Sergej doesn’t look like somebody who jokes around. He has the shaved head thing going on, lots of muscles. WTF, thinks Hannah. The guy must weigh 150 kilos. “Yes, if necessary, we have to kill,” says Sergej. “Hide, fight, run. These are the keywords to survival in times of chaos. Today then, lesson two: combat. We’ll start with a hundred push-ups to warm up. Go.” Sergej shouts. Men react extremely well to the shouts of other men. They’re quickly down in the mud doing push-ups, the first submissively expressed hatred for Sergej recognizable on their faces. Hannah does her hundred push-ups without breathing heavily for so much as a second. The grace of youth, a gift of their slender bodies. “Up you get,” yells Sergej.

“You all have knives with you. And weapons.” The men grunt, nod, proudly display their weapons. Their weapons are smaller than Sergej’s weapon. Sergej is bigger, he’s better-looking.

The men hate him.

And he shouts loudly. “Right. In an emergency we may have to kill our neighbors. Our greengrocer, our friend. We can’t trust anyone. I’ll pass out slips of paper.” He passes out slips of paper. “And pens.” He passes out pens. “I’m going to go have a piss, and when I get back you’re to have written down the name of the person we’ll be killing today.”

“Who exactly?” asks a fat man, the back of whose head seems to have been lost while doing push-ups.

“Someone from the group.” Says Sergej, heading into the brush.

The men freeze.

Nobody wants to die.

“I don’t want to die,”

Says the fat man with no back of the head, and Hannah says.

“Be quiet”

Whispers

THOME