“Hey,” Adam said, pressing a hand against her back as if he was worried she might just tumble.
Confused, Meryam glanced at him, saw the knitted brow just above his goggles, and realized that they had both stopped climbing down. The ice in her bones, the pain—oh, God, the pain—that she hadn’t allowed herself to feel, had made her stop without even realizing it.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” Adam said.
Meryam exhaled, a breath of mist sieving through her balaclava.
“I’m good,” she said, nodding.
She bit down hard on her lip, sharp pain waking her up. This was different pain, hot and stabbing, and as she tasted the copper of her own blood, it got her moving again. Toehold, handhold, toehold, tear the climbing ax out, smash it into the snow and rock a couple of feet lower, then start over again. And again. And again.
The numbness reached her thoughts, but she kept moving. Adam moved beneath her, and Meryam thought she would be all right. A thousand meters or so and the slant would change, allowing them to hike down instead of climbing. In her mind, she could already imagine pausing briefly at Camp Two to have something hot to drink, maybe even make a small fire. She’d burn someone’s gear if she had to do that to get some heat into her bones.
Something shifted to her right.
She glanced that way and blinked in surprise. Feyiz clung to the snow there, his head against the mountain. He had been below last she’d looked, but at some point, he’d stopped moving just as she had a moment before.
Even through his goggles she could see there were tears in his eyes.
“Feyiz?”
His eyes widened. He looked at her with such imploring sadness that she first thought he’d lost hope or become ill.
“I feel it,” he said, the words almost lost in a gust of wind. Snow built up on his hat and goggles and the collar of his jacket.
“What’s wrong?” Adam called loudly, starting to climb up toward them again.
I don’t know, Meryam wanted to say.
But that would have been a lie. She did know. She saw it in Feyiz’s eyes. There ought to have been terror there, but he did not look frightened. Only sad and resigned.
“I feel it inside me,” Feyiz said. “I can hear it laughing.”
His gaze hardened. A deadness entered his eyes and he stared at her, but she knew that it was not Feyiz.
He gasped as the demon released its hold. She saw it happen, the moment when he had control of his body back. And she saw the sorrow and hopelessness fill his eyes.
“No,” he said. “Oh, Meryam, the things it shows you…”
Feyiz tugged his climbing ax out of the snow. He cocked back his arm. She screamed his name, reached out and grabbed hold of his jacket, tried to scramble close enough to take his wrist, but she was too far away, too late, too weak. With a ferocious strength, Feyiz struck himself in the head with the ax, the point punching through flesh and bone and brain.
Meryam screamed her throat ragged. She kept her grip on Feyiz’s jacket as he slumped downward, head lolling back, his full weight dragging on her. Adam called her name and then she felt his arm around her waist, holding on, shaking her hard to make her let go.
Her fingers were so cold, so numb, that she simply couldn’t feel it when Feyiz slipped away. All she felt was the absence of his weight. She screamed curses at a God in whom she’d never believed.
Feyiz’s body spilled down the mountain. Meryam kept screaming. The air was too thin for hysteria and she couldn’t catch her breath between screams. Blackness swarmed in at the edges of her vision and she felt herself sag against Adam, suffocating in the darkness. Then the world was gone.
Blinking, she dragged in a breath and her heart began thudding in panic again. Adam was there, soothing her, talking to her in that comforting voice, as if he hadn’t stopped at all. Which meant she hadn’t blacked out very long, and that was good.
Long enough, though, that Hakan and Calliope had caught up to them.
Calliope had her camera out, filming it all.
“Fuck you,” Meryam slurred. She gritted her teeth, then bit her lip again, sending bright pain surging through her, waking her up fully. “Fuck you and that camera.”
“You told me to—” Calliope began to argue.
Meryam snarled at her. No words were necessary. But Calliope did not put the camera away, and Meryam knew that was right. God damn this woman for doing her bloody job.
Then she saw the way Hakan was looking at her and she remembered Feyiz.
