Necropolis

incredible force. She wanted to cry out, but her breath caught in her throat and her knees buckled underneath her. Somewhere in her mind, she was aware that a passerby had leaped off the sidewalk and that he was trying to save her. His arm was around her waist, his shoulder and head pressed into the small of her back. But how had he managed to get to her so fast? Even if he had seen the van coming and sprinted toward her immediately, he surely wouldn't have reached her in time. He seemed to know what was going to happen almost before it did.
    The van shot past, missing her by inches. She actually felt the warm breeze slap her face and smelled the petrol fumes. There had been two books in her hand: a French dictionary and a math notebook… an hour and a half's homework for the evening ahead. As she was carried forward, her hand and arm jerked, out of control, and the books were hurled into the air, landing on the road and sliding across the tarmac as if she had deliberately thrown them away. Scarlett followed them. With the man still grabbing hold of her, she came crashing down. There was a moment of sharp pain as she hit the ground and all the skin was taken off one knee. Behind her, there was the screech of tires, a blast of a horn, and then the ominous sound of metal hitting metal. A car alarm went off. Scarlett lay still.
    For what felt like a whole minute, nobody did anything. It was as if someone had taken a photograph and framed it with a sign reading accident in dulwich
    . Then Scarlett sat up and twisted round. The man who had saved her was lying stretched out in the road, and she was only aware that he was Chinese, in his twenties, with black hair, and that he was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting jacket. She looked past him. The white van had swerved round a traffic island, mounted the sidewalk, and smashed into a car parked in front of the primary school. It was this car's alarm that had gone off. The driver of the van was slumped over the wheel, his head covered in broken glass.
    Scarlett turned back. A crowd had already formed — perhaps it had been there from the start — and people were hurrying toward her, rushing past Aidan, who seemed to be rooted to the spot. He was shaking his head as if denying that he had been to blame. There were twenty or thirty schoolkids, some of them already taking photographs with their mobile phones. A policeman had appeared so quickly that he could have popped out of a trapdoor in the pavement. He was the first 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