Jacob off.
The soldiers are only three cars away now, and closing fast, they seem to have gotten the knack of leaping over the gaps between cars.
"Don't think about it," Jacob says. She can barely hear him, she isn't sure whether he's talking to himself or giving her advice. "Just go. Try to land on your butt and roll."
Then his hands vanish and he disappears into the night. The rattling train drowns out any sound of impact. Veronica stares at the space Jacob's hands just occupied. He might already be dead.
"Hurry!" Lovemore says urgently.
She nods, drops to her hands and knees, and begins crawling towards the edge of the train. The slippery metal is rocking precariously beneath her and when she nears the edge she switches to belly-crawling. Veronica grabs the ridge and slowly, agonizingly, works herself over the edge of the train, it isn't easy to do without falling, especially when the train itself is shaking violently back and forth, and wooden posts keep flashing past.
She hears shouts over the grinding noise of the train, and when she looks up, she sees that the half-dozen soldiers are now only one car away, and running towards them. Sudden desperation lends Veronica a gymnast's speed and grace. She swings her whole body down at once, catches herself by her fingers as her legs and torso fall down the outer wall of the train. Her shoulders squawk with pain but she manages to hold on. Lovemore is already sliding and scrambling to the edge beside her. Veronica lifts her feet so they are flat against the wall of the train, then uses her legs to propel herself back, away from the train, into the darkness. For a moment she hangs weightless in the air. It feels like flying.
Chapter 32
"Jacob," Veronica says, her voice frantic. "Jacob, wake up, please. Please, you have to wake up. Jacob, please!"
Jacob's world is pain. He is shaking. No, he is being shaken, someone's hands are on his shoulders, pushing and pulling. Veronica's hands. He opens his eyes, and his mouth too, to complain. It is night and he can barely make out Veronica's face as she kneels over him. There are tears in her eyes. A glittering curtain of stars hangs above her. He lies on a bed of rough earth and jagged stones, poorly cushioned by grass as dry as sandpaper. He can't remember why.
"Wha's going on?" Jacob manages.
Veronica takes a deep, relieved breath, then says, "They've stopped the train down the track, I don't know how exactly, but we heard shots. They're coming. We have to go."
There is a black man standing beside her, a man with a gun in his hand, watching silently, a man Jacob feels like he knows. He searches his mind and finds a dim memory of a train, a vague notion that they are being chased. He gets up. He feels like he is watching himself stand, a witness rather than a participant; he observes with admiration as his limbs coordinate to draw his battered body up into a gravity-defying bipedal configuration, and his muscles fight to keep him there. He has new bruises aplenty, but nothing seems torn or broken. His head has taken at least some of the impact of the fall. Jacob takes a single step and suddenly comes back to himself. It feels like imploding. He falls to his knees and throws up, his abdominal muscles cramp with agony as he retches and shudders. Veronica kneels and hovers over him, holding his shoulders lightly with nervous hands.
"I'm fine," he manages to say. "It's okay. I'm back." Then he is throwing up again. But when it is finally over he does feel stronger, as if he has purged himself of some weakness, left nothing but animal vitality. He can feel pain across a frightening amount of his body, but it is like he feels it through a cushion, he is aware of it but unaffected. Jacob staggers back to his feet and looks around. The lights of the train are dimly visible about a kilometre down the track. They are in a field of dry waist-high grass. About a hundred feet from the railway track he can see a sparse forest of withered, leafless trees silhouetted by moonlight.
"What do we do?" he asks Veronica and Lovemore. He remembers Lovemore again, remembers dangling from the edge of the train and letting go. He supposes he suffered a concussion in the fall. He feels physically capable again but his mind