Prip'Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl Read online

  Satisfied that he knew how to operate the device, Lucas closed it and returned it to the pocket on his vest. He looked at Yuri who was slowly nodding his head. Yuri looked up and met Lucas’s eyes through the face mask, then he spoke with the defeated tone of a man resigned to his fate.

  “Okay. Let’s do it. Let’s kill this bastard.”

  Lucas stood up and held out his hand to Yuri. The youth grabbed the proffered hand and stood, staring at Lucas as the soldier spoke to him. “You can still leave, you know. You’re a civilian and you aren’t supposed to be here. Just hide in the tunnels until the thing’s dead, then you can get back to your car before the recovery team comes to pick me up.”

  “Even if I wanted to do that, what would I tell my family and friends? How am I supposed to explain to my aunt that her son died? I let him go out there alone and this thing killed him, but I’m not letting it end like that.” Yuri shook his head and gritted his teeth as anger rose in his voice. “No. Like it or not, I’m coming with you. This thing scares the hell out of me, but it killed my best friend. There’s no way I’m running away from it.”

  Lucas sighed deeply and patted Yuri on the back. He briefly considered trying to force Yuri to do as he suggested, but he knew that would be an impossible battle. Despite the dangers, Yuri was dead set on avenging the death of his comrade, a feeling that Lucas knew too well.

  “Come on, then. Let’s get going.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lucas Pokrov | Yuri Volkov

  Time passed by slowly underground. While it felt like they had been traveling for hours, every time Yuri glanced at his watch he was surprised that less than a half hour had passed. Ducking around corners, slinking down corridors and leaping over crevices in the tunnels had left Yuri wondering where they were in the complex. Lucas appeared to know exactly where he was going though as he deftly maneuvered them around collapsed sections of the tunnels, through abandoned maintenance bays and even through a few surface level buildings.

  Ever since leaving the creature behind at the hatch, neither Lucas nor Yuri had seen nor heard any sign of the beast. Yuri decided that if it had left them alone for this long then it must not have been able to find where they were. While this was somewhat unsurprising given the seeming randomness of their trek, he still felt some unease about the assumption that the creature wouldn’t know the area around its own home well enough to find them. Regardless of the true reasons behind being left alone by the beast, Yuri was glad for the temporary reprieve, especially after the close call near the cooling lakes.

  Lost in his thoughts, Yuri bumped into the back of Lucas as the soldier abruptly stopped at an intersection. Yuri backed up as Lucas pulled out his Geiger counter and went from tunnel to tunnel, measuring the radioactivity in each passageway. With a satisfied grunt he put the Geiger counter away and turned back to Yuri.

  “I think we’re close to its lair. I’ve been trying to follow the radiation trail to find a passage that leads near the main reactor chamber and I think this is it. The measurements from that tunnel are rising abnormally fast, probably from water runoff in the soil.”

  Yuri nodded. “What’s to wait around for? Let’s get in there and kill it!” He started to walk down the passageway, but Lucas held up his arm, blocking Yuri’s path.

  “Yuri, you can’t go down there. The radiation levels are going to get much, much higher. Even if that thing doesn’t get you, if you go anywhere near the reactor chamber, you’ll die anyway.”

  Yuri frowned at Lucas and stood his ground, refusing to be pushed back. “If you go in, I go in.”

  “I don’t have time to argue about this, Yuri.” Lucas drew his SVD and stepped back, raising it to aim at Yuri. “I’m sorry about your cousin, but I’m not going to let you–”

  A crash from above the pair stopped Lucas mid-sentence. Both Yuri and Lucas stepped back into the tunnel they had come from. They shone their lights down the other tunnels of the intersection, trying to find the source of the sound. Lucas’s thermal and night vision scopes showed no evidence of anything in the passages, but the sound had most definitely been close by.

  After several seconds of silence, Yuri was preparing to speak, thinking that the noise was just something in a building overhead that had been knocked over by the wind. He opened his mouth to talk, but a second crash, this time much closer, made him snap his jaw shut. Lucas leaned his head out of the tunnel, glancing upward in the intersection.

  Most of the passageway intersections had tall roofs and the remains of ladders that had once gone from the bottom of the intersection up to the top, where more hatches were no doubt positioned. All of the intersections that Yuri and Lucas had passed had no usable ladders, though, so they dismissed the intersections as mere curiosities, not realizing that the beast was using them to track his prey. Once they had reached an intersection with a weakened hatch, the beast struck, pounding away at the hatch with such ferocity that he had nearly torn it off with just two blows.

  A third impact came several seconds later, though this one was accompanied by the sound of rushing air and the clatter of broken bolts as they rained down into the intersection from the smashed hatch. Lucas pushed Yuri into a side tunnel, directing them away from the passage to the reactor chamber. Yuri stumbled ahead as snarls came from the behind them, accompanied by the familiar rustle and clatter of the beast’s body and claws as it descended into the tunnels.

