Prip'Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl Read online

  Lucas shook his head. “Damn. So much for getting you out quickly.”

  “I already told you I’m not going. I’ll die before I lose my chance to kill that thing first.” Yuri leaned over and picked up a piece of a broken chair, brandishing the chair leg in his hands like a baseball bat. Lucas snorted at the sight, momentarily distracted from the seriousness of their situation by Yuri’s absurdity. Lucas could see the fear etched in Yuri’s face, but he was impressed by the display of bravery, no matter how foolish or hopeless it may have been. With a wry smile, Lucas held out his hand to Yuri.

  “My name is Lucas Pokrov, sniper with the Spetsnaz special forces group. I’m sorry to meet you like this, Yuri, but I admire your courage.”

  Yuri held the chair leg in his left hand, gripping Lucas’s thickly gloved hand with his right. Yuri’s grip was firm, though Lucas could feel the slightest tremble in his arm. Whether this was a symptom of the cold, the youth’s exhaustion or his fear, Lucas wasn’t sure. He released Yuri’s hand and reached up to his back, removing the shotgun that was strapped there.

  “Do you know how to use one of these?” Lucas held the shotgun out for Yuri to take. Yuri’s eyes went wide and he dropped the chair leg to the floor, taking the shotgun with both hands.

  “Dimitri and I used to shoot sometimes.” He flipped the pump-action shotgun over, examining the body of the weapon. With a rapid movement he took the pistol grip in one hand and slammed the pump back and then home again, ejecting a shell from the side of the weapon. He grinned sheepishly at Lucas and retrieved the shell, pushing it back into the gun.

  Lucas nodded approvingly. “It’s short range, but it packs quite a punch. Just hold on tight and don’t use it unless you’re right on top of the beast.”

  Yuri nodded and spoke again before Lucas could turn to leave. “What is that thing, Lucas? Is it some kind of bear?”

  Lucas stopped mid-turn, shaking his head as he looked out the entrance of the hospital. “No, but I don’t know what it is. Iosif and I dumped enough lead into it to drop a bull elephant, but it barely seemed to notice us. It’s certainly no bear.”

  Yuri sighed as he sat down in a nearby chair, ignoring the dirt and debris that coated it. “I guess the stories about this place are true.” He looked up at Lucas, questioning him. “Why are you here, anyway? You don’t look like local military.”

  Lucas hesitated before choosing to be open with Yuri instead of hiding his mission. “Iosif and I were sent here to kill whatever that thing is.” Lucas looked behind him and backed up to a table that was pressed against the wall and leaned on it, catching his breath as he spoke. “I think Iosif had more information about it than I did. All I was told at our briefings was that it was some kind of anomaly suspected to be in the area.”

  Lucas looked down at his vest suddenly, sparked by a memory of Iosif. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out the small notebook that Iosif had handed him. Lucas turned the notebook over in his hand, brushing his fingers over the deep brown leather surface. He glanced out the door of the hospital again, still concerned about the possibility of the shadow returning for them again.

  “What’s that?” Yuri stood up and walked closer to Lucas, holding his light up to illuminate the surface of the book. Lucas took off the rubber band that held the book closed and opened it to the first page, flipping through it to try and discern its contents.

  “Looks like some kind of journal.” Lucas flipped back to the first page and began reading. He skimmed the pages quickly at first, expecting to find little of interest in the small book. After the first few paragraphs, though, he began to slow down. Thoughts of the shadow that had attacked them dropped by the wayside as he read through the journal, captivated by the years-old stories told by Iosif.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Special Forces Field Journal

  Iosif Seleznev

  Feb 9, 2014

  It’s been just under 48 hours since we dropped in and it’s all gone to hell. Krylov and Abrahamoff are the only two left. I never thought I’d have a chance to write in this damned book, but we don’t have much else to do but sit here and wait to die. I’m going to outline what’s happened since we dropped in and hope that a recovery team finds this one day.

  Krylov and I are bruised but whole. Abrahamoff got the worst of it, losing his hand on one arm and breaking the other. I’d have him write this all out if he could, but I’m stuck transcribing what we’ve found out. Abrahamoff put the pieces together, figured the whole thing out. It’s fucking unbelievable, but there’s no other explanation for what’s happened here.

  Okay, Abrahamoff’s telling me to start from the beginning. We dropped in 48 hours ago, under the cover of night. There were eight of us in total, six soldiers and two scientists. We three are the only ones left, two soldiers and one scientist from a group of eight that were armed to the teeth. We had enough firepower to take over a small country and we lost almost everyone.

  The first few hours weren’t bad. We blew a hole in the side wall of the compound and stormed in, leaving Krylov behind to watch over Abrahamoff and Gorbunov. The rest of us charged in and lit the place up. Ten minutes later and all the guards were dead, along with a few technicians who got caught in the crossfire. We rounded up the rest of the technicians and put them in a bunker, sealed them in nice and tight so we could poke around. (Abrahamoff insists that I note that we gave them food and water).

