OLD WOMAN Do you know how old I am?
The soldier slumps. Hot. Sweaty. This is miserable.
SOLDIER I don't know. Old.
OLD WOMAN I am 82. I have lived here my whole life. Right here. That house. This place. What do I care about safe?
SOLDIER
I have a job. Don't cause trouble.
OLD WOMAN
Trouble. Tschh. You are not the first soldier to stand here with a gun. When I was 12, the revolution came.
Oh, for god's sake...
OLD WOMAN Czar's men. Then Bolsheviks. Boys like you marching in lines. They told us to leave. No. Then there was Stalin, and his famine. The Holodomor. My parents died. Two of my sisters died. They told the rest of us to leave. No.
The soldier softens a bit. Doesn't want to be disrespectful.
OLD WOMAN Then the Great War. German boys. Russian boys. More soldiers. More famine. More bodies. My brothers never came home. But I stayed. And I am still here. After all that I've seen. So I should leave now— because of something I cannot see at all? No.
The pail is full. She stops milking.
The soldier takes a couple of steps forward. Reaches down
gently to take the pail. She doesn't move to stop him.
He lifts it up, walks a few steps, and then SPILLS THE MILK
OUT on to the ground--
—where it SPLASHES into a puddle right next to a SIMILAR
PUDDLE... a dark-and-white milky spot on the ground.
She doesn't turn to look at him. Just waits.
Fine. He walks back to her. Hands her the pail.
She takes it, places it under the cow's udder. A small sigh.
And then she begins milking again.
SOUND: a TRUCK HORN. The soldier turns and looks out to THE DIRT ROAD, where a military bus is WAITING. Yeah. He knows. Just a minute.
The soldier looks back at her. Resolute now. All business.
SOLDIER Please stand up now.
She does not. Nor does she speak. The only sound is the soft moo of the cow. The milk hitting the bottom of the pail.
The soldier puts his hand on his holster.
THE OLD WOMAN - hears the SNAP of a button as the soldier unholsters his weapon. But she doesn't move. Keeps milking.
The soldier draws his Makarov. Chambers a round.
cha-chik
SOLDIER This is your last warning.
She keeps milking. The soldier purses his lips. Sweat rolling down from his forehead. Then he takes aim.
CLOSE ON THE OLD WOMAN - tired eyes. Ready. Her hands keep milking. Like they always have. All these years. All this--
GUNSHOT
She blinks.
THE COW - topples to the ground with a heavy thud. Milk still leaking from its udder.
The old woman just stares at it. White rivulets dribbling out into the soil. Then they stop.
SOLDIER (O.S.) It's time to go.
CUT TO TITLES
END TITLES, CUT TO:
OMITTED 403
EXT. APARTMENT COMPLEX COURTYARD - DAY 404
A bloc of IDENTICAL APARTMENT BUILDINGS. In the center courtyard, a small PLAYGROUND. Some young mothers stand together, smoking, watching their children play.
SCORE RISES
TITLE:
KIEV, UKRAINE AUGUST, 1986
405 INT. UNFURNISHED FLAT - SAME 405
An empty apartment. Lyudmilla enters the frame from behind.
REVERSE TO - C.U. LYUDMILLA - looking at the empty space. This is where she will live now. This is her home.
She looks back at the BUILDING CONCIERGE, a woman in her 50's, who stands waiting by the door. Lyudmilla nods. Yes.
WIDER SHOT - Lyudmilla stands in the empty space. We see that her belly has grown. About five months pregnant now.
The concierge leaves, and now Lyudmilla is alone.
Her hand absent-mindedly goes to her stomach.
No. Not alone.
MUFFLED VOICES (O.S.) Point five. Point seven. Point five.
406 EXT. AN OPEN FIELD NEAR A POND - MORNING 406
CLOSE ON: A GAS MASK-covered face. It stares dead ahead. In the dark lenses of the goggles, the distorted reflection of men... moving slowly in a pack through early morning FOG...
THE SURVEY TEAM - thirty soldiers, each wearing plasticky green radiation suits, hoods pulled tight over their heads. Their masks make them look like strange, nightmarish birds.
They move in a fanned-out formation holding RADIOMETERS in front of them, like astronauts exploring a distant planet.
THE TEAM LEADER - holds a map in his hand. He makes notations as they call their numbers out.
SURVEY TEAM Point three. Point seven. Point six.
From off-camera:
SURVEY SOLDIER (O.S.)
Fifteen.
The soldiers stop dead. All turn as one. The lack of expression on the masked faces somehow makes it worse.
REVEAL: a soldier holding his radiometer out toward a tree. A child's RUSTY BICYCLE leans against it. Someone rode here to swim in the pond, and left the bike behind because of a flat tire. The soldier turns back. Repeats.
SURVEY SOLDIER
Fifteen.
The team springs into action. Half the soldiers rush over to the hotspot. Using their radiometers to find the perimeter.
The others grab supplies from the truck. They work in perfect coordination to erect fencing around the hotspot.
A final sign planted in the ground. A yellow triangle. Cyrillic lettering. But we won't need a translation.
The red RADIATION SYMBOL on the sign is enough.
The sound of approaching HELICOPTER BLADES, and the Team Leader looks up, his masked face staring at the sky.
SCORE CARRIES US THROUGH TO:
407 OMITTED 407
408 INT. LYUDMILLA & VASILY'S PRIPYAT APT. - CONTINUOUS 408
Where we first met them... the night of the explosion. The apartment is mostly as we saw it then. Lyudmilla's cigarette in the ASHTRAY, stubbed out a lifetime ago.
But there is plaster dust covering the table where she sat. And rat droppings. The calendar is frozen, and will forever be, on April 1986.
SCORE CARRIES US THROUGH TO:
409 INT. HOTEL ROOM - POLISSYA 409
CLOSE ON: LEGASOV - by the window. Lost in thought. Smoking. Anxious.
PHONE: rings, jarring Legasov back to reality. He picks it up.
LEGASOV
Legasov.
(checks his watch) Alright. I'll be there to meet him.
He stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray, and:
410 EXT. REACTOR SITE / MOBILE OFFICE 410
A military car heads down the long road toward--
DRIVER'S POV - the approaching CHERNOBYL POWER PLANT
The car pulls into the reactor site area and comes to a stop. GENERAL TARAKANOV emerges. He stops to take it all in. A grim pause. Then he strides toward the MOBILE OFFICE.
411 INT. MOBILE OFFICE 411
CLOSE ON AN BLACK AND WHITE AERIAL PHOTO of CHERNOBYL. The massive, gaping wound in Building 4. Wreckage still covers the roof of the building.
Tarakanov sits at the table with Legasov and Shcherbina. Just staring at the photo. Then he flips to the next. And the next. Images of utter destruction.
LEGASOV
The atom is a humbling thing.
TARAKANOV Not humbling.
(drops the photos) Humiliating. Why is the core still exposed to the air? Why haven't we already covered it?
LEGASOV
We want to. But we can't get close enough. The debris on the roof is graphite from the core itself. Until we push it off the roof and back down into the reactor, it will kill anyone who goes near it.
As he speaks, he pulls photos to show Tarakanov.
LEGASOV
You can see the roof has three levels. We've named the sections— that small one there is Katya. About a thousand roentgen per hour. Presume two hours of exposure is fatal.