Ararat

by Christopher Golden

  Then others were shouting and they both looked up to see Walker, Kim, and Father Cornelius scrambling down to them, and the moment passed. The fury—the hatred and fear—in Mr. Avci’s eyes had been purely human.

  Or, at least, he thought it had.

  NINETEEN

  Meryam and Adam sat together in the cleft. She lay against him, allowing him to hold her, and to hold her up. There had been a time when she would have contemplated the way this might look to the others, the way it might undermine the leadership she had established. They were beyond that point. Even without the storm and the horror, there was the cancer. It had worn away at her long before the cold had dug in its talons. Her weariness pulled at her like a siren’s song, luring her into the darkness of unconsciousness. But unconsciousness meant surrender, and surrender would mean death.

  They couldn’t sit here long. She knew that. As long as they kept moving and kept well covered, they wouldn’t suffer too badly from exposure. There was bound to be some frostbite, but if they could set a decent pace and make it off the mountain within a few hours after nightfall, at the latest, they would be all right. She reckoned less than an hour to reach Camp Two, maybe twice that to Camp One—less if the blizzard weakened at lower altitude, as she expected it would.

  You can make it, she thought. But she rested against Adam and thought maybe, just maybe, she was telling herself a lie.

  The survivors were clustered around her. She thought of them that way now. The survivors. Olivieri, Mr. Avci, Belinda and another student Meryam didn’t know well. Hakan—fucking Hakan—and the other guide, his cousin or nephew or whatever. And Walker’s little team. Somehow they were still intact, that trio of Walker, Kim Seong, and Father Cornelius. She didn’t wish them dead, but she couldn’t fight the jealousy it inspired to see them together, now that Feyiz was dead.

  Then there was Calliope, with her camera. Meryam didn’t know whether to murder her or admire her. Maybe both. She fucked my fiancé. But damn, the work ethic on this woman. She knew it might not be work ethic at all, that maybe it was more about the idea that viewing this horror through the lens seemed to keep it at arm’s length. Calliope might feel safer with the distance the camera seemed to provide. Meryam knew it was a false distance, a false protection, but as much as she hated Calliope right now, she wasn’t going to take that away from her. Not when she would have given anything for a little distance, a little sense of security.

  “Hakan,” she said, clearing her throat, mustering some residue of energy. “How much further before we can start hiking instead of climbing?”

  Smashing his hands together to get the blood flowing, Hakan stood and looked over the ridge to get his bearings. His grief and fury were well hidden.

  “Ten minutes if we move quickly,” Hakan said. “Fifteen at most. It’s really not far. After that we must still be very careful. Help one another. Use climbing poles if you have them.”

  “We’re all going to stay together,” Meryam told them, surveying the faces around her, gauging their terror and shock.

  “Like hell we are,” Belinda said, hidden behind goggles and balaclava. “Every single one of us should be climbing alone, and should retreat if anyone comes near. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll keep in visual range, but I’m not going near any of you until we’re down.”

  No one spoke. Instead, each of the survivors began to study the others around them, almost vibrating with fear and paranoia. Meryam felt it as well. She wasn’t immune. From one face to the next, she searched for hints of the lunatic grin on their lips or the glint of orange in their eyes. They were all doing the same thing.

  Was it here among them, even now? Was the demon inside one of them, relishing every moment?

  “If we all stay together,” Walker said, “then if the demon attacks, there will be enough people around to prevent more fatalities.”

  “Or try to, anyway,” Calliope said.

  “Try to,” Father Cornelius agreed. “We will stay together. Those who wish to be on their own, we do understand. But if the evil enters you, takes you over, it may just make you hurl yourself down the mountain, or worse. We should be watching over one another.”

  “I still don’t understand why this is happening,” Mr. Avci snapped. “Professor Olivieri said the bitumen charms—”

  “It was a theory!” Olivieri shrieked, so fragile Meryam thought she could see little bits of his psyche breaking off with every word. “I had reason to believe … the Apocrypha spoke of it … and Noah’s family was wearing the damn things!”

