I looked around at the kids on the bus and was pretty sure that I was the only one who was afraid.
“Chernobyl is the site of the largest nuclear accident in the world,” Comrade Mokhoyida announced.
“People are proud of the strangest things,” Mikhail muttered. He picked up his comic book and began reading about Conan the Barbarian.
“The Zone is heavily guarded to keep the nuclear materials safe,” Comrade Mokhoyida continued. “To protect their health, the scientists and support staff who work here are limited to two-week shifts.” She continued talking about stuff I already knew until the bus hit a rough patch of concrete, and she had to steady herself against the dashboard. “I’ll resume when the road gets better,” she apologized, before sitting down.
I thought about the day of the evacuation. My mother and I had ridden a red-striped bus out of Pripyat. I remembered being grateful to the old peasant who had opened the window next to us so that we could have fresh air. Now I knew how dangerous that air had really been. “Did you leave Pripyat on a bus, Lyudmila?” I asked.
Lyudmila nodded. She twirled her long hair around her finger.
“Were the windows in the bus open?” I asked.
Lyudmila looked at me curiously. “I don’t remember.”
Mikhail whipped around and narrowed his small eyes at me. “I don’t like talking about that day.”
“I didn’t know you lived in Pripyat,” Lyudmila said.
“We had just moved there,” Mikhail said.
As Lyudmila leaned over the seat in front of us to tell him, “What bad luck!” she thrust her bottom in my face. Although I playfully slapped her, that didn’t stop her from whispering into Mikhail’s ear.
We passed more abandoned barns and silos and rotting cottages overgrown with weeds. One large poplar sprouted out of a farmer’s roof. I remembered this drive from when I was a kid. In April, these same fields used to be planted in neat rows of corn and hay. Now, only tall green grass blanketed the ground.
No matter what I saw or how hard I worked to distract myself, I couldn’t get my mind off the bad news. When Mama and Papa returned from the doctors, she had told me that Papa didn’t have an early case of thyroid cancer. “The surgeon says it’s an ‘advanced case,” she had admitted.
Ahead, a candy-striped bar blocked the road, and the bus braked to a stop. This was the last checkpoint guarding the Dead Zone. A guard dressed in camouflage gear exited a nearby guardhouse. Holding a clipboard, he took big strides toward the bus.
The bus driver opened the door, and Mokhoyida exited the few steps onto the ground. She approached the guard.
While the guard slowly examined all of our documents, I found myself studying the guardhouse. It was a small wooden building with a chimney and a gray roof. A high rectangular window provided the only view of the checkpoint from inside the hut, and I wondered how the guards knew when a visitor had arrived. They must rely on the sound of the cars, I had decided when the guard finally waved us on.
After Mokhoyida climbed back on board, our cumbersome bus rumbled over the cattle guard, leaving the checkpoint in the dust.
A few seats ahead of us, Stepan pulled out a radio, and Lyudmila began singing along. It was one of our favorite English songs, “This is not a technological breakdown. This is the road to hell.”
I closed my eyes. Lyudmila’s voice, which had been loud in my ear, stopped.
“Is the bus making you sick to your stomach?” Lyudmila asked. “You’re even more quiet than usual.”
“I don’t feel well,” I said, to cover up my real problem. I didn’t want to share my father’s latest bad news. If I kept the doctor’s report secret, I hoped I could keep it from coming true.
“Almost there,” Comrade Mokhoyida called out.
The bus grew silent. In the seat in front of us, Mikhail started coughing in that hacking way that smokers do.
“We’re going to just drive by the station. At Pripyat, we’ll get out of the bus. It’s very exciting. A photographer for the Ministry of Health is coming to take your photo. People all over the Soviet Union will see your picture.”
For a fleeting instant, I felt the urge to escape. I didn’t want to let the nuclear industry use my photograph to prove that the station was safe. But I felt that helpless feeling again: there’s nothing I can do.
“Our last stop will be the car graveyard, where the authorities buried the contaminated cars,” Comrade Mokhoyida said.
Mikhail sniffed. “I’ve been to the Zone many times with my father.”
“Doing what?” Lyudmila asked.
“My dad has an auto parts business,” Mikhail said. His voice was proud.
“Kruto,” Lyudmila said, using our word for cool.
“He’s probably a bootlegger,” I hissed to Lyudmila. Everyone had heard rumors about criminals who stole highly radioactive televisions, car parts, and appliances from the Zone and sold them on the black market to unsuspecting buyers.
Lyudmila turned to me and whispered, “You always think the worst of everyone, Katya.”
Mikhail heard her. “And you always think the best, Lyudmila. You’re a sweet girl.” He glared at me. “And Katya, you should go back into your cave.”
“You’re right, Mikhail. Katya is uptight.” Lyudmila faced me. Her gaze scolded me. I could tell that she was thinking, Katya, no boy is ever going to like you. She turned away and threw her arm around Mikhail’s shoulder.
Mokhoyida stood up again and faced us. “We’ve arrived at V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station, Chernobyl.”
I turned away from the kids and looked out the window.
In my imagination, the station had become a dark fortress, an evil emerald city with a terrifying fireball on the throne commanding people to do its bidding and then consuming them. Now with the bus parked one hundred yards away, the ordinariness of this complex of five- and six-story buildings surprised me. It resembled any other boring factory.
Water towers and some construction cranes rose up alongside the buildings. The whole compound was gray, except for random panels. A few were metallic, and others were painted yellow or light blue. The metallic surfaces were rusted and glinted in the sun. The painted ones added a playfulness to the scene which seemed out of place. The entire compound was enclosed by a concrete fence topped with barbed wire. Men dressed in camouflage guarded the gates.
“The station,” I overheard Angelika tell Sergei. “I haven’t been here since I was a little girl.”
I found Angelika’s reverent tone irritating and was tempted to challenge her, but what would I say? Although I hated Reactor Four and the men who were responsible for the explosion, many brave liquidators had given their lives to clean up the nuclear debris. It took 90,000 of them to assemble the Sarcophagus.[32] This place was a crime scene all right, but I realized it was a shrine, too.
A man dressed in black pointed a camera at the bus and snapped a photograph. Mokhoyida waved at him.
I examined my dosimeter. It was thirty-two microroentgens an hour. Pretty normal.
“That building next to the tall tower is the Sarcophagus,” Comrade Mokhoyida said. “It shares a divider wall with the third reactor unit, which is still operating.”
Until that moment I hadn’t looked for the Sarcophagus, but now that the guide identified it, I gasped at the sight. It was a rectangular structure, constructed out of concrete blocks. On some floors, the blocks appeared uneven, and sloppy spaces gaped between them. Yet the pathetic nuclear shield was all that stood between the world and another horrible disaster.