Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

Misha Dementyev. I clung onto the two words, my only lifeline.

My mother was still embracing me. I was looking at the curve of her neck, smelling her scent for the last time. “Why can’t you come with me?” I sobbed.

“It would do no good. I’m infected. I want to stay with your father. But it’s not so bad, knowing you’ve got away.” She moved me away from her, still holding me, looking straight into my eyes. “Now, you have to be brave. You have to leave. Don’t look back. Don’t let anyone stop you.”

“Mother…”

“I love you, my dear son. Now go!”

If I’d spoken to her again, I wouldn’t have been able to leave her. I knew that. We both did. I broke away. I ran.

The forest was on the other side of the house, to the north and spreading to the east of Estrov. It stretched on for about thirty miles, mainly pine trees but also linden, birch and spruce. It was a dark, tangled place and none of us ever went into it, partly because we were afraid of getting lost but also because there were rumoured to be wolves around, particularly in the winter. But somewhere inside me I knew my mother was right. If there were police or soldiers in the area, they would concentrate on the main road. I would be safer out of sight. The highway that she’d mentioned cut through the forest and they were laying a new water pipe alongside it.

To begin with, I followed the track that wound through the gardens, trying to keep out of sight, although there was nobody around. In the distance, I saw a boy I knew, cycling past with a bundle under his arm, but he was alone. I passed the village shop. It was closed. I continued through the allotments where the villagers grew their own food and stole everyone else’s. I was already hot, wearing a double set of clothes, and the air was suddenly warm and thick. The clouds were grey and swollen, rolling in from every side. It was definitely going to rain.

I still wasn’t sure I was going to do what my mother had told me. Did she really think I could so easily run off and leave her on her own with my father lying dead beside the fence? No matter what had happened at the factory, and whatever she had said, I couldn’t just abandon her. I would wait a few hours in the forest and see what happened. And then, once it was dark, I would return. She had talked about a weapon – anthrax. She had said the whole village was contaminated. But I refused to believe her. I was even angry with her for telling me these things. In truth, I do not think I was actually in my right mind.

And then I saw someone ahead of me, crouching down with their bottom in the air, pulling vegetables out of the ground. Even from this angle, I recognized him at once. It was Leo. He had been working on his family’s vegetable patch, probably as a punishment for doing something wrong. He had two younger brothers and whenever any of them fought, their father would take a belt to them and they would end up either mending fences or gardening. He was covered in mud with a bunch of very wrinkled carrots dangling from his hand, but seeing me approach, he broke into a grin.

“Hey, Yasha!” he called out. He did a double take, noticing my Pioneers clothes. “What are you doing?”

“Leo…” I was so glad to see him but I didn’t know what to say. How could I explain what had just happened?

“Did you hear the siren?” he said. “And there was shooting. I think something’s happened over at the factory.”

“Where are your parents?” I asked.

“Dad’s working. Mum’s at home.”

“Leo, you have to come with me.” The words came rushing out. I hadn’t planned to ask him along but suddenly it was the most important thing in the world. I couldn’t leave without him.

“Where are you going?” He lowered the carrots and stood there with his legs slightly apart, one hand on his hip, his boots reaching up to his thighs. For a moment he looked like one of those old posters, the sort they had printed to get the peasants to work in the fields. He gave me a crooked smile. “What’s the matter, Yasha? What’s wrong?”

“My dad’s dead,” I said.

“What?”

Hadn’t he understood anything? Hadn’t he realized that something was wrong? But that was Leo for you. Explosions, gun shots, alarms… and he would just carry on weeding.

“He’s been shot,” I said. “That was what the siren was about. It was him. They tried to stop him leaving. But he told me I have to go away and hide. Something terrible has happened at the factory.” I was pleading with him. “Please, Leo. Come with me.”

“I can’t…”

He was going to argue. No matter what I told him, he would never have abandoned his family. But just then we became aware of a sound, something that neither of us had ever heard before. At the same time, we felt a slight pulsing in the air, beating against our skin. We looked round and saw five black dots in the sky, swooping low over the hills, heading towards the village. They were military helicopters, just like the ones in the pictures in my room. They were still too far away to see properly but they were lined up in precise battle formation. It was that exactness that made them so menacing. Somehow I was certain that they weren’t going to land. They weren’t going to disgorge doctors and technicians who had come to help us. My parents had warned me that people were coming to Estrov to kill me and I had no doubt at all that they had arrived.

“Leo! Come on! Now!”

There must have been something in my voice, or perhaps it was the sight of the helicopters themselves, but this time Leo dropped his carrots and obeyed. Together, without a single thought, we began to run up the slope, away from the village. The edge of the forest, an endless line of thick trunks, branches, pine needles and shadows, stretched out before us. We were still about fifty metres away and now I found that my legs wouldn’t work, that the soft mud was deliberately dragging me down. Behind me, the sound of the helicopters was getting louder. I didn’t dare turn round but I could feel them getting closer and closer. And then – another shock – the bells of St Nicholas began to ring, the sound echoing over the rooftops. The church was empty. I had never heard the bells before.

I was sweating. My whole body felt as if it were trapped inside an oven. Something hit me on the shoulder and for a crazy moment I thought one of the helicopters had fired a bullet. But it was nothing more than a fat raindrop. The storm was about to break.

“Yasha!”

We stopped at the very edge of the forest and turned round just in time to see the helicopters deliver their first payload. They fired five missiles, one after the other. But they didn’t hit anything… not like in an old war film. The pilots hadn’t actually been aiming at any particular buildings. The missiles exploded randomly – in lanes, in peoples’ gardens – but the destruction was much, much worse than anything I could have imagined. Huge fireballs erupted at the point of impact, spreading out instantly so that they joined up with one another, wiping out everything they touched. The flames were a brilliant orange; fiercer and more intense than any fire I had ever seen. They devoured my entire world, burning up the houses, the walls, the trees, the roads, the very soil. Nothing that touched those flames could possibly survive. The first five missiles wiped out almost the entire village but they were followed by five more and then another five. We could feel the heat reaching out to us, so intense that even though we were some distance from it, our eyes watered and we had to look away. I put up my hand to protect my face and felt the back of my fingers burn. In seconds, Estrov, the village where I had spent my entire life, was turned into hell. My father was already dead but I had no doubt at all that my mother had now joined him. And my grandmother. And Leo’s mother and his brothers. It was impossible to see his house through the curtain of fire but by now it would be nothing more than ash.