Ararat

by Christopher Golden

  Adam and Calliope somehow managed to be unobtrusive, weaving among the workers with their cameras. The workers Hakan had brought into the project had been excluded from this operation. Instead, Wyn Douglas and the archaeology students would be handling the removal of the remains, overseen by Dev Patil and Zeybekci. Olivieri hovered, studying the corpse intently. Meryam had twice barked at him and once physically maneuvered him out of the paleopathologist’s way when Patil grew visibly frustrated.

  “Is this typical?” Olivieri asked, sidling up to Walker with an air of disapproval. “I’ve never observed this process before, but I can’t imagine there isn’t a more methodical way to extricate the cadaver, particularly in the interest of preservation.”

  Under Patil’s direction, the students had unwrapped a fresh package of thick plastic sheeting. Nobody could have been under the illusion that the opaque tarp was sterile, but at least it was clean.

  “No idea,” Walker said quietly, glancing at Calliope and her camera, not wanting his words recorded. “I’m not sure Meryam much cares at this point.”

  The students slid the stiff plastic tarp under the cadaver’s head. When the horned skull shifted, they could all hear a dry crackle, like the crunch of autumn leaves underfoot. No. There was no way this was standard procedure in the archaeology world. This was fuck-it-get-it-done-fast procedure.

  Walker wondered if the body would stick to the wood—if over the millennia the desiccated flesh would have melded itself to the bottom of the coffin—but as the archaeology team gently guided the tarp under the corpse, they encountered little resistance. The body rocked slightly. Bits of the dried skin that remained on the bones had reminded Walker of cobwebs, but they turned to dust as the body shifted, and the air at the back of the ark filled with a stale odor. Dev Patil sneezed into the crook of his arm, backing away for a moment as the students finished drawing the tarp underneath the body.

  “We set?” Meryam asked.

  Patil pulled a surgical mask up over his face and bent over the cadaver. With gloved hands, he checked the side of the head. The crinkling at the corners of his eyes made his displeasure clear and he sighed.

  “There’s damage enough already,” he said. “So I’m going to say it again. Holding each edge of the tarp, we will gently roll the cadaver toward the wall. The board will be slid beneath the remains and then we will—again, gently—roll the cadaver back down. This will likely result in significant damage, but our goal is to minimize that damage.”

  At this, Patil glanced sharply at Meryam. Walker could feel the sting of the paleopathologist’s disapproval from his place behind one of the lighting arrays.

  A susurrus of mutterings came from off to the right, toward the other end of the passage, and Walker looked up to see Father Cornelius quietly arguing with Mr. Zeybekci.

  “You may not,” Zeybekci said firmly.

  “You have no authority over me,” the priest said, his caterpillar eyebrows knitted together. “Now let me pass!”

  Walker swore under his breath.

  “Dr. Walker—” Meryam began.

  He held up a hand, staving off her admonishment, and pushed past Olivieri and one of the archaeology students. Adam’s camera tracked him as he approached Zeybekci and the priest.

  “Father, you can’t be here,” Walker began.

  “I don’t recognize your authority, either,” Father Cornelius said.

  “If you mention God’s authority, I’ll pitch you off the mountain myself,” Walker heard himself say. He felt the flinch from the gathered team members, then realized what he’d said. Most of these people were worried that the missing staffers had been victims of foul play. If so, that almost certainly involved going over the cliff.

  Father Cornelius ignored him, turning to Meryam instead. “Nobody here is going to listen to anyone but you, Miss Karga, so it’s to you I must appeal. I’ve been poring over my transcriptions and notes from my examination of the bitumen casing and the coffin lid and there is no doubt in my mind that the writing thereon is a warning, one that seems to be repeated several times, and emphatically so.”

  Olivieri huffed and rolled his eyes.

  Calliope swiveled to focus her camera on Meryam’s face.

  “Father, honestly,” Meryam said, “I respect your faith—”

  “This isn’t about my faith. These are writings that have no root in Christianity. Only history. It’s got nothing to do with being Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or any other religion.”

