“So, tell me about this strong wind you created by just touching the book,” Kimberley began, turning to Aiden.
“I think Aiden will become a good Bookbearer if he’s given the chance,” Rachel said. “He only thinks I’m crazy.”
“You’re not making sense, for sure,” Aiden told her.
“You three have been traveling with the books?” Oxana, now Mariah, wondered aloud.
“No, Mariah,” Rachel said. “Just the white one.”
“Was Mariah my original name?” Mariah asked her. “You brought me here through the white one?”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “I had no choice than to look for you with the book, just as I have done for the others.”
“And how many of us have you found so far?”
“Only Uncle Ezra and…and…”
“You met Ezra?” Mariah asked the little girl, brightening up temporarily. “The Booklords killed him, right?”
Rachel nodded dejectedly.
“Are you in trouble?”
“Obviously,” Aiden said.
“We were hoping you could help us stop them?” Rachel said, frowning.
“Are they after you?” Mariah asked her and she nodded. “Then you must find the other book.”
“Aunt Shira said it’s too late for that,” the little girl said.
“You met Shira?” An unexpected question.
“Yes,” Kimberley said.
“Not true,” Mariah said.
“Not true about what?” an annoyed Kimberley demanded.
“About the other book,” Mariah said. “I know the Black Ones are still after the Bookbearer with that book.”
“But Father said we must defeat the Booklords first before performing the ritual with the other book,” Rachel began. “This means we don’t need the other book to defeat the…”
“Your father was wrong,” Oxana interrupted. “You can only defeat the Booklords by performing the ritual with the other book, and Shurabi tells me the Black Ones are still after the Bookbearer with that book.”
Kimberley started. Shurabi. That magic word again.
“You can do Shurabi?” Aiden asked Mariah.
“I practice Shurabi,” Mariah corrected.
“All Bookmakers practiced Shurabi, Mariah,” Rachel began.
“You keep calling me that,” Mariah said.
“But that’s your name,” the little girl pointed out. “We just want you to…”
“I think I prefer Oxana,” Mariah told her.
“Okay by me,” Kimberley agreed, turning to Oxana, a.k.a. Mariah. “What’s Shurabi?”
They heard heavy rumblings.
“Sounds like a military detachment,” Kimberley said.
“Quick, get into the car before they get here,” Oxana told the children, who obeyed her. “Keep your heads down.”
“Why the hurry?” Kimberley demanded.
“Children are meant to have left this area by now,” Oxana said. “Those soldiers will arrest us if they discover the kids.”
The military vehicles entered the street from the main road. Kimberley and Oxana stood beside their car as the convoy quickly rolled past them into the street. The young soldiers on the trucks looked like they had never fought a battle before. They were armed with Kalashnikovs.
“What will they do now?” Kimberley asked.
“They’ll probably examine the bodies before checking them for radiation levels,” Oxana replied. “Other than that, they’re useless here.”
The last vehicle stopped before the two women and five men in white laboratory coats jumped down from it with the soldiers it transported. These men started examining the dead bodies lying about, while some of the soldiers assisted them by stuffing bodies already checked for radiation into body bags. The remaining soldiers simply stood guard.
A high-ranking officer alighted from the stationary truck’s driver’s cabin and looked at Kimberley and her companion with disdain. “You are not supposed to be here,” he slowly said in English.
“But we’re not the only ones who saw this tragedy, captain,” Oxana said. “Many have driven into the street as we speak.”
“Let us deal with them,” the captain said, turning to his men. “Please be on your way.”
“What do you think is the cause of the deaths, captain?” Oxana put forward in Ukrainian.
“This area is very close to Pripyat, miss,” the officer said in the same language. “The scientists are working to know if the radiation levels here were as high as the levels recorded in Pripyat within the last 48 hours.”
“I am a nuclear physicist, officer, and I have a dosimeter with me,” Oxana told the soldier. “Believe me when I tell you that these deaths are not due to the pollution from the plant. I’ve checked most of these bodies with my instrument.”
For a brief moment, Kimberley thought that the Soviet Army captain would lose it, but then he walked over to their car.
“Are you crazy?” she whispered to Oxana. “You might have just blown the children’s cover by being too forward.”
“I was just trying to appear normal,” Oxana whispered back. “Relax, he’ll find nothing on the car. I checked its radiation level even before you met me today.”
The officer stopped before the car’s trunk and brought out a pen-like instrument.
“What’s that?” Kimberley whispered to Oxana.
“I can hear you, miss,” the Soviet Army officer said. “Your physicist friend will tell you what it is.”
“It’s an indicator. Measures radiation levels,” Oxana explained to her companion.
“Bah!” the Soviet Army officer shouted in frustration. “This one does not work!”
“The indicator must have expired, captain,” one of the men studying the dead bodies lying nearby suggested.
“Check their vehicle for its radiation level,” the captain ordered the young man, who went to work immediately with his dosimeter.
“200 millisieverts, sir,” the military scientist finally told his superior. “They must have been passing by.”
“Now, leave before I am forced to take you in for questioning,” the captain threatened both women.
