just be strolling down the street, it wasn’t safe out there. They looked …” Her lip curls. “They looked pleased.”
“She’s right,” I say. “And they were in a pair, like all the Undying on the ship.”
Neal murmurs, “The thing Dex left us—it can detect the Undying somehow. That’s why it was beeping.” Neal’s voice istaut with fear. “The question is, did these two just happen to find themselves in the middle of some kind of outbreak, or is there a connection between their presence and what’s happening in Lyon?”
Mia’s face is white. I’m probably looking pretty ashen myself—Neal certainly looks like he’s about to throw up—but she has that look in her eye that tells me she’s had a realization, one that we’re not going to like.
“Those people back there are like animals.” Her eyes are on the window, her voice trembling. “Like they’ve …regressedor something, like they’re Neanderthals.”
My throat tightens. Perhaps it’s the time we’ve spent working together so closely, or perhaps it’s some instinct developed over all the studying I’ve done on this species—but I know what she’s about to say a split second before she says it.
Her eyes leave the window and meet mine, and for a moment Neal’s not even there. “It’s like they’re proto-humans,” she whispers.
We stand in silence for a long moment as the beeping from Dex’s device begins to slow, fading back into silence, but Lyon has one final offering—one that causes Neal to lift his phone to film with a shaky hand once more.
As the three of us gaze down at the final section of track, a pair comes stumbling out the gate in someone’s back fence. It’s an old woman, still in her nightdress, and a young child with a huge mop of brown curls, clad only in a pair of shorts.
The old woman’s lips part in a silent howl, and the child breaks into a run following us, hands up, fingers curled into claws, as if the train is some kind of threat it has to chase out of its territory.
Behind the child, the old woman tries to shuffle to a run too, but she falls, landing heavily on the tracks.
The child doesn’t look back, but keeps chasing us, face twisted in rage and confusion and maybe fear, until it’s lost from sight as we round the curve and pick up speed outside the city once more.
IT’S HOURS BEFORE ANY SEMBLANCE OF ORDER RETURNS TO THE TRAIN.We’re not the only ones who saw the horrifying chaos in Lyon. Ordinarily you’d get officials walking the aisles, telling everyone to remain calm and stay in their seats, but when we elbowed our way past the panicked passengers back to our car, we passed one of the conductors sitting in an empty seat, head in his hands, while the passenger next to him fired off a stream of endless, unanswerable questions.
Even the people in charge here are losing it.
We don’t speak much once we’re back in our seats. The countryside is beautiful, even idyllic—I’ve never seen so much grass, such green, rolling hills. Back home it’s all dust and stunted trees. But I watch the scenery pass with an emptiness in my chest, as if my mind can’t process beauty anymore. Vineyards, rivers, picturesque towns, fields of solar power arrays … I watch it go by like it’s a movie.
Because we left reality back there in Lyon.
The train makes a few stops, and some passengers leave—others stay, clearly wanting nothing more than to put as much distance between them and the afflicted town as possible. Another hour passes and a sign whips by, a message written in a number of languages:WILKOMMEN AUF DEUTSCHLAND! BIENVENUE EN ALLEMAGNE! WELCOME TO GERMANY!The conductor in the seat behind us finally pulls himself together and staggers on up the aisle and into the next car. Jules slowly and methodically shreds an old napkin into ragged confetti.
“I think I should post this.” Neal’s voice is quiet, but it’s been so long since anyone spoke that it thunders in my ears so that I barely understand him.
“What?” I stare at him, numb.
Neal’s eyes, so like Jules’s, flick between my face and that of his cousin. “The footage. I think I should put it online. The news reports … Guys, everyone else thinks whatever’s happening in Lyon is some sort of flu. That’s not a flu. That’s the goddamn end of the world.”
Jules stays quiet, so I clear my throat and try to gather my stunned and scattered thoughts together again. “People will panic when they see that.”
“Good!” Neal’s voice is higher than usual. “Theyshouldbloody well panic. Panicking is absolutely, one hundred percent, no question about it,exactlywhat they should do.”
I shiver and wrap both arms about myself. The air is warm, but the goose bumps all over my skin won’t go away. “Maybe.”
Neal’s staring down at his phone, and though I can’t see its screen, I know he’s watching the footage he took. “Do we say what we know about those two Undying in the background?”
I chew at my lip. “I don’t know. Maybe that’ll make people think it’s all some kind of hoax.”Like De Luca did.
“Post it.” Jules’s voice is hollow and soft, but contradicts me without hesitation. “Post all of it, everything about the two Undying. People might not believe that, but the part about Lyonis undeniably true. Maybe a few people will believe the rest of it.”
Neal’s gaze lingers on his cousin’s face for a while, then flicks over to meet my eyes. He only looks at me for a second, though, before bending his head over his phone to do as Jules said.
The silence stretches, until Jules’s voice comes softly: “Mia, what you said this morning …”
I steel myself, eyes on Neal’s bent head—if anything, he’s concentrating even harder on the screen of his phone. Opening my mouth, certain I won’t be able to make it through the sentence without cracking, I say, “What I said about your dad, I didn’t mean—”
“Not that.” Jules’s face tightens a little, but he presses on. “You said if the Undying wanted Earth, it’d be a problem for tanks and missiles and armies.”