  “It does, though,” Meryam said. “You’re suggesting there’s some kind of spiritual evil at work. That this thing”—she pointed at the horned cadaver—“is actually a demon. I’m not arguing your translation—”

  “I am,” Olivieri muttered.

  “—but I’m saying it doesn’t matter if the people who wrote those warnings believed they were necessary. We don’t believe them.” Meryam waved her hand around the space, her hand throwing long shadows in the bright, industrial light. “None of us but you, and priest or not, I’m surprised a man with your academic background would embrace such ideas.”

  Father Cornelius walked to the edge of the coffin. One of the students moved to stop him, but Meryam waved the young woman away, allowing the priest to stand beside the box and stare down at the horned visage of the “demon.” The way the shadows fell inside the coffin, Walker admitted to himself that the thing looked terrifying.

  “Back in my office, surrounded by books, I might not believe it,” Father Cornelius said. “But I’ve felt it. And I know you’ve all felt—”

  “Oh, enough of this,” Olivieri interrupted. “You’ve translated only fragments, and I question the methods by which you arrived at even those limited translations. With all due respect, you’re a frightened, elderly man who has heard one too many tales of evil from his fellow priests.”

  “The translation doesn’t matter now,” Walker said, trying to soften the inherent unkindness of the words as he gazed at Father Cornelius. “Even if this ugly bastard was an actual demon, look at it. The thing’s been dead since long before the time of Christ. It’s long gone.”

  Zeybekci moved in front of the priest. “Please step back.”

  Father Cornelius retreated a few paces, his face pale and his body tense.

  “Do it,” Meryam said.

  The students moved into place at the head and foot of the coffin, while Patil picked up the thin, hard plastic backboard and rested it on the edge. On the count of three, Patil nodded and the two students slowly shifted the plastic tarp, rocking the body to one side. Patil lowered the board into the coffin and worked it beneath the cadaver as if he were trying to shovel the dead thing up. As he bent over, sliding the board into place, a dry crackling came from the corpse, like tinder catching fire. A crack appeared in the horned thing’s chest, a puff of dust rose, followed by a little cloud of piss-yellow gas, enclosing Patil’s head in a momentary fog.

  “Get back!” Walker called.

  Adam darted forward, camera hanging by his side, forgotten, and used his free hand to haul Patil away. The paleopathologist turned and fell to his knees. For a moment Walker thought the whites of the man’s eyes had gone a putrid shade of orange. Then Patil twisted away from them and began to retch. The first groan brought up nothing, but with the next he spewed a torrent of vomit that splashed into the slanted corner of the cave, slipping into the places where the ark’s timbers had separated under the pressure of passing ages.

  “Wrap it up and get it out of there!” Meryam told the archaeology team.

  The two students at either end folded the plastic tarp around the cadaver as Wyn Douglas taped it down fast, and they lifted the hard board like EMTs at an accident scene. In what seemed only seconds, they carried the cadaver toward the base of the nearby ladder, where they began to wrap it more efficiently.

  Kneeling by Patil’s side, Meryam put a hand on his shoulder. “Dev, are you—”

  He shook her hand off and bent over again, breathing deep and fas
t, trying to control the surging roil of his guts.

  Walker pushed past a student. “Meryam, get away from him. All of you, back away.”

  Adam shook himself, the momentary shock passing. “He’s right. Come on, love. Whatever it was could be contagious.” He turned toward another student. “Get the doc down here, right now. The rest of you, keep back.”

  Nobody else needed to be told. Calliope kept filming as Adam helped Meryam to her feet and they withdrew from Patil. Not all of them, however. Father Cornelius pushed past Calliope and started toward Patil and the now-empty coffin.

  “Father—” Walker warned.

  But the priest’s eyes were locked on the brightly lit interior of the box where the horned thing had lain, and now Walker saw the markings there. The cadaver’s fluids had stained the wood in some ancient era, but these were not just the striations from those stains—there were words here as well, symbols like those on the lid and the bitumen casing, carved or burned into the wood thousands of years ago. More messages from the past for them to translate.

