Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

“Last chance to turn back,” he said.

Nadia recognized the scar from photographs of children at the Chernobyl Museum. Cancer of the thyroid.

Her dosimeter chattered steadily. Meeting her uncle suddenly seemed far less compelling than it had in Kiev. But then again, she needed the money, and there was also the boy, her cousin. How dangerous could Pripyat be if they offered daily tours of the place?

Nadia swallowed but shook her head.

“You go on?” he said.

Nadia imagined having a little cousin who looked up to her, and logging onto her brokerage account and seeing a seven- or eight-figure cash balance. “I go on.”

“Okay. You go on.” The tips of his silver-and-gold teeth shined in the dark. It was the first time she’d seen him grin. “You go on. I have some respectability for you.”

Hayder disappeared into the forest to tell Volodya he could leave and returned thirty seconds later. The truck rumbled away in the darkness.

Nadia checked her watch. It was 8:34 p.m. “I have twenty-six minutes. Will I make it to Pripyat in time?”

“Sure, sure. Three kilometers. I put you on the main road to Pripyat before I go. We meet back here ten thirty p.m.”

Nadia recoiled. “You go? Go where? You told us you’d take me to Pripyat yourself. To the Hotel Polissya. That I would wait for you afterward in the Chernobyl café. Where there are people.”

He pursed his lips sympathetically. “Small change in the plan. Very small. Before we go in the truck, Volodya relay message from the business contact. Schedule change. I meet him at nine o’clock now, so cannot go with you. You must go alone.”

“But isn’t Pripyat a ghost town? Are there any lights there at all?”

“Sure, sure. Good light on the bicycle, and I give flashlight, too,” he said. “Check cell phone. The coverage good. Is very good.”

Nadia pulled out her phone. Five bars lit up in green. Hayder did the same and nodded reassuringly. She punched his number into her phone and hung up as soon as it rang.

“See?” Hayder said. “No worries. Hayder is the stand-up guy. You get lost, any problem, you call me, we work out together. Just like New York.”

“Yeah,” Nadia said. She eyed the wreckage on the horizon and imagined a team of human robots cleaning it all up. “Just like New York.”

At the outskirts of the power station, the edge of a cooling pond shimmered in the night. Nadia remembered the skates the boy was wearing in the photo and wondered if he played hockey on it during the winter. Perhaps that was as good as it got for her cousin out here, a topless Madison Square Garden manufactured out of radioactive water, as frozen during the winter as Chernobyl was in time.

ADAM FELL TO his knees in the field, gasping. His necklace popped out of his shirt. The locket bobbed before him. He reached out to tuck it back in.

“No strength,” his hockey coach said.

The snap of the homemade whip cracked the air. The braided rope lashed Adam’s shoulders and back. It dug through his sweatshirt and T-shirt and burned his skin. Adam’s hands fell to the ground for support before he could grasp the locket. He gritted his teeth, determined not to make a sound no matter how much it hurt.

“No stamina,” the coach said.

He snapped the whip again.

Moisture blurred Adam’s vision. The whip thrashed his spine.

“No heart,” the coach said.

He whipped Adam again.

Tears streamed down Adam’s cheeks.

The locket. Where was the locket? He focused, grabbed it, and tucked it under his shirt.

The coach towered over him, his huge potbelly hanging over his waist like a sack of potatoes, rope coiled in his right hand, slapping his left as though counting the seconds until the next beating.

“I’ve been training you to play hockey since you were seven. Seven years old! And you are what—fifteen now? That’s eight years. And you still can’t climb that hill? You really are a useless bastard. The son of a scumbag Ukrainian thief and an ugly American whore. How many times have I told you? If you can’t climb that hill, there’s no hope for you. There’s no future for you. And guess what? You’ll never climb that hill.”

The hill was one hundred meters long and as steep as a snow mountain. The problem with the sprint was that it was a rigged game. The coach made him run with a fifty-meter rubber band around his waist. It was as thick as a man’s wrist. The coach tied the other end of the rubber band around his own belly. When he decided it was time for Adam to fall, he yanked on the band and pulled him back.

The coach was right. He would never climb that hill. He would never be strong enough to pull the coach with him.

Rusty hinges creaked behind them. Three huge men in overalls shuffled out the back door of the Korosten Porcelain Factory. They carried pails as wide as tractor tires to the field and placed them in front of three wooden blocks. The first block went up to Adam’s knees, the second to his hips, and the third to his chest.

Adam knew the routine. He did it three to five times a week. He quickly ripped off his tattered sneakers and pulled off his torn socks.

The coach removed a stopwatch from his pants pocket. “Five… four…”

Damian scampered to his bare feet and faced the column of pails and boxes.

“Three… two… one… Begin!” The coach squeezed the stopwatch with his left hand.

Adam jumped. As soon as he landed on the first box, he bent his knees and leaped onto the second. He did the same to land on the third. Once on the highest box, he spun in the air 180 degrees and reversed course. When he landed on the ground, he spun again and repeated the process.

“Five minutes on,” the coach screamed. “One minute off. Total exercise time: thirty-five minutes !”

Thirty-five minutes? The coach was trying to kill him. He’d always been brutal, but now he was insane. It had started after he got back from visiting his father in Chernobyl on Sunday. It was as though the coach knew he would be leaving soon forever. The coach had taken him in years ago as a favor to his father. He’d promised to turn Adam into a professional-caliber hockey player. But now it was as though he didn’t want Adam to go away. If he did leave, the coach wanted to make sure he did so in a casket.

If the coach was planning to kill him, he might have to kill the coach first.

“You won’t last thirty-five minutes,” the coach said. “Makarov would have lasted thirty-five minutes. Tretiak would have surely lasted thirty-five minutes. You? You won’t last thirty-five minutes.”

After twenty-five minutes of jumping, Adam shook off a dizzy spell. His lungs were ready to burst. His legs were spaghetti.

He was moving at a snail’s pace. Each leap required maximum concentration and effort now. But he wouldn’t quit. He wouldn’t give the fat bastard the satisfaction. He’d rather die than quit.

He leaped for the second block. Landed flat on the edge of the square. Bobbled. Wavered. Held his position.

“You want to know why you won’t last?” the coach said. “Because you have no heart. Because you have no soul. You’re the product of a radioactive cesspool. If I were a betting man, I would never bet on you.”

Adam took aim for the third block. He bent his knees. Swung his arms back and jumped.

His toes kissed the block. His heels came up short. He teetered, reached out for an imaginary handle—

There wasn’t one. He tumbled down into the pail of sizzling charcoal rock below him.