Russian Roulette by Anthony Horowitz

“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