Russian Roulette Read Online Free PDF

like him at all. The pain was distorting his voice.
    “What’s happened? What is it? Who hurt you? You’ve been shot!” Once I had begun to speak I could barely stop, but I was making little sense.
    My father reached out and grabbed hold of my arm. “I am so glad you’re here. I was afraid you’d be out of the house. But you have to listen to us very carefully, Yasha. We have very little time.”
    “Yasha, my dear boy . . .” It was my mother who had spoken and suddenly there were tears coursing down her cheeks. It didn’t matter what had happened at the factory. It was seeing me that had made her cry.
    “I will try to explain to you,” my father said. “But you can’t argue with me. Do you understand that? You have to leave the village immediately.”
    “What? I’m not leaving! I’m not going anywhere.”
    “You have no choice. If you stay here, they will kill you.” His grip on me tightened. “They’re already on their way. Do you understand me? They’ll be here in a few minutes . . .”
    “Who? Why?”
    My father was too weak, in too much pain to say anything more, so my mother took over.
    “We never told you about the factory,” she said. “We weren’t allowed to. But it wasn’t just that. We didn’t want you to know. We were ashamed.” She wiped her eyes, pulling herself together. “We were making chemicals and pesticides for farmers, like we always said. But we were also making other things. For the military.”
    “Weapons,” my father said. “Chemical weapons. Do you understand what I mean?” I said nothing, so he went on. “We had no choice, Yasha. Your mother and I got into trouble with the authorities a long time ago, when we were in Moscow, and we were sent out here. That was before you were born. It was all my fault. They stopped us from teaching. They threatened us. We had to earn a living and there was no other way.”
    The words were like a stampede of horses, galloping through my head. I wanted them to stop, to slow down. Surely all that mattered was to get help for my father. The nearest hospital was kilometers away, but there was a doctor in Rosna. It seemed to me that my father was getting weaker and that the blood was spreading.
    But still they went on. “This morning there was an accident in the main laboratory,” my mother explained. “And something was released into the air. We had already warned them it might happen. You heard us talking about it only last night. But they wouldn’t listen. Making a profit was all that mattered to them. Well, it’s over now. The whole village has been contaminated. We have been contaminated. We brought it with us in that car. Not that it would have made any difference. It’s in the air. It’s everywhere.”
    “What is? What are you talking about?”
    “A form of anthrax.” My mother spat out the words. “It’s a sort of bacterium, but it’s been modified so that it’s very contagious and acts very quickly. It could wipe out an army! And maybe we deserve this. We were responsible. We helped to make it . . .”
    “Do it!” my father said. “Do it now!” With his free hand, he fumbled in his pocket and took out a metal box, about fifteen centimeters long. It was the sort of thing that might contain a pen.
    My mother took it. Her eyes were still fixed on me. “As soon as we knew what had happened, our first thoughts were for you,” she said. “Nobody was allowed to leave the factory. That was the first protocol. They had to keep us there, to contain us. But your father and I had already made plans . . . just in case. We stole a car and we smashed through the perimeter fence. We had to reach you.”
    “The siren?”
    “That was nothing to do with the accident. They set it off afterward. They saw we were trying to escape.” She drew a breath. “They sounded the alarm and the guards fired machine guns at us. Your father was hit. We were so frightened we wouldn’t be able to find you, that you wouldn’t