That morning they had visited a village. Hetty knew the stories: there were still people living among the encroaching wilderness, the babushkas with their newspaper-famous stoicism returning to their irradiated homes to live with the graves of their dead husbands and to feed the neighbours’ cats. There were no dogs. They had been killed early on by the military, special patrols roaming the empty countryside shooting Azov and Belun, Mara and Polissia.
‘Was it to prevent them from hunting in packs?’ Hetty asked.
Ljudmila was swatting away the sandflies thick in the air. ‘Yes, partly that,’ she said. ‘Also, to stop them from wandering, looking for their humans—taking their radioactive bodies from village to village.’
Hetty had an image of the starving animals, their noses nudging the ground, seeking out the scent of lost family, confused by the sudden departure of not just their people but every one of their masters’ kind. Would they have become wild? she wondered.
‘What about the boar?’ she asked instead as she stepped over a patch of wormwood growing close to the ground. She had soon learned to step around the silvery-leafed plant; the smell on contact wasn’t easily forgotten.
‘Yes, there are boars and they can grow very large. We’ve had some problems with them in the Zone, but unless it is Return Week there aren’t really enough people here to worry them.’ A shadow fell across the sun, Ljudmila shielded her eyes with her hand. ‘A golden eagle!’ she cried with delight. ‘We see many more prey birds here now. They come because of all those mice.’
Earlier, Hetty had surprised a nest as she came out the back door of her accommodation. She’d also surprised the caretaker hanging out the washing. ‘Oh,’ the woman had cried, hand on her heart. ‘I thought you were a boar!’ She’d clapped her hands together and laughed, then offered Hetty a sample of her home-brewed vodka. At the kitchen table, Hetty coughed the contents of her glass down. The woman slapped her on the shoulder as she brushed past, returning to the washing, stringing up sheets and bath mats and towels to thick nylon ropes hanging between two gnarled apricot trees. Hetty watched idly from the back door, feeling the gentle breeze blowing across the hairs on her arms. The people here seem happy, she thought. She wondered if it was the vodka.
The art department had been excited by the footage she’d sent; she’d noticed comments on the internal chat channel. Most correctly assumed she was designing an RPG and they were wondering which direction the final game would take. Zombie apocalypse was polling strongly. Hetty swiped through a few of the images and sketches and saw that they’d already made a mock-up of her boots crunching through broken concrete and fallen leaves. Now she needed to see about accommodation for the real-world tie-in. She was pleased with herself for having thought of it; they would have a contest based on the game—here, in the Zone. It was a bit premature, she knew, as the game was still in the early stages of development, but Hetty wanted it done. Two birds, one stone. All she needed from this trip was living quarters and the footage, everything else could wait till she returned home.
It made sense (all these unused houses!) just to move the contestants in. But the locals became hostile whenever she mentioned it. A babushka in one village said that it was impossible, that ‘people still live here!’ Hetty thought she was a bit senile, but as they wandered through halls with tree roots growing through floorboards, Hetty peering through windows with glass pushed in by branches and scattered all over the floors, the woman started rattling off the names of her neighbours and their children. Those who came back for Return Week, who sent her postcards.
Hetty asked, ‘Couldn’t we use the houses of the people who didn’t come back?’
‘Impossible,’ said the babushka. ‘The houses still wait for them.’
If the houses are waiting, they’ve been waiting too long, Hetty brooded as she walked in and out of houses in the next abandoned place they’d visited. In this village she’d found old, faded notes written by children, parents, grandparents. Dear House, we are so sorry to leave you! Please don’t be sad, please look after Loki. Love, Your People. The babushka who’d accompanied Hetty explained that Loki was a cat. The original Loki died in the months following the evacuations, but there was still a Loki around here. She’d just renamed some other cat and fed it, waiting for the children to return.
Hetty felt a little sad for her then. She wondered if the old woman realised that the children probably now had children of their own. She wondered if they thought about these houses here in the woods. Hetty didn’t understand the old woman’s stubbornness. In exchange for a roof over their heads, the contestants could help out—cut down some of those trees and prune back the bushes that were threatening to take over. No one would move back into these villages. Only the old people like the babushkas wanted to live among the ruins.
*
Ljudmila drove her to the Red Forest. It was not as its name suggested; it didn’t look much like a forest—the trees were short and twisted. Hetty put her camera away. Ljudmila filled her empty hand with a dosimeter. As they walked, she described the days after reactor number four blew its payload into the surrounding atmosphere.
‘The forest turned an eerie red.’
Hetty followed Ljudmila’s sloped form through the tangled brush, holding the dosimeter. 500 microsieverts, it said. She tried not to look worried, but her gaze brushed Ljudmila’s, who said, ‘It’s okay. This place will never be habitable again, but the radiation is not so bad. We do not stay.’ And she walked away towards a line of nearby trees.
