Anthony Horowitz: Russian Roulette

The helicopters were continuing, heading towards us. Now that they were closer, I recognized them at once. They were Mil Mi-24s, sometimes known as Crocodiles, developed for the Russian military for both missile support and troop movements. Each one could carry eight men at speeds of over three hundred and fifty miles per hour. As well as the main and the tail rotors, the Mil had two wings stretching out of the main fuselage, each one equipped with a missile launcher that dangled beneath it. I had never seen anything that looked more deadly, more like a giant bird with claws outstretched, swooping out of the sky to snatch me up. They were getting closer and closer. I could actually see the nearest pilot, very low down in the glass bubble that was the cockpit window. Where had he come from? Had he once been a boy like me, dreaming of flying? How could he sit there and be responsible for so much killing? And yet he was without mercy. There could be no doubt at all that he was aiming the next salvo at me. I swear I saw him gazing straight at me as he fired. I saw the spurt of flame as the missiles were fired.

Fortunately, they fell short. A wall of flame erupted about thirty metres behind me. Even so, the heat was so intense that Leo screamed. I could smell the air burning. A cloud of chemicals and smoke poured over us. It was only later that I realized it must have briefly shielded us from the pilot. Otherwise he would have fired again.

Leo and I plunged into the forest. The light was cut out behind us. Instantly we were surrounded by green, with leaves and branches everywhere and soft moss beneath our feet. We had reached the top of the hill. The forest sloped down on the other side and this proved our salvation. We lost our footing and tumbled down, rolling over roots and mud. It was already raining harder. Water was dripping down and maybe that helped us too. We were invisible. We were away from the flames. As I fell, through the trees I caught a glimpse of the red and black horror that I had left behind. I heard the roar of helicopter blades. Branches were whipping and shaking all around me. Then I was at the very bottom of the hollow. Leo was next to me, staring helplessly, completely terrified. But we were protected by the forest and by the earth. The helicopters could not reach us.

Well, perhaps the pilots could have tried again. Maybe they had exhausted their missile supply. Maybe they didn’t think it was worth wasting more of their ammunition on two small boys. But even as I lay there I knew that this wasn’t over. They had seen us and they would radio ahead. Others would come to finish the work. It wasn’t enough that the village had been destroyed. If anybody had managed to survive, they would have to be killed. There must be nobody left to tell what had happened.

“Yasha…” Leo gasped. He was crying. His face was a mess of mud and tears.

“We have to go,” I said.

We struggled to our feet and dropped into the safety of the forest. Behind us, the sky was red, the helicopters hovering as Estrov continued to burn.

When I was a small boy, I had feared the forest with its ghosts and its demons. It had given me nightmares. My own parents had come from the city and didn’t believe such things but Leo’s mother used to tell me stories about it, the same stories that her mother had doubtless told her. Every child in the village knew them and stayed away. But now I wanted it to draw me in, to swallow me up and never let me go. The deeper I went, the safer I felt, surrounded by huge, solid trunks that blotted out the sky and everything silent except for the drip of the rain on the canopy of leaves. The real nightmare was behind me. It was almost impossible to think of my village and the people who had lived there. Mr Vladimov smoking his cigarettes until the stubs burnt his fingers. Mrs Bek who ran the village shop and put up with everyone’s complaints when there was nothing on the shelves. The twins, Irina and Olga, so alike that we could never tell them apart but always arguing and at each other’s throats. My grandmother. My parents. My friends. They had all gone as if they had never existed and nothing would remain of them, not even their names.

Never tell anyone you came from Estrov. Never use that word again .

My mother’s warning to me. And of course she was right. The place of my birth had now become a sentence of death.

I was in shock. So much had happened and it had happened so quickly that my brain simply wasn’t able to cope with it all. I had seen very few American films, and computer games hadn’t arrived in my corner of Russia yet – so the sort of violence I had just experienced was completely alien to me. Perhaps it was for the best. If I had really considered my situation, I might easily have gone mad. I was fourteen years old and suddenly I had nothing except a hundred rubles, the clothes I was wearing and the name of a man I had never met in a city I had never visited. My best friend was with me but it was as if his soul had flown out of him, leaving nothing but a shell behind. He was no longer crying but he was walking like a zombie. For the last hour, he had said nothing. We had been walking in silence with only the sound of our own footsteps and the rain hitting the leaves.

It wasn’t over yet. We were both waiting for the next attack. Maybe the helicopters would return and bomb the forest. Maybe they would use poison gas next time. They knew we were here and they wouldn’t let us get away.

“What was it all about, Yasha Gregorovich?” Leo asked. He used my full name in the formal way that we Russians do sometimes – when we want to make a point or when we are afraid. His face was puffy and I could see that his eyes were bright with tears, although he was trying hard not to cry in front of me.

“I don’t know,” I said. But that wasn’t true. I knew only too well. “There was an accident at the factory,” I went on. “Our parents lied to us. They weren’t just making chemicals for farmers. They were also making weapons. Something went wrong and they had to close it down very quickly.”

“The helicopters…”

“I suppose they didn’t want to tell anyone what had happened. It’s like that place we learnt about. You know… Chernobyl.”

We all knew about Chernobyl in Ukraine. Not so long ago, when Russia was still part of the Soviet Union, there had been a huge explosion at a nuclear reactor. The whole area had been covered with clouds of radioactive dust – they had even reached parts of Europe. But at the time, the authorities had done everything they could to cover up what had happened. Even now it was uncertain how many people had actually died. That was the way the Russian government worked back then. If they had admitted there had been a catastrophe, it would have shown they were weak. So it was easy to imagine what they would do following an accident at a secret facility creating biological weapons. If a hundred or even five hundred people were murdered, what would it matter so long as things were kept quiet?

Leo was still trying to take it all in. It hurt me seeing him like this. This was a boy who had been afraid of nothing, who had been rude to all the teachers and who had never complained when he was beaten or sent on forced marches. But it was as if he had become five years younger. He was lost. “They killed everyone,” he said.

“They had to keep it a secret, Leo. My mother and father managed to get out of the factory. They told me to run away because they knew what was going to happen.” My voice cracked. “They’re both dead.”

“I’m sorry, Yasha.”

“Me too, Leo.”

He was my best friend. He was all that I had left in the world. But I still wasn’t telling him the whole truth. My arm was throbbing painfully and I was sure that he must have noticed the bloodstain on my sleeve but I hadn’t mentioned the syringe. My mother had inoculated me with the antidote against whatever had escaped into the air. She had said it would protect me. No one had done the same for Leo. Did that mean he was carrying the anthrax spores on him even now? Was he dying? I didn’t want to think about it and, coward that I was, I certainly couldn’t bring myself to talk to him about it.