A short and skinny fourteen year old boy with long blond hair and pale skin leaned out of a third floor window of 1324 West Brook Boulevard.

“Bye Dad!” Oleksander Oleksiy yelled down to his father getting in the bus outside.

“Goodbye мій син [my son]! Don’t get into trouble!” Vladyslav, Olek’s father, shouted back up to their little apartment,. “See you in a few days!”

“Alright батько [father]! See you next week!” But Vlad was already on the bus, so he couldn’t hear these last words his only son left him with. Soon after, the old bus rumbled off to the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, leaving Olek alone with his little dog Dasha.

As Olek was left looking out the window of his little three room apartment, he became lost in thought. A few weeks ago, Olek had heard about a nuclear meltdown that had happened in Pennsylvania, over in the U.S.

Three Mile Island.

It had happened thirteen years ago, but he was too young then to remember. He had overheard his dad talking to the next door neighbor, Mr. Yegor, who was in the army, about it. Vlad had said that at Chernobyl there were some signs that it might happen there, but nothing was for sure.

When Olek had confronted his father about it, Vlad had gone straight the the plant and made sure it wouldn’t happen any time soon. When he came back, Vlad said the plant was just fine. Dasha, a little black terrier, let out a loud bark, yanking Olek out of his trance..

“Let’s get you some food, eh Dasha?” Olek asked as he turned from the window.

YIP! She replied.

“That’s what I thought,” Olek chuckled.

/ / / / / / / / / / / /

“Why does anyone play this game, it’s so boring.” Olek’s friend, Bohdan Yegor, complained as he yet again missed the hoop.

“I don’t know, maybe because the name is so fun to say; Baskutbull!” Olek replies, not realizing he pronounced it wrong. They were putting away the ball so the could go to the amusement park across town when they heard a loud BANG!

“о Боже [oh my gosh]!” Bohdan screamed, “What was that?!” There was a huge, roaring ball of fire shooting into the sky off towards Chernobyl.

“I think it's probably just a fuel truck gone off the road again. It happened a couple of years back too.”

“Oh. I hope the driver is ok.”

“Yeah. Hey, race ya to the park?”

“You’re on!”

They probably ran half a mile before they had tired themselves out. They then proceeded to do a little something they called Van Hopping. The name was exactly what they did, they got on top of a passing van, and rode it to their destination.

Once the boys had exhausted themselves at the amusement park, they began to walk home. The hubbub about the fireball had all but ceased, although there was still a red-orange glow where it had first popped up.

“Can you take Dasha for the night Bodhan? I’m feeling a little sick and don’t want her sick too.” Olek asked.

“Of course, are you ok?” Bodhan replied, concerned.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine”

The boys continued walking in silence, taking in the serenity of mid afternoon Pripyat. The towering apartment buildings and department stores all made out of pure white concrete. Wherever there wasn’t a road or sidewalk, there was grass and trees. It really was a beautiful city. As they entered the courtyard to their apartment complex, they stopped to water the community garden.

“Alright, see you tomorrow Bodhan.”

“Yep, I’ll bring Dasha over later after dinner,” Olek  farewelled.

/ / / / / / / / / / / /

“What is that?” Olek wondered out loud.

He had woken to the sound of a loud and fast ticking ticking. It was noon, so he had slept in long after his alarm was supposed to have gone off so he could go to school. Why didn’t the alarm go off? He thought, And what is that noise?

He got up to investigate. As he walked towards the door, the ticking just got louder and more annoying.

“Oh my gosh, make it stop!” Olek screamed as he flung open the door.

There was nothing there. The ticking was there, but the source was nowhere to be found. He looked down the hallway both ways, and still nothing. He was closing the door when he happened to look at the floor. There! A little yellow box, with a hemispherical shaped meter on the front and a needle bouncing wildly at the high end of the scale.

“What is this?” Olek said out loud as he stooped over to pick up the strange device.

The numbers on the dial were oddly sequenced, 1, 2, 3, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500. He had seen one of these before, when he was little. It was a Geiger Counter, his dad used to wear one on his belt when he went to work. He had said it was too measure amounts of radiation. The higher the needle was and the faster it ticked, the more deadly the amount of radiation. And the needle was at 500 cpm.

“Oh no.” Olek moaned despairingly as he dropped the counter.

He ran down the hall and started pounding on Bodhan’s door. “Let me in, we have to leave!” The door swung wide on it’s own.

“Hello?!” Olek yelled in as he walked into the other apartment, “Hello?! Is anyone here?!”

There was no answer. Everyone had gone. Then, outside, he heard the loud whirring of a bus driving away. He ran to the window to see the bus putter away. It was army green and on the back said, in almost imperceptibly black lettering, Evacuation Bus #2,055,.

“Evacu-? Dear God! I need to get to that bus!” Olek stammered in a nervous tone. He knew the was he only chance at survival, although he still didn’t completely understand why.

It would take to long to use the stairs. The elevator wasn’t an option, as it was out of order. The only out was down. Down the side of a three story building. Olek was notorious for hating heights too, so that just made the fact he had to jump so much worse.

“Oh no.” Olek moaned as he stared at the seemingly endless fall he would have to take.

