Russian Roulette (4 page)

Misha Dementyev. I clung on to 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 gotten 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 sixty-five kilometers, 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 rumored 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 gray and swollen, rolling in from every side. It was definitely going to rain.

I had already decided that I was not going to do what my mother had told me. Did she really think I could run off and leave her on her own with my father lying dead beside the car? 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 Pioneer 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. Mom’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. Gunshots, explosions, 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 from 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 around and saw five black dots in the sky, swooping low over the hills, heading toward 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 meters 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 around 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. We had no priest in the village. 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 on the very edge of the forest and turned around 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 that 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 away, 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 and 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.

The helicopters were continuing, heading toward 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 350 kilometers 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 meters 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 all around us 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, I caught a glimpse through the trees 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. But 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 yet. 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. Everybody who had lived there would have to be killed. There could 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 plunged into the safety of the forest. Behind us, the sky was red, the helicopters hovering as Estrov continued to burn.

W
HEN 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 with the sky blotted out 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 burned 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 had made a point of not crying 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 learned 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 died too.”

“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 about it with him.

We were still walking. The rain was getting heavier. Now it was making its way through the leaves and splashing down all around us. It was early in the afternoon, but most of the light was gone. I had taken out my compass and given it to Leo. I could of course have used it myself, but I thought it would be better for him to have his mind occupied—and anyway, he was better at finding directions than me. Not that the compass really helped. Every time we came to a particularly nasty knot of brambles or found a tangle of undergrowth blocking our path, we had to go another way. It was as if the forest itself were guiding us. Where? If it was feeling merciful, it would lead us to safety. But it might be just as likely to deliver us into our enemies’ hands.

The forest began to slope upward, gently at first, then more steeply, and we found our feet kept slipping and we tripped over the roots. Leo looked dreadful, his clothes plastered across him, his face deadly white, his hair, soaking wet now, hanging lifelessly over his eyes. I felt guilty in my waterproof clothes, but it was too late to hand them over. Ahead of us, the trees began to thin out. This was doubly bad news. First, it meant that we were even less protected from the rain. But it would also be easier to spot us from the air if the helicopters returned.

“Over there!” I said.

I had seen an electricity pylon not too far away, poking out above the trees, part of the new construction. They had been laying all three together—the new highway, the water pipe, and electricity—all part of the modernization of the area, before the work had ground to a halt. But even without tarmac or lighting, the road would lead us straight to Kirsk. At least we knew which way to go.

I had very little memory of Kirsk. The last time I had been there had been about a year ago, on a school trip. Getting out of Estrov had been exciting enough, but when we had gotten there, we had spent half the time in a museum and by the afternoon I was bored stiff. When I was twelve, I had spent a week in Kirsk Hospital after I’d broken my leg. Both times, I had been taken there by bus and had no idea how to get around. But surely the station wouldn’t be too difficult to find, and at least I would have enough money to buy two tickets for the train. A hundred rubles was worth a great deal. It was more than a month’s salary for one of my teachers.

We trudged forward, making better progress. We were beginning to think that we had gotten away after all, that nobody was interested in us anymore. Of course it is just when you begin to think like that, when you relax your guard, that the worst happens. If I had been in the same situation now, I would have gone anywhere except toward the new highway. When you are in danger, you must always opt for what is least expected. Predictability kills.

We reached the first evidence of the construction: abandoned spools of wire, cement slabs, great piles of plastic tubing. Ahead of us, a brown ribbon of dug-up earth stretched out into the gloom. The town of Kirsk and the railway to Moscow lay at the other end.

“How far is it?” Leo asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “About thirty kilometers, I think. Are you okay?”

Leo nodded, but the misery in his face told another story.

“We can do it,” I said. “Five or six hours. And it can’t rain forever.”

It felt as if it was going to do just that. We could actually see the raindrops now, fat and relentless, slanting down in front of us and splattering on the ground. It was like a curtain hanging between the trees, and we could barely make out the road on the other side. There were more pipes scattered on both sides, and after a short while we came to a deep ditch that must have been cut as part of the water project. Was it really possible for an entire community to near the end of the twentieth century without running water? I had carried enough buckets down to the well to know the answer to that.

We walked for another ten minutes, neither of us speaking, our feet splashing in the puddles. And then we saw them. They were ahead of us, a long line of soldiers spread out across the forest, making steady progress toward us . . . like detectives looking for clues after a murder. They were spaced out so that nobody would be able to pass through the line without being seen. They had no faces. They were dressed in pale silver anti-biochemical uniforms with hoods and gas masks, and they carried semiautomatic machine guns. They had dogs with them, scrawny Alsatians, straining at the end of metal leashes. It was as if they had walked out of my worst nightmare. They didn’t look human at all.

It should have been obvious from the start that whoever had sent the helicopters would follow it with infantry backup. First destroy the village, then put a noose around the place to make sure there are no survivors. The line of militiamen, if that’s what they were, would have formed a huge circle around Estrov. They would close in from all sides. And they would have been told to shoot any stragglers—Leo and me—on sight. Nobody could be allowed to tell what had happened. And above all, the anthrax virus that we might be carrying could not break free.

They would have seen us at once but for the rain. And the dogs, too, would have smelled us if everything hadn’t been so wet. In the darkness of the forest, the pale color of their protective gear stood out, but for a few precious seconds, we were invisible. I reached out and grabbed Leo’s arm. We turned and ran the way we had come.

It was the worst thing to do. Since that time, long ago now, I have been taught survival techniques for exactly such situations. You do not break your pace. You do not panic. It is the very rhythm of your movement that will alert your enemy. We should have melted to one side, found cover, and then retreated as quickly but as steadily as we could. Instead, the sound of our shoes stamping on the wet ground signaled that we were there. One of the dogs began to bark ferociously, followed immediately by the rest of them. Somebody shouted. An instant later there was the deafening clamor of machine gun fire, a dozen weapons spraying bullets that sliced through the trees and the leaves, sending pieces of debris showering over our heads. We had been seen. The line began to move forward more urgently. We were perhaps thirty or forty meters ahead of them but we were already close to exhaustion, drenched, unarmed. We were children. We had no chance at all.

More machine gun fire. I saw mud splattering up centimeters from my feet. Leo was slightly ahead of me. His legs were shorter than mine and he had been more tired than me, but I was determined to keep him in front of me, not to leave him behind. If one went down, we both went down. The dogs were making a hideous sound. They had seen their prey. They wanted to be released.

And we stayed on the half-built highway! That was a killing ground if ever there was one, wide and exposed, an easy matter for a sniper to pick us off. I suppose we thought we could run faster with a flat surface beneath our feet. But every step I took, I was waiting for the bullet that would come smashing between my shoulders. I could hear the dogs, the guns, the blast of the whistles. I didn’t look back but I could actually feel the men closing in behind me.

Still we had the advantage of distance. The line of soldiers would move more slowly than us. They wouldn’t want to break rank and risk the chance of our doubling back and slipping through. I had perhaps one minute to work out some sort of scheme before they caught up with us. Climb a tree? No, it would take too long, and anyway, the dogs would sniff us out. Continue back down the hill? Pointless. There were probably more soldiers coming up the other side. I was still running, my heart pounding in my chest, the breath harsh in my throat. And then I saw it—the ditch we had passed with the plastic tubes scattered about.

“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
toward
the line of soldiers, looking for what I prayed must be there.