Orest Stelmach - The Boy Who Stole from the Dead

The General laughed. “Pet hunters? What are you talking about, old woman?”

“Someone sent pet hunters from Kyiv to kill the pets. Was that you? Are you responsible for my dog’s death? Did you send the butchers? The ones who drove around in trucks guzzling vodka and giving each other points for running over turtles?”

The General appeared incredulous. “We had to evacuate the entire village. What did you want us to do? Let radioactive animals act as agents to spread the poison?” He laughed. “Old woman, you’re a proper little Ukrainian peasant, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the babushka said, showing no signs of having been insulted. “And you’re a proper Soviet bastard.”

She whipped the broom handle around and smashed both lanterns. Glass cracked. The lanterns crashed against the stone oven. Kerosene spilled. A flame erupted.

“Fire,” said the rawboned man from Lviv.

Marko leaped at him. He grasped the rifle with outstretched hands. The rawboned man pulled the trigger. Marko’s momentum pushed the barrel of the gun toward the floor. A shot rang out. The bullet went into the wooden floor.

The General stood. He straightened his rifle. Nadia charged. She reared her right leg back and snapped her foot into his groin. He screamed. Doubled-over. Nadia grabbed his rifle. Tried to rip it out of his hands. He struggled to breathe but maintained his grip.

A flame flickered in the corner of her eye. Nadia pulled. He wouldn’t let go. She pulled harder. His grip strengthened. She pulled her right hand away and punched his nose. A groan escaped his lips. He fell back. Fury crossed his face. He used his backward momentum to rip the rifle out of Nadia’s hands. He fell to the floor, gun in his hands—

A deafening blast.

Nadia turned. The rawboned man from Lviv lay on the floor with a hole in his chest. Marko was sprawled beside him. The fire spread toward them.

A second blast.

Nadia turned back. The General collapsed. Blood spurted from his neck. A third shot. A hole appeared in his stomach. His eyes were open. He held his neck, gasping.

The babushka stood by a portable cabinet pointing a handgun, flames flying around her, still aiming at the General.

“This gun belonged to one of your pet hunters,” she said. “Now you will die by the bullets you gave them.”

She walked up to him and fired a fourth shot into his forehead.

Marko coughed. Smoke filled the kitchen. Nadia helped him up.

The babushka opened the front door. Nadia and Marko grabbed the rifles and hurried outside. The babushka told them to follow her to the back of the house. The white Lexus was parked around the corner from the garden.

“You must take their car and go,” the babushka said.

Nadia checked the ignition. “No keys,” she said.

Marko ran back into the house. He came back ten seconds later coughing, keys in hand.

Smoke oozed from the chimney and the window sills. There was no brush surrounding the perimeter of the house. No trees overhanging. The house would burn down but the fire wouldn’t spread.

“Where will you go, Pani Hauk?” Nadia said.

“I have some friends. Other squatters. They are close by. I will stay with them tonight. Tomorrow we will return and collect the bones. My friends have a root cellar, too.”

“Can we drive you there?” Marko said.

“No. It’s not too far down the road. Maybe there’s a flashlight in the car.”

The trunk contained Nadia’s suitcase, bag, and two knapsacks filled with hunting paraphernalia including ponchos and canteens. Marko fished a flashlight out of one of them. He handed the babushka the flashlight and one of the knapsacks.

“How is Adam?” the babushka said. “Does he love America?”

“Yes,” Nadia said. “He loves America.”

“And do Americans love him back?”

Nadia realized that by now he’d told Johnny the truth. Whatever the details, he had to have been defending himself when he killed Valentin’s son. And now she knew why.

“They will, babushka . They will.”

JOHNNY PICTURED A woman with a rifle falling backward into water she knew to be radioactive.

“Eva and me,” Bobby said. “We didn’t waste time. Once the woman fell in the water, we took off into the forest. We knew the rest of the hunters would be coming once they heard the shot. Because there was only one shot. But there were two of us. They’d want to know what happened. They may have had radios to communicate but she wouldn’t be able to answer. And sure enough, before we could take ten steps I heard a man’s voice shouting for us to stop. He must have been on his way to her already.”

“Valentine’s father. That’s how you recognized him from the picture.”

“Yes. He didn’t even raise his rifle because he was running to help his wife.”

“How did you get out of the Zone of Exclusion?”

“We figured they’d be expecting us to head for the scavenger trails. So we didn’t. We hiked to the main entrance instead. Last place they’d be looking for us. We climbed up a pair of trees that gave us cover but let us see the checkpoint. So we could see every vehicle that came in and out. An ambulance came flying in about half an hour after we got there. Went flying out ten minutes later. We stayed hidden until the car we saw in Pripyat left the Zone.”

“When was that?”

“The next day. In the afternoon. A young man and an old man.”

“Valentine and his father,” Johnny said. “They hunted you through the night.”

Bobby nodded. “I didn’t know their names at the time.”

“I thought your father lived in an abandoned house in Chornobyl,” Johnny said. “Why didn’t you go there?”

“I didn’t want to lead the hunters to him. Squatting is illegal. Squatters are criminals.”

“They might have killed your father. What happened to Eva?”

“She died nine months later.”

Johnny detected the sadness in Bobby’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“She had thyroid disease,” Bobby said. “She left school early one day. She didn’t come home. Neither did Coach. Three days later Coach came back and told me to prepare for a funeral. She was gone. Sometimes it happens quickly. I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye.”

“How did Valentine find you in New York?”

“He saw my picture in the paper and the YouTube video of my race against the Rangers in Lasker Park last year. He called me while I was with Iryna one night at her cousin’s bakery in Brighton Beach.”

“He must have been in London. Promised his father to avenge his mother. Made the call then. How did he get your number?”

“It’s on my Facebook page.”

“Facebook? You didn’t hide it?”

“Not until after he called. I’m an American. I wanted to make friends. I wanted to be like everyone else.”

Johnny shook his head. Foolish kid. “What language did Valentine speak with you?”

“English.”

“Did he identify himself to you?”

“No. All he said was that he knew me from Ukraine. That he knew who I was. Which was funny.”

“Why?”

“Because he still called me Bobby. You’d figure if he knew who I was he’d have called me Adam. No matter. He said he’d be calling with instructions for us to meet the next day. That I was to follow those instructions to the letter. That if I didn’t or I told the police or anyone else about that call, he’d have Nadia and me killed.”