Russian Roulette by Anthony Horowitz

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. Our pace had quickened and there were police cars parked ahead.
    “This way!” One of the policemen pointed. We were going to enter the station at the back, down a wide alley and across a deserted parking lot with overflowing trash cans lined up along a rusting fence. We turned off and suddenly we were on our own. It was exactly what I wanted.
    I staggered 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. I put as much pain as I could manage into my voice.
    I twisted around. 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 berries 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 on to 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.
    The policemen made their decision. If they stayed where they were, if they tried to force me to my feet, it would kill them . . . quickly and unpleasantly. Yes, they wanted their promotion. But their lives mattered more. Maybe it occurred to them that the very fact that they had come into contact with me meant that they themselves would have to be eliminated. As far as they could see, I was dying anyway. I was lying on my side now, writhing on the ground, sobbing. My whole face was covered in blood. One of them spoke briefly to the other. I didn’t hear what he said, but his colleague must have agreed, because a moment later they were gone, hurrying back the way they had come. I watched them turn a corner. I very much doubted that they would report what had just happened. After all, dereliction of duty would not be something they would wish to advertise. They would probably spend the rest of the day at the bathhouse, hoping that the steam and the hot water would wash away the disease.
    I waited until I was sure they had gone, then got to my feet and wiped my face with my sleeve. At least the encounter had given me an advance warning. There was no way I was going to walk into the railway station at Kirsk. The moment I tried to buy a train ticket, there would be someone there to arrest me, and I very much doubted the same trick would work a second time. If I was going to get onto a train to Moscow, I was going to have to think of something else.
    And I already had an idea.
    There had been quite a few passengers arriving in taxis and coming off buses just before I had been arrested, and that suggested that the evening train might be coming soon. At the same time, I’d seen a number of porters