Prip'Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl

Chapter Six

Iosif held a closed fist up, signaling for Lucas to stop. Lucas crouched low to the ground, sweeping his SVD to the left, right and back of the pair for any signs of trouble. A click came through on his earpiece followed by Iosif’s voice.

“Moving past the hospital now. Go slow, check the roofs, I’ll take the ground.”

Lucas tapped the microphone button once to signify an affirmative response. Following Iosif’s lead, he began to circle the hospital, giving it a wide berth and keeping several yards between him and his comrade.

From one hundred yards away, the soldiers could see nearly every section of the hospital at once, a fact that Lucas used to his full advantage. After doing a scan of the roof of the hospital with his thermal scope, he began to scan the long rows of windows, looking for any unusual heat signatures. The side of the building was dark blue in the cold of the night and the windows were black with no other colors to be seen.

After moving several paces forward, Lucas flipped his thermal scope down to the right on the SVD and flipped up a second scope that had been locked into place on the opposite side of the rifle. This scope was of lesser magnification and allowed him to see in infrared. After a quick check through the infrared scope, he tapped the microphone button and spoke.

“Nothing on either band. Doing a visual scan, then circling around the rear.” A single click in his earpiece told him that Iosif had received his message and wanted him to proceed.

Lucas pulled a small pair of binoculars out of a pouch on his vest and scanned the building one final time, checking to see if anything was visible. What’s going to show up that wasn’t on either scope, though? Orders were orders, though, and Lucas obeyed them to the letter.

Satisfied that nothing was in the windows or on the roof of the hospital on the eastern side, Lucas began to circle around the northern part of the building, moving to check the western side of the hospital and then link up with Iosif at the entrance on the south side of the structure.

Without the thermal or infrared scopes, the hospital was both dark and uninviting. The exterior façade was damaged and crumbling, and the tan paint was barely visible in the moonlight. Craggy trees devoid of leaves had grown close around the building in the last few decades and their haphazard shadows were cast over the ground and the building, shaking as the trees vibrated in the breeze.

A senior ranking officer for two years, Iosif Seleznev was no stranger to hostile environments, though he grudgingly admitted to himself that this city was the first in a long time to evoke any type of emotion in him. Wading through swamps, crawling through deserts and being outnumbered by enemies ten-to-one didn’t rattle him. This city spooked him, though. Iosif couldn’t pinpoint what exactly had put him on edge, but he trusted his gut, so he stayed alert as he cautiously approached the hospital.

On the opposite side of the hospital from Iosif, Lucas was finishing his thermal and infrared sweeps of the windows and roof of the building. After lowering his rifle, he turned to the side to readjust his face mask before conducting a final visual sweep. The mask was stifling even in the cold air, and he dearly wished he could remove it. His Geiger counter still showed slightly high radiation levels, though, so he kept the mask on, not wanting to have to be subjected to the intensive radiation poisoning treatment that was mandatory for soldiers when they returned from missions. Radiation contamination up to a certain level was tolerated, but anything beyond that got you a week in isolation, drinking gallons of chemicals designed to flush the radiation from your body. In Lucas’s mind, a few days with a mask was preferable to that type of experience.

Lucas turned back to check the hospital building one last time with his binoculars when movement at the edge of his field of view caught his eye. He whipped his head toward the movement, bringing his scope up to scan for it. The infrared scope was still in place and he squinted through it, trying to find the source of the movement again. Fifteen hundred yards away, in between several apartment buildings and countless trees, Lucas made out the faintest flicker of movement, a dark shadow darting behind the buildings. Adrenaline pumped through his body as he pushed his microphone button and spoke quickly to Iosif.

“Movement west, through the buildings, half a kilometer out. Looked like a big shadow moving fast.”

Iosif’s voice was hurried as he replied. “Move out. I’ll pick up and follow behind you.”

Lucas was already up and running before Iosif finished his reply. As he ran, he jabbed the microphone button once and then broke into a sprint, dodging low hanging branches and running around rubble, trees and bushes that grew throughout the city, heading in the direction of the shadow.