Hetty felt the itch of sweat break across her back. The numbers were still rising, the yellow box in her hands screaming. Then, suddenly, it gave up. She stopped, shook the thing, and hit it against her thigh, hard. She let out a yelp.
Ljudmila turned. ‘Ignore it. The hotspots are far worse than the background radiation of this area. We’ll head back.’
Close to the van, Hetty paused to examine a stunted tree. The branches had formed a kind of semicircle, growing out then back in towards the trunk—tiny buds, tiny leaves. Something moved in the corner of her eye; a finch with a red crown came to rest on a nearby branch. Hetty was surprised by the indifference of the environment. Everything that shouldn’t be, was. She found it confusing, like the human realm had been set aside—or, worse, hadn’t been regarded at all.
They climbed back into the van, Hetty watching Ljudmila’s hands as she expertly coaxed a start out of the sticky engine. She tried to imagine Ljudmila reclining by a pool, cocktail in hand, but the image failed to form.
They took to the broken road. Trees slid by, a cornucopia of cooling green. Reedy conifers and unruly oaks waved limbs in the slight afternoon breeze.
Hetty wondered if Ljudmila ever got angry about what had happened. She wasn’t sure she would be so circumspect if this was her home, if she’d had to watch her streets being reclaimed by the forests, turned into some kind of grotesque parody, everything off kilter. Everything undone. She thought about her neat little unit in Sydney, the dishes in their cupboards, the benches cleared and clean. Windows gleaming. Trees outside.
They pulled into the next village. Hetty landed strangely as she slid out of the van.
‘It’s the boars that leave the ground dug up like that; you’ll have to watch your step,’ Ljudmila instructed, pulling the rucksack off the seat and slinging it over her shoulder.
She pushed aside a thatch of branches, swiping away the cobwebs to allow Hetty to step through to the path, which was close and overgrown. Ljudmila spoke as she continued to clear the way. ‘The birds are fond of the houses here, so many good perches for them. But not for the storks. We only see them flying overhead.’ She paused and looked up. ‘There used to be storks all around. It was considered good luck to have one of them choose your house to make a nest.’ Ljudmila strode on. ‘But the storks liked the people and now the people are gone. So the storks have gone too.’ She had led Hetty through a side gate to the back of a yard. ‘I like their nests, long sticks. Some people would consider it a mess, having one of those on your roof, your chimney. But not people from around here, we like the storks. Good fertility. Happy home. That is what a stork’s nest means.’
Ljudmila plonked the rucksack on a rusted patio set hanging together on loose hinges; it cocked a lean like the Tower of Pisa. She hunted around in the rucksack and brought out two bottles of water, handing one to Hetty.
Hetty looked up at the crumbling chimney, remnants of a nest drooping down around it. She’d seen the huge birds in the air. A massive wingspan of up to six metres, she’d read. As big as a pelican’s, but with these long and spindly legs dragging behind them. They were quite comical, she thought, but dared not say so. The people she’d encountered here looked up to them. Almost as some kind of deity.
‘The storks herald the beginning of spring,’ Ljudmila continued. ‘It’s quite an important time with the end of winter and the milder weather. The crops have mostly been planted so the hard work is done. The stork symbolises hope. And they have largely gone.’ She sighed as she zipped up the rucksack. ‘There are other places that have the luck of the storks.’
*
Their last stop was the city. The city—only newly proclaimed at the time of the accident—had promises and beginnings etched into its fabric. There were ten gymnasiums, three indoor heated swimming pools, a cinema and an amusement park. Hetty had read that the city was a kind of a prototype, planned for the ease of use of its citizens. The buildings had been arranged to maximise the space between them for parks, squares and gardens. Even the roads had been designed to be free of traffic jams.
Hetty walked through a desolate square towards an empty plinth, its statue gone. Tree roots were haphazardly pushing up concrete to either side of it, asserting primacy over the space made as a place of egress and rest for the many people who had since deserted it.
The wind began to moan, leaves rushing in circles then scattering against the surface like open palms, fingers curled. Hetty felt her stomach pitch. A memory was forming like waves breaking against the shore, methodically and without rest. She placed her fingers against her temples and made the shape of circles.
Unsettled, she picked a path through the tufted grass and meandered around the base of the ferris wheel, its yellow canopies like decrepit Pac-Men pell-melling a circle in the sky. Only now they were still, with the occasional hinge creaking out. The other sounds were of birds and trees and the shrill whistle of the wind through the leaves. But the noises from the amusement park, the carnival music and the happy screams of children, still echoed in her head.
