Chernobyl- A short story
(Based on a true event)
I can’t feel my body.
I try to open my eyes. Flakes of stones settle before me. My arm holds me against the wall as I kneel on the ground, vomiting. I can hear screaming, fading in and out like a radio trying to be tuned. Static comes from every direction. Black spots dance across my vision, swooping in like vultures. What little sight I have tilts; something cracks against the side of my head. A dust cloud erupts and settles over me like a blanket as I drift off into darkness.
*
When I wake up, I’m lying in a hospital bed. The room is a haunting garish white. The walls, the floor, the curtain, even the bedding and blanket are washed in it. I could almost believe I’m in heaven, if it weren’t for all the coughing and spluttering.
Wires protrude from my skin, snaking around the edges of my bed. A pain jack-knifes my skull as I hastily sit up. My arm shakily reaching for the water cup. That’s when I see it.
A dry cracked sound erupts from my throat in the place of a scream.
Death creeps across my arm in a black, blistering cloak. Mottled patches of brown crust the skin, digging deeper towards the bone. The truth hits me like a hammer, my heart starts to speed up. Fear grasps me from all sides, causing my body to convulse. Oh God! What has happened?
A nurse appears just before I pass out.
*
It was only a few days before when I had clocked in for my routine night shift.
We were performing a safety test on the reactor under the harsh dictatorship of Anatoly Dyatlov. His fascist temper was enough to scare even the bravest of men. His foolishness however, that was what made him a coward.
His tongue lashed against our warnings of the minimum safety requirement, his anger striking the room like lightning, frying all our confidence to a crisp. Who were we to question him? He towered over us all, twitching his moustache in disagreement at even the slightest disturbance. His authority whirled over us, coaxing us to follow his orders. We were just as much cowards.
Shortly after, things quickly started disintegrating before our eyes.
The machine was too powerful, too unstable. The reactor started to combust. Pressure built and before we knew it the machine had control over us. A panel broke loose in a mighty roar. Manically, we began to push buttons, lighting up the panels in front us. Desperate for something, anything, to grind this operation to a holt. Dyatlov kept screaming to continue. The chances of an accident were slim, but the machine in front of us knew better. The simple safety test was escalating into disaster.
Steam fed itself through the whole core, unfurling. Spreading its sickly touch. The reactor burst open into the room and rose like a beast, flicking its menacing tongue at us, mocking our foolishness. Its cackle spread across the air, filling our lungs with sweet poison.
My ears popped. My body was flung across the room as if it were a ragdoll. A black mark burned into the floor; Dyatlov no longer in sight. The acrid smell of burning flesh scorched my nostrils as I stumbled to my feet.
Poison. Poison everywhere. I had to escape.
Half-dead bodies lay scattered across the floor. Some of them shuffled forward moaning. Bones peaked through their blistered skin. Blood washed over our torn flesh and pooled across the floor. Limbs dangled precariously, hanging on by threads of nerves.
I thought of my wife and daughter, of their faces and if I would ever see them again. The ache in my heart urged me on. I would see them again. I would. We all pushed forward, racing in a zombie-pace for the door.
We flung ourselves forward, out of the room, but the air still burned.
Other survivors had reached us now. They too were bent-double, lumbering away as fast as they could. Men in arms against the waves of radiation that was washing over us. Stumbling, wheezing, gagging. Corridors began to blur into each other. Walls began to spin. My breathing became laboured. I coughed up red spit, which had sent another emotional wave of panic through me.
We moaned in joint will-power until we were outside. The cool night air greeted us.
Many collapsed. I faltered to my knees by a broken wall. That’s when my vision failed.
*
When I next woke up in the hospital, my arm was gone. The muscles had been burned away by the rot. There was nothing they could do to save it, they said.
Tears fell across my cheek. I laid in despair for days, wishing I could go back and change everything.
A week later a doctor came to see me. My breathing had become a rattled wheezing. I knew from his despairing look I was dying.
Too much poison. Too much exposure.
My family came to see me. My lungs burned. I kissed my beautiful daughter’s head and limply hugged my wife goodbye. I didn’t tell her, but she knew. My body lurched with each wheeze.
My little girl cried, and I hummed through my aching throat the lullaby I sung her every night at home.
I hummed and I hummed until my voice faded along with me, into the blinding, aching white nothingness of the room.