The sun seemed to take for ever to rise. They call them the small hours, that time from four o’clock onwards, and I know from experience that they are always the most miserable of the day. That is when you feel most vulnerable and alone. Leo was sound asleep. The hut was even more desolate than before – I had fed almost anything that was made of wood into the fire. The world outside was wet, cold and threatening. As I got dressed again, I remembered that in a few hours I should have been going to school.
Wake up, Yasha. Come on! Get your things together…
I had to force my mother’s voice out of my head. She wasn’t there for me any more. Nobody was. From now on, if I was to survive, I had to look after myself.
The two remaining tins of fish were still waiting, uneaten, on a shelf beside the fire. I was tempted to wolf them down myself, as I was really hungry, but I was keeping them for Leo. I made some more tea and ate a little chocolate, then I went back outside. The sky was now a dirty off-white, and the trees were more skeletal than ever. But at least there was nobody around. The soldiers hadn’t come back. Walking around, I came across a shrub of bright red lingonberries. They were past their best but I knew they would be edible. We used to make them into a dish called kissel, a sort of jelly, and I stuffed some of them into my mouth. They were slightly sour but I thought they would keep me going and I placed several more in my pockets.
“Yasha…?”
As I returned to the hut, I heard Leo call my name. He had woken up. I was delighted to hear his voice and hurried over to him. “How are you feeling, Leo?” I asked.
“Where are we?”
“We found a shed. After the tunnel. Don’t you remember?”
“I’m very cold, Yasha.”
He looked terrible. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t pretend otherwise. There was no colour at all in his face, and his eyes were burning, out of focus. I didn’t know why he was cold. The one thing I had managed to do was to keep the hut reasonably warm and I had put plenty of makeshift covers on the bed.
“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.
КИРСК
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?
The station was right in front of me, at the end of a wide, very straight boulevard with trees on both sides. I recognized it at once. It was surrounded by stalls selling everything from suitcases, blankets and cushions to all sorts of food and drink. I could smell shashlyk – skewers of meat – cooking on charcoal fires and it made my mouth water. I was desperate to buy something but that was when I realized I had a problem. Although I had a lot of money in my pocket, it was all in large notes. I had no coins. If I were to hand over a ten-ruble note for a snack that would cost no more than a few kopecks, I would only draw attention to myself. The stallholder would assume I was a thief. Better to wait until I’d bought my train ticket. At least then I would have change.
With these thoughts in my mind, I walked towards the main entrance of the station. I was so relieved to have got here and so anxious to be on my way that I was careless. I was keeping my head down, trying not to catch anyone’s eye. I should have been looking all around me. In fact, if I had been sensible, I would have tried to enter the station from a completely different direction … around the side or the back. As it was, I hadn’t taken more than five or six steps before I found that my way was blocked. I glanced up and saw two policemen standing in front of me, dressed in long grey coats with insignia around their collars and military caps. They were both young, in their twenties. They had revolvers hanging from their belts.
“Where are you going?” one of them asked. He had bad skin, very raw, as if he had only started shaving recently and had used a blunt razor.
“To the station.” I pointed, trying to sound casual.
“Why?”
“I work there. After school. I help clean the platforms.” I was making things up as I went along.
“Where have you come from?”
“Over there…” I pointed to one of the apartment blocks I had passed on my way into the town.
“Your name?”
“Leo Tretyakov.” My poor dead friend. Why had I chosen him?
The two policemen hesitated and for a moment I thought they were going to let me pass. Surely there was no reason to stop me. I was just a boy, doing odd jobs after school. But then the second policeman spoke. “Your identity papers,” he demanded. His eyes were cold.
I had used a false name because I was afraid the authorities would know who I was. After all, it had been my parents, Anton and Eva Gregorovich, who had escaped from the factory. But now I was trapped. The moment they looked at my passport, they would know I had lied to them. I should have been watching out for them from the start. Now that I looked around me, I realized that the station was crawling with policemen. Obviously. The police would know what had happened at Estrov. They would have been told that two boys had escaped. They had been warned to keep an eye out for us at every station in the area … and I had simply walked into their arms.
“I don’t have them,” I stammered. I put a stupid look on my face, as if I didn’t realize how serious it was to be out without ID. “They’re at home.”