  “Not now,” Walker began. “Seriously, we can’t risk—”

  Zeybekci shouted at the priest in Turkish, something short and angry at first, and then a long stream of guttural words that contorted the monitor’s face with fury.

  “Hang on,” Meryam said as she and Adam turned toward Zeybekci, but too late. The man had already started moving.

  Zeybekci lunged at Father Cornelius, hands outstretched, and his fingers hooked into claws as he snagged the priest’s clothes and hurled him to the floor. People started to shout. Calliope jockeyed for position for her camera, getting the whole thing as they grabbed hold of Zeybekci and tried to pull him off. Zeybekci’s stream of guttural language continued as he began to pummel the old priest, fists smacking Father Cornelius’s head and throat.

  Then he pulled his gun.

  Adam snagged his arm, twisted it back, disarming him quickly, but then Zeybekci lashed out and cracked a fist against his skull, knocking him backward.

  “Come on, help us!” Meryam called to the students.

  But Walker had gotten leverage by then. With Meryam helping, he ripped Zeybekci off the priest and wrestled him to the ground. Then the students were there, holding the man’s hands down as Zeybekci shrieked and fought them, strong in his rage. So strong that Walker knelt on his chest, shouting for him to stop, to come to his senses.

  Zeybekci glared up at him. The industrial lights made his eyes gleam, but there were shadows there as well, and for half a second Walker thought they had the same glittery orange hue he’d seen in Patil’s eyes when that gas had engulfed the paleopathologist’s head.

  Abruptly, Zeybekci just stopped. His eyes closed and he sighed and tears began to well in his eyes.

  “What has happened to me?” he asked calmly.

  Walker didn’t trust it. Not yet. He and the students took their time, made sure Zeybekci really had calmed himself down. When he could exhale and the muscles in his back relaxed, Walker glanced back toward the coffin to see Patil sitting up and leaning against it. Patil wiped his mouth with a look of disgust, pale but otherwise seemingly all right.

  “What the hell?” Adam said, rubbing at his skull as Meryam stared around the passage at the simmering aftermath of the chaos.

  Walker looked at the gun in his hand. Zeybekci did the same.

  “I’ll take that, now,” Zeybekci said, reaching for the pistol.

  “I don’t think so,” Walker said, stepping between them. “Not yet, anyway.”

  He held out his own hand for the weapon. Adam hesitated, glancing at Meryam, but Walker would not wait for approval. Not when there was a firearm in play. Carefully but firmly, he took the gun from Adam’s hand.

  “As long as Mr. Avci seems fine, I’ll return this to him,” Walker said. That seemed to satisfy them all, for the moment.

  Father Cornelius cleared his throat. They all turned to see the man rising shakily to his feet. Blood streamed from the priest’s nose. His mouth had already begun to swell, his upper lip split, and his left cheek had split against the bone and would certainly need stitches.

  “If you’re through with your objections,” the priest said, “I’d like to try deciphering what’s written inside the coffin now. Maybe that noxious little cloud was nothing more than body gas. But just in case your insistence that all of this is perfectly natural turns out to be wrong, I’d like to know what we’re dealing with.”

  Little patters of blood fell from his wounded face and dotted the timber floor.

  No one attempted to argue with him this time.

  * * *

  There had been a lull in the storm. In midafternoon the wind dropped off to nothing for an hour or so, the world around the mountain going entirely still. Work had ground to a halt inside the ark, despite the moment of calm in the weather. Like the stillness of the sky, the cessation of activity inside the cave seemed a temporary thing, with the promise that both would soon be replaced by renewed vigor. In the case of the storm, at least, the promise was fulfilled an hour before dark.

  Adam planted his feet, fighting the gusts that crashed across the mouth of the cave. Night had not yet fallen, but the darkness had come early. The snows of the past couple of days had been little more than flurries in comparison to the raging, churning whiteness that was now arriving. His back to the wind, he held tightly to his camera and recorded footage of the screaming white maelstrom, hoping the visuals were as stunning as he thought they would be. People would be familiar with the sight of a blizzard, but not like this, with thousands of meters of nothing stretching out below them.

