Amaury Dreher - Opalescence - The Secret of Pripyat

I noticed that their silhouettes were getting bigger. Yes, they were getting closer. I had to get out of here. They were so close that they would necessarily see me take the exit. Instinctively, I choose to slip under the bed. The two Skinheads came through the door and threw themselves on the mattress to fall asleep almost immediately. I felt trapped. Their sleep was still light, it would probably only take a sneeze to make me noticed. I made the decision to wait and try to control my breathing to calm down.

It was only when I heard them snoring loudly that I got out of under the bed. I tried to move silently towards the door. The floor creaked, first slightly and then vehemently. I was taking a very slight precaution to move as gently as possible. But the old parquet floor seemed to moan at my feet. The big Ukrainian fellow opened his eyes and saw me. He got up in a flash and grabbed his rifle. I barely had time to breathe, when he shouted incomprehensible words and pointed a gun at me. Lesser by the alcohol, he had forgotten that the weapon was not loaded. This reprieve probably saved my life. I ran as fast as I could out of the building and walked away into the forest. Drunk as he was, he couldn’t keep up and went back to his sidekick.

Oleksandr had warned me of the presence of these people. Most of them were simply young people who were bored and wanted to spice up their weekends by coming to spend some time in the Zone. Still others belonged to ultra-nationalist movements with well-defined ideas. Russians or Ukrainians, fights often broke out when they met. The conflict between the two countries fuelled their pride. These two, on the other hand, had only brought a shotgun. They had probably only come to have fun in the Pripyat forest and kill some deer. They were kids, they must have been in their twenties at most. I considered them to be harmful inconveniences, but I knew they were not the worst.

I had no idea that in winter the Zone was so busy. Obviously these young people were not too embarrassed. They entered the exclusion zone without adequate equipment. Neither dosimeters nor gloves were included in their equipment. They dreamed of terror, but they did not have the hundredth of courage of their elders the liquidators, those who sacrificed their lives in the reactor containment operations.

Monday.

I was breaking into a school whose name I had no idea. It didn’t look like the one I had been with when I was growing up in Pripyat. Would I have recognised it? I wasn’t convinced of that.

I was moving forward in small steps, almost frightened at the thought of damaging the old parquet floor a little more. Notebooks were strewn all over the classroom floor. On the wall, drawings of children were still hanging. Most of them were torn apart. Some of them were quite successful. All of them were getting moldy. A German book was opened on a page describing animal vocabulary.

Around me, the tables and chairs seemed authentic, ordered as if a lesson had just ended. A yellowish element caught my attention. A brand new little Lego was sitting on one of the desks, his arms dangling. It must have been brought in and then placed by a photographer lacking inspiration. Unfortunately, this type of cross-dressing was common in the Zone . They made the Internet forums happy and many gullible bloggers shared these kinds of clichés. For my part, I was working hard not to change anything. I didn’t want to alter this environment that I considered sacred. I snuck between the desks to get close to the closet at the back of the room. It was gutted and revealed a few books, each dustier than the next. Some were covered with inscriptions in the Cyrillic alphabet. These were history textbooks. Dated from 1984, they obviously had not been used much.

With unsatisfied curiosity, I left the classroom and headed for an adjacent room. It was to be a rest area for the school’s teachers. A crumbling chair was there. The place looked much better than the rest of the building. It had probably been visited less. However, the room was not very interesting, as it was practically empty. The decoration was cold and sketchy. It seemed virgin of any desecration, which relieved me for a few moments.

I quickly realized that I was not alone. As I was about to leave, I came face to face with a Stalker. He was dressed in a khaki jacket and a gas mask on his shoulder, which had the effect of panicking me. In a fearful reflex, I plunged two fingers into my pocket to grab my knife and brandish it in front of him. The individual raised his arms and told me that he meant no harm. He reached out to me and introduced himself.

Andrei was in his thirties, rather thin, and had light eyes. His appearance was a little peculiar, half-smiling, half-bad. In addition to his blond hair, he had a scar on his left cheekbone, a wound he didn’t mention.

We exchanged our experiences, our biographies. He knew the city of Pripyat by heart, but had never entered the Red Forest. He was not very interested in poisonous vegetation. His hobby was urban exploration. The real one. Not the one intended to show a Japanese couple around the Pripyat buildings approved by the Ukrainian government.

Andrei visited the Zone frequently, “3 to 4 times a year” he explained to me. There he felt a real need, a kind of vital impulse that had to be fulfilled. However, he had no direct connection to the events. Andrei was of Estonian origin and was born in Kiev. Coming from an uninhabited and privileged family, he was not predestined to wander through radioactive rubble, but rather to study at university and scour the capital’s trendy bars.

Andrei was atypical. He was trying to escape boredom, to explore the buried one. In Pripyat, he had entered the basement of the hospital several times, a place of multiple fantasies. “Not all of them wrong,” he told me, cracking a broad smile. The place was considered by many to be haunted, devoured by paranormal phenomena. We heard all kinds of supernatural stories about him. Despite his encouragement, I stubbornly refused to go there. Besides the necromantic aspect, the levels of radioactivity were much higher in the basements of the buildings and I was not ready to take that risk. According to him, the Geiger counter was panicking so much that it was better to turn it off so as not to go crazy. To be with oneself only, to falsify the rational in order to tame fear and overcome the anguish of the place. Andrei’s stories fascinated me.

We left the building and started walking together while we continued our conversation. He took a small path that rushed through the trees. We chatted happily under the icy peaks, almost carefree and unaware of where we were standing.

When he bent down to tie his shoelaces again, I thought I saw the butt of a gun.

—Are you armed?

—Of course. Not everyone here is benevolent.

—Have you ever used it before?

—Only once.

—What happened? What happened?

—I was near the Jupiter factory when shots were fired. A bullet suddenly ricocheted a few centimetres from me. I never saw my attacker. As I fled, I tried to retaliate. I could swear I touched someone or something. I had to shoot blind, I don’t know what I reached. The Zone made me a little paranoid. I don’t trust anyone. Don’t rely on anyone, not even the military. Believe me, it will probably save your life.

—What kinds of people did you meet in the Zone? Why are they coming?

—As you might expect, most of the visitors here are tourists. They arrive and leave daily with their guide and group of congeners. The rest of the people who are there are working for the Zone. Most are employed by the government and do maintenance. Others are employed by private firms and are assigned to the sarcophagus or to the various nuclear waste treatment centres located throughout the Zone. You have a few soldiers too, although most of them just stay at the many checkpoints. Finally, there are the Stalkers. Those prowlers you’re now part of. Many of them are attracted to Pripyat’s loot. People are poor around here, it’s hard to blame them. Some are willing to do anything. Their lives are of little value. I met a young Belarusian man about ten years ago. He was convinced that Pripyat’s treasure was hidden in the reactor itself. The unlikeliest place would be where the loot would be found. It sounded almost too beautiful and too easy. He was so convinced of his reasoning that he devised a plan to enter it. He had offered to accompany him, but fortunately I declined. I had been able to detect certain glimmers in his eyes, such as those that inhabit any being possessed by an irrational idea and obsessed with the prospect of its realisation. I knew he would go all the way, no matter what the obstacles.