  The survivors had begun to pick themselves up again, shouldering their packs and making sure their faces were fully covered before they slipped over the ridge and began the careful descent.

  Meryam took a deep breath to steady herself, then pushed off Adam’s shoulder and rose to her feet. Her thoughts blurred and for a moment she thought she might fall over. Adam reached out to steady her but she waved him away.

  “No. If I can’t do this myself, you’ll have to carry me down, and it’s too dangerous.”

  Taking long, even breaths, she managed to clear her head. She’d had a protein bar while they rested and she could feel the little bit of energy it gave her starting to take hold. Somewhere in Adam’s pack there were caffeine pills and she knew she might need those before long, too. For now, though, fear was all the motivation she required.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  The others had all gone over the edge of the ridge by the time she started to clamber backward over the rocks.

  “Meryam,” Adam said.

  She glanced up to see him digging down inside his turtleneck, pushing his gloved fingers between the sweater and balaclava.

  “What are you doing?”

  Adam found the bitumen charm, snaked a finger around the twine from which it hung, and yanked it off. Before she could object, he tossed it into the snow behind him.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” he told her. “But we both know they’re not working. Maybe the demon’s already in us, maybe the evil’s taken root. Doesn’t matter. I think our only hope is getting beyond its reach.”

  “Its reach?” she echoed, fresh fear buzzing inside her.

  “Like a ghost can’t leave the place it haunts,” Adam said, his eyes hurt but hopeful. “I’m hoping that’s what it is … that once we really get away from the cave, it can’t hurt us anymore. If I’m wrong … well, if I’m wrong, we’d all have been better off going off the ledge that first night, dying right then.”

  “Don’t say things like that.”

  Adam glanced away. “Let’s just go.”

  He stayed by her side as they caught up to the others, descending more quickly now that the slope was less treacherous. His words echoed in her mind and that look in his eyes lingered, breaking her heart by degrees with every moment of reflection. She knew about the dybbuk, about the fear that had been his constant companion as a child, and she had always hated his grandmother for having instilled that dark faith in him. He had never been able to escape it. Now he wouldn’t put his faith in anything, including the charm Olivieri believed might save his life.

  But Meryam had to keep the charm around her own neck. She had never believed, and now this horror had instilled her with the faith she had always lacked. There was no way she was going to take off that charm.

  Which meant she would have to watch Adam very carefully from now on.

  * * *

  For a handful of minutes, they scrabbled down the mountain face in silence replete with wary glances. Walker stayed with Kim and Father Cornelius at the center of the line of climbers, the comforting weight of the gun against the small of his back. Cold and numb as he’d become, he wondered if his fingers would cramp up if the time came for him to hold that weapon, to pull the trigger again.

  When screams broke the silence, rising on the wind, he steeled himself and looked down with grim resignation. How could he be surprised, now? The demon had become their curse.


  Kim swore and started to quicken her descent, but Walker barked her name and reached out to stop her.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded. “We have to…”

  Her words faltered as she gazed into his eyes. She looked at Father Cornelius for support and found none.

  “We have to what?” he asked.

  Only twenty feet below them, Hakan’s cousin had turned on a student, a scruffy guy named Markus. He had a knife, and infernal strength, and with those tools murder took only seconds. Blood flew in the falling snow, whipped away on the wind. Belinda tried to stop it, but that knife and that strength did their gruesome work on both of them, and soon the blood had splashed in hideous patterns across a stretch of snow, right where the slope became more accessible … right where things should have become easier for them.

  The demon brandished its knife, and that soulless grin, and it started to climb back up toward them in the body of that guide—the last of Hakan’s family on the mountain.

  Walker pulled his gun. He held onto the mountain with one hand and aimed downward.

  Shouting, Hakan skidded down from above, wanting him to stop, to let him try talking to the young man, give him a chance to drive the demon out. But the guide had that bloody knife and he was clambering spiderlike toward Walker and Kim and the priest, and Walker had been trained to eliminate the immediate threat.