  He thought of the missing four, wondered if they had gone over the edge of that abyss and if their bodies were down there now, buried in the deepening snow, lost to their loved ones until at least the first thaw of spring. More and more, Adam had been keeping his thoughts and fears to himself. Meryam did not seem to want to hear them, and though that broke his heart a little, he reminded himself of the pressure she was under.

  Pressure she put herself under, he thought. He’d have been happy to share the burden, but Meryam didn’t want to share. Doesn’t want to share her troubles, and maybe doesn’t want to share her happiness either. Is that really the woman you want to marry?

  Guilt washed through him. He loved her, and didn’t regret that love. But sometimes Meryam didn’t make it easy. Adam had viewed her as the perfect partner, someone with whom he could chase his dreams, side by side with her as she chased her own, each lending strength to the other.

  Everyone with any sense was in the middle of taking whatever refuge they could find, firing up the heaters, and huddling down together, but he needed time to himself. A chance to clear his head. There were meetings going on, he knew that. A lot of decisions to be made. Dr. Dwyer had patched up Father Cornelius, and Hakan was observing while the priest tried to decipher the writing inside the coffin, with Walker and Kim assisting, and Calliope getting the process on film. Dev Patil and Zeybekci were still under Dr. Dwyer’s care, though both were protesting that they were fine.

  Adam tucked his camera into the deep pocket inside his jacket and zipped it back up, thinking he ought to head back inside. When he glanced he saw a figure moving out of the ark at a staggering hurtle. Head bowed, hands at its side, the figure trudged through the blizzard, straight for the edge and the long fall that waited there.

  “Who the hell—” Adam began, starting to run before the words were even out of his mouth.

  His feet skidded in the snow and he put his arms out like a child playing airplane, heart galloping with the fear that one wrong step would send him sliding right over the edge. In the ethereal blue light that breathed inside the blizzard, the silhouette picked up speed, but so did Adam. His feet had found their rhythm on the snow and he knew he was going to make it, to save this one life.

  Then his left foot hit a patch of ice under the snow and went out from beneath him. He spun as he fell, crashing down on his right side with
a grunt of breath and a shock of pain in his ribs. Momentum carried him a foot or two and he felt the nearness of the edge and the certainty that even to flinch might mean going over.

  No, he thought, craning his neck, knowing he’d never make it now. He rolled onto his chest and started to rise, body tensed with failure.

  A second figure came after the first. It emerged from the storm like an apparition, arriving between gusts of wind, a curtain of snow whipping back in revelation. Panic seized Adam as he imagined these only the first two of a sudden mass exodus, a flight of suicides as members of the team hurled themselves off the mountain.

  Then he saw that the second figure was Hakan, and held his breath. Hakan shouted as he lunged after the first man, grabbed him by the back of the jacket and yanked him down into the snow. They tumbled over each other and Adam whispered a prayer when they came to rest on the ledge. Hakan’s leg jutted over the side as the first man continued to struggle. Eyes wide with primal fear, desperate for his own life, Hakan struck the other man twice in the face.

  Adam reached them then. He offered Hakan his hand, gave him leverage to move away from the edge. Together, they dragged the first man toward the cave. Hakan punched him again and then tore the scarf away from his face.

  “You could have killed us both!” Hakan shouted, spittle flying from his lips.

  Armando Olivieri stared back up at them without fear or shame, face filled instead with disappointment. Anger boiled up in Adam’s chest. He grabbed Olivieri by the coat and dragged him onto safer ground. The professor cried out, slapped at Adam’s arms, demanding to be released.

  Adam slammed him onto the snow. “Are you kidding me? You pull this shit and bitch about me putting hands on you? I just saved your damn life!”

  Olivieri went rigid and tears began to well in his eyes. Snow whipped at them, the icy temperatures slowing the professor’s tears. Adam wondered if they would freeze on his face.