The train station is painted yellow, but the paint has become dark and heavy in the rain. The national flags have been prudently taken down from the columns - the army's leaving the city, don't want to agitate the newcomers. The wastebaskets attached to the columns are filled to the brim with bright wrappers and plastic. There are several bloody bandages on top, draped over empty Coke bottles. The blood's bright, too. Nobody has emptied the wastebaskets in a while. Even the pigeons are steering clear of them. 'Yeah, where are they?' Pasha thinks, squinting all around. 'Where is everybody?' Remnants of snow on the roof, gnarled trees nearby, the skies settling frigidly. Pasha's eyes slide up and then down, and he suddenly notices them - hundreds of warm clumps of birds are clenched like fists, hundreds of bird beaks are aimed down at him, hundreds of round eyes, frozen from constant fear. Pigeons are huddled against one another, perched high up above the columns, under the awning of the station, nestling into one another like they're cold. But they're scared, not cold: scared of the racket behind the factory, scared of the silence of the surrounding streets, scared of the mercury gleam in the sky, scared that no-one's around.