Christopher Golden: Ararat

“Back up there,” she said quietly, gesturing toward the peak of Ararat. “With the rest.”

Hakan nodded slowly. She saw a flicker of something in his expression, some decision, and then he moved Kim aside and lifted Meryam into his arms. She stiffened, remembering all of the hatred he had inflicted upon her, but then she let it go. Let herself relax into him. The man saw a dying woman and had decided to show her a last kindness. She would not take that away from him.

Walker began to argue, but Kim silenced him, and these few last survivors began the final stage of their descent. Meryam thought about the burned remains in the cave, and the slabs and chunks of broken bitumen up there. She thought about the dead they had left behind, and the shards of bitumen around some of their necks, as well as the other charms that had been cast aside, somewhere on the face of Ararat. Where was the demon now? Still inside the ark? Suffused into the bitumen? Haunting the shards they’d left behind?

Or was he still with them, these few survivors, quietly waiting to meet the modern world?

Meryam wept quietly in Hakan’s arms. As he walked, her body rocked against him, and soon she lost consciousness.

Her dreams were filled with screaming.

On the second Tuesday in April, Kim Seong sat at a small, round table in Pizzeria Paradiso and waited for her lunch appointment to arrive. She’d taken a table right by the windows that looked out on the sidewalk so she could watch pedestrian traffic passing by on M Street, but also because it was an unseasonably warm early spring day in Washington, D.C., and she wanted to feel the sun on her. Ever since Ararat, she could not get enough of the sun.

“Can I get you a drink while you wait?”

Kim blinked and glanced up at the waiter, a thin young man with perfectly groomed hair and artful stubble on his chin.

“Just water for now,” she said.

The waiter vanished as if she’d summoned him out of her imagination in the first place. She sat and waited in the sunshine, relishing its heat and light. For a moment she closed her eyes, just basking in it, but she opened them quickly again. Whenever her eyes were closed, she saw things she hoped never to see again.

A bell rang over the door and she looked up. The way the little table was situated, a corner and a column and a tall plant obstructed her view of the entrance, but she heard the muffled voice of someone speaking to the hostess and she knew it was Walker even before he came into view. He smiled when he saw her and raised a hand in greeting, and Kim did the same. For the first second or two, they studied each other’s faces, searching for signs—for a grin that seemed too wide or a glint of orange light in the eyes that defied both sunshine and shadows.

It had become her habit when she encountered anyone, studying them a little closer, wondering when she might encounter someone who was not who they pretended to be. Kim’s pulse quickened in relief when it seemed to her that Walker was only Walker. With the way the corners of his mouth had been torn and then sewn up, he seemed reluctant to smile too widely, and that was for the best. He had healed quite a bit, but the scars would be with him forever.

Walker stepped aside, beckoned back toward the entrance, and a little dark-haired boy joined him. He put a hand on the boy’s back and the two of them approached the table.

“You made it,” she said pleasantly.

“Made it?” Walker replied. “We live here. You’re the one who came from so far away. I appreciate you making the time.”

Kim gave a nod. She didn’t want to correct him just yet.

“This must be Charlie,” she said, lowering into a crouch.

The boy smiled shyly. He took after his father, but he had a softness to his features, an open kindness, that undermined the resemblance.

“Charlie, this is my friend Seong. Can you say hello?”

The boy held out his hand to shake. “It’s nice to meet you, Seong.”

“And you, sir,” Kim replied, sharing the boy’s formality. “Your father tells me this is your favorite place to eat.”

He brightened and launched into a litany of pizza toppings that were acceptable to him, all shyness gone. The three of them sat around the table in the sunlight and with the boy entertaining them, Kim and Walker managed to avoid discussing the horrors they had in common. By the time the waiter had returned, Charlie had already helped each of them perfect their pizza orders and seemed proud of his expertise.

“The fresh mozzarella—the drops—not the shredded stuff,” the boy told the waiter.

“Absolutely, sir,” the waiter said as if the kid were a Congressman instead of a fourth-grader, and then went off to put in their orders.

“All right, buddy, what now?” Walker asked.

“Hands,” Charlie replied good-naturedly, sliding his chair back. He stood and looked at his father expectantly.

“You first,” Walker told his son. “I’ll go right after.”

The openness faded from Charlie’s face. His nine-year-old innocence receded, to be replaced by keen perception as he glanced from his father to Kim and back again.

He nodded. “Got it. But no kissing in public. It’s embarrassing.”

As Charlie marched off to wash his hands, Kim felt herself flush. Walker watched him a moment before turning toward her.

“Sorry about that.”

She cocked her head. “Is there a reason he expects us to kiss the moment he leaves the table?”

Walker offered a small shrug, with no trace of a smile. “He interrogated me on the way over. One of his questions was whether or not we’d ever kissed.”

“And you said we had.”

“There are a lot of things I can’t tell him,” Walker replied. “I’ve made myself a promise that I’m going to be honest with him about everything else.”

Kim scraped her fingernails over the textured cotton tablecloth. She wetted her lips with her tongue.

“How much do you know?” she asked.

Walker glanced around to make sure they weren’t overheard. He leaned slightly forward. “I know they’ve pulled most of the bodies off the mountain. My employers have been paying very close attention to their progress, but so far we haven’t had any reports of violence or… anything like what we experienced up there.”

Kim nodded. “So far. But they haven’t let anyone go into the cave. The Turks are adamant that the ark is off-limits and the UN is inclined to agree with them.”

They locked eyes and Kim saw her own fears reflected back to her. Walker glanced out the window, watching two women stroll hand-in-hand, one holding the leash of an energetic black terrier. Ordinary people living ordinary lives, Kim thought. If they only knew .

“Have they released Adam Holzer’s body?” Walker asked.

“Just a few days ago. I thought about trying to attend, but I feared it might be an intrusion,” Kim replied. “Besides, Meryam doesn’t want to see us. She wants to put the mountain behind her for whatever time she has left.”

Walker glanced deeper into the restaurant. Kim followed his gaze and saw that Charlie had emerged from the bathroom in the back corridor and was wiping the excess water from his hands onto his jeans. It made her smile.

“I’m sort of amazed she’s lived this long,” Walker said. “She can’t have much time left.”

Kim hesitated, then plunged ahead. “You never know how much time you’ll have,” she said. “Which is why I wanted to see you.”

Walker must have heard something in her tone, because he studied her more closely, searching her face for whatever he’d missed. “What is it?”

“I just thought you should know that I’ve taken a job at the embassy. A two-year posting as special advisor to the ambassador. So, I’ll be here in D.C. for a while. I thought we might get together now and then.”