“Step on it! Anya, go!” shouted Boris but we had all already seen them – even Lenny, who wasn’t taking part in the conversation – and with foot on accelerator we all drove off at the same time – so fast, that I nearly collided with the shiny back of the Land Cruiser.
We zoomed past several villages at full throttle, and my panic started easing off only after the level crossing was left far behind. The black, impenetrable walls of the forest which flanked the road now seemed a lot more appealing than any of the villages lurking in distance – illuminated windows, empty streets, vandalised food stalls. I found a cigarette and lit it, glad that my hands weren’t shaking.
“That was a good place for an ambush,” Boris said into the microphone. “We’ll know next time.”
“Yes, that was smart of them,” Sergey replied. “Good job they couldn’t put down the barrier and raise the metal road blocks – I’m sure I could drive through the barrier, but none of us would be able to leap over the blocks, even Lenny in his show-off four-by-four.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t an ambush,” I suggested, remembering that the people who came out of the cabin didn’t have anything in their hands – guns or sticks, “we don’t know for sure.”
“Of course we don’t,” Boris agreed readily. “Maybe they just wanted to nick a couple of ciggies. Only I wouldn’t want to check, Anya, honest to God, I wouldn’t.”
The comfortable feeling of safety, which we had while driving through the dark, uninhabited forest, didn’t last long. Within about ten kilometres, there were lights ahead again. People, I was thinking, looking at the road nostalgically, there’s so many of you everywhere, you live so close to each other, and there’s no way to get away from you, however far we go. I wonder if there’s a place anywhere for hundreds of miles that is free of people – completely free, so that you could dump the car on the side of the road and go into the woods, and stay there, without being afraid that somebody would find your footprints or the smoke from your fire, and would follow them. Who invented this way of living? – where you live a mere couple of steps from the door or the window of a neighbour. Who decided that it would be safe, when people just like you, your neighbours and friends, can soon become your enemies if they know you have something they really want?
We had only been on the road for a few hours, and I was already feeling sick just thinking about driving through another village, another level crossing, torn between my aversion to taking my eyes off the road and my inability to prevent it.
Perhaps I sighed, or pressed my foot a bit harder on the accelerator, because Boris, who was also looking at the lights which were approaching fast said:
“Oh come on, Anya, there’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s just a small village. I think this is Noudol – we don’t even have to drive through it, it’s a bit off the road, we can have a nice, peaceful drive all the way to Klin now.”
“Are we going to drive through Klin?” I asked, my blood running cold. The thought of driving through a city – any city – was terrifying me. “Weren’t we going to avoid cities?”
“Well, you can’t really call it a city,” Boris said. “It’s hardly bigger than a Moscow suburb. I think it should still be OK there – we should be able to drive through without much trouble. You see, it’s like a big wave – it’s following us, and the faster we move, the more likely it is that it won’t overwhelm us. We’ve got neither the time nor the fuel to roam around country lanes – plus, there’s no guarantee that they’re safer. The most important thing for us now is speed, and the sooner we escape from the vicinity of Moscow, the better. And we have Tver to look forward to – you can’t go round that, with the Volga running through it.”
What he was saying reminded me of a scene in a film I saw once: cars squeezed in between houses, full of terrified people, with an approaching steel-coloured, gigantic, wall of water – higher than the surrounding skyscrapers – heavy, like a concrete slab, with a white foamy crown on top, drawing closer and closer… ‘Like a wave,’ he says. If we don’t hurry, it’ll swallow us – in spite of our fast cars, guns, provisions, in spite of the fact that we know where we’re going – unlike those who stayed put, waiting for a lucky escape and won’t see it, and will die under this wave – and unlike many others, who will take off as soon as they see it on the horizon, without any preparation, without packing – and they’re also doomed to failure. I can’t believe I used to enjoy films like that.
The radio under my right elbow crackled and said:
“Petrol station, Anya, look – on the left, there’s an open petrol station!”
“Slow down, Sergey,” Boris said immediately, but Sergey was already slowing down, and Lenny, brake lights lit up, did the same. I drove a bit further ahead to level with the Land Cruiser, and lowered the passenger side window.
“I know, I know,” Lenny shouted to us, “why are we waiting?”
“Let’s take a good look at it first,” Boris said, “and you, Lenny, don’t jump out of the car as if you’re going to a birthday party, understand? We need to be careful.”
There was no queue – which was understandable considering the empty motorway, the absence of radio chatter and the sinister level crossing. Apart from us, there were no strangers on the motorway, and the locals probably didn’t want to venture out for petrol in the dark. It was an ordinary roadside petrol station, with a peacefully glowing blue and white sign casting light on a couple of trucks staying overnight at the side, three cars with lit headlights near the pumps, the illuminated cashier’s window, some silhouetted people inside. Everything seemed more or less normal, other than the bright banner saying ‘BUSINESS AS USUAL DURING THE CRISIS’, a dark blue minibus parked nearby with ‘SECURITY’ written on its side in yellow, and four people with machine guns in identical black uniforms. They had writing on their fronts and backs, impossible to read from a distance, and peaked caps, which, for some reason, underlined the difference between them and the kind of people who kicked at our gate yesterday morning. One of them stood next to the road, holding a cigarette in a hollowed palm as the military do.
“I think this looks fine, Dad,” Sergey said, “these guys with machine-guns look like they’re the company’s security men. We could really do with topping up. I think we should go in. They might tell us what’s going on, too.”
“Crisis’!” Dad spat out sarcastically, and hawked on to the road through the open window.“They think it’s just a crisis? Just listen to them. They just have no idea, bastards. It’s the bloody apocalypse.” He used several longwinded, fruity swearwords, then looked back and apologised: “Sorry, guys, forgot you were here for a second.”
“That’s OK,” Mishka said, impressed.
The radio started crackling again, and Ira spoke – for some reason, she was speaking to me:
“Anya, there are masks in the bag with sandwiches on your back seat. You should put them on. Tell Lenny, too.”
“Oh come on, Ira,” Boris answered, “there’s hardly anyone there, they look fine, we’ll only scare them with our masks.”
I could hear Sergey, saying irritably: “Ira, why do we need the masks now”, and she immediately shouted:
“Because we must always wear them, do you hear me, we must, you don’t understand, you haven’t seen a thing!” And then I grabbed the microphone from Boris and said: “I got it, Ira, we’ll put them on. I’ll tell Lenny.” I turned to Mishka and said: “Give me the bag with sandwiches.”
When we’d managed to put our masks on – Boris, swearing under his breath, was the last to pull on the pale-green rectangle – we slowly drove into the petrol station forecourt. A guard, who was smoking on the side of the road and had been watching us for some time, flicked his cigarette end away and started walking towards us, resting his arms on the machine gun hanging around his neck. Having caught up with him, Sergey stopped and wound the window down, and I could hear his voice clearly in the quiet, crisp frosty air: