Prip'Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl

by Kraus, Mike

  Dimitri pressed his ear against the door of the surgical theater, listening to the noises outside. The scraping and the footsteps still reverberated down the hallway, now closer than ever. With a deep breath, Dimitri slowly pushed open the door, peeking out into the hallway. The beam of his flashlight cut through the darkness of the hall, though it didn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. The source of the sounds was close, but not visible from the angle he was at. Dimitri looked back at the technician’s booth where Yuri was crouching in the doorway, watching Dimitri’s every move.

  As Dimitri walked through the door, letting it close slowly behind him, Yuri noticed that the noises in the hall stopped. He heard Dimitri’s muffled speech, then was shocked as several gunshots rang out. The shots were very close by, and sounded as if they were coming from the hallway. A few seconds later, an enormous crash came from outside the room and Yuri ducked down instinctively, feeling the vibrations from the crash all the way at the back of the room. More gunfire erupted from inside the building, followed by silence and then the most gut-wrenching sound Yuri had heard in his life.

  The scream had unquestionably emanated from the mouth of Dimitri, though it was unnatural and guttural. The scream rose in pitch over the few seconds it lasted, before it finally cut off with a faint gurgle. Several more seconds passed in slow motion as Yuri agonized over the sounds he had just heard. When the next round of gunfire erupted, Yuri was slower to react, his senses dulled by the raw emotions overwhelming him.

  A distant yell followed the gunfire, then more gunfire and finally another large crash. The cacophony of sounds was a blur to Yuri, who failed to pay any attention to them. Slumped behind the desk in the technician’s booth, Yuri pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his head in his legs, fighting to choke back tears.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Iosif Seleznev | Lucas Pokrov

  Though their time so far in the city had been moderately eventful, nothing that Iosif and Lucas had encountered so far had prepared them for the events that began to unfold before their eyes. The pair of soldiers moved toward the radiation signature together, alternating between crawling through the thick grass and crouching to get a better angle to perform thermal and infrared scans on the area.

  While nothing was appearing on any visual, thermal or infrared scans that they did, both Lucas’s and Iosif’s radiation meters were still going wild, indicating that an intensely radioactive source was just in front of them.

  “Cover me while I move up,” Iosif whispered through his microphone as he moved forward through the grass. He held his radiation meter up in front of him like a shield while keeping the rifle steady, pointed forward to the cluster of trees just ahead. Lucas moved perpendicular to Iosif and then lay back down in the grass, extending the bipod that was attached to the front of his SVD. While the SVD didn’t normally come with any type of stabilization mechanism, Lucas preferred to have one as it made long periods of waiting much more tolerable.

  Through the thermal scope on the SVD, Lucas could see Iosif advancing forward, stopping every few feet to wave the radiation meter in front of him. A few moments passed before Iosif’s voice came through on the radio.

  “The radiation levels aren’t getting any stronger yet. The source must be on the other side of these trees. I’m advancing forward.”

  The light orange form of Iosif began to break up on the thermal scope as he walked through the trees. After just a few feet, his body appeared as nothing more than thin slivers of orange that happened to show through the cracks in the foliage and tree trunks.

  “I’ve lost sight of you on the thermal.” Lucas switched to his infrared scope, though that didn’t offer any better results than the thermal scope, in terms of keeping an eye on Iosif. There was no response to Lucas’s statement, and he began to worry about the status of his partner when the radio finally cracked and Iosif’s hurried voice came through again.

  “Get up here now!” Iosif’s tone was worried, though it didn’t sound like he was in trouble. Nonetheless, Lucas did as he was instructed, jumping up and running full tilt toward the stand of trees where Iosif had vanished. The group of trees was several meters thick, a small grouping out on the edge of the city. Just beyond them lay what appeared to be another grouping of trees. As he drew closer, though, Lucas could see that it wasn’t just trees. A variety of flora had grown up around a metal structure, masking its original form.

  On his thermal scope, Lucas could see Iosif’s outline just inside the structure. He was kneeling on the ground, examining something in front of him. “Coming in.” Lucas warned Iosif of his imminent arrival and then jogged forward, turning his head back and forth to ensure he and Iosif were alone. After he pushed through the trees he nearly stumbled into Iosif, who had backed up to the edge of the structure.

  “Careful, don’t go forward any farther.”

  A steady beeping in Lucas’s ear told him the reason for Iosif’s warning. Lucas’s radiation meter was in the red zone, indicating that radiation levels in their vicinity were at high enough levels to be deadly. Lucas looked around at the interior of the structure, momentarily distracted by the size of it. It looked like it had once been a greenhouse, though all of the glass had been broken out years ago. The plants in the greenhouse could certainly give off a larger amount of radiation than in other spots, but the readings here were equivalent to what you could find closer in to the Chernobyl disaster site itself.

  “Shouldn’t we get out of here?” Lucas motioned toward the end of the greenhouse with his head. Iosif looked over at him and replied.

