Yuri’s mama always made eggs and shkvarky (chopped and fried pork fat) for breakfast. As he sat on his bed the scent of fried pork wafted into him from the kitchen. They lived very good in Pripyat. Tato worked at the power plant nearby. He promised Yuri they would go and ride on the big ferris wheel in the city’s amusement park. Many people left the city on buses days earlier. Yuri wasn’t even sure how many days had passed. The city stood empty outside his window. Work kept tato a long time. Sometimes mama would turn on some music and dance around the apartment, or tell Yuri stories to help him go to sleep at night. She would sit next to him and stroke his hair with her thin fingers. Mama was so pale.

Adrian wandered through the decaying apartment block. The silence of this place was maddening. Most of the doors to the apartments were left open in haste to leave. Debris lay everywhere. Strips of paint peeled down the walls. The Geiger counter in his hand clicked away melodiously. Adrian donned a white protective suit, but even that was only so protective. He still needed to be careful what he touched. The more the Geiger clicked, the more radiation was present. Adrian felt hopeless when he reached the final apartment on the top floor. The door was shut. He carefully turned the knob and pushed the door open a small crack. A soft noise came from inside, “Tato?”

Dear God, Adrian thought. Speaking through the door, afraid of what he would find, “Bzovsky?”

Through the crack in the door, Adrian could see piles of discarded food tins.

“Yes. Where is my father?”

“Yuri?!”

Adrian was surprised to be talking to Bzovsky’s child. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but he died in the Chernobyl disaster years ago. How come you didn’t leave when everyone was evacuated on buses, and where is your mother? We just found this discrepancy in our census records.”

Tears welled in Yuri’s eyes, but when he put his hand up to his face, the skin of his cheek stuck to it and sloughed off. The pain wasn’t new. “We were waiting for him.”

Adrian opened the door the rest of the way with his foot. The smell of rotted flesh and excrement filled the space. On the floor of the kitchen was the decaying corpse of Yuri’s mother.

Oh God. Adrian’s heart pounded. She must have left the apartment to do the scavenging, killed by the radiation. Adrian noticed that parts of her were missing. Had Yuri eaten her? He fought the bile back in his throat.

He walked down the short hall into Yuri’s bedroom. Yuri’s face was melting off. Radiation had devoured him for six years. He was only twelve years old now. His right cheek had withered away to the jaw.

“Oh God, we have to leave this place. I can get you help. There’s nothing for you here.” Adrian said. His voice cracked in deep anguish, extremely frightened by the sight of Yuri.

“I want to stay.” A sadness filled his eyes.

“Mama will not be able to find me if you take me away, and tato will never come home.”

Adrian left the apartment, and called his supervisor.

“I checked on things here… and the entire family is dead.”