Christopher Golden - Ararat

But Meryam had to keep the charm around her own neck. She had never believed, and now this horror had instilled her with the faith she had always lacked. There was no way she was going to take off that charm.

Which meant she would have to watch Adam very carefully from now on.

For a handful of minutes, they scrabbled down the mountain face in silence replete with wary glances. Walker stayed with Kim and Father Cornelius at the center of the line of climbers, the comforting weight of the gun against the small of his back. Cold and numb as he’d become, he wondered if his fingers would cramp up if the time came for him to hold that weapon, to pull the trigger again.

When screams broke the silence, rising on the wind, he steeled himself and looked down with grim resignation. How could he be surprised, now? The demon had become their curse.

Kim swore and started to quicken her descent, but Walker barked her name and reached out to stop her.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “We have to…”

Her words faltered as she gazed into his eyes. She looked at Father Cornelius for support and found none.

“We have to what?” he asked.

Only twenty feet below them, Hakan’s cousin had turned on a student, a scruffy guy named Markus. He had a knife, and infernal strength, and with those tools murder took only seconds. Blood flew in the falling snow, whipped away on the wind. Belinda tried to stop it, but that knife and that strength did their gruesome work on both of them, and soon the blood had splashed in hideous patterns across a stretch of snow, right where the slope became more accessible… right where things should have become easier for them.

The demon brandished its knife, and that soulless grin, and it started to climb back up toward them in the body of that guide—the last of Hakan’s family on the mountain.

Walker pulled his gun. He held onto the mountain with one hand and aimed downward.

Shouting, Hakan skidded down from above, wanting him to stop, to let him try talking to the young man, give him a chance to drive the demon out. But the guide had that bloody knife and he was clambering spiderlike toward Walker and Kim and the priest, and Walker had been trained to eliminate the immediate threat.

He shot the guide twice in the chest. The bearded young man flopped backward, rolled down the hill, through the bloody snow, and tumbled to a halt where the ground became hikeable.

Hakan put a hand on Walker, who knocked it away with the barrel of the gun and then took aim at Hakan. For a full five-count they stared at each other, breathing deeply, until Walker decided Hakan had not been possessed—not yet—and Hakan apparently decided he did not want to be shot.

Scrambling down the snowy slope, sliding and then trudging, Hakan fell to his knees beside the corpse of his cousin. He closed his cousin’s eyes, muttering prayers in their own language.

Walker held back with his team as Meryam, Adam, and Calliope passed them and went to stand by Hakan. Olivieri and Mr. Avci joined them.

“As soon as we get a little ways past the blood,” Walker said quietly, turning to Kim, “I want you to go. Move as fast as you can. I studied the hiking maps before we came. Camp Two isn’t far. You can probably make out some of the path based on the way the snow has accumulated, but either way, you’ll be safer on your own than you will be with any of us.”

Kim stared at him, then glanced at Father Cornelius. “I won’t leave the two of you behind.”

“You’re here to observe, not to die,” Walker told her. “We’ll be able to hike down from this point, but Cornelius can’t go very quickly. Just the way it’s got to be.”

“Walker’s right,” the priest rasped, leaning against the mountain as if he hadn’t any fear the demon would enter him next. “You should go.”

“I’m safer with the two of you than on my own,” Kim said. “But…”

Walker frowned. The weight in that one word, the thick lines in her forehead, showed just how much it disturbed her.

“What?” he urged.

Kim glanced at the others below, the handful of people gathered around Hakan while he mourned.

“What if we shouldn’t even try?” she said. “What if the demon isn’t poison, but more like a virus, and if we bring it down off the mountain we’re just setting it loose in the world?”

Walker stared at her. He had no reply. What Kim had said terrified him more than any idea he’d ever heard.

Adam held Meryam’s hand, but there was nothing romantic in the gesture. He had tried to get her to lean on him, to sling an arm around his shoulder so that he could help keep her on her feet, but she had refused. Only after she had stumbled several times and nearly sprawled face-first onto the snow-covered trail had she relented enough to hold on to his hand.

They trudged downward, some of them with hiking poles and others just aiding one another, lost in the shock of death and bloodshed. Nearly an hour had passed since the demon had made its last appearance, and Adam could feel the shock beginning to abate. He didn’t dare hope that they had passed beyond its influence, but the spark of hope was hard to extinguish, particularly since he so wanted to believe it. Every minute that passed, he saw those around him beginning to relax the tiniest bit. And to feel. To grieve. Half an hour ago, Calliope had begun crying quietly and let her camera dangle in the grip of her right hand while she used the left to wipe her tears away.

Meryam stumbled. Adam gripped her hand tightly and pulled her to him, almost as if they were dancing. Face-to-face, he crushed her against him, watching her breath mist through the cloth of her balaclava.

“Camp Two is just ahead,” Hakan called back to them.

He had taken the lead some time ago, with Calliope just behind, and Meryam and Adam trailing them. The rest were stretched out in an irregular line, but nobody more than fifty yards back.

Camp Two . The terrain would still be rough, particularly with a foot of snow on the ground and the wind still gusting, resisting their progress. But from Camp Two the trail would get easier, more pronounced, enough so that Adam thought he might be able to get down from there even without a guide. Camp Two was good news.

Don’t be stupid, he told himself. Don’t hope. There’s still a long way to go . They had hours yet, and Meryam would only grow wearier. Adam didn’t want to think about how complicated things would become if he had to carry her.

“Hakan!” he called, taking Meryam’s hand again as they began again to follow the trail. “Wait for us!”

Up ahead, Hakan turned slowly toward them.

“Wait for you?” he said. “It takes all of my will not to leave you here.”

“Now hang on,” Adam replied.

Calliope shifted the weight of her camera from one hand to another but did not lift it to begin filming.

“What?” Hakan snarled, marching back toward Adam and Meryam, glaring his hatred at them, face nearly as full of malice as if the demon had taken him. “What do you want to say to me, you two disgusting beasts?”

“Fuck you, you obnoxious—” Adam began.

Meryam put the back of her hand over his mouth to stop the words, but she kept her gaze on Hakan.

“I’m sorry,” she said, a hitch in her voice. “Feyiz was my friend, Hakan. I wish I could hear him laugh again and feel the openness and acceptance that he gave to everyone around him. But wishing won’t fix anything. This group is all that’s left. I don’t know if this is just grief or if the demon’s pulling your strings, bringing out the worst parts of you, but—”

“Slut,” Hakan sneered.

Adam took a step forward, letting go of Meryam’s hand. “That’s enough!”