Christopher Golden - Ararat

“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 background 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.