Necropolis Read Free

to reach her.
    "Are you all right? Don't try to move…"
    Scarlett ignored him. She put out a hand for support and eased herself back onto her feet. Her knee was on fire and her shoulder felt as if it had been beaten with an iron club, but she was already fairly sure that she hadn't been seriously hurt.

    She looked at Aidan, then at the white van. A few people were already helping the driver out, laying him on the sidewalk. Steam was rising out of the crumpled hood. Next to her, the policeman was speaking urgently into his shoulder mike, doing all the stuff with Delta Bravo Oscar Charlie, summoning help.
    Finally, Aidan made it over to her. "Scarl…?" That was his name for her. "Are you okay?"
    She nodded, suddenly tearful without knowing why. Maybe it was just the shock, the knowledge of what could have been. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, noticing that her nails were grimy and all her knuckles were grazed. Her dress was torn. She realized she must look like a total wreck.
    'You were nearly killed…!" Why was Aidan telling her that? She had more or less worked it out for herself.
    Even so, his words reminded her of the man who had saved her. She looked down and was surprised to see that he was no longer there. For a moment she thought that it was a conjuring trick, that he had simply vanished into thin air. Then she saw him, already on the far side of the road — the side that she had been heading toward — hurrying past the shops. He reached a hair salon on the corner, where a woman with hair that was too blond to be true had just come out. He pushed past her and then he was gone.
    Why? He hadn't even stayed long enough to be thanked.
    After that, things unraveled more slowly. An ambulance arrived, and although Scarlett didn't need it, the van driver had to be put on a stretcher and carried away. Scarlett herself was examined but nothing was broken, and in the end she was allowed to go home. Aidan went with her. An officer accompanied them both. Scarlett wondered how that would go down with Mrs. Murdoch. Somehow she knew it wasn't going to mean laughter and backslapping at bedtime.
    In fact, the accident had several consequences.
    Paul and Vanessa Adams were told what had happened when they got home that night, and as soon as they had got over the shock, the knowledge of how close they had come to losing their only child, they began to argue about whose fault it was: their own for allowing Scarlett too much freedom, Aidan's for distracting her, or Scarlett's for showing so little road sense, even at the age of thirteen. In the end, they decided that in the future, Mrs. Murdoch would take up her old position at the school gates. It would be another nine months before Scarlett was allowed to walk home on her own again.
    The identity of the man who had saved her remained a mystery. Where had he come from? How had he seen what was about to happen? Why had he been in such a hurry to get away? Mrs. Murdoch decided that he must be an illegal immigrant, that he had taken off at the sight of the approaching policeman. For her part, Scarlett was just sorry that she hadn't been able to thank him. And if he was in some sort of trouble, she would have liked to have helped him.
    That was the night she had her first dream.
    Scarlett had never been one for vivid dreams. Normally she got home, ate, did her homework, spent forty minutes on her PlayStation, and then plunged into a deep, empty sleep that would be ended all too quickly by Mrs. Murdoch shaking her awake for the start of another school day. But this dream was more than vivid. It was so realistic, so detailed, that it was almost like being inside a film. And there was something else that was strange about it. As far as she could see, it had no connection to her life or to anything that had happened during the day.
    She dreamed that she was in a gray-lit world that might be another planet…the moon perhaps. In the distance, she could see a vast ocean stretching