Chapter Nineteen
T
HE TRAIN
station at Korosten was little more than a platform on the outskirts of a small town surrounded by farmland. A cluster of low buildings stood outside the sparsely occupied train station, lit with yellow light from within at dusk. It was a curiously normal scene, one Tara expected could have been replicated anywhere in the midwestern U.S. near any smallish city taken root in agricultural land.
As Tara stepped onto the platform from the train station, she took a deep breath. The air here smelled like freshly mown hay, a welcome change from the cabin that smelled like cigarette smoke. The smell of smoke reminded her too much of the Pythia, and Tara had found it difficult to doze with her face pressed in a pillow that smelled like her. But the fresh air dispelled some of her sense of unease.
Until she saw a vendor with a cart stand beside the train station. An old woman was selling beautiful red tomatoes. Chernobyl tomatoes. Tara could make out the Cyrillic word for “Chernobyl” on the sign. She stifled a shudder, imagining the witch in Snow White hawking her poisoned apples. To her amazement, a man walked by and purchased one.
A woman in her late fifties, dressed simply in casual pants, farm boots, and a white cotton blouse approached them. She was petite, brown hair streaked with silver and cut in a chin-length bob. Her skin was kissed with the wholesome-seeming ruddiness of a sunburn.
“Ms. Sheridan, Mr. Lee?” she asked, in heavily accented English. When Tara nodded, the woman stuck out a hand. “I’m Irina. I will be your guide to the Exclusion Zone.”
“Thank you.” Tara sized her up, wondering how deeply involved she was in Delphi’s Daughters. Was she another oracle, or merely one of the Pythia’s many flunkies? And how had she drawn babysitting duty? At least the Pythia had seen to it that they were given a handler who spoke English. Tara was relieved; her attempts to stumble through the phrase book the Pythia had sent were thoroughly pathetic.
“This way.” She motioned for Tara and Harry to follow her to a crumbling parking lot outside the station. “I have a car.”
Irina’s car was a small, subcompact car of undetermined vintage, caked in mud and speckled in rust spots. The interior smelled like mildew, and the windows didn’t crank up all the way. But Tara was grateful to have the opportunity to be able to communicate with someone who was familiar with the terrain. Harry scrambled into the back with his luggage, his knees jammed up against the back of Tara’s front seat. The car’s engine sounded like an overworked lawnmower when Irina started it up.
“The Pythia said you are looking for a man,” Irina said, pulling out of the train station and onto a gravel two-lane road. “A man selling nuclear secrets.”
Harry nodded. “Yes. We think he’s coming here. We think he’s from here.”
Irina’s green eyes darkened. “Ah. Another Chernobylite has come home.”
“What do you mean?”
Irina shrugged. “Many people fled from the disaster, many years ago, and never came back. But many returned to their roots.”
“Why?” Harry asked, leaning forward from the backseat.
“It is home.” Irina gestured out the window at the houses dotting the beautiful landscape. Though many looked as if they’d been abandoned, there were clusters of houses that showed signs of life: cows, chickens, cats roaming the yards. “No one bothers us. Not the state, not the churches. In many ways, it is idyllic.” She shook her head. “No one brings their children back, of course, but for many of the older folk, and the folk who have nowhere else, it is something of a frontier. No law.”
Tara sat forward in her seat, stymied. “But it can’t be safe.”
Irina barked a harsh laugh. “‘Safe’ is a relative term. In the days of the war, people feared the Germans. Now, they fear the invisible. It is much more difficult to fear the invisible, the atom that cannot be seen.” She gestured to an old woman turning up soil for a garden. “They tell us that we can no longer eat the apples, the potatoes, drink the milk. We must bury the chicken eggs two feet deep. And people did that, I think, for a time, when the soldiers came and scraped all the topsoil away. But that’s no way to live.”
“The woman with the tomatoes at the train station—” Harry began.
