By late afternoon the worst of the prevaricators had acknowledged the need to prepare for evacuation. In the meantime untold numbers of workers had been sent into the heart of the radiation field to direct cooling water onto the non-existent reactor. The helicopters had begun their dumping, and the rotors, arriving and departing, stirred up sandstorms of radioactive dust. The crews had to hover for three to five minutes directly over the reactor to drop their loads. Most managed only two trips before becoming unfit for service.
Word finally came through that Petya too had been sent to the medical center. By the time I got over there he’d been delivered to the airport for emergency transport to Moscow. When I asked how he’d gotten such a dose, no one had any idea.
At 10 am on Sunday the town was finally advised to shut its windows and not let its children outside. Four hours later the evacuation began.
Citizens were told to collect their papers and indispensable items, along with food for three days, and to gather at the sites posted. Some may have known they were never coming back. Most didn’t even take warm clothes.
The entire town climbed onto buses and was carried away. Many getting on were already intensely radioactive. The buses were washed with decontaminant once they were far enough out of town. Eleven hundred buses: the column stretched for 18 kilometers. It was a miserable sight. The convoy kicked up rolling billows of dust. In some places it enveloped families still waiting to be picked up, their children groping for their toys at the roadside.
That night when the Commission meeting was over, I went my own way. Even the streetlights were out. I felt my way along with small steps. I was in the middle of town and might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. Naturally, I thought: Petya had somehow been there, on the river. Whenever the shit cart tipped over, there was Petya, underneath.