  Per the mission instructions we left two men up top to guard the entrance to the main reactor while the rest of us headed down. Everything was uneventful until we hit the bottom of the elevator. There were guards left down in the reactor and they were ready for us, but we figured they’d be there. What we didn’t figure on was there being three full squads. They were jammed in there, too, all spread out across the different floors.

  They opened up on us when the elevator doors opened. We took out the few that were watching the elevator and got Abrahamoff and Gorbunov into a side room where we could fortify against the squads. The thing is, they weren’t really concerned with us. We had a couple guys taking potshots at us, but they weren’t rushing to get us or anything like that. We stayed holed up in the room for a good twenty minutes before the power gave out. That’s when all hell broke loose.

  Gorbunov was actually the first to go. A lot of the lights had gone out and he was standing back against the far wall of the room, separated from the rest of us. One second he was fine and the next second he was screaming and his body was torn apart. I’ve never seen anything like it. We thought he got shot at first until we got the lights out on the remains, or what was left of them. It was just a shitload of blood all spread out across the back of the room and a few bits of him, too. Not much else, except for this giant hole in the wall.

  Right after we see what happened to Gorbunov, we start hearing screams and gunfire from the squads. They’re unloading with everything. AKs, grenades, hell I think one of them must have had a rocket launcher. They were just firing wildly around the reactor, but they sure as hell didn’t care. I don’t know how they avoided hitting it, but they did.

  It only took a few minutes for the gunfire to die down, then we were left wondering what the hell happened. Galkin volunteered to go out and see what was going on, so we sent him to do some recon. The rest of us were paranoid as shit and Abrahamoff was climbing the walls with paranoia, thinking he’d end up like Gorbunov. Just a minute after we sent Galkin out he came back, pale as a ghost. He started going on about shadows in the walls and how the squads were all dead. Before we could respond, this… thing comes out of nowhere down the hall, grabs him and snaps him in two. It was that fast, just like a twig. We were all so stunned that it got Artemiev before we could react.

  We unloaded everything we had into the beast and it ran off, or that’s what we thought at the time. I left Krylov with Abrahamoff in the room and ran down the hall to check everything for myself. We were trying to contact the surface team the entire time, but they had either been killed
as soon as we went down or the radios couldn’t penetrate through the earth. Regardless, it was pretty obvious that the three of us were on our own.

  As I was coming back to the room I was met by Krylov and Abrahamoff who were running like bats out of hell, yelling about a shadow in the wall. The beast was behind them alright, just filling the hall with its mass. The three of us ran for our lives until we got here, into this room. It was just off of the main reactor with an assload of pipes and wires running directly from the reactor core into it. It looked like the best fortified room we had seen outside of the reactor itself, so we ran inside. Krylov and I turned to make a last stand against the beast, but it was unbelievable. It just stopped, right outside the room. It stood there, watching us in the dark, then it ran off and vanished.

  Krylov and I were trying to figure out what happened before it came back, but it was Abrahamoff who figured it out. When we got into this room he started going ape-shit over the controls and monitors. When we eventually got him calmed down he explained that this chamber must have been what saved us. It lines up perfectly with our intel about that new weapon the Chinese were testing, the radiation bomb. Total organic destruction with minimal non-organic collateral damage. It was all here in the files, unlocked and open. I guess whoever was working on them was killed by that beast before they could close everything down.

  Abrahamoff found out that this facility was built to test a radiation removal device that complemented their radiation bomb, and they set up a static field test in this room. I guess the plan was for them to detonate a nuke underground somewhere close once they got enough materials built up, then try to remove the radiation from the surrounding soil. It looks like they wanted to use the devices in tandem. They’d hit a city with a radiation bomb to kill off all the people, then they’d deploy a mobile version of this room to clean up the radiation overnight. Then they’d be able to roll in the next day and take control of the city without getting irradiated to hell.

  Here’s the kicker. Abrahamoff thinks this creature is some kind of radiation eating monstrosity. We poked our heads out a few times and took some readings of where it had smashed through the walls and floors and the radiation levels were off the chart. If that’s true, then it explains why we’re safe in here. This room is drawing power directly from the reactor so it’s still cleansing the room of radiation. If that beast likes radiation, then it would think of this room as hell. I told Abrahamoff he was insane when he first suggested it, but the evidence makes sense.

  Of course, there’s a problem. This static device is still in the alpha stages, so it was barely working when we got in. After Abrahamoff started figuring everything out, he realized that the device was at low power and started boosting it. That’s when that thing showed up again. It broke a hole through the floor of the chamber and started going wild on us. It was weakened enough by the field that we drove it back fairly quickly, but Abrahamoff took the attack the worst. He lost his hand and had his other arm broken by that thing. Krylov and I helped finish getting the power bumped up, then we tended to Abrahamoff.

  Abrahamoff’s asleep now. He’s been drifting in and out of consciousness ever since the attack. I think he’s stabilized, but there’s no way we can get out of here without running into that beast again. We’ve been in here for over two days now and we’ve gotten no word from the surface team or the Chinese or anyone. We’ve got our emergency rations here, but I don’t know how much longer we’ll last before something else happens.