  He shot the guide twice in the chest. The bearded young man flopped backward, rolled down the hill, through the bloody snow, and tumbled to a halt where the ground became hikeable.

  Hakan put a hand on Walker, who knocked it away with the barrel of the gun and then took aim at Hakan. For a full five-count they stared at each other, breathing deeply, until Walker decided Hakan had not been possessed—not yet—and Hakan apparently decided he did not want to be shot.

  Scrambling down the snowy slope, sliding and then trudging, Hakan fell to his knees beside the corpse of his cousin. He closed his cousin’s eyes, muttering prayers in their own language.

  Walker held back with his team as Meryam, Adam, and Calliope passed them and went to stand by Hakan. Olivieri and Mr. Avci joined them.

  “As soon as we get a little ways past the blood,” Walker said quietly, turning to Kim, “I want you to go. Move as fast as you can. I studied the hiking maps before we came. Camp Two isn’t far. You can probably make out some of the path based on the way the snow has accumulated, but either way, you’ll be safer on your own than you will be with any of us.”

  Kim stared at him, then glanced at Father Cornelius. “I won’t leave the two of you behind.”

  “You’re here to observe, not to die,” Walker told her. “We’ll be able to hike down from this point, but Cornelius can’t go very quickly. Just the way it’s got to be.”

  “Walker’s right,” the priest rasped, leaning against the mountain as if he hadn’t any fear the demon would enter him next. “You should go.”

  “I’m safer with the two of you than on my own,” Kim said. “But…”

  Walker frowned. The weight in that one word, the thick lines in her forehead, showed just how much it disturbed her.

  “What?” he urged.

  Kim glanced at the others below, the handful of people gathered around Hakan while he mourned.

  “What if we shouldn’t even try?” she said. “What if the demon isn’t poison, but more like a virus, and if we bring it down off the mountain we’re just setting it loose in the world?”

  Walker stared at her. He had no reply. What Kim had said terrified him more than any idea he’d ever heard.

  * * *

  Adam held Meryam’s hand, but there was nothing romantic in the gesture. He had tried to get her to lean on him, to sling an arm around his shoulder so that he could help keep her on her feet, but she had refused. Only after she had stumbled several times and nearly sprawled face-first onto the snow-covered trail had she relented enough to hold on to his hand.

  They trudged downward, some of them with hiking poles and others just aiding one another, lost in the shock of death and bloodshed. Nearly an hour had passed since the demon had made its last appearance, and Adam could feel the shock beginning to abate. He didn’t dare hope that they had passed beyond its influence, but the spark of hope was hard to extinguish, particularly since he so wanted to believe it. Every minute that passed, he saw those around him beginning to relax the tiniest bit. And to feel. To grieve. Half an hour ago, Calliope had begun crying quietly and let her camera dangle in the grip of her right hand while she used the left to wipe her tears away.

  Meryam stumbled. Adam gripped her hand tightly and pulled her to him, almost as if they were dancing. Face-to-face, he crushed her against him, watching her breath mist through the cloth of her balaclava.

  “Camp Two is just ahead,” Hakan called back to them.

  He had taken the lead some time ago, with Calliope just behind, and Meryam and Adam trailing them. The rest were stretched out in an irregular line, but nobody more than fifty yards back.

  Camp Two. The terrain would still be rough, particularly with a foot of snow on the ground and the wind still gusting, resisting their progress. But from Camp Two the trail would get easier, more pronounced, enough so that Adam thought he might be able to get down from there even without a guide. Camp Two was good news.

  Don’t be stupid, he told himself. Don’t hope. There’s still a long way to go. They had hours yet, and Meryam would only grow wearier. Adam didn’t want to think about how complicated things would become if he had to carry her.

  “Hakan!” he called, taking Meryam’s hand again as they began again to follow the trail. “Wait for us!”

  Up ahead, Hakan turned slowly toward them.

  “Wait for you?” he said. “It takes all of my will not to leave you here.”