“Okay, officer, we’re leaving,” Oxana said, turning back to the car.
Kimberley turned as well. She felt chilly.
“They’re coming back!” Rachel shouted from the car’s back seat.
“Who said that?” the military captain demanded, turning back to the car.
“Eh, nothing, captain,” an alarmed Kimberley told him. “Could be that person lying over there.”
“Ivanov, check the backseat,” the man ordered an armed subordinate standing nearby.
“There’s nobody with us, officer,” Oxana said.
“Yes, nobody,” Kimberley stressed, intentionally blocking the armed private’s view of the backseat.
“You’re lying,” the man’s commanding officer snapped, walking back to the car.
“Get out of the way,” the soldier ordered Kimberley, pushing her aside. Two gloomy faces stared at him from the car’s back seat when he peered in through the right side window. “There are children in the backseat, sir!”
“Seize them!” his superior ordered him.
Kimberley kicked the soldier between the legs and he doubled over. The soldiers around turned towards the vehicle.
“I order you to freeze!” the officer behind Kimberley demanded.
“We need to go, Kim,” Aiden shouted from the car’s back seat.
“Get in, Kim!” Oxana shouted, entering the car.
Kimberley opened the car’s front passenger door.
“Stop or I shoot!” the Soviet Army captain behind her ordered, his right hand pointing a service pistol in her direction.
The Portwood police sergeant froze and raised her hands, surprised by the number of Kalashnikovs now pointing her way.
The soldiers surrounding the car moved in.
“Get out of the car right now,” their captain orde
red Oxana, who still sat in the car. “Get out before I do something drastic.”
She obeyed him, raising her hands like her companion.
“You have to let us go right now, captain, before it is too late,” Kimberley said.
“Before what happens?” the man snapped, frowning.
“Before they come, captain,” Oxana said.
“So you know something MDV does not know?” the captain said coldly. “Is there something I must know right now?”
Both women said nothing.
“Whose children are these two?” The captain pointed at the two young faces staring at him through the car’s side window with his left hand. His men started murmuring and he angrily looked around him. Some of them were pointing their guns upwards into the sky. “What is it, Ivanov?” he asked the nearest soldier, who obviously did not hear him.
Kimberley looked up to see what the captain’s men were pointing their guns at. She froze at the sight of the individual gaping at her from above.
The weather turned cold pretty fast.
She acted without thinking.
Chapter 19: Destination Pripyat
CAPTAIN Vladimir Zhukov of the Special Motorized Military Unit 5402 from the Kiev Red Order Decorated Military District frowned at the woman whose hands were in the air before him. He glared at her companion through the car’s side window. “Get out of the car right now,” he ordered this other person. “Get out before I do something drastic.”
The woman in the car obeyed him and raised her hands like her friend.
“You have to let us go right now, captain, before it is too late,” the first woman standing before him said.
“Before what happens?” he snapped, frowning.
“Before they come, captain,” the other woman said.
“So you know something MDV does not know?” the captain asked coldly. “Is there something I must know right now?”
Both women said nothing.
“Whose children are these two?” The captain pointed at the two young faces staring at him through the car’s side window with his left hand. His men started murmuring and he angrily looked around him. Some of them were pointing their guns upwards into the sky. “What is it, Ivanov?” he asked the nearest soldier, who obviously did not hear him.
The men opened fire without being ordered to do so.
“Hold your fire,” Captain Zhukov snapped, but nobody obeyed him. He looked up at what they were shooting at.
A strange man floated in the air high above the men.
Captain Zhukov panicked. He started shooting at the floating man like his men. The two women he’d been interrogating rushed into their vehicle and zoomed off, but he didn’t care if they had kidnapped the children in their back seat anymore. His biggest concern at the moment looked like a man and floated like a ghost above his men. “Fire at will!” he ordered them, emptying his service pistol on the motionless individual high above the street.
The bullets had no effect on the apparition in the sky. It followed the moving car as the captain’s fear-stricken men kept up their shooting.
“Where is it going?” a terrified private wanted to know.
Captain Zhukov realized he was shaking and his palms were sweaty despite the cold weather. He reloaded his gun and resumed the futile attempt to bring down the strange entity confounding his sense of sight high above the street. One by one, his men stopped shooting at it, lowering their fatigued arms while gasping for badly needed air. “Keep shooting!” he snapped and the soldiers started murmuring amongst themselves.
The captain turned and shot a conspicuous hesitator and the others resumed fire in the direction the ghostlike man had taken. He and the car had all but vanished round a bend.
“Stop!” Captain Zhukov ordered his men, peering into the distant horizon. Screeching voices forced him to turn in the opposite direction, but he saw nothing except the other soldiers from Unit 3502 coming out from the inner residential areas, probably after hearing the eruptive sound of gunfire. He heard the horrendous noise again.
“What is that?” Ivanov demanded to his left.
“Probably the confusion in your head!” Captain Zhukov snapped, waving away the screeching sounds in his own head. “Notify MDV of the car with two women and two children. Who got their number?”
“Here, sir.”
