Michael Beres - Chernobyl Murders

Can’t you call him and find out about this? I’m sure he’s all right.”

“Hey,” said one of the men. “You work at the plant. What do you think this is?”

“Juli, he’s talking to you. They want to know if you know anything.” Marina turned to the group of people gathering slowly like penguins. “She doesn’t know anything. We heard you out here and came to see what was going on.”

“But she works there in a laboratory. A technician should know what’s happening.”

“Juli,” whispered Marina, “say something.”

“I don’t know anything,” said Juli. “Some of you must also work at the plant.”

“Even so, you are a technician,” said one of the men. “Therefore, you must have special knowledge of what’s going on. You must know if there’s danger for us.”

“Why us?” said the large woman.

“Radiation,” said the man. “If a reactor explodes, it releases radioactive fallout like a bomb.”

Several heads turned to look at the glow in the sky. At the far end of the courtyard, a woman sobbed loudly as she ran outside.

“The phone!” screamed the woman. “My husband! He’s there tonight, and the phone is dead! Something terrible has happened!”

The man who had mentioned radioactive fallout turned back to Juli. “I know you work in the radiation measurement laboratory. If one of the reactors exploded and there is radiation leaking out, tell us what we should do.”

The man walked directly in front of Juli. Marina stepped up to the man. “She doesn’t know anything. Because she works there doesn’t mean she had anything to do with this.”

“I didn’t mean it was her doing,” said the man. “I simply want to know if there’s anything we can do to protect ourselves.”

“Yes,” said Juli.

“Speak up!” shouted the heavy woman. “We can’t hear you!”

“Yes! If there was an explosion and if the explosion involved one of the reactors, the initial radiation will be airborne.” She looked to the sky, the dark column of smoke crawling upward. “The best thing to do is go to your apartments. Stay inside and close all the windows.

Keep the outside air from coming in as much as possible.”

“Then what?” asked the man.

Juli looked from one shadowed face to another. “If there is radiation, the authorities will tell us what to do. But it could be smoke from any fire. It could be nothing.”

The sound of a car traveling at high speed came from the main road at the front of the apartment complex. Tires squealed as the car drove through the curve in the road beyond the apartments.

After the car passed, a truck came, its lights flashing in the trees.

When the truck appeared for a moment between buildings, Juli saw figures in off-white uniforms hanging onto the back.

An hour later, Juli sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the curtains closed over the balcony door. Even if the curtains had been open, she wouldn’t have been able to see anything because the balcony faced north. After coming up the stairs, they had run to look out the south-facing window at the far end of the hallway. The fire was definitely at the Chernobyl plant. Flames leapt into the sky at the base of its towers, and Juli knew the glow in the sky meant death.

Marina sat cross-legged behind Juli on the bed, massaging Juli’s shoulders as she spoke. “There’s nothing you can do,” said Marina.

“Worrying about it won’t help. Even if it was the number four reactor, Mihaly would have been one of the first out of there because he would have known if something was going wrong. He’s home right now, sealed in his apartment.”

“Mihaly wouldn’t have left, Marina. There’s no answer at the plant switchboard. They were going to do a shutdown. And now there’s no answer…”

“How bad could it be?” asked Marina. “My Vasily lives closer to the plant than we do. I wish he had a phone so I could call him.

What about the dosimeter you put out on the balcony? Will the dosimeter tell us if it’s safe?”

Juli stood, walked to the balcony door, and opened the curtains.

She slid the door open a few centimeters, reached quickly outside, pulled the dosimeter inside, and slammed the door.

“You should have asked me to get it,” said Marina.

“Why? You said it’s probably nothing.”

Juli took the dosimeter into the bathroom, turned on the bright overhead light, and held the small lens to her eye. At first she thought she saw the hairline resting at zero. But it was only the zero marker line. Then she thought there was no hairline, and she had trouble keeping the markings in the dosimeter in focus. Her hand shook, so she held the dosimeter with both hands, steadying her knuckles against her forehead.

The hairline was where she had never seen it during her years at the laboratory. If turned in to the rack on Monday morning, it would bring a crew of safety technicians down into the sub-basement to remove her from the vicinity of the sensitive counting equipment.

Marina spoke from behind Juli. “What does it say?”

Juli turned and did her best to remain calm. “Thirty millirems.”

“Is that a lot?” asked Marina.

“Some workers are exposed to as much as a thousand millirems a year. Anything above five thousand a year is considered dangerous.”

“Then it’s okay, Juli. See? It’s fine. Everyone will be fine. Mihaly and Vasily… everyone.”

“How long did I leave it on the balcony?”

“I don’t know,” said Marina. “Maybe half an hour.”

Juli worked out the figures in her head. It was no use remaining calm. “At this rate, in a day outside on the balcony, the exposure would have been over a thousand. In five days it would have been beyond the danger level. We’re three kilometers from the explosion, and the worst of the radioactivity might not even be here yet!”

Juli turned, placed the dosimeter on the edge of the sink, and began washing her hands and arms vigorously, especially her right because it had reached out into the blackness to retrieve the dosimeter.

“But if something’s happened, where’s the militia?” asked Marina, looking worried.

The ceiling began shaking with a pounding vibration, rattling the balcony door. “What’s that?” screamed Marina.

Juli looked up as the pounding became louder before suddenly fading. “A helicopter heading to the plant.”

“Should we go out and see?”

Juli went to Marina and held her shoulders. She spoke in a voice that did not seem her own. “We’ll stay here. Technically I should go to the plant because I’m a dosimetrist, and in the event of a spill, I should be monitoring the area. But this is no spill. This is a disaster.”

Not everyone in Pripyat was frightened. Many slept as moist air swept through open windows. Others, even though they knew of the explosion, did not believe radiation could be allowed to be let loose. Dawn would bring action. Weren’t there plenty of sirens now? Weren’t firemen being called to extra duty? Obviously the explosion, and the resulting fire, was something entirely controlla-ble? To some, even the metallic taste and smell in the air was a good sign. “Nothing but an ordinary industrial fire,” they said.

Lectures from Juli’s classes years earlier in Moscow haunted her. Strontium, krypton-85, cesium-137, and the concerns of her co-worker Aleksandra Yasinsky-all of these things from her years of training and working with radiation took on new meaning. Not because of concern for herself, but because of the vulnerability of the baby growing inside her.

And what about Mihaly? One second she imagined Mihaly and his co-workers safe inside the bunker beneath the administration building. The next second she imagined him at home with his wife, both of them looking out their balcony window facing the plant.