Escape from Chernobyl by Andy Marino

Author:Andy Marino
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Saturday morning in Pripyat.

If this were a normal Saturday, Sofiya would be getting ready for school.

She has heard that Americans go to school only five days a week, and get Saturdays and Sundays off, and can scarcely imagine what she would do with all that glorious free time. But this morning, she’s standing at her living room window, watching the bright day swallow up the glow from the shrub.

All that’s visible now is the smoke curling up over the edge of the forest, hanging low and dense in the sky.

Mayakovsky comes and goes, curls like that smoke through her mind:

Behold what quiet settles on the world.

After leaving the Fomichevs’ curiously empty apartment, Sofiya made her way back home to wolf down some kasha for breakfast and plot her next move.

She’d tried to warn the people on the railway bridge, but no one had listened.

Now, on the streets below, a curious scene is unfolding. People move about the city as if everything is normal. A row of uniformed children follow their teacher from the Little Goldfish school, like ducklings trailing their mother. Women push baby strollers and gather in the shade of the trees. Nearby, two dogs chase each other in circles, tangling leashes. Men hurry off to work.

At the same time, everything is far from normal. Militsiya vehicles race down the wide avenue. At the edges of the city, soldiers block off roads with heavy wooden barriers manned by armed guards.

Sealing everyone in.

It doesn’t make any sense. Sofiya knows for a fact that members of the militsiya and police carry around dosimeters. They are just as capable of measuring the rising radiation in the air as she is. And yet there has been no announcement on the radio, no loudspeakers blaring in the streets—not even a bulletin telling people to stay inside, at the very least.

There’s an old joke she has heard Pavlo Fomichev tell: If you want to fill your fridge with food, plug the fridge into the radio outlet.

Meaning: Reality is whatever the Party says it is.

If they say there is plenty of food to be had in the shops, then it is so. Never mind the empty shelves, the long lines, the avoska bags.

This explains why everyone below can scurry about on their commutes and morning walks and errands while the militsiya cuts off the city from the outside world.

As she’s turning this over in her mind, the phone rings.

Alina! is her first thought. Yuri! is her second.

“Hello?” She’s practically out of breath as she rushes to grab the receiver from where it hangs on the wall by the radio tochki.

“Sofiya!” Her father’s voice. He sounds hushed and garbled, as if he’s pressing wool to his mouth.

“Dad! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Yes. Listen to me very carefully, Sofiya. You must continue to stay inside. Close all the windows. Throw away any food that has been out. And wash everything in the apartment.”

Sofiya winces at the word continue. Hopefully, her father would never find out that she went to the railway bridge, and to the Fomichevs’ apartment.

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