“Well… here goes nothing-”

Lord knows he didn’t want to, but he did it anyway. He climbed onto the window sill, and lowered himself down so he was only hanging by his hands. He was going to try to land on the window sill directly below himself to break his fall.

Okay, whatever, he thought.

He let go.

Land right, LAND RIGHT!

He couldn’t tell if he was screaming it or if he was thinking it loudly, but he didn’t land right. His feet slammed onto the concrete window sill and snapped
upward with a loud pop, and his right ankle was put at an especially odd angle. He was flug backwards away from the building, into thin air.

“Oh dear GooooOOOOOD!!!!”

This is it, he thought in an oddly calm tone, despite the fact he had just jumped out of a three story building and broken his ankle, I’m going to die.

But he didn’t.

He tried to contort his body so he could get his feet underneath him, as he landed, but he instead ended up smashing his left shoulder into the concrete sidewalk beneath him.

Crack!

He wailed in misery with the most horrific sound imaginable as his shoulder and upper arm shattered. It was the most painful, and agonizing feeling Olek had ever experienced. As he lay there, now moaning due to his voice being lost, he looked like he a skydiver whose parachute had failed. His left arm had been thrown at a very odd, and quite honestly disgusting angle, and his right ankle was also in a very uncomfortable looking degree.

“Help!” he tried to yell, “Help me! Please!”

His voice was so quiet and scratchy he could hardly hear himself. It was hopeless he decided. He was just going to have to sit here and wait for his apparently imminent death.

Hours passed, it was getting dark now. Hot, thirsty, and still in excruciating pain, he lay there, without the will to live. He hadn't moved, he hadn’t said anything, not even to himself, and he hadn’t even tried to stand. The pain was beginning to spread to his whole body now. It wasn’t sharp like his bone had been, and still were, but more of a vexatious throbbing. He couldn’t tell what it was from, but he know it wasn’t good.

Just as he was beginning to fall to sleep, a voice pierced the darkness.

“Hello?! Is someone there?!” the voice yelled, “Who are you and why are you here?! This is an exclusion zone!”

A tall man with a gun and cludgle leaped from the haze. He was wearing army fatigues, he had very short brown hair, and a very skinny stature. He also had a breathing mask on, one like the ones his father used to wear to work every day before they “weren't necessary.” He looked oddly familiar.

“Please don’t shoot me, sir!” Olek cried out as the gun was pointed at him, “I can’t move, I- Mr. Yegor?”

“Oleksander Oleksiy?! What are you doing here, you should be with the evacuation busses. Why are you here?”

After Olek had finished his story, and Mr. Yegor had seen his displaced limbs, he said, “We need to get you out of here and to hospital. Here, get up.”

Mr. Yegor’s little blue Ford Ranger was a half mile away, so it was a very long walk/drag for Olek. Once they had completed the 800 Yards of Pain, Mr. Yegor proceeded to set Olek’s ankle, seeing as there was no helping his arm, as it was in pieces.

“So kid, why didn't the crews get you out?” Mr. Yegor asked.

“I’m not documented. We don’t have enough money to pay for my taxes, so i was never documented. My dad was at the plant when they must have come through.”

/ / / / / / / / / / / /

It had been 3 hours and they were now driving through the Red Forest, a large forest outside of the town.. Olek had fallen asleep, despite the pain in his arm, but it was now not much more than a dull throb. But what he couldn't see, was about to be his undoing. Mr. Yegor was asleep.

The car began to swerve to the left, sharper, and sharper, until the truck hit a bump, sending it into  a roll. End over end it went. BANG! The car hit a tree, sending Olek, now very awake, flying through the windshield.

Crack!!

Olek’s head smashed into a rock, staining his bleach blonde hair red with blood. He tried to get up to see if Mr. Yegor was alright, forgetting about his ankle, and fell back to the ground because of either his ankle, and/or the probable concussion he had sustained from his little superman moment.

He looked over to the truck, now upside down to try to find Mr. Yegor. It was on fire. The fire was about to reach the fuel tank at the back. The engine compartment was already ablaze, as was the floor of the cab itself.

“Mr.Yegor! Nikolai,” that was Mr. Yegor’s first name, “get out! Get-”

BANG!!

He was interrupted with  a cannonade like series of explosions coming from the burning wreck. There was no way Nikolai could have survived that.

“Oh my-,” he threw up mid sentence.

Olek didn't have the strength nor the will to back himself away from the blaze. He instead just lay there, once again unmoving.

His skin was lightly burned and most of his hair singed off by the time the fire died down. He knew that he was going to die if he didn’t get up and find the road. He began to crawl.

After about 30 seconds, he collapsed from exhaustion. Then, towards where he assumed the road was, he heard a faint rumble. He snapped his head up and saw an army green pickup, most likely a Gaz 93, stopping a the road where the truck went off.

“Help! Help!” He cried weakly.

Blackness consumed him.

/ / / / / / / / / / / /

When the evacuation crews found his body, 3 weeks later, he was brought to the cemetery and laid to rest next to his father and Nikolai, and the rest of the fifty-six  people that had died that day. His story, as with this one, was over

The End.