“Smoke and piss break! Ten minutes!” the driver shouted as he disembarked without turning off the engine. The trucks parked by the verge.

Men scattered into the bushes, yawning and stretching. As K. relieved himself, he tuned into a new sound: a distant, low rumble, like a thunderstorm beyond the forest, washing over the hubbub of birds, the buzzing of cicadas and the growl of the engine.

With a sense of clinging dread, he rushed back to the bus and took his seat. The men at the bus stop merrily smoked and chatted among themselves.

A small white cloud floated over the field some five hundred metres away.

The men looked in that direction. Twenty seconds later, another puff of smoke. Closer.

All of a sudden, everybody scattered. Several people dove under the bus, one ran toward the village. Kostya slithered to the bus stop and gesticulated desperately. K. read the signal and leapt out of the door, reaching Kostya in two bounds. Kostya had already pressed himself up against a concrete block. An explosion.

“What did I tell you, eh?!” he coughed.

Others ran out after K. and more yet crawled from under the wheels. The driver shimmied over. Thirteen of them lay huddled together, panting, eyes wide with terror. It smelled of piss.

“Fuck’s sake, you had to piss right here? Was there no room in the field?”

“You go ahead and piss in the field.”

The retort was drowned out by the next shell.

“What are you looking at me for? I didn’t even get to piss at all.”

“If they hit the ammo truck, we are so fucked. I said we shouldn’t stop.”

“What are you on about? You were the first one to go out.”

Another blast. Further away. Quiet.

“We’ve got a window,” Kostya shouted, rising to his feet. “They’re adjusting their aim. Let’s go!”

He grabbed K. by the collar and dragged him along.

The men jumped up all at once and caused a crush as they barrelled at the bus door. The driver came around the other side, got behind the wheel and smashed the horn frantically, summoning the men who had rushed into the village or sheltered in a ditch.

“Faster! Faster!”

The bus edged forward.

Men ran along the road, shouting and waving their arms. Catching up with the accelerating bus, they jumped through the open rear doors. The rest scraped their palms clinging awkwardly to the sides of the trucks and climbing in.

The bus picked up speed.

Kostya coughed and wheezed. Then he laughed. And sunk into a doze.

A half-hour later, they drove into an open area. From an elevation, a vision of a meandering river and grey one-storey houses materialised in the valley: the outskirts of the city. Black smoke rose above the horizon and merged with low graphite clouds. A dozen cars were backed up at the checkpoint on the bridge over the river.

A sigh of relief swept through the bus at this grim scene. The bus pulled up to the bridge. All eyes turned to the sign hung at the roadblock. Words had been written in white paint on a large rusty metal sheet tied to pillars: “Welcome to Hell.”