Prip'Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl

Chapter Twenty-Two

“It knows we’re here? Shit!” Yuri began to pace the ground next to Lucas, talking loudly to himself as he began to panic.

“Shut up and get over here now!” Lucas hissed at Yuri, startling him but causing him to obey the instructions. Yuri knelt down on the ground next to Lucas who still kept guard, scanning the area around them with his thermal and night vision scopes. Yuri whispered to Lucas, fighting to keep his voice calm as he spoke.

“Sorry. What do we do now?”

Lucas didn’t look away from his scope as he held the SVD in his right hand. He used his left hand to fish a small device out of his vest pouch and handed it to Yuri.

“Flip the switch on the end and then push the red button on this. If the transmitter inside Iosif’s suit is still intact, it’ll activate and start transmitting his location.”

“What?” Yuri was shocked at this revelation and nearly dropped the device in shock. “Why didn’t we do this before?”

Lucas grimaced as he spoke. “You’ll see. Just push it.”

Yuri turned the device over in his hands, examining its surface. It was slightly larger than a lighter and had three raised buttons on its surface along with a small power switch at one end. Yuri slid the switch to the on position, causing the three buttons to glow their respective colors: red, green and blue. Yuri flinched as he depressed the red button, half-expecting the device to shock him or jump out of his hand.

For a few seconds, nothing happened, and Yuri thought that the button had done nothing. Then, from the depths of the power plant, a sound echoed forth. It pulsed in a high-pitched tone, sounding like an alarm clock on steroids. Yuri looked at Lucas as he took back the small device.

“What is that?”

“Audible transponder. All the radiation around here makes it impossible to track Iosif’s suit through any other means, so what you just switched on is that last-ditch emergency audible transponder located in his gear. I didn’t want to activate it until I was certain we were close by since we’re not the only ones who can follow it.”

Lucas stood and moved forward quickly through the construction area, heading toward the western cooling lake to the south of the power plant. Though it was difficult to tell exactly where the sound was coming from, both Yuri and Lucas agreed that it was roughly in the direction of the power plant, the same place that Lucas had spotted the creature.

Knowing that they were treading on the territory of the beast, Yuri forgot his cold and chills and focused on following Lucas as closely as possible. As Lucas scanned ahead of them, Yuri kept his eye behind them, watching on the ground and up in buildings and other structures for any signs of the shadowy creature. Although Yuri only held a simple shotgun for protection, he put his full confidence in Lucas who had already chased the creature off once before.

The alarm grew louder as the pair drew closer toward the western cooling lake. The lakes were once used as reservoirs for cooling the power plant, but were drained shortly after the disaster. Constructed of concrete, they had quickly seen growth of plants and algae that were fed by the rainwater that fell into the lake. This plant material absorbed a large amount of radiation, which in turn caused the lakes to develop hotspots over the years. This, plus their close proximity to the nuclear power plant, made them a dangerous place to visit since one wrong slip could mean tumbling down into a pit of radiation.

On the southern side of the sarcophagus Lucas and Yuri could see the abandoned remains of reactor buildings one, two and three stretching eastward from the sarcophagus covering reactor number four. These reactors were kept online for years after the disaster, culminating in shutdowns in the 1990’s and a total decommission in 2000. Plans were made to spend the next two decades removing the radioactive waste from at a slow and calculated pace. After the Ukrainian government began to encounter financial difficulties, though, they sold the fuel to China at a reduced rate with the agreement that everything would be removed by 2016. This led to a complete abandonment of the site, and all personnel who still worked at the power plant were reassigned or quietly retired.

Standing at the edge of the cooling lake, Lucas looked around with his scopes. Satisfied that — for the moment — they were alone, he switched on his flashlight, illuminating the empty concrete lake in front of them, in search of the alarm that sounded like it was right next to them. Yuri clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle a yelp as the contents of the lake bed were revealed.

Bones, tattered clothing, backpacks and even a few guns were scattered in the pit, spread out over its length in a thin layer. Hidden in the dark and masked by the cold, both the sight and smell of the contents of the lake bed had been obscured from the pair during their approach. Even during the daylight, from any farther than a hundred feet away, the brush and grasses growing in the defunct lake camouflaged its contents from observers.

Yuri shook his head in disbelief. “How is this even possible? There must be dozens of bodies down there. How has no one discovered this?”

Lucas began to walk along the perimeter, searching for an easy way down as he spoke. “This part of the complex is pretty isolated. No one would normally come down here due to the radiation. The closest visitors get to the sarcophagus is the center north of what used to be the new sarcophagus construction yard. Plus, there’s no clear line of sight to the lake bed from the roads. Aside from stashing these remains inside a building, there’s no better place to do it.”

“Why go to all this trouble?” Yuri followed close behind Lucas, following him down the easiest slope into the lake bed. The sound of the transponder was close now, within a few dozen feet.

“Who knows. Maybe after it cleans the bodies of anything edible it deposits them here? I guess it could be marking its territory, or hell, this could even be its nest, though it seems too open for that.”

The mere suggestion that they could be walking in the beast’s very lair made Yuri’s heart race. He felt his chest constrict with panic and tried to force himself to calm down. Lucas had slowed again after taking back his Geiger counter from Yuri and was again scanning their path, stopping every few feet to check for radiation hotspots. He led them on a winding path through the lake bed, slowly picking his way toward a cluster of garments and gear near the edge of the lake opposite where they had entered.

