Christopher Golden - Ararat

“Look at the two of you,” Hakan said. “A Jew and a whore who has turned her back on God. I know the torment that awaits you both, but it is not enough. You parade yourself in front of my nephew until the stink of your sex fills his head so that he forgets himself, so that he can’t do anything but what you desire,” he said to Meryam, and then he turned to Adam. “And you… what do you do, man that you are? You seek out another whore to—”

“Hey, fuck you!” Calliope snapped.

Adam waded toward him, fists bunched, knowing that Hakan could thrash him within an inch of his life but not caring. The man needed to stop talking, he needed to be bruised and bleeding and unconscious. Even better if he were dead.

A gunshot cracked the sky, echoing off the mountain.

Hakan and Adam both spun to see Mr. Avci pointing his pistol at the clouds. The little man hunched over in exhaustion, glaring at them both. Walker and Kim came rushing down the trail, leaving Olivieri and the priest behind. Barking orders, trying to play alpha the same as he had since his arrival, Walker pulled out his own gun and leveled it at Avci.

“Get hold of yourselves,” Avci said, ignoring Walker.

Adam’s hatred seethed inside him. Hakan had been a bastard since the moment they’d met him, long before his grief and loss. But the things he’d said were unforgivable. Adam turned to Meryam.

“What do you say?”

Meryam stood up to her full height, pale but alive. When Adam reached for her hand, she batted it away, slogging through the snow so that she and Hakan were eye-to-eye. She spat in his face.

Hakan hauled back a fist as everyone began to shout. Adam rushed toward them, but he wouldn’t make it in time.

Calliope did. She stepped between Hakan and Meryam and grabbed his arm before he could throw the punch. Whatever she might have said to him, Adam couldn’t hear it. He wanted to thank her, but what could he say?

“You didn’t have to—” Meryam began.

Calliope whirled on her. “Don’t talk.”

Meryam stuttered and took a step back.

“No, really,” Calliope went on. “Don’t say anything. Everything he said, about you… about Adam and about me… it’s all true, and you know it. If there’s a demon inside us, we invited it in. Don’t you see that? The thing up in the cave might have been evil, but the awful parts of us are what fed it and made it grow.”

The camera fell from her hand, thumping into the snow. Tears filled her eyes as she staggered backward, off the trail.

“Don’t be stupid, girl,” Hakan said.

Calliope only glanced at him, not bothering to wipe her eyes. She picked up her pace, cutting her own path away from the trail. Hakan started after her, angrier than ever. Adam expected her to stop, to cry and catch her breath and then rejoin them, but it wasn’t until Calliope started to run and fell, sliding down the mountain slope, bumping over rocks under the soft layer of white, that he realized she really meant to abandon them.

“Damn it, Calliope!” he shouted, striding off the trail.

Meryam grabbed his arm, her grip too weak to hold him but enough to get his attention. He turned to her, torn and panicked. Without a guide, off on her own, Calliope would die. Even if she made it to the base of the mountain, the odds of her being anywhere she could find refuge without freezing or starving to death were pitiful.

“I have to—” he began.

“No. You don’t.”

Heart pounding, he stared at Meryam, then turned to watch Hakan skidding and clambering after her. The wind kicked up again and for several seconds the storm swallowed Calliope entirely. They could still see Hakan, but she was gone.

“Calliope, come on!” Adam shouted. “You can’t do this on your own!”

Hakan paused on the mountain, turned to point back up toward them.

“Stay on the trail. Camp Two is just below!” Hakan shouted. “Rest there no more than ten minutes, then carry on. I will bring her back.”

“Let her go, Hakan!” Mr. Avci shouted. “We must have a guide!”

But Hakan had gone. Adam could see him slipping, knees bent, maneuvering down the slope. He watched until, like Calliope, Hakan had vanished in the swirl of white.

“I hate him,” Meryam said, standing beside Adam.

“He hates you, too.”

They stood another few seconds, staring into the frozen landscape, where the rush of wind and snow seemed to stretch out forever.

Then Meryam took his hand and they marched down into Camp Two.

Seven of them remained, and only Adam, Meryam, and Olivieri had any history climbing this mountain, all with more courage than skill.

They gathered behind a ridge of black rock that half encircled Camp Two, eating protein bars and drinking water. Walker wanted coffee, but none of them dared to take the time to make it, him least of all. They spoke little, still smothered in the paranoia that had been with them all day. They eyed one another, took a drink or a nibble, and then they packed up again. At first they had all been glancing the way Hakan and Calliope had gone, expecting them to return at any moment, but after the first ten minutes, there had been few glances in that direction. They had left enough people behind on the mountain that they were getting used to it.

Walker ejected the magazine from his weapon, checked it over, and then slammed it back into place. He wouldn’t take any more chances.

“Let’s move,” he said, standing up.

Kim and Father Cornelius rose immediately. The others all glanced at Adam and Meryam, still thinking they were in charge. But Adam had to help Meryam to her feet, and the way he held onto her arm, assisting her, Walker wasn’t confident she would make it to Camp One, never mind off the mountain. Part of him wanted to abandon them all, to just get himself home to Charlie. He would be a better father now, he promised any god who might be listening. He would be kinder to Amanda, a friend to her in the aftermath of his failures as a husband. If he left Meryam behind—and the priest, damn it, because Father Cornelius was so old and so fucking slow—he could be a better man.

But that made zero sense. How could he be a better man back in the world he’d known if he abandoned these people now? He couldn’t be a father any son would look up to if he left them to die.

And you’d probably get lost and die without at least someone who’s climbed Ararat before . Walker trudged down the snow-covered trail, claws of his crampons keeping his footing firm. He peered through the snow, watching Adam and Meryam moving slowly up ahead, and tried to tell himself that wasn’t it—that he would have stuck with them even if he had climbed this mountain a thousand times.

It’s not just that you need them, he thought.

And he tried to believe it.

He watched them carefully, now. For the first twenty minutes out of Camp Two, he kept his gun in his hand, but after awhile he had to holster it so that he could stretch his fingers and clap his hands together to get the blood flowing. The temperature ought to have risen at least a little as they dropped elevation, but if it had, Walker noticed no difference. If anything, the wind seemed to bring even colder air, frigid and biting, and there were spots on his mouth and around his eyes that had gone numb, places his balaclava didn’t cover. He tried not to think about it.

Just as he tried not to think about the one thing on all of their minds with every step. Walker’s back prickled with his certainty that he was observed, that evil descended the mountain with them, burrowed inside their hearts or minds. If he let himself think about it, he found he couldn’t breathe. Fear trapped him between the desire to just stop and curl into a ball, huddling in fear, and the atavistic urge to simply run, screaming.