  Instead of dropping directly to the ground, the beast had its claws dug firmly into the concrete walls of the intersection, crawling swiftly downward in a manner reminiscent of a reptile. The face of the beast appeared at the top of the tunnel entrance as Lucas backed up, retreating behind Yuri. Rows of teeth were revealed as the beast snarled openly at Lucas, who responded by raising his rifle toward the creature.

  Remembering their last encounter, the beast quickly tucked its head out of the way as Lucas fired off two shots, both of which missed their target and impacted on the opposite wall. The powerful rounds exploded upon impact, showering the intersection with fragments of metal and concrete and causing the beast to lose its footing. The dark shape of the creature fell to the ground in a heap, though it was swiftly back on its feet. In the infrared scope of his SVD, Lucas watched the creature back up out of the tunnel to hide just out of sight.

  “Keep moving!” Lucas called back to Yuri, whose only response was a grunt as he continued running down the passage. After several more minutes of running, Yuri and Lucas slowed again and strained to listen for the creature. Silence was their only companion, though, which once again proved to be more unnerving than knowing where the beast was. Stuck in a long stretch of winding tunnel with no nearby intersections or ways of escape, Lucas took up the lead and left Yuri to watch their backs with his flashlight.

  Lucas stopped every few seconds to check his compass, trying to get an idea of where they were. He cursed hoarsely, still struggling to get enough air through his mask. “Shit! I have no idea where we are.”

  Yuri started to reply when a slight vibration in the air gave him pause. He cocked his head and pointed upward to the low ceiling as he tapped Lucas on the shoulder. Lucas nodded in confirmation that he had heard the sound as well, then quietly began to retreat back down the hallway in the direction they had come from. A few feet ahead, where they had just been standing, the vibrations became worse and pieces of the ceiling began to shatter and fall to the ground.

  “Go!” Lucas shouted at Yuri, who turned and ran back down the hall. As he ran, the ceiling in front of Lucas finally caved in and a shadowy mass dropped into the hallway. In his thermal scope, Lucas couldn’t make out any details of the mass, but his night vision scope clearly showed the creature’s outline, along with its two red, glowing eyes.

  The beast snarled at Lucas and began to charge down the hall, gaining speed at a frightening rate. Lucas backed down the hall as quickly as he could, keeping the SVD trained on the creature. Only when the shadow had come within twenty feet of Lucas did h
e open fire, squeezing off two quick rounds from the SVD in rapid succession. The rounds exploded against the beast’s body, lighting up the hallway with brief flashes, though they didn’t seem to cause any ill effects to the creature itself.

  Lucas could hear Yuri behind him, still running through the tunnel, then stopping as he reached what Yuri assumed to be the intersection. He continued to fire at the creature, which other than causing it to snarl and slow down slightly, was still having no effect. Damn! Did this thing grow body armor or something?

  With only five rounds left in his current magazine and no time left to swap in another one, Lucas decided that it was time to put his sniper training to good use. He raised the rifle a few inches, leveling it with the creature’s face. Dropping to one knee, he pressed the rifle deep into his shoulder and flipped both scopes down. Lucas stared down the iron sights of the SVD and squeezed the trigger rapidly, dropping four rounds into the creature’s right eye socket. Lucas’s motions were so quick that the beast had barely gained any ground and was still several feet away when the explosives from the rounds went off.

  Even from underneath his protective mask, Lucas’s ears still rang from the concussive blasts of the rounds. These were accompanied by a loud howling groan from the creature as it skidded to a stop. With one round left, Lucas dropped it into the center of the creature’s face where he assumed its nose or mouth might be. While the previous shots had startled, wounded and enraged the beast, the fifth shot was the last straw for the creature. Viscous liquid was expelled from the creature’s face from the impact, a mixture of the clear gelatin-like substance and a dark, black substance that Lucas had never seen before. The beast backpedalled down the passage, leaving Lucas to watch it retreat, panting heavily as he saw the single red eye vanish around a corner.

  A moment of silence passed as Lucas kept watch down the hall, having quickly swapped out the empty magazine in his SVD for a full one. He wiped the strange substances from his chest and mask, puzzled by the dark liquid yet glad that there wasn’t enough of the clear gelatin on him to harden and cause damage to his gear. Yuri’s quiet footsteps sounded from behind him and he turned his head to check on him.

  “You alright?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. How about you? That was one hell of a loud firefight.”

  Lucas smirked and stood, satisfied that they were safe for the moment. “Fine here. That thing’s not, though. I think I took out one of its eyes.”

  Yuri grinned broadly as he congratulated Lucas. “Hot damn! That’s fantastic!”

  “Maybe.” Lucas shrugged. “I didn’t kill it, and now it’s wounded. If that thing’s like any other wild animal, all I did was piss it off and make it twice as dangerous.”

  Yuri’s celebratory mood was instantly deflated upon hearing this and he grew quiet and somber. “So what are we doing now? Heading into the main chamber?”

  Lucas pondered the question for a moment when a sharp pain exploded in his head. He gripped the sides of his mask tightly as stars sprang into view and the entire tunnel started to spin. Yuri reached out to grab his arm but Lucas waved him away, falling to one knee to support himself. An overwhelming feeling of nausea rose in the pit of his stomach and he fought it back, trying to keep himself from vomiting.