Irina laughed. “Yes. They are sold and given as gifts to many a hated boss or mother-in-law.”
Harry didn’t cover up his shock.
Irina wagged her finger. “You will become accustomed to our sense of humor, young man.”
Harry sat back in the backseat, muttering: “I hope not.”
Irina pretended not to hear him. “It’s growing late. I will take you to my house, and then we will go to the Exclusion Zone in the morning. The Exclusion Zone is large—it extends for thirty kilometers around the site of the disaster. We will have much before us, if we are to find your dealer in secrets.”
“We were hoping to start as soon as possible—” Harry began.
Irina made a cutting gesture. “It’s not safe in the Exclusion Zone at night. There are wolves, looters. We wait until morning.” It was clear she would brook no argument.
Irina asked Tara and Harry few questions about themselves, and Tara tried to be as respectful of her boundaries. Still, she was curious when the car stopped outside a small house built not far from the road with a ribbon of a disintegrating gravel driveway leading to it. A garden bloomed in the front yard, thick with the smell of manure. A cow chewed cud from behind a ramshackle fence, in a green field heavy with the tassels of grasses. A chicken darted out from in front of the car, clucking in annoyance. It was a bucolic scene, with dusky mist settling from the sky into the ground.
Tara followed her up the creaking front porch. Tara noted that Irina didn’t lock her front door. “You live alone?” she asked, surprised.
“No,” Irina responded curtly. “I have a cow, three cats, and seven chickens. That’s hardly ‘alone.’”
The first floor of Irina’s house was a large room. It was filled with a jumble of brightly patterned furniture and quilts, old photographs, and a collection of painted eggs. The far side of the room held a small sink, a stove, and a refrigerator, all probably older than Tara. A pressure cooker sat on the counter with open canning jars, lids, and rims. A shelf held dozens of jars of tomatoes put away for the winter. A cat with one blind eye watched Tara and Harry with suspicion.
“This way,” Irina said, leading them up a staircase that hugged one of the walls. Two bedrooms and a bathroom were at the top of the stairs. Irina showed them to a bed tucked under the eaves of the house, covered with a delicately embroidered coverlet. “You can sleep here.”
“Thank you,” Tara said.
Irina nodded. “As the Pythia commands.” Her eyes sparkled in humor, and she shut the door behind her as she left.
Harry paced the length of the room, jingling the change in his pocket. Tara could tell he was impatient to get underway. But the light was falling, and there was nothing to be done for it. Irina was their guide, and they were wedded to her judgment.
Tara dug out the GPS device that the Cowboy had given her. She booted it up, hoping that it would get a signal this far out. According to the device, they were a scant five kilometers from the border of the Exclusion Zone. Close enough to reach out and touch it.
She showed it to Harry, and he emitted a low whistle. “I wonder if those chickens glow in the dark.”
Tara dug the dosimeter out of her pocket, switched it on. It chirped like a canary. Harry peered over her shoulder. “That’s not good. It says that the background level is thirty-two microroentgens per hour. That’s four times the amount of background radiation in a normal environment. And we’re not in the Exclusion Zone yet.”
Tara suppressed a shudder, switched it off.
“Why’d you do that?”
She had trouble articulating it to him. She was so accustomed to dealing with the unseen world and measuring it in her own way that the machine was unsettling. “I don’t really want to know. We don’t have any choice in this mission. This”—she pointed to the machine—“is just a distraction. I don’t want to think of how I’ve dragged you along after me and exposed you to glow-in-the-dark chickens.”
Harry wrapped his arms around her. “Hey. I go where I want, remember? The Pythia can’t make me do shit. I didn’t come out here out of duty to her.”
“You came here to catch the Chimera, I know.”
“Partly. But I also came here because of my duty to you.” Harry kissed her temple. “I can’t let you face the glow-in-the-dark chickens alone.”
She sighed, resting her forehead on his shoulder. The Pythia had been right.
She did need him here. But at what cost?