“Hakan,” Meryam said, drowning in grief. “I’m so—”
“Can you continue?” Hakan asked, voice colder and more dangerous than the storm.
Heart breaking, Meryam took stock of herself—of her pain and what little strength she thought she could muster.
“I think so.”
“Then keep moving,” Hakan said, studying both her and Adam with revulsion. “And go quickly, before I kill you both.”
* * *
Walker had Father Cornelius pressed against the mountain. The priest had been moving slowly but surely, conserving both strength and breath. He might have been old, but he had a vitality and persistence that many people at his age could not manage. His skin had gone nearly as white as the blizzard, so pale he looked more like a cadaver than a living man, but those bushy eyebrows knitted together in determination above his goggles and he kept moving.
Until Feyiz’s body had tumbled past them. The guide’s skull had struck a rocky outcropping perhaps a dozen feet away and the loud, echoing crack had erased any doubt as to his fate. Blood smeared the snow below. Arms and legs twisted at wrong angles as he kept falling. Further below, someone screamed, days of pent-up fear and horror escaping in one, mournful wail.
Walker and his group had paused, paralyzed for a moment. He pressed Father Cornelius against the mountain, while a few feet away, Kim and Polly tried to persuade Wyn Douglas to keep going.
“Come on, love,” Polly urged. “Keep moving.”
“But what … how could it happen? Did he just fall?” Wyn asked, and then questions kept coming.
“It doesn’t matter how,” Polly replied. “We’ve got to—”
“Doesn’t matter? He’s dead! He was so kind, and now he’s—”
“Wyn, you’ve got to keep moving!” Polly snapped.
“I can’t!” Wyn shouted, as if her voice was an assault against the storm.
Kim shot a hard look at Walker, not a demand for him to intervene but a silent question: What would they do if Wyn would not move?
“We’ve got to go,” he said firmly.
His little boy waited for him back home. Yes, there was work for him to do. He had responsibilities. But he wasn’t going to die here, so far from home, with Charlie waiting for him there.
“Kim—” he began.
She didn’t need his prodding. Nudging Polly aside, she grabbed a fistful of Wyn’s jacket and tugged, forcing the archaeologist to hold on even tighter.
“What the hell are you doing?” Wyn shouted, staring at her, perhaps thinking the demon had entered her.
“Moving on without you!” Kim called over the storm’s howl. “You can keep moving, or you can stay right here. If you stay here, eventually you’ll freeze to death or you’ll fall. But there is no scenario in which you stay here and live.”
Kim started climbing down. Walker tapped Father Cornelius and they both began moving as well, one foothold, one handhold, at a time. Polly stayed with Wyn, arguing quietly for several seconds before they, too, began to move. As they passed the rocky outcropping where the snow had been stained with Feyiz’s blood—black-red in the gray gloom of the storm—nobody but Walker turned to look.
Kim made her way over to him, so that they were climbing almost side by side, close enough to hear each other’s grunting exertions.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Kim said. “The charms are supposed to keep the demon out.”
“We don’t know,” Walker
said. “Feyiz might not have worn it—”
“Or it’s just another myth! We’ve gambled our lives on a myth!”
Father Cornelius paused a moment, wheezing behind his balaclava. He craned his neck to look down at them as they continued.
“You don’t know that,” the priest rasped loudly.
“And we don’t have any other answers!” Walker snapped. “We’re committed now.”
Memories flashed through his head. Images of Charlie. He thought of Christmas mornings when Charlie was still small and theirs had still been a happy home. He wondered now why he had never caught any of them on film. Did people ever appreciate the moments they were in while they lived them? he wondered, and the wondering tore him apart.
Walker glanced up to make sure Wyn and Polly were keeping pace and saw fear in Wyn’s eyes … and Polly’s left hand clutching Wyn’s throat, squeezing.