“Good. Make sure it gets to HQ immediately.” The screeching sound increased in the captain’s head and he could not help holding his head with both hands. Looking around him, he realized his men were undergoing the same experience. “Where is that damn noise coming from?” he wondered aloud.
Right before his very eyes, something pierced through Captain Zhukov’s men all around him, bursting out from their backs without spilling any blood. His men now collapsing around him, the Soviet Army captain suddenly felt raw inside. His stomach churned and he started gasping for air, sweating profusely before losing consciousness.
* * *
Carl Bain could not believe his eyes when he saw the woman he killed in Germany standing beside the car below him. She also recognized him and rushed into the car, which started moving immediately.
Ignoring the bullets wheezing through him, he went after the moving vehicle.
His masters simply smothered all the soldiers he left in his wake.
* * *
Kimberley knew how explosive the already tense situation would become when the weather suddenly turned cold. She had seen the floating man when the soldiers surrounding the car started pointing their rifles upwards rather than at her. She rushed into the vehicle when their captain joined them in attacking the apparition high above them. “Get in,” she ordered Oxana, whose eyes were glued to the sky above them. “Get in, dammit!”
Oxana got in and started the car. “What is that thing above us?” she finally asked.
“An old friend,” Aiden quipped.
“Get us out of here,” Kimberley urged Oxana, who started the car and moved it. “Aiden, what of my cross?” she asked, turning to the back seat. “I had a small one in my pocket back in Germany.”
“I couldn’t find it before we left,” Aiden replied.
“Did you draw any cross on the book?” Kimberley asked Rachel.
“Haven’t seen any pen since we got here,” the little girl replied.
“You were in Germany?” Oxana asked Kimberley.
“Yeah, sure. World War Two.” The Portwood sergeant opened the glove compartment in the car’s dashboard. “We need to make a cross sign and I need something to write with.”
“Like a pen,” Rachel said.
“Yeah, like a pen.” Kimberley looked up in frustration. “There’s no pen here.”
The car swerved into the main road from Chernobyl and picked up speed.
Oxana pulled a pen from her breast pocket and handed it over to Kimberley. “You have a pen now,” she said, “but you can’t use it on the book.”
“Why not?” Kimberley asked.
“Both books are from the devil, himself,” Oxana replied, concentrating on her driving. “Back in the Mine, we tried to draw many forms of the Christian symbol on them to no avail. The symbols never appeared on their pages as long as we tried.”
“That’s a new one,” Rachel said.
“We could draw on something else instead,” Aiden suggested.
“Great idea,” Kimberley agreed. “Only that there’s no paper in this ancient car.”
“Ancient?” Oxana was surprised. “This is a 1985 GAZ-24-10 Volga. It’s a classic for us Ukrainian citizens, you know.”
“Yeah, more like a Spartan classic to me,” Kimberley grumbled.
“You Americans have no taste, you know?” Oxana emphasized.
“Do we have to go into that right now?” Aiden cut in.
“Remember we’ve established that you’re Jewish,” Kimberley said, ignoring Aiden. “Not Ukrainian.”
“Remember the flying man after us?” Aiden tried.
“Remember your name is Mar
iah,” Rachel told Oxana, and Aiden glared at her.
“Thanks for the help,” he said, to which the little girl raised both hands in mock helplessness.
Oxana had ignored them all. “Give Aiden the book, Rachel,” she ordered the Jewish girl.
“Okay.” Rachel handed the book to the Portwood boy.
“Okay,” Kimberley said, frowning. “You could be right about Aiden.”
“I know I’m right,” Oxana said. “The Gray Ones are afraid of him, that’s why they haven’t attacked us yet.”
“I thought they were afraid of his union with Rachel during fights,” Kimberley pointed out.
“That is true, but they have every reason to be more afraid of him, since he made the boom possible. Very few Bookbearers can do that, including yours truly.”
“I think Aiden will be a good Bookbearer,” Rachel said. “I know that anybody with the book for a long time becomes a Bookbearer and has better control of the book, but I think he has a special connection with the white book and…and can do a better job than me if he begins to bear the book right now.”
Aiden stared at the strange little girl.
“You know you don’t like people holding this particular book,” he told her. “Sure you want this?”
“If you can do a good job, yes,” Rachel said. “But if you fall short, then I’ll take it back.”
“Aiden, Rachel will help us if you can’t bear the book,” Oxana allayed.
“And what of Carl Bain?” Kimberley asked her new acquaintance.
“Carl who?” Oxana had never heard the name in all her nine lives.
“The flying guy?” Kimberley explained.
“Oh, he should be scared as well,” Oxana said.
“I–I don’t know anything about being a Bookbearer,” Aiden reminded everyone, staring at the cold ancient artifact he now held in his hands.
“You can only learn from experience,” Oxana assured him. “There’s really nothing to teach, just bear the book and you’ll be fine.”
“You have to be with the book for some time like me,” Rachel said. “Only then will you be grounded in the art of bookbearing.”
“You were murmuring some words beside Aunt Shira in Germany,” Aiden told the little girl. “What did you tell Mr. Bain when he took the book back then? Some kind of ancient chant?”
The White Book Page 24