  --------------------

  Abrahamoff woke up a few hours ago. He was very weak, but he started talking to us about an idea he had before he fell asleep. He thinks that if the creature is avoiding the room due to the “radiovacuum” (that’s Abrahamoff’s term for it, not mine) field, then if we can lure it in close and then crank the field up to maximum strength, we might be able to weaken or kill it. The problem is that we don’t even know what the thing is made of, where it’s from or what might interest it. Krylov thinks that it wants to kill us and that we should be the bait, but I’m not so sure about it. Abrahamoff dozed off again before we could talk to him about it so we’re waiting for him to wake up again before we try anything.

  I can hear the beast outside the room. I can see it sometimes, too, across the platforms. It sticks to the darkness, avoiding our lights as we try to see it. It keeps moving in to the reactor and back out again, over and over, like it’s feeding. Krylov and I think that must be what it’s doing, feeding on the radiation. That doesn’t explain why it killed so many people, though. It could be an animal defending its territory, or perhaps it needs us for something else.

  I nearly lost my gun to this strange substance we found on the ground. I think the creature must secrete it, maybe from its mouth or nose. It looks like a pile of goo on the ground, like clear gelatin or something. When you touch it, it feels that way too, for the first second. Then, it solidifies almost immediately, trapping the object that was touching it and binding it to the ground. I poked at it with the butt of my rifle and had to cut the damn thing loose. This stuff is incredibly resilient against blows, but a sharp blade renders it inert and you can just scrape it off once you’ve cut into it. I wonder, is this a defense mechanism, an active trapping mechanism or simply a curious byproduct of whatever this beast is?

  --------------------

  Abrahamoff is awake again. We’re going to test the device. He insists on being the bait, but Krylov and I won’t allow it. He’s the one who’s figured out the system and he’s the most important of all of us. I’m going to act as bait while he triggers the device, then we’re all going to try to get out of here. May God have mercy on us if we don’t make it through this.

  --------------------

  Feb 20, 2014

  Krylov is dead. So is Abrahamoff. I can’t think. Can’t think, can’t concentrate, can barely write. I got out, with Krylov. He died within minutes, though, the poor bastard. His skin was bubbling off from the radiation. Before that thing died it got a swipe in at him, pumped him so full he was nearly glowing. The device worked, though. Killed the beast cold in its tracks. Abrahamoff distracted me, acted as bait instead. The thing got him and nailed Krylov before the device went off. I’m in a chopper, minutes from base. Have to hide this, keep it as proof to myself that this really happened. That beast disappeared, all evidence vanished. Just the blood and bodies left. At least it’s dead.

  --------------------

  Feb 23, 2019

  My God, it’s happening again. Five years later and it’s happening again. I pray it isn’t so, and I hope it isn’t so, but my gut tells me otherwise. I never thought I would touch this accursed book again, but circumstances demand it. In twelve hours we leave for Ukraine, my partner and I. We are to investigate the site of the Chernobyl power plant and the nearby town of Prip’Yat. Once again I’m tasked with investigating “anomalies” in the area.

  My superiors have briefed me separately from Lucas, my partner. My attempts to find out why have been met with the simple instruction to keep him in the dark. The massacre in China is still a guarded secret, I see. Writing this information down in my field journal is a grave risk that could mean my imprisonment, but if what I fear to be true comes to fruition, we must all know what has happened.

  I have been given a small device that I am told will kill one of the beasts. It’s a small cylinder containing a fuel cell and miniaturized circuitry for a portable radiovacuum. I’ve been instructed to use it only when I’m within a few meters of the creature, as it has a limited range and is good for only one use. The bastards are preparing me to kill a beast when they won’t even tell me if one is here.

  If I can confirm that another beast is present in the city, I will tell Lucas everything about it. Command can lock me away in the mines or shoot me, but it doesn’t matter. No more deaths will come from this beast. I wish Abrahamoff or Krylov were still here, God rest their souls. I can’t get an answer out of anyone I speak to about China. No one will talk about it
for fear of being punished. Someone expected this to happen again, though, if they made the device in that room portable.

  Lucas is a good kid. Tough as nails, still naïve, but a good kid. I hope this turns out to be some kind of field exercise. He doesn’t need this, not if it’s what I think.

  Time to ride.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lucas Pokrov | Yuri Volkov

  Lucas turned to the last page of Iosif’s field journal that contained writing. Nearly a quarter of the small book had been filled with Iosif’s scribbling. Some of it was in calm, clean writing while other parts were jerky, small and rushed. While it wasn’t much, Lucas finally had pieces to the puzzle that helped explain the events that had unfolded. He closed the book and stared at the leather cover, trying to wrap his mind around what he had just read.

  Yuri shuffled away from him and sat back down in his chair. Both of them stared at the ground, temporarily lost in a fog of confusion after reading through the field journal together. Yuri was the first to speak after several long, quiet minutes.

  “So where’s the device?”

  Lucas looked up at Yuri, shaking his head questioningly. “Device?”