T
HE COST HAD BEEN IMMENSE, BUT
G
ALEN HAD RETURNED
home. He had no desire to escape his roots. Rather, he wished to lie down in them and allow them to wrap around him, digesting him wholly.
His fingers brushed the tall, green grasses splitting bits of pavement. In the ruddy sunset, the land had been painted in washes of gold and red. He stood before the looming Sarcophagus, its shadow driven long by the sun before him. This was the place that had been built to contain the radiation from the failed reactor, a black structure lined with lead and steel. But it was disintegrating; bits of rust showed at the seams that leaked bits of straw from birds’ nests. Warped pine trees grew around it, digging their roots into the foundations. It had cost thousands of lives to build this thing, and it was failing. Split seams and popped rivets were visible even from this distance, leaking that prickling radiation into the land.
Galen could hear none of the ghosts that had been sacrificed to build it. He could barely hear the ghosts of the people he’d consumed, and loneliness began to infest his thoughts. But he could feel the malignant power of this place, that splinter of poison in this beautiful land.
And he would begin to dig it out.
His cell phone rang at his hip, and he answered. “Yes.”
“The materiel you promised us … is it on schedule?”
“Yes. It will be ready on time.”
“And is it … as potent as you promised?”
Galen inhaled, feeling the metallic buzz of the radiation on his skin and prickling in his lungs. He wore no protective suit here. There was no point. He was dying, and he wanted to take this last opportunity to feel the pulse of his motherland, the force that made him.
“It is,” Galen said.
“Good. We look forward to obtaining it.”
Galen shut off the phone. He turned back to the truck containing his tools. The truck contained lead-lined barrels, empty now. But they would soon be full, full and taken away. Galen had no hope he would be able to remove all of the contamination. An army had tried, and failed. But he could remove some of it, surrender it to the rest of the world for their wars. What they did with it was not his concern.
Galen slung a heavy tool bag over his shoulder and walked toward the cool shadow of the Sarcophagus. A bit of movement around the edge of the building caught his attention, and he froze. It was too late in the day for stalkers to come … Who was here?
But it wasn’t people. A thin, gray wolf slunk through the sunshine-hazed underbrush. It paused to look at him. Galen returned its golden stare. The wolf trotted away, leaving him to his task.
A good omen,
he thought.
A very good omen.
“N
OT A GOOD OMEN
,” I
RINA MUTTERED
.
The Ukrainian woman had cracked open an egg into a bowl, was peering into it. Tara glanced up from her perch at Irina’s small kitchen table. “What do you mean?”
Irina showed her the small bowl. Blood mixed in with the yellow yolk and white albumen in streaks. “Blood is a poor augur for your quest.” Irina took the egg and dumped it out the back door, to the chagrin of a chicken standing outside. She carefully rinsed the bowl and dried it. “They say that we’re supposed to bury the eggs at least two feet deep, but …” She slung her dishtowel over her shoulder and continued to poke at some potatoes cooking on the stove with a spatula. Tara was used to associating eggs and potatoes with breakfast, but Irina was preparing them for dinner. Tara thought her body was just jet-lagged enough that it made sense, and her stomach growled at the aromas.
“You’re an oracle,” Tara said. “You’re one of Delphi’s Daughters.”
Irina shrugged. “I’m a very minor oracle. There’s not much demand for ovamancers. Except for here.”
It made sense. Tara glanced around the living area, decorated with hand-painted eggs in egg cups and wooden holders. “Are these all your work?”
“Yes.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“Thank you. Once, I used to sell them. Still do. But there’s not much demand for them anymore. People want practical things, things they can eat or tools they can use. Beauty is a useless luxury.”
Tara fingered the scars crossing her arm. She understood some of the sentiment. Irina had loosened up a bit, chatted more now that Harry wasn’t in the picture. He was upstairs, fiddling with the GPS device and fussing over the dosimeter. “Why are you here, then?”