Nobody wanted to be tied to a climber who might attempt to murder them at any moment.
A man grabbed his arm. On instinct, Olivieri yanked it away.
“You’re next, professor,” the man said, his voice thickly accented. It might have been Feyiz or his cousin, face hidden like that. Or it might have been something else.
Olivieri wanted to weep. “I don’t think I can.”
“You have to,” the voice said, muffled by a gray balaclava. “We’re going, and we’re all in it together. You’ve climbed a dozen mountains, you told me. This one’s easy.”
Olivieri laughed. It was Feyiz, after all. The guide had such kindness in him, not like his uncle. “Easy in the summer.”
But he started moving. The wind gusted and he stumbled, but Feyiz took his arm and helped him over to the western corner of the ledge. The cold had numbed him already and they had thousands of meters of climbing to do. In good weather they could have made the full descent in a handful of hours. This would be different.
All morning he had felt a sickness twisting inside him. Screams that wanted to erupt from his throat. Frantic tears he had to fight to keep inside. Adam had been possessed, but he wasn’t the only one. Zeybekci had committed murder when the demon had taken the reins of his flesh, and Adam had attempted to do the same. But not Olivieri. The demon had used him as a different sort of puppet. It had gotten down deep in his bones, insinuated itself there and gnawed at all of his doubts, every instant of self-loathing he’d ever felt. It had feasted on the sorrows and regrets that Olivieri believed everyone must have within them. The demon had torn open the wounds on his soul and made him try to take his own life.
It was the demon, he told himself now. Laughing at you. Pulling the strings. He told himself that. But the true hell of the thing was that he couldn’t be sure it had been the demon at all, because the urge remained. As Feyiz led him to the rope line that they had set up to guide them away from the snow-covered rockfall and onto more reliable terrain, he had to fight the temptation to hurl himself off the ledge.
“Come on, professor,” Feyiz said, making sure he was holding onto the guide rope. “It’s time.”
His boots crunched down on the snow and he slipped a few inches. His hands surprised him by holding tight to the rope. He froze a moment, and then started moving west, bent toward the mountain, digging the crampons on his boots into the snow and the mountain beneath.
Death beckoned to him. But the professor held on.
* * *
Time, Walker thought. That’s the key.
He held onto the rope line that Feyiz’s cousin had set up, leaning into the mountain. His knees crunched in the snow and his climbing ax tapped his thigh as he shuffled sideways. They were leaving the ark in groups of three or four, moving along the guide rope to a section of the mountain face that Hakan assured them was safe. Already, several groups were gathered in clumps thirty meters to the west, and Hakan had begun to coach them on how to maneuver the descent. With crampons, they could dig at the snow with the toes of their boots and get a good foothold. Facing the mountain, they could descend carefully for the first thousand meters or so, after which they might be able to simply hike down. The frigid air and the blasting winds were a challenge, but now that he’d been out in the blizzard for a short while, Walker felt confident they were not the real danger.
Time, he thought again. They needed to get as far down the mountain face as possible before nightfall. In the midst of the blizzard it was dark enough, but when evening arrived, the temperature would plummet further and even with flashlights, the footing would become more treacherous. He had left all of his samples, all of his notes, back in the cave and he didn’t care. He could write DARPA all the reports they wanted, but only if he got off Ararat alive.
“Let’s go, Father!” he urged. “We’ve got to keep pace.”
Walker kept one hand on the guideline and put the other at the small of Father Cornelius’s back. The priest had been using the same kneeling shuffle as Walker but he’d already become winded. Beyond him, Kim Seong stood at an angle to the mountain, holding onto the rope and watching them patiently. The grooves left behind by the knees and footsteps of the dozen or so who had gone before them had created a path in the snow and she seemed more confident in her balance than Walker felt in his own.
“Father,” he said again, his voice muffled by his balaclava and the whirling snow. Even through the cloth, his face stung.
“I’m doing my best!” Father Cornelius huffed. “I’m an old man, Walker!”
“If you want to get any older, you’re gonna have to put a little more effort into it.”
The priest grumbled, but started to shuffle his knees faster. After a moment, he gave a muttered curse, dug his boots into the snow, and stood up.
“Father, I don’t think that’s a—”
“My knees are killing me,” Father Cornelius said. “If we keep on like that, I’m not going to get anywhere fast.”
Walker didn’t bother to explain how much work lay ahead for the old man’s knees. The priest would either make it or he wouldn’t. If they had to wrap him up in some kind of makeshift travois and slide him down the mountain, that was exactly what they would do. But Father Cornelius had his pride, and Walker did not want to undermine it so soon into the climb.
Grunting and chuffing, Father Cornelius kept one hand against the mountain and the other one wrapped around the guide rope. It wasn’t safe—none of what they were doing was safe—but there were other dangers here, and speed was of the essence.
Time.
“Look at that,” Kim said, nodding westward, into the storm.
Walker turned to see a red glow flickering in the blizzard’s heart, rising at first and then beginning to fall.
“Well, that’s a good sign,” Father Cornelius said.