“It’s getting hot up ahead. You stay here, I’ll go on. I’ll be fine for a few minutes in this mess.” Yuri nodded and crouched down, keeping on the lookout for the beast. The high-pitched alarm was beginning to give him a headache, and he wondered how much longer it would be before the creature became curious enough about the foreign noise to come and investigate it.

Moving on ahead, Lucas quickly moved over the piles of discarded remains, trying not to think about the massive amounts of radiation that he was more than likely exposing himself to. As he grew close to the source of the alarm, he pulled out the activation device from his vest and depressed the red button again, silencing the alarm. He then pressed the blue button on the device. A few seconds later, a soft glow emanated from beneath a pile of blood-soaked clothing. The material was still moist and Lucas was grateful for his suit’s gloves as he pulled aside the cloth, exposing what was left of Iosif’s gear.

Iosif’s vest was nearly intact, aside from being shredded in half. Blood had soaked entirely through it, turning the black fabric a shade of deep crimson in the glow of Lucas’s flashlight. He quickly searched through the pockets of the vest, finally coming upon what he had been searching for. Inside the lower back pocket, a cylinder the size of a soda can was nestled inside a small bag along with a device similar to the one he had used to locate the gear. While the cylinder itself appeared intact, the remote control hadn’t fared as well, having been sliced open on one end by the creature’s fearsome claws.

Why the hell would it need a remote, anyway? Lucas mused over this new piece of the puzzle before he tucked the bag containing the damaged remote and the intact cylinder into a pocket on his vest. He turned around, preparing to head back to Yuri, when movement on the ridge of the cooling lake caught his eye. Lucas pulled his SVD up, aiming it in the direction of the movement and stared down the scope.

In the inky blackness, slinking along nearly out of view, a pair of glowing eyes appeared in the night vision scope, accompanied by the familiar black mass attached to them. Lucas kept still as he watched the creature pace slowly along, watching the pair who were crouched in the cooling lake. Lucas silently prayed that Yuri would not notice the presence of the creature and make any sudden moves, but this hope was short-lived.

Out of the corner of his other eye, Lucas saw Yuri turn to look in the direction the SVD was pointing. A few seconds passed in silence as Yuri processed the sight of the creature on the edge of the lake. As recognition dawned over what it was, he let out a scream and raised his shotgun, preparing to fire on the beast.

“No! Don’t shoot!” Lucas called to Yuri and started to run toward him, trying to close the gap between himself and the young man. His cry of warning came a few seconds too late, though, as Yuri began to fire at the beast with the shotgun. Enraged, the beast ducked out of sight for a moment, disappearing from Lucas’s scope as Yuri continued to fire wildly into the darkness.

Lucas grabbed Yuri’s arm, pulling him along as he ran, trying to keep an eye on both where they were running and where he last saw the creature at the same time. Yuri stumbled along behind Lucas, having dropped his shotgun in the confusion.

“Get up the slope, quick!” Lucas yelled at Yuri, all pretense of stealth having been abandoned. Lucas pushed Yuri up ahead of him, holding his SVD scope up to his eye to try and catch sight of the creature. In all of the jostling, Lucas finally saw what he was looking for. On the opposite side of the cooling lake, the massive form of the beast tore along the rim of the lake, heading directly for them. With Yuri and Lucas both now out of the pit, there were only a few seconds left to make a decision about what to do next before the creature would be upon them.

Oddly enough, Yuri was the first one to make a move. He began to run across the nearby field, heading for the reactor buildings in the distance. Lucas ran after him, struggling to keep up with Yuri’s sudden burst of energy.

“Just ahead, do you see it?” Yuri yelled back to Lucas who was only a few paces behind. In front of them, a small structure stood in the middle of the field. No larger than an outhouse, it was painted white and had a single steel door that led inside. Lucas immediately recognized it as an underground bunker entrance and realized what Yuri was doing.

While going underground would in no way guarantee that they would be able to lose the creature, Lucas couldn’t think of any other alternatives that were close enough. As they reached the door, Yuri pulled the handle, overjoyed to find that it was unlocked. He flung the door open and stepped inside, facing a large hatch with an oversized wheel on the ground inside the structure.

Lucas slid to a stop behind Yuri just in front of the structure and brought his SVD up in a ready position, preparing to fire on the creature. “Open the hatch! I’ll cover you!” Yuri knelt down and frantically began to turn the rusty wheel. Though the old metal whined and groaned in protest at first, it gradually gave way and the wheel spun freely, unlocking the hatch. With a grunt, Yuri lifted the hatch and began his descent down the ladder, vanishing quickly into the darkness.

Lucas continued to back up into the structure, having lost sight of the creature during their brief run. Hesitating for a moment, he quickly turned around and descended the ladder, slinging his SVD over his shoulder. After he was a few feet down the ladder he pulled on the steel hatch, swinging it slowly over until its weight brought it down with a loud bang. As he began to turn the wheel on the hatch, a powerful thud came from the other side that caused the wheel to bend inward, striking him on the arm. Lucas hurried down the ladder after Yuri as the pounding on the hatch increased, accompanied by angry snarls as the beast tried to break through the thick steel barrier to pursue its prey.