Prip'Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl

Chapter Nine

Once Dimitri and Yuri finally stopped running, Yuri had to brace himself against the wall to keep from toppling over. His heart was beating hard in his chest, feeling like it was about to burst from pumping so much blood, making him light-headed and dizzy. Dimitri held onto Yuri with one arm, pushing his other arm against his side as he arched his back and looked at the ceiling, panting with exhaustion.

“You know,” Dimitri finally wheezed, “We’re just a couple of babies. That was nothing but animal shit and the wind!” Yuri glanced up at Dimitri, seeing the hesitation in his cousin’s eyes as he spoke. Dimitri didn’t believe what he said and neither did Yuri, but Yuri felt obligated to agree with his cousin, if only to try and bring calm to the situation.

He nodded slowly as he regained control of his breathing. “Yeah, that’s all it was.” Yuri’s voice was shaking, but he put on a brave smile, trying to make the best of the situation. “At least we didn’t meet the bear that left it, right?”

Dimitri’s grin was genuine as he laughed at Yuri, punching him lightly in the shoulder.

“Come on, let’s stop being such children.” He shined his flashlight around the room they were in, trying to figure out what building they had run into. “Might as well explore this place, whatever it is.”

Yuri flicked on his light as well and moved it slowly over the interior walls and columns, squinting through the dust and reflections from the light. “It’s big. Maybe a market?”

Dimitri shook his head. “We came down two flights of stairs, remember? I don’t think a market would have that many steps.”

Yuri waved a hand in front of his face, shooing away the dust motes that swirled as he walked through the cavernous room. The walls were a pale pink in color, though the paint was cracked and fading. Thick pillars were covered in elaborate and colorful paintings, remnants of the decorations that once adorned the walls. Small wheelchairs and beds were overturned in the basement, lending a sad tone to the room. As Yuri’s flashlight beam passed over these items, he suddenly realized where they were. This must be the children’s clinic, he thought.

As the only children’s hospital in the area, any child with an injury would have been sent here instead of to the main hospital, staying for as little as a few hours or as long as a few months. When the disaster occurred, though, all of the children in the clinic had to be immediately evacuated despite their various ailments and conditions. While there was no proof, Dimitri and Yuri had often spoken of the children who might have died during the evacuation, either too wounded to survive the trip out of the city or simply forgotten. The thought of being in a building that may have contained those exact children was enough to spook the both of them more than the strange puddle in the apartment building, though they each tried their best not to show their apprehension.

Yuri looked back at the footprints his boots left in the dust, doing his best to breathe shallowly, not wanting to inhale any more radiation than he already was. “Come on, cousin. Let’s get out of here. We should find someplace a little less ominous to explore.”

Dimitri grunted in response, crouching over a broken picture frame on the floor. A small child in a dress who was carrying a flower in her hands was faded and torn under the broken glass. Dimitri found himself lost in the photograph, wondering who the little girl was and what her life was like before the disaster.

“Those poor souls.” Dimitri mumbled, momentarily forgetting his adventurer spirit. Yuri pressed a hand on Dimitri’s shoulder, making him jump in surprise.

“Yes, sorry. You’re right. Let’s go. This place is far too disturbing to stay in for long.”

“What about the noise we heard?” Yuri motioned upwards, referring to the cracks and rustles they had heard earlier.

“Just the wind, remember?” Dimitri smiled, trying his best to appear brave to his cousin.

Yuri began to nod in agreement when a noise from the upstairs level of the clinic stopped both cousins in their tracks. The noise was quiet at first, like the light scraping of two pieces of wood against each other. It came in spurts, stopping for several seconds, starting up and then stopping again.

“That is not the wind.” Yuri leaned in to Dimitri’s ear and hissed at him as quietly as he could manage.

Although Yuri was quiet when he spoke, the sounds from upstairs changed the very second the words left his mouth. The slow scraping became louder and more frenzied, and was accompanied by more sounds of crackling, like a combination between leaves crunching and the arc of electricity. The sound continued to circle above the boys as they stood frozen in fear, Yuri still holding onto Dimitri’s coat.

Dimitri looked at Yuri in panic as the sound began to change. Instead of staying in one location as it had, it began to move outward, sounding as though its source could be moving closer to the stairwell that led to the basement. The pair waved their flashlights about the room wildly, striving to be quiet at the same time as they searched for an exit from the building.

Yuri pointed out into the hall and motioned for Dimitri to follow him. The room they were in had no other way out, and Yuri didn’t want to get trapped in the room if the source of the sounds upstairs decided to join them in the basement. Although the boys stepped lightly through the room, they could hear the noise from upstairs growingly increasingly agitated. When they reached the door, though, all hell broke loose.

Dimitri’s shoulder brushed the door to the room they were in as they exited, causing its hinges to give off a loud squeal. Instantly the noise from upstairs changed from a soft scratching to a harried scrabbling combined with the sounds of thumping. Yuri shoved Dimitri forward, nearly knocking him down. “Get moving now!” Yuri hissed again at Dimitri, glancing behind him at the stairs they had descended a short time ago.

Dimitri held his light in front of him as he ran, trying to find another stairwell or other avenue of escape. The noise from upstairs began to recede behind them as they ran away from the stairs, then it grew stronger and louder. Panicked, the cousins turned a blind corner in the hallway, realizing that whatever was making the sound was now down in the basement and likely hot in pursuit of them.

At the end of the hall, Yuri spotted an object that made his heart leap. A janitorial closet was positioned in the hallway, with its door wide open. Just inside the closet the beams of their flashlights reflected off a piece of glass high on the far wall of the closet.

“Window!” Yuri half shouted at Dimitri as they ran, struggling to stay ahead of the thing behind them. Dimitri was first in the closet, followed close by Yuri who slammed the door to the closet shut, wincing as it bounced back open, the handle and lock having broken off long ago.

“Hurry up!” Yuri shone his light out of the janitorial closet and back down the long hall. A dark shape charged along, running past the branch that the boys had taken. Behind him, Dimitri had finally gotten the window open and shouldered boxes in front of it, building a makeshift staircase to get up to the window.

“Okay, let’s go!” Dimitri shouted down at Yuri from the top of the boxes, his body already halfway out the window.

Yuri grabbed Dimitri’s outstretched hand and began to descend the stairway of boxes. He couldn’t resist one last look behind him as he climbed, and directed his light back down the hallway. The dark shape reappeared at the end of the hall, half hidden by the partially closed janitorial close door. It was a large, black shape, as wide as it was tall, with no definable form. Although the thing was just as dark as the basement they were in, Yuri could sense its shape, feeling adrenaline coarse through his veins as fear gripped his heart.

Spurred on by the sight, Yuri squirmed through the window, digging his fingers into the dirt and grass that were just outside. Dimitri grabbed Yuri’s arm and hauled him up. The boys stumbled as they began to run, trying to get as far away from the clinic as possible.