  “What’s wrong?” Concern grew in Yuri’s voice as he tried to reach out again to help Lucas up to his feet.

  “Don’t touch me, stay back!” Lucas growled as he spoke, fearful of what might be the cause for his sudden onset of symptoms. He grabbed the Geiger counter from his vest pocket and switched it on, then held it to his chest where the majority of the gelatin and black liquid had landed. The counter immediately spiked into the red zone and started clicking rapidly. Yuri’s face grew pale and he stepped back, unsure of what to do next.

  Thinking quickly, Lucas held the counter to a section of wall in the tunnel and confirmed that it showed low amounts of radiation. He then spread a small amount of the black liquid from his chest onto the wall with his free hand and held the Geiger counter up again. Where the readings had previously shown a nearly radiation-free section of the wall, the counter was spiking into the red zone again. Lucas stood up shakily and turned to Yuri.

  “Did any of that black shit get on you?” He held his hand up to Yuri, showing him the black liquid he was referring to. Yuri shook his head as he glanced at the Geiger counter, then back at Lucas.

  “How much is on me?” Lucas turned around in the hall as Yuri raised his flashlight. The look on Yuri’s face told Lucas the answer almost as soon as he said it.

  “You’re covered, Lucas. It’s all over your arms, your legs and your chest. Your mask looks pretty much clear, but the rest of you is coated with it.”

  Lucas nodded grimly and put his Geiger counter back into his vest. “Back up more. You don’t want to get this stuff on you.” Yuri quickly retreated back down the hall, away from Lucas and the passageway that was coated in the radioactive liquid. Lucas walked a few paces toward Yuri and stopped, leaning his SVD up against the wall of the passageway.

  “You’re sure my mask is clean?” Lucas twisted his head again and Yuri nodded, too stunned to speak.

  “Good.” Lucas unbuckled his right glove and pulled it off, raising his hand away from his sleeve to avoid coating it with the black liquid. He reached back to his mask and released the catch on the back, feeling it slide forward on his head as he loosened it up. Once he removed the straps, he pulled the mask off and tossed it toward Yuri, who instinctively caught it and then dropped it to the ground in surprise.

  Lucas’s dark hair was glistening with sweat from exertion and he rubbed his face with his ungloved hand, glad to be free from the restrictive confinement. Yuri slowly picked up the mask again and looked it over, amazed by the amount of circuitry and wiring inside. Lucas stepped back from Yuri as he looked down at his body again, shaking his head at how much of the black liquid was present.

  “Don’t you need this?” Yuri held out the mask for Lucas.

  “No. Now it’s your turn to wear it. The mask won’t protect you from radioactive contamination on your skin, but most of the stuff in Prip’Yat is in the dirt and dust. This should keep you safe from most of the hotspots as you run back to your car.”

  Yuri shook his head firmly. “We’ve had this conversation too many times already. I’m going with you.”

  “Yuri, shut the hell up and listen to me.” Free of the mask, Lucas’s voice was louder than he had intended. Yuri stopped speaking and stared at him.

  “This black stuff is killing me. I’m already dead. Even if I got to a decontamination chamber now, I’d die within a few weeks.” As if to purposefully emphasize this point, Lucas grimaced and gripped his head as another wave of pain washed over him. “I’m in the early stages of severe radiation poisoning. Whatever this is, it came from that thing when I shot it. I’m committed to this now.”

  “So am I!” Yuri protested.

  Lucas nodded and made a circular motion with his hand. “Yes you are, but not in the way you think. Turn over the mask and look on the side.” Yuri flipped the mask around in his hands until he was looking at the interior again.

  “Now you see that little indent next to the left earpiece? If you push that in and twist, it’ll eject the memory chip for the mask’s monitoring system. Don’t do it now, though. Eject it once you’re clear of the city.”

  Yuri brushed his finger over the indent and examined it as he spoke. “Monitoring system?”

  “The mask has an integrated camera that looks out the front, along with an audio recorder. All of the data is saved to the mask’s memory chip for post-operational analysis.”

  “I don’t understand… why did you give me this?”

  Lucas smiled through another wave of pain. “Two men died here tonight and the bodies of hundreds more are in the lake outside this complex. I’d bet there are even more inside the reactor chamber or wherever this thing calls home around here.

  “If both of us die tonight, n
o one will ever know about what happened here. Even if a recovery team finds the memory chip, they’ll just hide it away. The only way to make sure people know what happened is if you take the chip and distribute its contents.”

  Yuri sputtered in response. “But my cousin! That thing killed him! I have to destroy it!”

  “There are bigger things at stake here than your cousin’s death, Yuri.” Lucas’s voice was warm, though it cut straight to Yuri’s heart like a knife. “What about those other people? What about Iosif? Who’s going to make sure people know what happened to them? This isn’t something that can stay hidden. This is the second creature that we know about. If there are more out there, we can’t let our governments hide them from the world.”

  Lucas was preparing to physically intimidate Yuri in order to convince him to leave until he heard Yuri’s next statement.

  “Okay, I’ll do it. How do I get out of here?”