8. Awakening

Here, then, the great train, awakening. Here the rising glow of the coals, the roar of the furnace. Here the spit of the rain on hot metal. The stokers have returned to their posts, the drivers beside them. The stewards are buttoning up their collars, brushing the dust off their lapels. The porters are fastening up the luggage racks. The clockwork of the train is set going again and the passengers too play their parts. The Countess presides over the saloon car. She has thrown off her shawls and is crowned with a wreath of birch leaves. The Professor comforts the timid and scared. The pious pray to whatever gods might be listening. The impious pray to the gods of the rail—to the furnace and pistons and power. Let the great gates open, let the guns of the guards be no match for the train, let the world forgive us for what we are about to do.

"When you come back you must run for the last door on the train," Weiwei says. "I will make sure it is open for you. As soon as you can, you must run faster than you have ever run before."

"I will run faster than ever before," says Elena, and it is the repetition of the words that makes Weiwei realize what is truly different about her—she is no longer mimicking. Her gestures and expressions belong to her, only her.

She steps backward, holding Elena at arm's length, just like some of the passengers used to do with her when she was little, exclaiming over her precociousness, her tiny Company uniform. She doesn't want to let her go. "What has changed?" she says. "Why are you different? Is it the rain?" She wants to cry but she will not let herself. It will work.

Elena smiles. "Are you not different too?"

Weiwei manages something between a laugh and a sob. "I don't know what I am anymore."

Elena steps backward, holding out her arms just as Weiwei had done, examining her. "Not just one thing," she says, with a little nod. "Many things." Then, after a moment's hesitation, Elena throws her arms around her in a fierce hug. She doesn't smell of damp and rot anymore but of green, growing things, of the soil after the rain. Weiwei wants to hold on to her, to tell her she doesn't have to take the risk. She wants time to turn on its axis, for the water in the clock to pour upward, for the wheels of the train to follow the rail back, for a child of the train and a Wastelands girl to be playing games of stealth in the dark, to be telling stories, to be raising their faces to the sky. She wants to stay right here.

"It will work," whispers Elena. "I will see you again."

And she is gone, scrambling up into the ceiling of the storage carriage and out of view, and Weiwei runs into the corridor to the window and presses her face to the glass, but all she can see are the clouds of steam from the undercarriage, swallowing up the shadows of the guards.

In the watchtower Oleg the gunner stands with his eye to his rifle and the Captain stands watching the gates. In her hand is the brass speaker. "Hold fast," she says to the drivers in the cab. The train is pulling against its stillness; Weiwei can feel its complex machinery moving into place.

"Hold fast."

She looks back down the train and sees Suzuki and Marya Antonovna in the opposite tower, watching through their telescopes. But the Vigil yard is still.

"I can't see her," Weiwei says, looking through one of the lenses, a tight, sickening feeling in her stomach. "I can't see her anywhere."

"Then neither can they," says the Captain.

Oleg has the sights of his rifle trained on the yard. "There," he says, just as Weiwei sees the faintest ripple in the rain. Elena is at the gates.

"Stand by," says the Captain.

The great iron gates are beginning to open.

The guards erupt into life and Oleg fires into the yard, drawing them away from the gates. They return fire, though they may as well be throwing pebbles at the train.

"Stand by."

The gates have opened far enough to reveal the rail stretching ahead, but it is a slow, ponderous process, and more guards are pouring out of the watchtowers.

She watches for Elena but there are too many figures; they are lost in the steam and the smoke from the guns. The train is poised, all of its joints straining, but the gates have fallen still.

"What's happening?" She presses her eye so hard to the scope that her eye socket aches, but she cannot make out the scene below. "Can you see her?"

"Hold fast." The Captain's voice is strained. Weiwei feels a wave of despair sweep over her.

"Captain—"

The hesitation in the gunner's tone makes Weiwei look up. She follows his gaze to a patch of ground near the main building, but can't understand at first what he has seen. Then she sees it too—out of the churning mud, slim green shoots are growing. They vanish in a burst of gunfire, but more grow before their eyes, ragged and determined. They curl around ankles, they hold the guards tight in their grip.

"Look…" Weiwei watches as trickles of mud creep up the walls, as if long fingers are questing to find a way in. The muddy ground is turning to liquid, the weeds growing faster than they can be shot down.

"The river!"

The gunner's shout sends her running to one of the far scopes, looking back the way they have come, and her breath catches in her throat. The river has broken its banks. It is rising up, impossibly fast. "Like Rostov's dream…" That final, famous vision of apocalypse. How it had thrilled her, as a child. How she had urged the water to rise up, each time the train crossed the river. And now the waters are coming to meet them.

"We're finished." There is despair in the gunner's voice. "After all this…"

"No, they're helping her. The soil, the river…" There is nothing that can hold them back anymore.

The iron doors are moving again.

"Now." At the Captain's command, a burst of power, and the scene outside is hidden by a cloud of gray, as the train starts to move. Weiwei is already running for the stairs. She pushes her way back through the forest of the train, passing through each carriage as they emerge through the gates, running backward as the train runs forward, the familiar rhythm of the rails beginning beneath her feet, though the water is rising, it has broken down the far walls, it is surging forward in waves. Alexei is waiting at the final door, his hair and uniform soaked with rain.

"Can you see her?" she yells.

"Keep back—" He pulls her away from the door as muddy water gushes over their feet, and she feels for a moment that they are waterborne, sailing weightless through the great gates, carried onward by the flood.

"Where is she?" She grabs the doorframe and leans out. "We have to wait for her, we have to tell the Captain to wait." She is sure she will rise out of the water, any moment now she will come splashing toward the train, arms outstretched.

The rain and the floodwater chill her skin but she leans out further. They are picking up speed, they are outrunning the flood.

"Weiwei, we can't stop!" He has to shout over the roar of the water.

"But she's the reason we're through! It's all because of her…" Her voice cracks. "We can't leave her behind, we can't."

She can feel the rhythm of the rails. Insistent, familiar. She can feel the power released as the train picks up speed, and there will be no stopping now, no waiting for what they have left behind. She looks up at the Wall and sees that cracks have appeared, water and weeds pushing their way out of the stones, as if the Wastelands are escaping, as if the Wall itself is weeping.