It might have worked. I was only fourteen and looked young for my age. But maybe the policemen had been given my description. Maybe one of the helicopter pilots had managed to take my photograph as he flew overhead. Either way, they knew. I could see it in their eyes, the way they glanced at each other. They were only at the start of their careers, and this was a huge moment for them. It could lead to promotion, a pay rise, their names in the newspaper. They had just scored big time. They had me.
“You will come with us,” the first policeman said.
“But I’ve done nothing wrong. My mother will be worried.” Why was I even bothering? Neither of them believed me.
“No arguments,” the second man snapped.
I had no choice. If I argued, if I tried to run, they would grab me and call for backup. I would be bundled into a police van before I could blink. It was better, for the moment, to stick with them. If they were determined to bring me into the police station themselves, there might still be an opportunity for me to get away. The building could be on the other side of town. By going with them, I would at least buy myself a little time to plan a way out of this.
We walked slowly and all the time I was thinking, my eyes darting about, adding up the possibilities. There were plenty of people around. The working day was coming to an end and they were on their way home. But they wouldn’t help me. They wouldn’t want to get involved. I glanced back at the two policemen who were walking about two steps behind me. What was it that I had noticed about them? They had clearly been pleased they had caught me, no question of that – but at the same time they were nervous. Well, that was understandable. This was a big deal for them.
But there was something else. They were nervous for another reason. I saw it now. They were walking very carefully, close enough to grab me if I tried to escape but not so close that they could actually touch me. Why the distance between me and them? Why hadn’t they put handcuffs on me? Why were they giving me even the smallest chance to run away? It made no sense.
Unless they knew.
That was it. It had to be.
I had supposedly been infected with a virus so deadly that it had forced the authorities to wipe out my village. It had killed Leo in less than twenty-four hours. The soldiers in the forest had all been dressed in biochemical protective gear. The police in Kirsk – and in Rosna, for that matter – must have been told that I was dangerous, infected. None of them could have guessed that my parents had risked everything to inoculate me. They probably didn’t know that an antidote existed at all. There was nothing to protect the young officers who had arrested me. As far as they were concerned, I was a walking time bomb. They wanted to bring me in. But they weren’t going to come too close.
We continued walking, away from the station. A few people passed us but said nothing and looked the other way. The policemen were still hanging back and now I knew why. Although it didn’t look like it, I had the upper hand. They were afraid of me! And I could use that.
Casually, I slipped my hand into my pocket. Because the two men were behind me, they didn’t see the movement. I took it out and wiped my mouth. I sensed that we were drawing close to the police station from the police cars parked ahead.
“Down
there…!” one of the policemen snapped. We were going to enter the police station the back way, down a wide alleyway and across a deserted car park with overflowing dustbins lined up along a rusting fence. We turned off and suddenly we were on our own. It was exactly what I wanted.
I stumbled slightly and let out a groan, clutching hold of my stomach. Neither of the policemen spoke. I stopped. One of them prodded me in the back. Just one finger. No contact with my skin.
“Keep moving,” he commanded.
“I can’t,” I said, putting as much pain as I could manage into my voice.
I twisted round. At the same time, I began to cough, making horrible retching noises as if my lungs were tearing themselves apart. I sucked in, gasping for air, still holding my stomach. The policemen stared at me in horror. There was bright blood all around my lips, trickling down my chin. I coughed again and drops of blood splattered in their direction. I watched them fall back as if they had come face to face with a poisonous snake. And as far as they knew, my blood was poison. If any of it touched them, they would end up like me.
But it wasn’t blood.
Just a minute ago, I had slipped some of the lingonberries from the forest into my mouth and chewed them up. What I was spitting was red berry juice mixed with my own saliva.
“Please help me,” I said. “I’m not well.”
The two policemen had come to a dead halt, caught between two conflicting desires: one to hold onto me, the other to be as far away from me as possible. I was overacting like crazy, grimacing and staggering about like a drunk, but it didn’t matter. Just as I’d suspected, they’d been told how dangerous I was. They knew the stakes. Their imagination was doing half the work for me.
“Everyone died,” I went on. “They all died. Please … I don’t want to be like them.” I reached out imploringly. My hand was stained red. The two men stepped back. They weren’t coming anywhere near. “So much pain!” I sobbed. I fell to my knees. The juice dripped onto my jacket.