  “No, we’re safe for the moment. Our suits will block this stuff. Besides, it’s incredibly localized. The scanners are picking it up from a distance due to their sensitivity, but it won’t do much to you until you get right into it. There,” Iosif pointed down at the ground a few feet away. “See that indentation? That’s where it’s coming from.”

  Lucas crouched next to Iosif and directed his flashlight toward the spot Iosif had pointed out. In the middle of the red light was a large indent in the gravel and dirt, a few inches deep, several feet long and several feet wide. Lucas pulled out his radiation meter and waved it around, confirming that the indentation was, indeed, the source of the intense radioactivity.

  “What the hell is it?”

  Iosif didn’t reply to Lucas, but walked around the indent, through what used to be a doorway in the greenhouse and into the next section. Lucas followed behind him, still confused over what they were witnessing. Iosif stopped at a table in the structure, examining an object that was lying on top of the table. He turned to Lucas and pointed at the object. “Now we have two problems.”

  Lucas went to the table to examine the object, gasping as he saw what it was. He stared at the object for a few seconds before his radio cracked. “Make that three.” Lucas watched as Iosif knelt down again, examining the dirt on the ground. Lucas crouched next to him and watched as Iosif used his finger to trace the faint outlines of two pairs of footprints that disappeared in the thick gravel.

  “So what are we hunting? A man or a beast?”

  Iosif shook his head. “This isn’t right. None of this is right. No one is supposed to be here but us.” He looked back at the table where the AK still sat, forgotten by a recent visitor to the greenhouse. “We’re not after whoever left that.” Iosif pointed at the gun, then jabbed a thumb over his back at the section of the greenhouse containing the indentation. “We’re after whatever left that.”

  Lucas stood, frustrated with Iosif’s cryptic comments. “Sir, I know I’m not quite as experienced as you, but I’m not wet behind the ears, either. If you want me to do my job as your partner, I need to know what you know.”

  Iosif didn’t respond to Lucas’s demand at first. He continued to kneel on the ground, touching the footprints lightly as though he could pry the identity of their creator out of the dirt they had been inscribed in.

  Finally he stood and sat on the table next to Lucas, cradl
ing his rifle in his arms. He sighed deeply, causing a plume of mist to cloud the interior of his mask. “This is all too familiar. Before you were promoted to the special operations unit, I worked on an operation in southern China five years ago. It was a large team, a total of six of us plus two scientists we were tasked to guard.”

  “Guard duty?” Lucas stood in front of Iosif, still holding his gun at the ready in case of an attack. “Since when are special operations members used for guard duty?”

  Iosif nodded. “Yes, guard duty. It was highly unusual, but what made it more so was how we were outfitted. We were armed to the teeth. Hell, even the scientists were armed and armored like they were going into a warzone.”

  Lucas struggled to remember the state of the world in the Middle East five years ago. “There wasn’t a war going on there, though.”

  “Just shut up and let me finish.” Iosif’s voice was strained and his body tense. He began to speed up his story, glancing around nervously as he did so.

  “We were dropped off in the middle of the desert under the cover of night to, as we were told, ‘investigate rumors of unusual activity near a suspected nuclear weapons facility.’” Iosif nearly spat in disgust, then remembered at the last moment that he was wearing the mask. “It was a massacre. The facility was completely deserted and we lost both scientists and four of the special operations team before we got out. The other one who got out died of his injuries a few hours later. Want to know what he died from?”

  Lucas nodded as Iosif eyed him.

  “Catastrophic radiation poisoning. That’s what the doctors said.”

  “Well, you were near a nuclear facility, right? That’s the one that the Americans ended up bombing if I remember correctly.”

  Iosif nodded again. “You do remember correctly. Our leaders contacted the Americans and spoke with their leaders. Twelve hours later the Americans saturated the Chinese facility with hundreds of their biggest bombs and we sent in ground troops to clean up the mess. The Chinese never batted an eye at us, that’s how unusual this was.”

  Lucas shifted on his feet. “So what’s this got to do with this op?”

  “I’m getting there. I said the other survivor died from radiation poisoning. What do you think happened to the other six?”

  “Radiation poisoning, I would assume.”

  Iosif turned his head to the side, staring into space as he spoke. “If only. I saw two of them die, one of the scientists and another of our team. The scientist was the first to go. He was next to us, in a room inside the facility we were defending against a few squads of Chinese soldiers we encountered. I saw him…” Iosif hesitated, trying to piece together his memory in a coherent way.

  “It was a shadow, some kind of thing that tore him apart, literally ripped him to shreds. He didn’t have time to scream before it was all over. His body armor did nothing to stop it, either. Standard procedure is to retrieve a body from an operational area and return it, but there was nothing left to retrieve unless you used a sponge.”

  Lucas started to ask a question when Iosif raised his hand, silencing him. He cocked his head, listening as he slowly rose from the table.

  “Do you hear that?” Iosif whispered through the radio. Lucas had been distracted by the story, enough that it took him a moment to pick up on what Iosif was hearing. A faint shuffling in the distance, some scratching and footsteps came through very faintly. On alert, both soldiers readied their weapons and crept through the rest of the greenhouse, moving toward the source of the noise. Lucas’s mind was still reeling from the revelations Iosif had explained, but he still didn’t know whether to believe the story or not.

