Mountain of the Dead

by Jeremy Bates

  “Not so implausible.”

  “You are forgetting the extent of their injuries. Soldiers, not even Special Forces, could have caused such damage to their internal bones and organs without leaving marks on their skin.”

  “And the puttee?” Olivia said. “How do you explain that?”

  “They were faded out of service during World War Two. Hence it likely belonged to Zolotaryov, who had served in that war.”

  Here it was, I thought, what I’d been running up to ever since I began researching the Dyatlov incident: yet another plausible theory that ultimately didn’t hold up to closer scrutiny. I felt as though I were trying to figure out a rigged Rubik’s cube that only let you match five sides.

  I said, “I’m confused. The Soviets were clearly covering up something. They had to be, otherwise they wouldn’t have doctored the criminal case file. But if it wasn’t some secret controversial missile or field test, what was it?”

  “That, Mr. Smith,” Vasily said, “is the million-dollar question.”

  CHAPTER 14

  NORTHERN URAL MOUNTAINS, USSR, 1959

  FIVE DAYS TO LIVE

  After a hungover breakfast of boiled oats and tea, the Dyatlov group was eager to get on their way. It was fifteen kilometers to their next destination, an abandoned geological settlement, and they no longer had the luxury of motorized transport. From this point on they would ski.

  Nevertheless, Beard had told Igor that a local contractor would be passing by shortly on his way to the same settlement, to scavenge a bounty of iron pipes. He had a horse and a sleigh. The hikers could load their heavy rucksacks on the sleigh, making for a considerably less taxing ski.

  And so they agreed to wait. Igor was not immune to hangovers—he was likely more susceptible to them than the others because of how infrequently he imbibed—and anything to make the day’s travel easier suited him.

  However, after one uneventful hour passed, then two, he became increasingly frustrated. The one thing he despised more than unpunctuality was idleness. They could have been halfway to the geological settlement by then. If they waited much longer, they would be forced to ski in the dark. They would arrive at the destination late and get yet another poor night’s rest.

  When lunch had come and gone, and the contractor had still failed to show, Igor told Beard they would depart on their own. Yet Beard would not hear of this, insisting the man would be by soon. Given the fragile truce they shared, Igor did not press the matter, for fear of once again upsetting his testy host.

  For Beard’s part, he seemed to be enjoying the day immensely, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer—all the while regaling Zina and Lyuda with tales of adventure. In fact, Igor began to wonder if the contractor existed at all, if Beard had invented him as part of some nefarious scam to keep the hikers at Sector 41, entertainment for the lonely woodcutters.

  But then, finally, from the woods to the south emerged a tired-looking Clydesdale pulling a sleigh on which sat an equally tired-looking old man.

  “Thank God,” Igor grumbled, leaving his vigil at the cabin window to round up the others.

  Outside, Beard insisted they take several group photographs. He also insisted he be in each—after he had smoothed back his hair and lit a cigarette to hang roguishly from his mouth. Perhaps to atone for her library comment the day before, Zina offered Beard one of her books as a farewell gift. Touched, he declared that the hikers were welcomed back any time they wished. Then he did the unthinkable: he planted a kiss on Zina’s lips in front of everyone. Zina’s face flushed a beet red, while the gathered woodcutters broke into hoots and hollers.

  With his cheeks almost as red as Zina’s, though in his case from livid anger, Igor turned his back to the gathering and began to ski, leaving Sector 41, and the scoundrel Beard, behind.

  ⁂

  They made their way north along the frozen Lozva River, the quickest and easiest route through the coniferous forest. Night arrived promptly, though the three-quarter moon and the plentitude of stars in the Arctic sky allowed them to see well enough in the dark.

  At one of their rest stops, their old comrade on the sleigh—a Lithuanian named Stanislav Velikyavichus who Zina had nicknamed “Grandpa Slava”—said, “Can you smell that?”

  Igor sniffed the air, wondering if someone had broken wind. “Smell what?”

  “That.”

  Igor didn’t smell anything. The confused expressions on the faces of the others told him they didn’t smell anything either.

  Georgy said, “Can you elaborate, comrade?”

  “That,” he repeated, inhaling deeply. “The trees, the snow, the night.”

  Zina said, “You mean the taiga?”

  Velikyavichus nodded. “That’s the smell of freedom—appreciate it whenever you can. You never know when it might be taken away.”

  Igor blinked in understanding. “You’re a convict,” he said.

  “Ex-convict, dorogoi moy. I have been successfully ‘rehabilitated.’” He seemed to find this amusing and cackled to himself.

  “What did you—?” Zina cut herself off.

  “What did I do? What was my crime?” Velikyavichus took a pull on the cigarette he was smoking. “According to the NKVD, I was a member of an underground anti-Soviet organization. This was not true. I came to Russia to study at one of her prestigious military academies. I cared nothing for politics.” He shrugged. “My only crime was my nationality, as was the case with many of the foreigners that were rounded up in Stalin’s purges.”

