“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.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lucas jumped the last few feet off the ladder, landing with a grunt next to Yuri. Wide eyed and shaking, Yuri whispered to Lucas. “Are you okay?”
Lucas nodded and held a finger up in front of his face, indicating that Yuri should remain silent. From the shaft above them the relentless pounding continued, though the hatch still showed no signs of yielding under the onslaught. Lucas turned his flashlight on and scanned it around the tunnel, trying to get some idea of where they were.
The underground area was damp and cramped. The small chamber they were both squatting in was barely tall enough for them to stand and it stretched off in three directions through narrow tunnels. Antiquated pipes and wiring lined the walls of the tunnels, leaving little room for someone to traverse them. Though Lucas couldn’t get a sense of the smell of the place due to his mask, Yuri wrinkled his nose at the musty odors that permeated the underground tunnels.
The construction of the place was a collection of brick, concrete blocks, steel support beams and rotting wooden walkways that extended over deep caverns. Lucas and Yuri both knew little of the underground complex, though each had their own perspective on the area. Yuri had grown up hearing whispers of the underground as a place where “mole people” lived, blinded by the radiation and reduced to scrounging for rats and insects for food. Lucas recalled that the underground had been mentioned in one of his briefings, but couldn’t remember any specifics about it.
The tunnel system extended throughout the lower portions of Chernobyl, linking the various buildings to each other. Their primary purpose was for steam transportation, ventilation, piping and wiring, but they were also used as a more convenient way to travel around the plant during the winter, when the snowfall could be measured in feet. The unofficial nature of this use meant that they weren’t maintained as well as might otherwise be expected, so the years of neglect had been less kind to the tunnel system than it had to other areas of the power plant complex.