Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

“This way, Leo!” I shouted.

At the same time, I threw myself off the road, skidding down the deep bank and landing in a stream of water that rose over my ankles.

“Yasha, what are you…?” Leo began but he was sensible enough not to hesitate, turning back and following me down, almost landing on top of me. And so there we were, below the level of the road, and I was already making my way back, heading towards the line of soldiers, looking for what I prayed must be there.

Hundreds of metres of the water pipe had already been laid. The opening was in front of us: a perfect black circle, like the entrance to some futuristic cave. It was small. If I hadn’t been so thin and Leo hadn’t been so slight, neither of us would have fitted into it and it was unlikely that many of the soldiers would have been able to follow – certainly not in their gas masks and protective gear. They would have been mad to try. Would they really have been prepared to bury themselves alive, plunging into utter darkness with tons of damp earth above their heads?

That was what we did. On our hands and knees, we threw ourselves forward, our shoulders scraping against the curve of the pipe. At least it was dry inside the tunnel. But it was also pitch-black. When I looked back to see if Leo was behind me, I caught a glimmer of soft light a few metres away. But when I looked ahead… there was nothing! I brought my hand up and touched my nose but I couldn’t see my fingers. For a moment, I found it difficult to breathe. I had to fight off the claustrophobia, the sense of being suffocated, of being squeezed to death. I wondered if it would be a good idea to go any further. We could have stayed where we were and used the tunnel as a hiding place until everyone had gone – but that wasn’t good enough for me. I could imagine a burst of machine-gun fire killing me or, worse still, paralysing me and leaving me to die slowly in the darkness. I could feel the Alsatians, sent after us, snapping and snarling their way down the tunnel and then tearing ferociously at our legs and thighs. I had to let the tunnel carry me away and it didn’t matter where it took me. So I kept going with Leo behind me, the two of us burrowing ever further beneath the wood.

To the soldiers it must have seemed as if we had disappeared by magic. They would have passed the ditch but it’s quite likely that they didn’t see the pipeline – or, if they did, refused to believe that we could actually fit into it. Once again, the rain covered our tracks. The dogs failed to pick up our scent. Any footprints were washed away. And the soldiers were completely unaware that, as they moved forward, we were right underneath them, crawling like insects through the mud. When I looked back again, the entrance was no longer there. It was as if a shutter had come down, sealing us in. I could hear Leo very close to me, his breath sobbing. But any sound in the tunnel was strange and muted. I felt the weight above me, pressing down.

We had swapped one hell for another.

We could only go forward. There wasn’t enough room to turn round. I suppose we could have shuffled backwards until we reached the tunnel entrance, but what was the point of that? The soldiers would be looking for us and once we emerged the dogs would be onto us instantly. On the other hand, the further we went forward, the worse our situation became. Suppose the tunnel simply ended? Suppose we ran out of air? Every inch that we continued was another inch into the grave and it took all my willpower to force myself on. I think Leo only followed because he didn’t want to be left on his own. I was getting warmer. Once more, I was sweating inside my clothes. I could feel the sweat mixed with rainwater under my armpits and in the palms of my hands. My knees were already hurting. Occasionally, I passed rivets, where one section of the pipe had been fastened into the next, and I felt them tugging at my anorak, scratching across my back. And I was blind. It really was as if someone had switched off my eyes. The blackness was very physical. It was like a surgical operation.

“Yasha…?” Leo’s whispered voice came out of nowhere.

“It’s all right, Leo,” I said. My own voice didn’t sound like me at all. “Not much further.”

But we continued for what felt like an eternity. We were moving like robots with no sense of direction, no choice of where to go. We were simply functioning – one hand forward, then the next, knees following behind, utterly alone. There was nothing to hear apart from ourselves. Suppose the tunnel went all the way to Kirsk? Would we have the strength to travel as far as twenty miles underground? Of course not. Between us, we had half a litre of water. We hadn’t eaten for hours. I had to stop myself imagining what might happen. If I wasn’t careful, I would scare myself to death.

Hand and knee, hand and knee. Every part of me was hurting. I wanted to stand up, and the fact that I couldn’t almost made me cry out with frustration. My shoulders hit the curve of the pipe again and again. My eyes were closed. What was the point of using them when I couldn’t see? And then, quite suddenly, I was outside. I felt the breeze brush over my shoulders and the rain, lighter now, patter onto my head and the back of my neck. I opened my eyes. The workmen had constructed some sort of inspection hatch and they had left this part of the pipe open. I was crouching in a V-shaped ditch with pieces of wire and rusting metal bolts all around. I pulled back my sleeve and looked at my watch. Amazingly, it was five o’clock. I thought only an hour had passed but the whole day had gone.

Leo clambered out into the half-light and sat there, blinking. For a moment, neither of us dared speak but there were no sounds around us and it seemed fairly certain we were on our own.

“We’re OK,” I said. “We went under them. They don’t know we’re here.”

“What next?” Leo asked.

“We can keep going… follow the road to Kirsk.”

“They’ll be looking for us there.”

“I know. We can worry about that when we get there.”

And just for one moment, I thought we were going to make it. We had escaped from the helicopters. We had outwitted the soldiers. I had a hundred rubles in my pocket. I would get us to Moscow and we would tell the whole world what had happened and we would be heroes. Right then, I really did think that, despite what we had been through and all that we had lost, we might actually be all right.

But then Leo spoke.

“Yasha,” he said. “I don’t feel well.”

We couldn’t stay where we were. I was afraid that the soldiers would see the entrance to the pipeline and realize how we had managed to slip past them – in which case they would double back and find us. We had to put more distance between us and them while we still had the strength. But at the same time I saw that Leo couldn’t go much further. He had a headache and he was finding it difficult to breathe. Was it too much to hope that he had simply caught a cold, that he was in shock? It didn’t have to be contamination by the chemicals from the factory. I tried to convince myself that, like me, he was exhausted and if he could just get a night’s rest he would be well again.

Even so, I knew I had to find him somewhere warm to shelter. He needed food. Somehow I had to dry his clothes. As I looked around me, at the spindly trees that rose up into an ever darkening sky, I felt a sense of complete helplessness. How could I possibly manage on my own? I wanted my parents and I had to remind myself that they weren’t going to come, that I was never going to see them again. I was sick with grief – but something inside me told me that I couldn’t give in. Leo and I hadn’t escaped from Estrov simply to die out here, a few miles away, in the middle of a forest.