He shouted, adrenaline searing through him. Crablike, he scrambled sideways and upward, grabbed hold of Polly’s leg. She whipped her head around and through the swirl of whiteness he saw the glint of orange in her eyes. Polly snatched up the climbing ax that hung at her hip, turned and hacked it down at him. Walker tried to defend himself with one hand but she had such grotesque strength that he had to take his other hand away from the mountain. Polly gave a high, giddy squeal and kicked at his side. Her boot thumped his ribs and then Walker was falling.
He twisted as he fell, hurling himself sideways instead of down so that he could land flat on his chest. If he’d fallen outward, begun to tumble, broken bones would be the least of it. Instead he thudded against the snow and rock, dug his fingers in, and then jabbed the toes of his boots in deep. The edges of the crampons caught. Momentum almost tipped him backward, but he pulled his feet away from the mountain again, let his hands drag, let his knees create furrows in the snow, and then he dug his feet in once more.
Walker heard his heart thumping in his ears and he gave a shout of triumph and fury. Kim and Father Cornelius were shouting at Polly from below. Shouting at Walker to make sure he was all right. Every part of him told him to keep climbing, to get away from the demon, but when he looked back up he saw Wyn trying to scrabble away, clawing at the snow, clinging to the mountain.
Polly dragged her back. Steam came from her mouth and began to mist up from her eyes, as if the demon brought its own inferno and that hell burned now inside of her.
Below, Father Cornelius had begun to pray loudly. Walker could barely see him through the blowing snow, but the old man’s rasp turned into a bellow now that he was praying, and Polly winced as if the words hurt her.
“Leave her!” Walker shouted, climbing toward them again. “In the name of God—”
The thing inside Polly did not wince this time. It laughed. “When have you ever believed in God?”
Wyn screamed, her face briefly visible as Polly wrapped an arm around her neck. The demon glanced back toward Walker, the gleaming embers of its eyes pinpricks of color in the white, churning sea of the storm.
“You have no faith, Benjamin,” it said with Polly’s lips, from behind that balaclava.
Then she wrenched Wyn’s head to one side and the whimpering ceased. The struggling halted.
“No!” Walker cried.
Polly shook her head as if in disappointment, a parent schooling a recalcitrant child. “You don’t believe in anything.”
She kicked away from the mountain face, arms wrapped tightly around Wyn’s lifeless body. Inhuman strength carried them out fifteen feet or more, and then they began to arc downward, plummeting through the storm. The other climbers screamed, watching it happen. Like a spider enshrouding its prey, Polly wrapped herself around Wyn for a moment … then sprang away from her, limbs pinwheeling as she reached for a handhold.
Polly struck, slid, rolled, and slammed into the jagged ridge of a crevice.
Wyn’s body dropped out of sight, lost in the whistling swirl of white. Walker listened, but the storm had taken them so completely that he did not even hear the impact. Nearby, someone was choking back sobs. For a moment he thought it might be Kim, but then he saw her put a hand on Father Cornelius’s back and he knew it was the priest who had begun to cry.
From above, he heard Meryam and Adam shouting at them to keep going, and he knew they had no choice.
“Keep moving,” he said icily, making sure Kim and the priest heard him. “Go.”
They started to climb, silent and resigned.
And then they heard the screaming from below.
Walker dug his ax into the mountain and leaned out as far as he dared, peering through the white. It took him a moment before he saw movement where no movement should have been.
Polly’s body had struck that jutting stone ridge. Bones would have shattered. Blood would be everywhere. But still she was moving, crawling back up the mountain with one hand, humping up a few feet at a time, unnatural and inexorable.
“Kill her!” Walker roared down at those below. “You’ve gotta kill her!”
Something broke inside him as he said the words. He felt smaller, diminished, and farther away from his little boy than he had been before, even up inside the ark.
* * *
Olivieri clung to the mountainside, lost in despair that swallowed him more completely than the storm. The climb had gotten easier in the past few minutes, the angle lessening as they moved toward the cleft below. The first group—one guide and two archaeology students—had already passed the cleft and continued onward.
Then the bodies had begun to fall.
“Who was that?” he asked. “Did anyone see?”