  “No,” Lyuda said. “They were arrested because they plotted against Mother Russia. They—”

  “Were not criminals,” Velikyavichus said calmly. “If they were guilty of something, let them have a trial, prove it at a trial. But there were no trials. Only verdicts. ‘Stanislav Velikyavichus,’” he mimicked in a self-important voice, “‘in the name of the Soviet Union blah blah. You have been given a term of work in the camps of six years!’ That was it. I was put on a train and sent up here to Sector 2 of the eighth department of penitentiary camps.” He took another pull on the cigarette and exhaled the smoke out his nose. “My loving wife didn’t know where I went. She thought I had left her. She killed herself while I was locked away.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, comrade,” Igor said.

  Velikyavichus nodded. “At least I can say I survived. Potato peels and slop, that’s all we were fed. Many men I knew died of starvation, and if it wasn’t that, it was pneumonia, or dysentery. It was a lottery in there.” Another drag. “And then—the happiest day of my life. It was announced over a loudspeaker that Stalin had died. Everybody—everybody was shocked, confused. No one knew what to do. Not even the guards. Finally, they told us to gather together so we could pay our respects.” He spat into the snow.

  A stunned silence had fallen over the hikers. They had never heard of anyone speak of Joseph Stalin with such vile contempt.

  Lyuda blurted, “You cannot denigrate our great leader like this!”

  “Our great leader.” Velikyavichus barked a laugh. “Lenin was Russia’s butcher number one. Stalin was number two. Great leader? He was nothing but a murdering dog.”

  “I will not listen to this!”

  “Pretending it is not so will not make it so. I once believed in Communism and the Party. But after what I have seen…” He shook his head, tossing the butt of the cigarette into the snow. “One day in the Gulag, dorogaya moya. One day, and I am sure you would change your tune too.”

  Lyuda, Georgy, Nikolai “Kolya” Thibault-Brignoles, and Rustem “Rustik” Slobodin on the Lozva River

  Lyuda, Rustem, Kolya, and Zina

  Doroshenko, Zina, Lyuda, Grandpa Slava on the sled, and Yuri Yudin far behind

  CHAPTER 15

  It was full dark now. The pale moon and wash of stars cast a ghostly luminescence over the frozen and silent forest. Vasily had retired to his tent a few minutes ago, leaving Olivia and me with the grandfatherly advice not to stay up too late.

&n
bsp; We sat in silence for a while watching the fire leap, dip, and crackle. I breathed in the smoky smell of burning wood. It made me think of the antique logwood stove in the living room of my beach cottage. I usually had a fire burning in it most nights, regardless of how warm the weather might be outside, just for that smoky smell. It reminded me of Christmases as a kid, which were the one time a year my parents would light a fire in the big brick fireplace in my childhood home.

  Denise and I had spent countless hours in front of the little stove, jazz playing softly on the radio, a platter of exotic cheeses to nibble at, a bottle of Shiraz to share, the ubiquitous drone of the ocean in the distance, and the dazzling purple LA sunset slanting through the room’s large bay window. On those evenings we’d often play Scrabble, or some other board game, and as mundane as it sounded, there had never been anything else I would rather have been doing.

  I had missed that time with Denise tremendously the four weeks she had been in the treatment center in the fall of 2016. Before my first visit I’d been expecting the center to be a sterile, labyrinthine structure with imposing doors and barred windows and pastel hallways. However, it turned out to be a pleasantly renovated farmstead with plenty of livestock and tranquil views of both the Malibu Canyon as well as the Pacific Ocean.

  Denise’s case manager, a friendly, clean-cut guy name Lockie, had met me upon my arrival and explained that it would be better if I came back in a few days, as Denise was in full withdrawal and was not her normal self. I nevertheless insisted I see her, and Lockie reluctantly showed me to her room on the second floor of the north guesthouse.

  Denise was in the twin bed, curled up on top of the sheets like a little escargot, haggard and green. On the floor next to her was a stash of empty RockStar cans, some Jolly Ranchers, three packs of cigarettes, a Bic lighter, and a glass filled with cigarette butts.

  I sat with her for an hour. During that time she alternated between sobbing and shivering and rushed to the bathroom twice to vomit, on both occasions returning to her curled up position on the bed oblivious to the drool on her chin and the mucus running from her nose. When not shaking violently, she would regularly swat her legs with her hands, mumbling something about bugs, though there were no bugs on her.

  Finally Lockie returned and told me it would be best if I gave her some privacy. I concurred with guilty relief and slept terribly that night. I simply couldn’t get my mind off Denise, and the wretched state she had been in. I’d heard horror stories of opiate withdrawals before, I’d seen Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream and other such movies, but none of that had prepared me for the reality of someone I loved going through such an experience.

  I returned to the treatment center two days later. To my immense relief, the worst of Denise’s withdrawal symptoms seemed to have passed. She still appeared pallid and weak, and exhibited minor flu-like chills and sweats, but she could at least sit up and hold a conversation. “You know when you’re underwater?” she told me softly while we were sitting on a bench outside, her demeanor uncharacteristically raw and emotional, almost as if she might fall apart at any moment. “And you need to come up for breath? And it’s taking too long to get to the surface? That feeling of having no oxygen left? You’re whole body on fire? That’s what I felt like the other day, only worse. I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”

  During my third visit I was thrilled to find that Denise appeared to be well on the way to recovery. She was not exactly her old self—there still seemed to be a cloud of melancholy hovering over her—but she was smiling and chatty and took gleeful pleasure dishing on the idiosyncrasies of some of the center’s staff members, including the “wacky” psychotherapist, who she likened to Daffy Duck with a medical degree, the “sleepy” program director, and the eccentric German chef responsible for the “tasteless” recovery diet.