  A few feet from the exit to the greenhouse, Iosif suddenly ran toward the edge of the structure, shouldering his way through the saplings and bushes that had grown around it. Lucas pushed through as well, just as Iosif raised his rifle, firing into the distance, toward the city.

  “Shoot, damn you! Shoot!” Iosif hissed at Lucas, who raised his rifle and looked down the scope. The infrared scope was still engaged, and Lucas couldn’t make out anything in the distance that looked like a threat. He switched the SVD over to the thermal scope with a flick of the wrist and raised it up again. This time, a massive heat bloom was visible, moving away from them with a frightening speed.

  Lucas squeezed the SVD’s trigger several times, sending a half dozen rounds down toward the target. He couldn’t tell from this distance if they had impacted, but the heat signature didn’t stop moving, regardless of whether or not Iosif’s and his rounds were hitting their target. After several more shots, the signature disappeared behind a building, vanishing from Lucas’s thermal scope.

  Iosif took off at a run, waving his arm for Lucas to follow behind him. Moments later, the pair stopped again, checking the area for signs of the thing they had been firing at. To Lucas’s surprise, the ground gave no evidence that the thing had passed through, with no footprints visible on the thermal scope despite the creature’s huge size. Listening carefully, though, they heard the footsteps and rustling again. Just as they started to follow in the direction of the noise, Lucas saw a dark shadow appear in front of a distant building, go up the steps and vanish into the entrance.

  Lucas pointed ahead of them. “There, it went into the hospital!” Iosif nodded as he watched the shadow disappear. Iosif took off at a sprint, making a beeline for the hospital entrance as Lucas followed close behind.

  Breathing heavily, Iosif and Lucas entered the building and weaved their way through the hospital. Its layout was similar to the building they had visited previously, though it was much larger in size and in the number of rooms it held. The path of the soldiers was clear, though, as they continued to pick up intermittent spots of radiation on the floor and walls of the hospital corridors. Iosif warned Lucas not to fire at their target until they had a clear line of sight again, despite the temptation to shoot at the brief glimpses of orange in the thermal scope as it ducked around corners and through holes in the walls.

  “Don’t forget that there are other people here. If they get in the way, shoot them, but there’s no need to recklessly kill civilians.” Lucas agreed with Iosif’s sentiment, but the younger soldier was eager to see their hunt complete so that he could begin to get answers to the questions bubbling up inside. Spetsnaz training instilled strict discipline into its members, more so than troops in the normal ranks of the military received. Lucas was bucking against that training now, disturbed by both their mission and by Iosif’s brief story in the greenhouse.

  A gentle thud broke Lucas from his thoughts and he looked at Iosif. “That sounded like a door closing.”

  “This thing doesn’t use doors. Christ, the other people must be in the building. It’s hunting them.”

  A second, softer impact came as Iosif was speaking and they both strained to hear where it had come from. “Below us?” Lucas said with a whisper, pointing down the hall at a stairwell.

  Debris crashed down from the ceiling in front of the two officers as Iosif started his reply, cutting him off before he could begin to speak. Through a hole in the ceiling, a dark shape fell to the ground, deftly ducking to the side to avoid the hail of gunfire unleashed upon it by the two soldiers. The shadow tore at the wall with long, savage claws, pulling itself along the side of Iosif and landing behind him.

  Lucas and Iosif turned to fire at the shadow, but their quick reactions were no match for the beast. Standing a few feet away, Lucas watched in horror as the shadow reached out for Iosif, its long muscular arms masked by wispy tendrils of darkness. Iosif’s finger instinctively pulled the trigger on his rifle and a burst of bullets tore through the shadow. It made no noise as it absorbed the gunfire, seemingly unaffected by the steam of depleted uranium and lead.

  Blood red eyes stared into Iosif’s mask, meeting his gaze head on. The seconds he spent in the shadow’s grasp stretched in slow motion. Rows of black teeth glinted in the light of Lucas and Iosif’s guns as the shadow stretched open the upper portion
of its frame. Using both its limbs and its teeth, it rended Iosif’s body, tearing his head from his shoulders and splitting his torso apart in the center.

  Lucas screamed as he fired his SVD, squeezing the trigger multiple times until the weapon clicked, indicating that it was out of ammunition. The creature paid Lucas no mind as it fled down the hall, jumping up and then crashing down, forming a gaping hole in the floor. In shock, Lucas stood stark still, unsure of what to do next. His training had prepared him to face death and atrocities on every scale, but never to face a foe the likes of this.

  Lucas was shaken from his stupor by the sound of a second scream that came from the floor below. Turning around, he ran toward the stairwell, releasing the empty magazine from his SVD and replacing it with one containing bullets with bright orange tips. Along with standard armor-piercing rounds, Lucas had brought several magazines containing high-explosive rounds, capable of blowing a hole the size of a car in a steel wall.