Conversation faded as they walked through a kindergarten; cots and bedding were strewn about, a small shoe discarded near the door. She wondered if people were frantic to leave, or were they sold a story to make the evacuations orderly? To maintain discipline as radiation spewed out of the reactor and into the air of the city’s residents. She walked through building after building, drab grey, discoloured by water damage; there was a broken uniformity in the peeling paint, damaged ceilings and snaking conduit cables. Ljudmila appeared unwilling to take her through the living quarters in the towers. Hetty would have gone alone, only she remembered her pre-tour briefing on things like structural integrity. She tested the heel of her boot against a cracked tile and set herself a reminder to access the drone footage from the living quarters.
She took videos and stills from the kindergarten. The discarded shoe. The empty cot with bedding strewn about. The doll with outstretched arms reaching for the impossible, empty embrace.
Ljudmila pointed ahead. They crunched over wreckage, looping cables threaded with filigree vines, pushed aside viburnum growing tall and reedy in the wooded shade of the entrance to a gymnasium. They walked up wide stairs strewn with glass and dirt and concrete dust to a dark passageway and came out onto a narrow deck. Beneath them stretched an empty swimming pool with a diving platform positioned above, its alabaster arm hinged out over an expanse of air and broken glass. Hetty looked at the clock permanently reading 1:23, the minute hand pointing towards the plank. Like a memorial.
In the dim registry office, chunks of plaster lay across desks and on chairs. Hetty noticed a book lying open on a table. This was where the births, deaths and marriages were recorded. She ran her finger along the dust-laden column and traced the signatures. Here were the last names to be added. Here was the last date written. Where were these people now? Had they survived? She thought about the children from the kindergarten. There was nothing that pointed to a future, only what had been left, what was rotting and decaying.
As they exited the building, she saw how someone had painted a bunch of life-sized deer on the building opposite. The does’ flat eyes followed her back into the van.
*
At the hostel, the caretaker and her vodka were nowhere to be found. Hetty and one other—a furtive Russian birder with a directional mic—were the only guests. Hetty wondered where the caretaker had got to—the spot out front where her car was usually parked sat empty. She remembered the woman saying that she lived some way outside the Zone, travelling back and forth for the duration of their stay.
Hetty sat down on the spongy bed, the springs sagging towards her corner. She got up and brushed back the sticky folds of the quilt, peeling it to a triangle across the bed. It smelt of stale cigarette smoke. She took out her computer.
She had most of it now, and it wasn’t even like she had to make any of it up. That was the beauty of it. She would bring the dogs back to life—zombie dogs hunting in packs and taking their revenge in the wasteland, prowling through the deserted buildings looking for their owners but coming across military personnel sent to dispatch them. She already knew what the ‘Game Over’ screen would flash—the player’s name would appear on the registry in the birth, deaths and marriages office, a finger tracing the outline onto the page.
There was balance to it.
Then she’d add the other elements. The danger of radiation—definitely the one she’d sold the studio executives on—and the possibility of contamination, of putting your life at risk, not something you find in your average office or school day. There were encounters with the locals, a randomised element. Then there was the natural dimension: the wilderness and the interest it held for the art department. It wasn’t something she understood. In fact if she dwelled on it, she found the whole thing off—the abandoned buildings in the city sprouting trees through windows and cracks in the floors.
Hetty thought back to the babushkas she’d met, waiting all on their own, feeding the village cats. The world had moved on. They saw only glimpses of what the world had become through infrequent postcards sent from the old residents. Their lives were here; they had memories of the people who used to live in the villages, they had graves to tend, potatoes to plant.
She would use footage shot inside their crumbling homes. The faded notes she found could be interactive, generating clues and unlocking levels. She’d include the babushkas—they could issue directions to the players as they went.
She thought about the rusted ferris wheel, the mournful creak of its oxidised hinges. The square with its missing statue. The diving platform, the clock. The doll with its outstretched arms. It reminded her of something, a prickling of nerves across the back of her neck. A thing that made her future inscrutable. A memory of a child crying—lost in the shopping centre, the guiding force of her mother’s hand separated from hers. An impression of nothing more than the trace of her mother’s skin held against her own.
Hearing a noise, Hetty crept outside and trailed along the hall to check the lights—but there were none. She threaded her fingers over the peeling paper, blindly feeling around for a switch. Finally she came across a hard plastic casing and depressed the switch. Nothing. She jiggled it up and down in case she was mistaken, but again—nothing. Hetty sighed, edged back to her room and hunted through her purse for her pen torch. This time she found a light further along and turned that on. It’s lucky this hostel is rarely at capacity, she thought to herself. She wasn’t sure it could handle the excitement.
Whatever had made the sound was probably long gone. She breathed a deep sigh, but as she edged outside the kitchen, she heard it again. A rooting and shuffling noise followed by a few loud snorts. A wild boar. She snuck around the corner, careful not to disturb it from its foraging. She shone the light, and the boar stuck up its fat head, large tusks on either side of its snout. She was surprised by the size of them. They looked like hooked bayonets.
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