  “Now hang on,” Adam replied.

  Calliope shifted the weight of her camera from one hand to another but did not lift it to begin filming.

  “What?” Hakan snarled, marching back toward Adam and Meryam, glaring his hatred at them, face nearly as full of malice as if the demon had taken him. “What do you want to say to me, you two disgusting beasts?”

  “Fuck you, you obnoxious—” Adam began.

  Meryam put the back of her hand over his mouth to stop the words, but she kept her gaze on Hakan.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, a hitch in her voice. “Feyiz was my friend, Hakan. I wish I could hear him laugh again and feel the openness and acceptance that he gave to everyone around him. But wishing won’t fix anything. This group is all that’s left. I don’t know if this is just grief or if the demon’s pulling your strings, bringing out the worst parts of you, but—”

  “Slut,” Hakan sneered.

  Adam took a step forward, letting go of Meryam’s hand. “That’s enough!”

  “Look at the two of you,” Hakan said. “A Jew and a whore who has turned her back on God. I know the torment that awaits you both, but it is not enough. You parade yourself in front of my nephew until the stink of your sex fills his head so that he forgets himself, so that he can’t do anything but what you desire,” he said to Meryam, and then he turned to Adam. “And you … what do you do, man that you are? You seek out another whore to—”

  “Hey, fuck you!” Calliope snapped.

  Adam waded toward him, fists bunched, knowing that Hakan could thrash him within an inch of his life but not caring. The man needed to stop talking, he needed to be bruised and bleeding and unconscious. Even better if he were dead.

  A gunshot cracked the sky, echoing off the mountain.

  Hakan and Adam both spun to see Mr. Avci pointing his pistol at the clouds. The little man hunched over in exhaustion, glaring at them both. Walker and Kim came rushing down the trail, leaving Olivieri and the priest behind. Barking orders, trying to play alpha the same as he had since his arrival, Walker pulled out his own gun and leveled it at Avci.

  “Get hold of yourselves,” Avci said, ignoring Walker.

  Adam
’s hatred seethed inside him. Hakan had been a bastard since the moment they’d met him, long before his grief and loss. But the things he’d said were unforgivable. Adam turned to Meryam.

  “What do you say?”

  Meryam stood up to her full height, pale but alive. When Adam reached for her hand, she batted it away, slogging through the snow so that she and Hakan were eye-to-eye. She spat in his face.

  Hakan hauled back a fist as everyone began to shout. Adam rushed toward them, but he wouldn’t make it in time.

  Calliope did. She stepped between Hakan and Meryam and grabbed his arm before he could throw the punch. Whatever she might have said to him, Adam couldn’t hear it. He wanted to thank her, but what could he say?

  “You didn’t have to—” Meryam began.

  Calliope whirled on her. “Don’t talk.”

  Meryam stuttered and took a step back.

  “No, really,” Calliope went on. “Don’t say anything. Everything he said, about you … about Adam and about me … it’s all true, and you know it. If there’s a demon inside us, we invited it in. Don’t you see that? The thing up in the cave might have been evil, but the awful parts of us are what fed it and made it grow.”

  The camera fell from her hand, thumping into the snow. Tears filled her eyes as she staggered backward, off the trail.

  “Don’t be stupid, girl,” Hakan said.

  Calliope only glanced at him, not bothering to wipe her eyes. She picked up her pace, cutting her own path away from the trail. Hakan started after her, angrier than ever. Adam expected her to stop, to cry and catch her breath and then rejoin them, but it wasn’t until Calliope started to run and fell, sliding down the mountain slope, bumping over rocks under the soft layer of white, that he realized she really meant to abandon them.

  “Damn it, Calliope!” he shouted, striding off the trail.

  Meryam grabbed his arm, her grip too weak to hold him but enough to get his attention. He turned to her, torn and panicked. Without a guide, off on her own, Calliope would die. Even if she made it to the base of the mountain, the odds of her being anywhere she could find refuge without freezing or starving to death were pitiful.