Walker agreed. Feyiz’s cousin had been instructed to climb down two hundred meters and send up a flare to let them know the descent could be made without difficulty, at least to that point. They all watched as the flare flickered momentarily, its light refracted a million times inside the white, rushing silence of the storm, and then it vanished, hidden in the driving snow.
“Your superiors will be disappointed,” Father Cornelius said, his voice a muffled rasp. “With you coming back empty-handed.”
Walker saw him slip, the snow buckling under his left foot, and reached out to steady him. The priest went down on one knee but was back up in a moment. Kim had a hand on his back as well, and she met Walker’s gaze and gave a small nod, letting him know that they were in this together. Whatever might come, they were getting Father Cornelius off the mountain.
“Under the circumstances, I don’t think they can really hold me responsible, do you?” Walker asked. His fingers were already stiff and cold inside his gloves. He looked forward to no longer needing the guide rope.
“Actually, I’d think they would be even more disappointed,” Father Cornelius said. “You found a demon, Dr. Walker. A supernatural force with real, malignant power. Whoever you really work for, I get the impression they would dearly love to dissect that power and see if they can figure out how to wield it.”
Walker stiffened. They were only a dozen feet from the end of the rope line now. Wyn Douglas and Polly Bennett stood at the end—their group had gone right before Walker’s, and they were waiting, apparently to lend a hand. With the storm blowing and the way they were all swaddled against the cold, they were still too far away to hear the conversation. Walker wanted to keep it that way.
“You know who I work for,” he said, glancing from the priest to Kim.
“We know who you say you work for,” Father Cornelius replied.
“The rest is an educated guess,” Kim added, leaning slightly toward them, making sure he could hear her over the wind and through the cloth covering her mouth. “We’ve decided it’s DARPA. Some of the hints you’ve given of things you’ve seen are beyond the life of an ordinary researcher, and your backg
round is a bit too colorful for something as ordinary as the National Science Foundation.”
Walker kept shuffling to his left, digging his boots into the snow. They were smart, both of them. The UN had chosen Kim for a reason, and Walker himself had picked Father Cornelius for his brilliance and comparative open-mindedness. He contemplated telling them the truth, but he couldn’t really do that. On the other hand, he refused to lie to them. After what they’d endured together already, and the peril they found themselves in now, he owed them that much.
“Does it matter, now?” he called, stumbling a bit, slamming a knee into the snow. “We all had certain responsibilities on this trip, and we all tried our best. Part of my job was exactly what I said it was. My credentials in biology and anthropology are genuine.”
“Oh, I know they are,” Kim said. He wanted to think she was smiling, but so much of her face was covered. All he could see was the barest hint of her eyes behind her goggles, and the snow and the gray light nearly took that glimpse away as well. “You don’t think the United Nations vetted you before sending me along?”
Father Cornelius paused to rest a moment, both knees back in the snow. He was closer to Walker, his eyes clearly visible behind his goggles.
“That’s why they sent her,” the priest said. “To make sure that she learned whatever you learned.”
Walker couldn’t help laughing. “I guess we’re both out of luck.”
Father Cornelius wasn’t wrong. If he got off the mountain alive, General Wagner and the others he answered to back at DARPA would be supremely unhappy that he had nothing to show for the journey. He had responsibilities, they would remind him. Obligations to his country. But fuck that, he was no expert on demons. Meryam had burned the thing’s remains, but clearly its real power no longer resided in its bones. It might be possible to trap the thing inside a person the next time it possessed someone, but he had zero idea how to even begin figuring that out, and it was clear Father Cornelius didn’t know any more than he did. If DARPA wanted to play around with demons, they could send a team back up to the ark after he filed his report. The only thing Walker knew for certain was that he wouldn’t be on that mission.
If there was a way to harness evil, to use a demon for their own ends, DARPA would do it, and worry about the moral implications later, the way they always did. But Walker would be damned if he was going to try to grab the tiger by the tail himself.
Damned, he thought, and he laughed again.
“What’s so amusing?” Father Cornelius asked, huffing with exertion as he clung to the guide rope.
“Nothing,” Walker said, smile fading. “Nothing at all.”
Unsettled but determined, he shuffled westward. A moment later he glanced up to see Polly reaching out a hand to him. He stood back, steadying Father Cornelius and Kim as they joined Polly and Wyn, and then he let go of the rope at last.
One of the guides was there, shouting instructions and advice. Walker smashed his gloved hands together to get the blood flowing again, and then snatched his climbing ax from where it hung at his hip. The incline wasn’t terrible, but the snow would make every step uncertain. He planted his ax into the mountain face, back to the storm, and began to descend, leading the way for the others.
He exhaled, feeling ice crystals form on the inside of his balaclava. Every step away from the cave eased a little more of the tension from his shoulders.
No question lingered in his mind. He was never coming back to Ararat.
