Christopher Golden - Ararat

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.”

Then others were shouting and they both looked up to see Walker, Kim, and Father Cornelius scrambling down to them, and the moment passed. The fury—the hatred and fear—in Mr. Avci’s eyes had been purely human.

Or, at least, he thought it had.

Meryam and Adam sat together in the cleft. She lay against him, allowing him to hold her, and to hold her up. There had been a time when she would have contemplated the way this might look to the others, the way it might undermine the leadership she had established. They were beyond that point. Even without the storm and the horror, there was the cancer. It had worn away at her long before the cold had dug in its talons. Her weariness pulled at her like a siren’s song, luring her into the darkness of unconsciousness. But unconsciousness meant surrender, and surrender would mean death.

They couldn’t sit here long. She knew that. As long as they kept moving and kept well covered, they wouldn’t suffer too badly from exposure. There was bound to be some frostbite, but if they could set a decent pace and make it off the mountain within a few hours after nightfall, at the latest, they would be all right. She reckoned less than an hour to reach Camp Two, maybe twice that to Camp One—less if the blizzard weakened at lower altitude, as she expected it would.

You can make it, she thought. But she rested against Adam and thought maybe, just maybe, she was telling herself a lie.

The survivors were clustered around her. She thought of them that way now. The survivors . Olivieri, Mr. Avci, Belinda and another student Meryam didn’t know well. Hakan— fucking Hakan —and the other guide, his cousin or nephew or whatever. And Walker’s little team. Somehow they were still intact, that trio of Walker, Kim Seong, and Father Cornelius. She didn’t wish them dead, but she couldn’t fight the jealousy it inspired to see them together, now that Feyiz was dead.

Then there was Calliope, with her camera. Meryam didn’t know whether to murder her or admire her. Maybe both. She fucked my fiancé . But damn, the work ethic on this woman. She knew it might not be work ethic at all, that maybe it was more about the idea that viewing this horror through the lens seemed to keep it at arm’s length. Calliope might feel safer with the distance the camera seemed to provide. Meryam knew it was a false distance, a false protection, but as much as she hated Calliope right now, she wasn’t going to take that away from her. Not when she would have given anything for a little distance, a little sense of security.

“Hakan,” she said, clearing her throat, mustering some residue of energy. “How much further before we can start hiking instead of climbing?”

Smashing his hands together to get the blood flowing, Hakan stood and looked over the ridge to get his bearings. His grief and fury were well hidden.

“Ten minutes if we move quickly,” Hakan said. “Fifteen at most. It’s really not far. After that we must still be very careful. Help one another. Use climbing poles if you have them.”

“We’re all going to stay together,” Meryam told them, surveying the faces around her, gauging their terror and shock.

“Like hell we are,” Belinda said, hidden behind goggles and balaclava. “Every single one of us should be climbing alone, and should retreat if anyone comes near. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll keep in visual range, but I’m not going near any of you until we’re down.”

No one spoke. Instead, each of the survivors began to study the others around them, almost vibrating with fear and paranoia. Meryam felt it as well. She wasn’t immune. From one face to the next, she searched for hints of the lunatic grin on their lips or the glint of orange in their eyes. They were all doing the same thing.

Was it here among them, even now? Was the demon inside one of them, relishing every moment?

“If we all stay together,” Walker said, “then if the demon attacks, there will be enough people around to prevent more fatalities.”

“Or try to, anyway,” Calliope said.

“Try to,” Father Cornelius agreed. “We will stay together. Those who wish to be on their own, we do understand. But if the evil enters you, takes you over, it may just make you hurl yourself down the mountain, or worse. We should be watching over one another.”

“I still don’t understand why this is happening,” Mr. Avci snapped. “Professor Olivieri said the bitumen charms—”

“It was a theory!” Olivieri shrieked, so fragile Meryam thought she could see little bits of his psyche breaking off with every word. “I had reason to believe… the Apocrypha spoke of it… and Noah’s family was wearing the damn things!”

The survivors had begun to pick themselves up again, shouldering their packs and making sure their faces were fully covered before they slipped over the ridge and began the careful descent.

Meryam took a deep breath to steady herself, then pushed off Adam’s shoulder and rose to her feet. Her thoughts blurred and for a moment she thought she might fall over. Adam reached out to steady her but she waved him away.

“No. If I can’t do this myself, you’ll have to carry me down, and it’s too dangerous.”

Taking long, even breaths, she managed to clear her head. She’d had a protein bar while they rested and she could feel the little bit of energy it gave her starting to take hold. Somewhere in Adam’s pack there were caffeine pills and she knew she might need those before long, too. For now, though, fear was all the motivation she required.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The others had all gone over the edge of the ridge by the time she started to clamber backward over the rocks.

“Meryam,” Adam said.

She glanced up to see him digging down inside his turtleneck, pushing his gloved fingers between the sweater and balaclava.

“What are you doing?”

Adam found the bitumen charm, snaked a finger around the twine from which it hung, and yanked it off. Before she could object, he tossed it into the snow behind him.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he told her. “But we both know they’re not working. Maybe the demon’s already in us, maybe the evil’s taken root. Doesn’t matter. I think our only hope is getting beyond its reach.”

“Its reach?” she echoed, fresh fear buzzing inside her.

“Like a ghost can’t leave the place it haunts,” Adam said, his eyes hurt but hopeful. “I’m hoping that’s what it is… that once we really get away from the cave, it can’t hurt us anymore. If I’m wrong… well, if I’m wrong, we’d all have been better off going off the ledge that first night, dying right then.”

“Don’t say things like that.”

Adam glanced away. “Let’s just go.”

He stayed by her side as they caught up to the others, descending more quickly now that the slope was less treacherous. His words echoed in her mind and that look in his eyes lingered, breaking her heart by degrees with every moment of reflection. She knew about the dybbuk, about the fear that had been his constant companion as a child, and she had always hated his grandmother for having instilled that dark faith in him. He had never been able to escape it. Now he wouldn’t put his faith in anything, including the charm Olivieri believed might save his life.