He craned out farther to try to get a look, but it was no use. The blizzard swept around them in a blur of white that seemed to turn them all into ghosts, as if each climber were a spirit, already dead, wandering the slopes of Ararat forever.
“No idea who fell first,” Errick said, “but I think there were two just now, both women. I saw green hair. Had to be—”
“Polly,” Olivieri said numbly, dry lips cracking. He let go of his grip on his climbing ax, almost unconscious of the urge to give in completely, to just fall with the others. The strap on his climbing ax tugged against his wrist but he did not grip it again.
Mr. Avci shifted downward, boots digging into the snow. The wind gusted so hard that his jacket rippled with it and his body rocked slightly leftward.
“We must continue,” Avci said. “We’ll stop at the crevasse below. Just a few minutes of rest before we—”
Errick swore loudly.
Olivieri looked down and could barely take in the hideous white nightmare unfolding there. Through the veil of snow he saw Polly Bennett’s green hair, a splash of color against the ghostly white world. Her left arm hung loose at her side, useless, and she dragged one leg behind her as she used her right arm and left leg to climb, leaving a smear of bright blood on the snow. Polly grinned so wide that her mouth had torn at the edges and blood flowed from her cheeks. Her eyes glinted like tiny flames as she scrambled upward, inhumanly fast.
Mr. Avci screamed. Errick let himself slide down toward Polly, by accident or in their defense, Olivieri didn’t know, but suddenly he felt himself doing the same. He tugged his ax from the ice, moving, desperate to do something to fight back against the terror inside him, against the evil that he felt stained his heart and soul. Polly clawed at Errick’s leg. He cocked back a boot and kicked her in the face, the claws of the crampon tearing her cheek even further open.
Errick lost his balance and his grip. Skidding farther down, he found himself first parallel to Polly and then slightly below.
Olivieri forgot his age. He forgot the extra inches around his middle and the years since he had last done any regular exercise. He pulled his hands and feet away from the snow and began to slide. Snow went up inside his coat and sweater and inside the cuffs of his pants and for a flicker of a moment he wondered if he would be able to stop.
He slid right into Polly. Snow flew up into her bloody, pa
le features, but those orange eyes blazed through the mask of white. Her green hair blew wild. A flap of skin from her torn cheek quivered in the roaring wind. Something gray jutted out through a tear in the sleeve of her coat, a jagged edge of broken bone that had burst violently from inside her arm as she fell.
Her one good hand closed on his jacket. Together, they began to slide again. Olivieri dug into the mountain with his boots and one hand as she thrust her face toward him. Her breath had the reek of rancid meat and though her lips did not move, he was certain he heard a chorus of voices whispering and laughing from the darkness at the back of her throat.
For a moment he had thought he could fight this, thought he could face evil and stand fast. Instead he began to weep and to bat at her with his free hand, wishing he had never come here, that he had never been so foolish as to think he could protect anyone. She grabbed his head and smashed his face against the mountain. The snow saved him, soft and yielding.
Other voices shouted. One belonged to Errick. He felt Polly tug away from him and forced himself to look, saw her fighting with Errick … saw her plunge her fingers into his left eye socket and pluck out something wet and squirming. Saw her dig in deeper, and when she pulled her hands away again, Errick began to skid away and then to roll, now that the slope was not so drastic. He tumbled into the cleft and came to rest against a ridge of rock, snow dancing around him.
Polly came for Olivieri again.
The others nearby were climbing away, desperate to escape, no delusions of heroism for them.
Only Mr. Avci remained.
Olivieri blinked in mute surprise. Avci had moved nearer, had climbed up to within five feet of them. He held a black pistol in his left hand, took aim, and shot Polly through the skull. A swatch of blood and green hair blew out the back of her head and hit the snow, skittering downward in its own grotesque little snowball.
“Oh, my God,” Olivieri gasped, turning to thank Mr. Avci.
Avci aimed the gun at Olivieri’s face. “You bastard. You said the charms would work. I should kill you next.”
Ararat Page 24