* * *
Adam watched as Meryam and Feyiz started across the guide rope. Once upon a time he would never have been able to resist the urge to catch this with his camera, but despite what Meryam had said to Calliope, he had no desire to film their exodus. It ought to be captured—he knew that. With so many dead or presumed dead, every bit of video they could present to show how things unfolded in the ark would go toward defending the choices they’d all made. But he still felt sick, his head muzzy and his guts queasy, and a layer of invisible filth seemed to cover his flesh. He was too focused on how ill he felt, and battling that, to give a damn what did or did not end up on film. So it was good that Calliope was there.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that she’d followed him. The eye of her camera looked dark. Snow whipped around her, so strong she visibly leaned into it. She was formidable. Beautiful. The memory of her kiss, the touch of her skin, rushed back into his head and he squeezed his eyes closed, forcing it out. Maybe she didn’t mind at all, maybe to Calliope there had been nothing romantic in what they’d done. Just sex. She’d practically said as much. But still he felt as if she was the one who’d suffered the greatest injustice here.
You’re such a shit for even thinking that.
Digging the toes of his boots, the claws of the crampons, into the snowy mountain face, Adam readied to step off the ledge.
“Hey,” Calliope said, putting her hand over his on the rope.
Startled, Adam jerked to his left and nearly slid right off the edge.
“Sorry,” she said. “Shit, I’m sorry, I just…”
She had lowered the camera for a moment, but now she lifted it again, shooting footage of Meryam and Feyiz, tracking their progress with the camera.
“Calliope, we’ve got to get out of here,” he told her.
She nodded, but he saw her hit the button on the camera that stopped the recording. This was between them.
“I know,” she said. “You’re right. I just figured once we were climbing down, there wouldn’t be a lot of opportunity to talk. And I just wanted to say I was sorry.”
Adam stared at her. He tugged down the front of his balaclava to make sure she could hear him clearly. “I got you into this situation.”
Calliope smirked. “Men and their arrogance. Don’t be stupid, Adam. You’re engaged to be married. I knew that. I saw the stress fractures in your relationship. I didn’t know if Meryam had really been screwing Feyiz on the side or not, but when you thought that, you were broken up inside. You’re guilty. I’m not saying you’re not. But I took advantage, and that makes me guilty, too.”
Adam glanced past her. Hakan had come out of the shelter of the cave, a huge pack on his back. Behind him, inside the darkness of the cave, orange light flickered and grew and a plume of black smoke began to spill out, eddying away on the gusts of wind.
“Holy shit,” Adam said.
Calliope turned, took it all in, and clicked the camera back on. Hakan had lit the timber skeleton of the ark on fire, and the flames were spreading fast. Burning light flickered in the dark mouth of the cave, and Calliope got it all on film as Hakan marched toward them, a grim phantom in the maelstrom of white.
“Best to move now,” the guide said. “There will be a great deal of smoke.”
Adam turned to Calliope, speaking more quietly and hoping she could hear him, not caring if the camera picked up his voice.
“I get what you’re saying,” he told her, “but I’m still sorry. I never thought I was the kind of person who would do something like that.”
“Maybe you’re not,” she said, her back to him, filming the flames licking out of the cave mouth. “Maybe it wasn’t you at all.”
“Do you really believe that?” he asked.
Calliope glanced back at him. “Get out of here, Adam. And good luck to both of you.”
He nodded. Pulling up his balaclava, he started out along the guide rope at the quickest pace he could manage. The path had been worn down enough that it wasn’t too difficult now, and he made good time.
He thought of the dybbuk in his grandmother’s clock, and wondered what would happen to his own spirit if he died on Ararat. Would he haunt the mountain, lingering here forever, or would he be trapped inside an object himself, like that old dybbuk? Locked inside his camera, perhaps, viewing the same fragments of footage, little bits of digital memory that would be all that remained of his life?
He decided that he did not want to die here. He refused.
Head dow
n, he held the rope so tightly that his knuckles hurt. His sins followed him every step of the way.
EIGHTEEN
Meryam wished she could go numb. Even with thick layers, wrapped in insulated tights and shirt, and a sweater with the right wicking, she felt the cold digging down into her bones. The cancer had not just weakened her, it had lessened her, eroded her flesh and muscle and the warmth her body normally could have regenerated on its own. Her limbs felt like hollow pipes, nothing but frozen glass, so easily shattered if she were to fall.
Teeth clenched, she kept descending. Tugged the climbing ax from its hold, planted it a couple of feet lower, dug the claws of her crampons into the snowy mountain face, then did it again.
As they climbed, she heard the occasional muttered or shouted profanity and glanced down to see people skidding downward thanks to a misplaced foot or an unreliable toehold. The angle allowed for mistakes, permitted anyone sliding downward to cling to the snow and rock face, dig in their boots and hands and climbing axes, and correct their mistakes. The wrong fall could break bones, or much worse, no question.
Her teeth chattered behind her balaclava. Bones aching, breath rattling in her chest, she kept moving, all of her focus on her grip and the placement of her feet.
The blizzard swept across the mountain face, turning the world into white silence. The storm breathed, the wind pushing and then holding its breath a moment before blowing again. When the gusts came hard enough, she had to pause and wait for it to stop clawing at her, and what little strength she had continued to be leeched away.
She could make out the two figures above them on the mountain. Hakan and Calliope were making steady progress. They were like ghosts, clothes coated in so much snow that they were white against white, only their constant movement separating them from the maelstrom.
Ararat Page 23
