The boy speeded up through the underpass. The woman with the small child was walking towards a trolleybus stop, the man with the walkman had paused in front of a kiosk, inspecting the bottles, the soldier still hadn't come out of the subway. He glanced back now, without slowing down, but there was no one following him. Up on the surface there were far more people, but he still had the feeling of alarm. Egor pulled the hood back over his head, darted past the vendor kiosks without stopping and hurried into the underpass. His hair, still wet from the pool – the dryer was broken again – was instantly stiff with ice. Again he felt a pricking sensation of senseless anxiety and a cold shudder ran through his body.Įgor slipped out through the half-opened doors and the piercing cold assailed him with renewed fury.
The boy glanced back once more and started running up the moving steps as they flattened out under his feet. The wind gave Egor one last nudge and suddenly dropped away, apparently resigned that the struggle was pointless. Egor looked up again, at the policeman lounging against the gleaming handrails, dejectedly trying to spot some easy prey in this sparse stream of passengers. He looked just about dead on his feet too. And another man, young, wearing a bright orange jacket, with a walkman. Then there was a woman with a sleepy little child, clutching her hand.
It wasn't a frightening kind of feeling at all, it felt interesting, a sudden, pricking sensation.ĭown at the bottom of the escalator there was a tall man in uniform. For a couple of minutes already, from the moment he stepped off the train, he'd had the feeling he was being watched. That was it.Įgor stuck his hands in his pockets and turned to look back. Only a few people riding down towards Egor and hardly anyone on the up escalator either. There was hardly anyone around – it was midnight and the station was already emptying. Strange, but no one else seemed to notice the wind. In an old station like this, what else would you expect? But the wind swirled like a wild thing inside the concrete pipe – ruffling his hair, tugging the hood off his head, sneaking in under his scarf, pressing him downward.
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