  As Lockie walked me to my car that day, however, he cautioned me that even though Denise’s acute symptoms appeared to be getting better, she had been abusing fentanyl for one heck of a long time, and prolonged symptoms in the form of a general malaise or mild depression could persist. “The withdrawal doesn’t do anything to remove the addiction,” he said. “That’s always going to be there, so the most important thing for her to realize is to take it—”

  “One day at a time,” I said, completing the clichéd AA dictum.

  He nodded. “If she starts thinking about going through the rest of her life without ever getting high again…” He shrugged. “Well, as a former addict myself, I can tell you it’s like thinking you’ll never have a moment of happiness again. You’ll never not be sad, anxious, or lonely. So she’s going to need your support.”

  “Yeah, of course. She’ll have it.”

  During my fourth and final visit, immediately upon my arrival, a cherub social worker warned me that Denise was in a terrible mood, and nobody was sure what had caused it. I found Denise in her room, and while on our usual walk around the farm I asked her what was wrong. She produced a piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to me. It was an email she had received and printed out. I read it quickly, my stomach falling. A manager with the staffing agency NewStart had written a complaint to the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT), describing in detail the morning Denise was found on the bathroom floor next to the wrongly labeled syringe of succinylcholine. The ARRT Ethics Committee was now demanding from Denise an explanation.

  “They’re going to pull my license,” Denise told me monotonously. “I’ll never work in a hospital again.”

  “Why the hell would this manager do this?” I asked angrily.

  Denise only shook her head. “Two years of school wasted. I’m going to have to start over at something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, then burst into tears.

  I hugged her and told her everything was going to be okay.

  Later that morning Denise said goodbye to all the staff at the farmstead and checked out, telling the gathered audience, “Thank you guys so much, I love you all…but I hope to hell I don’t have to ever see any one of you again.”

  I took Denise out for a nice dinner to celebrate, then back at my place we built a fire and played a long-overdue match of Scrabble. Denise won due to a few controversial neologisms I let pass such as bezzy, lolz, and cakeage, the restaurant charge for bringing your own cake. Afterward, lying together on the sofa, drowsy from the champagne we’d had, I was nodding off when Denise said, “I really like this song.”

  Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” was playing on the stereo.

  “Me too,” I said. “It’s why it’s on my playlist.”

  “Hey, Corey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If I die, will you play it at my funeral?”

  I propped myself onto an elbow and frowned at her. “Jesus, Denny. What the hell are you talking about? You’re thirty-three. You’re not going to die.”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “Don’t ask.”

  She died nine months later, and that ominous question has haunted me ever since.

  ⁂

  Olivia, I noticed in the anemic light of the fire, was watching me, her face divvied into shadows. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, clearing my mind of the memories of Denise.

  “You’re always thinking of something. You don’t just stop like fish.”

  “Like fish?” I said.

  “Goldfish. It’s why they don’t mind being in their little bowls.”

  “Are they ever thinking to begin with?”

  “So what are you thinking about?”

  “That it’s awkward sitting here with just you.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “What? Why?” Then a smile. “Do I make you nervous? Do you have a secret crush on me, Corey?”

  “It’s more of an elevator awkwardness.”

  “But you know me now,” she said. “We’ve become good friends.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t know about that,” I said.

  “So grouchy! Sheesh.” She poked the fire with her own stick. “Hey, what do you think about Fyodor killing that rabbit? Do you think it was cruel?”

  I shrugged. “A lot of people eat rabbit.”

  “When I was a kid, I had a bunny as a pet. It was white with black spots. I called it Thumper, from Bambi.”

  “Thumper was brown.”

  “Anyway, I think it’s cruel to kill rabbits.”

  “If you had a chicken as a pet, would you never eat chicken?”

  “That’s not the same thing. Chickens are dumb.”

  “Rabbits are pretty dumb,” I said.

  “People don’t eat dogs,” she said.

  “They do in Korea.”

  “You know what I mean. You don’t cook up a Golden Retriever.”

  “Golden Retrievers are smart.”

  “So it’s based on intelligence, what we can kill, and what we can’t?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “Where do you draw the line? Why’s it okay to kill a deer but not a horse? I don’t think horses are any smarter than deer.”

  “What are you getting at?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I just think it’s odd you can go around and kill a cute little bunny and nobody bats an eye, but if you shoot a dog or cat you’re sick, and if you shoot your neighbor, you’re really sick and get locked up in a cell for the rest of your life.”

  “It’s ethics,” I said.

  “Ethics is bullshit. There’s no objective right or wrong, just what’s allowed and not allowed. Which is subjective, made up, by us.”