Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

“Maybe you should eat something,” I said.

I brought the open tin of herring over but he recoiled at the smell. “I don’t want it,” he said. His voice rattled in his chest. He sounded like an old man.

“All right. But you must have some tea.”

I took the mug over and forced him to sip from it. As he strained his neck towards me, I noticed a red mark under his chin and, very slowly, trying not to let him know what I was doing, I folded back the covers to see what was going on. I was shocked by what I saw. The whole of Leo’s neck and chest was covered in dreadful, diamond-shaped sores. His skin looked as if it had been burned in a fire. I could easily imagine that his whole body was like this and I didn’t want to see any more. His face was the only part of him that had been spared. Underneath the covers he was a rotting corpse.

I knew that if it hadn’t been for my parents, I would be exactly the same as Leo. They had injected me with something that protected me from the biochemical weapon that they had helped to build. They had said it acted quickly and here was the living – or perhaps the dying – proof. No wonder the authorities had been so quick to quarantine the area. If the anthrax had managed to do this to Leo in just a few hours, imagine what it would do to the rest of Russia as it spread.

“I’m sorry, Yasha,” Leo whispered.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I said. I was casting about me, trying to find something to do. The fire, untended, had almost gone out. But there was no more wood to put in it anyway.

“I can’t come with you,” Leo said.

“Yes, you can. We’re just going to have to wait. That’s all. You’ll feel better when the sun comes up.”

He shook his head. He knew I was lying for his sake. “I don’t mind. I’m glad you looked after me. I always liked being with you, Yasha.”

He rested his head back. Despite the marks on his body, he didn’t seem to be in pain. I sat beside him, and after a few minutes he began to mutter something. I leant closer. He wasn’t saying anything. He was singing. I recognized the words. “ Close the door after me… I’m going .” Everyone at school would have known the song. It was by a rock singer called Viktor Tsoi and it had been the rage throughout the summer.

Perhaps Leo didn’t even want to live – not without his family, not without the village. He got to the end of the line and he died. And the truth is that, apart from the silence, there wasn’t a great deal of difference between Leo alive and Leo dead. He simply stopped. I closed his eyes. I drew the covers over his face. And then I began to cry. Is it shocking that I felt Leo’s death even more than that of my own parents? Maybe it was because they had been snatched from me so suddenly. I hadn’t even been given a chance to react. But it had taken Leo the whole of that long night to die and I was sitting with him even now, remembering everything he had been to me. I had been close to my parents but much closer to Leo. And he was so young… the same age as me.

In a way, I think I am writing this for Leo.

I have decided to keep a record of my life because I suspect my life will be short. I do not particularly want to be remembered. Being unknown has been essential to my work. But I sometimes think of him and I would like him to understand what it was that made me what I am. After all, living as a boy of fourteen in a Russian village, it had never been my intention to become a contract killer.

Leo’s death may have been one step on my journey. It was not a major step. It did not change me. That happened much later.

I set fire to the hut with Leo still inside it. I remembered the helicopters and knew that the flames might attract their attention, but it was the only way I could think of to prevent the disease spreading. And if the soldiers were drawn here, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. They had their gas masks and protective suits. They would know how to decontaminate the area.

But that didn’t mean I was going to hang around waiting for them to come. With the smoke billowing behind me, carrying Leo out of this world, I hurried away, along the road to Kirsk.

I entered Kirsk on legs that were tired and feet that were sore and remembered that the last time I had been there, it had been on a school trip to the museum.

Lenin had once visited Kirsk. The great Soviet leader had stopped briefly in the town on his way to somewhere more important because there was a problem with his train. He made a short speech on the station platform, then went to the local café for a cup of tea and, happening to glance in the mirror, decided that his beard and moustache needed a trim. Not surprisingly, the local barber almost had a heart attack when the most powerful man in the Soviet Union walked into his shop. The cup that he drank from and the clippings of black hair were still on display in the History and Folklore Museum of Kirsk.

It was a large, reddish-brown building with rooms that were filled with objects and after only an hour my head had already been pounding. From the outside, it looked like a railway station. Curiously, Kirsk railway station looked quite like a museum, with wide stairs, pillars and huge bronze doors that should have opened onto something more important than ticket offices, platforms and waiting rooms. I had seen it on that last trip but I couldn’t remember where it was. When you’ve been taken to a place in a coach and marched around shoulder to shoulder in a long line with no talking allowed, you don’t really look where you’re going. That hadn’t been my only visit. My father had taken me to the cinema here once. And then there had been my visit to the hospital. But all these places could have been on different planets. I had no idea where they were in relation to one another.

After Estrov, the place felt enormous. I had forgotten how many buildings there were, how many shops, how many cars and buses racing up and down the wide, cobbled streets. Everywhere seemed to have electricity. There were wires zigzagging from pole to pole, crossing each other like a disastrous cat’s cradle. But I’m not suggesting that Kirsk was anything special. I’d spent my whole life in a tiny village so I was easily impressed. I didn’t notice the crumbling plaster on the buildings, the empty construction sites, the pits in the road and the dirty water running through the gutters.

It was late afternoon when I arrived and the light was already fading. My mother had said there were two trains a day to Moscow and I hoped I was in time to catch the evening one. I had never spent a night in a hotel before and even though I had money in my pocket, the idea of finding one and booking a room filled me with fear. How much would I have to pay? Would they even give a room to a boy on his own? I had been walking non-stop, leaving the forest behind me just after midday. I was starving hungry. Since I had left the shed, all I’d had to eat were the lingonberries I’d collected. I still had a handful of them in my pocket but I couldn’t eat any more because they were giving me stomach cramps. My feet were aching and soaking wet. I was wearing my leather boots, which had suddenly decided to leak. I felt filthy and wondered if they would let me onto the train. And what if they didn’t? I had only one plan – to get to Moscow – and even that seemed daunting. I had seen pictures of the city at school, of course, but I had no real idea what it would be like.

Finding the station wasn’t so difficult in the end. Somehow I stumbled across the centre of the town… I suppose every road led there if you walked enough. It was a spacious area with an empty fountain and a Second World War monument, a slab of granite shaped like a slice of cake with the inscription: WE SALUTE THE GLORIOUS DEAD OF KIRSK. I had always been brought up to respect all those who had lost their lives in the war, but I know now that there is nothing glorious about being dead. The monument was surrounded by statues of generals and soldiers, many of them on horseback. Was that how they had set off to face the German tanks?