Wild Girl of Chernobyl

By Thomas Porter

Helle's parents were evacuated with the rest of Pripyat when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant melted down. Left behind, she was raised by wolves and remained unnoticed by the world until an internet video brought her to the attention of Louisiana State University anthropology PhD candidate Janice Grayson. Aggressive but insecure, Janice wins a grant to study Wild Girl of Chernobyl and moves quickly to capture the feral girl. Through a series of bold, and expensive, maneuvers, she manages to smuggle Helle back to the university, where the study itself melts in directions she never could have predicted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Porter
• Release date: May 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311678232

Thomas Porter

Author of The Power to Live, a story of girls sold into slavery in San Francisco who break the grip of their oppressors with unexpected powers, and raw strength of will, inherited from their Native American ancestors. Author of The Fallujah Strain. This short novel watches Maya develop from a selfish young girl blessed with blood immune to Ebola, which allows her to command others to serve her, into a young adult who may help change the world.

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Wild Girl of Chernobyl

T homas Porter

Copyright 2015 by Thomas Porter

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To my daughters

BOOK 1

THE UKRAINE

Chapter 1

The internet video was 2:57 long. The first minute was out of focus and shaky and showed a group of trees about 100 yards away. They shielded a street and three buildings across from it, each about eight stories tall. At the 1:20 mark, the cameraman ran toward the trees. His heavy breathing was the only sound and the camera shook violently. As he ran, the camera revealed another street perpendicular to the first, and three more buildings across from it. After several seconds, still about 50 yards from the trees, he stopped. His heavy breathing continued and the camera lens heaved up and down in rhythm, showing the surrounding field overgrown with weeds and saplings. After about 5 seconds, the camera focused on the trees. At 2:10, several wolves ran left to right through them. They moved quickly but smoothly, separating to pass around trees but then melding back together. Among them, near the center of the pack, ran a naked, dirt-covered figure with short, wavy black hair. It was hunched over and moved with them fluidly, as if melted into the organism, part of it, moving as one with it. At 2:14, as the pack moved through the trees, the figure veered very slightly leftward. It was an almost imperceptible movement that most viewers didn't notice. A fraction of a second later the surrounding pack, as one, shifted with it. At 2:18 the figure, then the pack, shifted left again, floated across the paved area surrounding the office building, and disappeared through the broken glass of the double wide doorway. The man holding the camera ran again. When he arrived at the trees and stopped running, the camera stopped.

The title of the video, apparently posted by the man filming, was Wild Girl of Chernobyl?

The first time she watched it, anthropology PhD candidate Janice Grayson did notice the figure's subtle shift to the left, followed by the pack's. In fact, on that first viewing, at the 2:14 mark, she involuntarily sat upright in her chair and cried out in surprise before catching herself. Rather than questioning the video's authenticity or wondering how someone could survive as a wild animal in the radioactive city of Pripyat, next to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, she replayed it again and again.

A girl in command of the group, and I can prove it.

On February 8, 2008, three months after the video was posted, it had accumulated 3,459 views and Janice Grayson had her doctoral thesis.

Chapter 2

At 6:30 a.m. on April 27, 1986, Mila leaned over Helle's crib to pull the girl out.

Let her sleep, Gregorii said, still lying in bed. I'll take her in. Don't have to be there 'til 8 this morning.

Thanks, love. Bottle's in the fridge, Mila told him and left the bedroom.

Gregorii worked at the Chernobyl Power Station as a firefighter. His shift started at 8 this morning and Mila's building, where 18-month old Helle spent her days while her parents worked, was on the way.

Mila retrieved her coat from a hook in the apartment's entryway. It was thigh length and pink, with fake pink fur trimming the bottom, and it swung gently side to side as she descended the four flights of stairs to the street. She buttoned her coat as she walked one block to the street car stop, where she waited with several others, mostly women, also on their way to work. They pushed their way onto the street car when it stopped and opened its doors. All remained silent as the streetcar bell rang and resumed its glide along the rails.

At 6:48 a.m. Mila exited the street car and walked diagonally across the main square, which was bordered on three sides by Pripyat city government buildings. As she approached the glass doors of her building, she heard a police siren behind her and she turned around. It pulled in front of the street car and stopped, blocking its path. Mila stopped walking momentarily and watched two policemen in green leather rush out and enter the street car. When they left her sight, she walked the few remaining feet to the entrance and, at 6:50 a.m., entered. She walked through the small foyer, past the hallway leading to the child care room where Gregorii and Helle were destined later, then opened the large wooden door of the staircase.

The walls of the staircase were covered with tin squares and each stair was a thin slab of stone.

On the fourth floor, she opened the green metal door and entered the reception area of her office, which managed the distribution of large equipment to the various agencies that maintained public facilities around the city of Pripyat. She took her coat off, hung it on a free-standing metal coat rack near the desk, and sat down behind her desk. Her morning routine including pulling a small mirror from the top front drawer and putting on her makeup, which she kept neatly lined up on the right side of her desktop, the side nearest the window.

The reception area overlooked the main square. On that side of the room, the top half of the wall was a series of windows set side by side. They were closed and the sirens outside were muffled but audible. The bottom half was gray tile