Old yellow bumper cars sat in pools of stagnant green water, amid waist-high weeds. The roof of the ride had long since collapsed, leaving a frame of red corrosion arched over it. Ahead, the park's giant Ferris wheel the Big
Dipper rose into the late-afternoon sky, limned against the low sun. Its yellow umbrella chairs hung idle from the rusted skeleton. A symbol and monument to the ruin left behind in the wake of Chernobyl.
Nicolas continued on.
The park had been built in anticipation of the celebrations of May Day back in
1986. Instead, a week prior to the celebration, the city of Pripyat, home to forty-eight thousand workers and their families, was killed, smothered under a veil of radiation. The city, built in the 1970s, had been a shining example of
Soviet architecture and urban living: the Energetic Theater, the palatial
Polissia Hotel, a state-of-the-art hospital, scores of schools.
The theater lay now in ruins. The hotel had birch trees growing out of its roof.
The schools had become crumbled shells, piled with moldy textbooks, old dolls, and wooden toy blocks. In one room, Nicolas had seen piles of discarded gas masks, lying in limp heaps like the scalped faces of the dead. The once vibrant city had been reduced to broken windows, collapsed walls, old bed frames, and peeling paint. Weeds and trees grew wild everywhere, cracking apart what man had built. Now only tours came here, four hundred dollars a head to explore the haunted place.
And the cause of it all
Nicolas shaded his eyes and stared. He could just make out on the horizon a hazy bump, two miles off.
The Chernobyl power plant.
The explosion of reactor number four had cast a plume that wrapped the world.
Yet here, the evacuation order was delayed for thirty hours. The forest around the city turned red with radioactive dust. Townspeople swept their porches and balconies to keep them clean while plutonium fires burned two miles away.
Nicolas shook his head, mostly because he knew a news crew followed him, rolling
B-roll footage for the evening news. Nicolas strode through the amusement park.
He had been warned to stay on the fresh asphalt strip that crossed the ruins of the abandoned town. The radiation levels spiked higher if you tread out into the mossy stretches of the urban wasteland. The worst zones were marked off with triangular yellow signs. The new asphalt path had been laid to accommodate the flood of dignitaries, officials, and newspeople that were descending on
Chernobyl in anticipation of the installation of the new steel Sarcophagus over its decaying concrete shell.
By this evening, the showplace Polissia Hotel would return to a tarnished bit of its former glory. The hotel's ballroom had been hastily renovated, cleared, and cleaned to host a formal black-tie party tonight. Even the birch trees growing out of the roof had been cut down for the event.
Nothing but the best for their international guests. There would be representatives from almost every nation, even a handful of stars from
Hollywood. Pripyat would shine for this one night, a bright gala in the center of a radiological ruin.
Both the Russian president and prime minister would be in attendance, along with many members from the upper and lower house of Federal Assembly. Many were already here, making halfhearted assertions of change and reform, attempting to churn political currency from this momentous event.
But no one had been more vocal and vehement for a true change than Senator
Nicolas Solokov. And after this morning's assassination attempt, he had the spotlight shining him full in the face.
As the cameras taped him, Nicolas stepped off the asphalt walkway and crossed to a neighboring wall. Upon its surface had been painted a stark black shadow of a pair of children playing with a toy truck. It was said a mad Frenchman had spent months in Pripyat. His shadow art could be found throughout the city, haunting and disturbing, representing the ghosts of the lost children.
His own personal shadow, Elena, remained upon the asphalt walk. She had already chosen this particular piece of art to be the most poignant. Earlier she had scouted the zone with a dosimeter to make sure the radiation levels were safe.
It was all about showmanship this evening.
Nicolas leaned a hand on the wall. He traced the children's form with a finger.
He pressed the back of his wrist to one eye. Elena had already dabbed the sleeve of his suit jacket with drops of ammonia. The sting drew the required tears.
He turned to the cameras, his fingers still on the cheek of the shadow child.
This is why we must change, he said and waved his hand to encompass the city.
How can anyone look across this blasted landscape and not know that our great country must move into a new era? We must put all this behind us yet never forget.
He wiped his cheek and hardened his countenance a few tears were fine, but he did not want to appear weak. His voice growled toward the microphones. Look at this city! What man has ruined, nature consumes. Some have called this place
Chernobyl's Garden of Eden. Is it not a handsome forest that has taken over the city? Birds sing. Deer roam in great abundance. But know that the wolves have also returned.
He stared toward the darkening horizon. Do not be fooled by the beauty here. It still remains a radioactive garden. We all crossed through the two military checkpoints to enter the thirty-kilometer-wide Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. We all passed the two thousand vehicles used to put out Chernobyl's radioactive blaze.
Firetrucks, aircraft, ambulances, still too hot to get near. We all wear our dosimeter badges. So do not be deceived. Nature has returned, but it will suffer for generations. What appears healthy and vital is not. This is not rebirth.
Only false hope. For a true rebirth, we must look in new directions, toward new goals, toward a new Renaissance.
He turned again to the shadowy children. He shook his head.
How could we not? he finished sadly.
Someone along the roadway clapped.
Faced away from the camera, Nicolas smiled. As camera flashes captured his thoughtful and resolute pose, his own shadow consumed the children's shapes.
After a long moment, he turned away and went back to the asphalt walkway.
He marched back toward the hotel. Elena trailed him. Rounding a turn, he saw a commotion at the front of the Polissia Hotel. A stretch black limousine pulled to the entrance of the hotel, surrounded by a sleek fleet of bulletproof sedans.
Men in dark suits piled out, forming a thick cordon. The arriving dignitary climbed from the limousine, an arm raised in greeting.
Camera and video lights spotlighted the figure, outlining the newcomer's profile.
There was no mistaking that silhouette.
The president of the United States.
Here to support a vital nuclear pact between Russia and the United States.
The major reason Pripyat had been cleaned up and sanitized was so it could host such dignitaries.
Not wanting to be upstaged, Nicolas waited for the entire party to vanish into the hotel's lobby. Once the way was clear, he headed out again.
Everything was in place.
He glanced to the Chernobyl plant as the sun sank toward twilight.
By this time tomorrow, a new world would be born.
5:49 P. M.
Southern Ural Mountains
Monk stood on a ridge and stared out across the low mountains. With the sun sinking, the valley below lay in deep shadows.
We have to cross that? he asked. There's no other way around?
