“Wrap it up and get it out of there!” Meryam told the archaeology team.
The two students at either end folded the plastic tarp around the cadaver as Wyn Douglas taped it down fast, and they lifted the hard board like EMTs at an accident scene. In what seemed only seconds, they carried the cadaver toward the base of the nearby ladder, where they began to wrap it more efficiently.
Kneeling by Patil’s side, Meryam put a hand on his shoulder. “Dev, are you—”
He shook her hand off and bent over again, breathing deep and fast, trying to control the surging roil of his guts.
Walker pushed past a student. “Meryam, get away from him. All of you, back away.”
Adam shook himself, the momentary shock passing. “He’s right. Come on, love. Whatever it was could be contagious.” He turned toward another student. “Get the doc down here, right now. The rest of you, keep back.”
Nobody else needed to be told. Calliope kept filming as Adam helped Meryam to her feet and they withdrew from Patil. Not all of them, however. Father Cornelius pushed past Calliope and started toward Patil and the now-empty coffin.
“Father—” Walker warned.
But the priest’s eyes were locked on the brightly lit interior of the box where the horned thing had lain, and now Walker saw the markings there. The cadaver’s fluids had stained the wood in some ancient era, but these were not just the striations from those stains—there were words here as well, symbols like those on the lid and the bitumen casing, carved or burned into the wood thousands of years ago. More messages from the past for them to translate.
“Not now,” Walker began. “Seriously, we can’t risk—”
Zeybekci shouted at the priest in Turkish, something short and angry at first, and then a long stream of guttural words that contorted the monitor’s face with fury.
“Hang on,” Meryam said as she and Adam turned toward Zeybekci, but too late. The man had already started moving.
Zeybekci lunged at Father Cornelius, hands outstretched, and his fingers hooked into claws as he snagged the priest’s clothes and hurled him to the floor. People started to shout. Calliope jockeyed for position for her camera, getting the whole thing as they grabbed hold of Zeybekci and tried to pull him off. Zeybekci’s stream of guttural language continued as he began to pummel the old priest, fists smacking Father Cornelius’s head and throat.
Then he pulled his gun.
Adam snagged his arm, twisted it back, disarming him quickly, but then Zeybekci lashed out and cracked a fist against his skull, knocking him backward.
“Come on, help us!” Meryam called to the students.
But Walker had gotten leverage by then. With Meryam helping, he ripped Zeybekci off the priest and wrestled him to the ground. Then the students were there, holding the man’s hands down as Zeybekci shrieked and fought them, strong in his rage. So strong that Walker knelt on his chest, shouting for him to stop, to come to his senses.
Zeybekci glared up at him. The industrial lights made his eyes gleam, but there were shadows there as well, and for half a second Walker thought they had the same glittery orange hue he’d seen in Patil’s eyes when that gas had engulfed the paleopathologist’s head.
Abruptly, Zeybekci just stopped. His eyes closed and he sighed and tears began to well in his eyes.
“What has happened to me?” he asked calmly.
Walker didn’t trust it. Not yet. He and the students took their time, made sure Zeybekci really had calmed himself down. When he could exhale and the muscles in his back relaxed, Walker glanced back toward the coffin to see Patil sitting up and leaning against it. Patil wiped his mouth with a look of disgust, pale but otherwise seemingly all right.
“What the hell?” Adam said, rubbing at his skull as Meryam stared around the passage at the simmering aftermath of the chaos.
Walker looked at the gun in his hand. Zeybekci did the same.
“I’ll take that, now,” Zeybekci said, reaching for the pistol.
“I don’t think so,” Walker said, stepping between them. “Not yet, anyway.”
He held out his own hand for the weapon. Adam hesitated, glancing at Meryam, but Walker would not wait for approval. Not when there was a firearm in play. Carefully but firmly, he took the gun from Adam’s hand.
“As long as Mr. Avci seems fine, I’ll return this to him,” Walker said. That seemed to satisfy them all, for the moment.
Father Cornelius cleared his throat. They all turned to see the man rising shakily to his feet. Blood streamed from the priest’s nose. His mouth had already begun to swell, his upper lip split, and his left cheek had split against the bone and would certainly need stitches.
“If you’re through with your objections,” the priest said, “I’d like to try deciphering what’s written inside the coffin now. Maybe that noxious little cloud was nothing more than body gas. But just in case your insistence that all of this is perfectly natural turns out to be wrong, I’d like to know what we’re dealing with.”
Little patters of blood fell from his wounded face and dotted the timber floor.
No one attempted to argue with him this time.
There had been a lull in the storm. In midafternoon the wind dropped off to nothing for an hour or so, the world around the mountain going entirely still. Work had ground to a halt inside the ark, despite the moment of calm in the weather. Like the stillness of the sky, the cessation of activity inside the cave seemed a temporary thing, with the promise that both would soon be replaced by renewed vigor. In the case of the storm, at least, the promise was fulfilled an hour before dark.
Adam planted his feet, fighting the gusts that crashed across the mouth of the cave. Night had not yet fallen, but the darkness had come early. The snows of the past couple of days had been little more than flurries in comparison to the raging, churning whiteness that was now arriving. His back to the wind, he held tightly to his camera and recorded footage of the screaming white maelstrom, hoping the visuals were as stunning as he thought they would be. People would be familiar with the sight of a blizzard, but not like this, with thousands of meters of nothing stretching out below them.
He thought of the missing four, wondered if they had gone over the edge of that abyss and if their bodies were down there now, buried in the deepening snow, lost to their loved ones until at least the first thaw of spring. More and more, Adam had been keeping his thoughts and fears to himself. Meryam did not seem to want to hear them, and though that broke his heart a little, he reminded himself of the pressure she was under.
Pressure she put herself under, he thought. He’d have been happy to share the burden, but Meryam didn’t want to share. Doesn’t want to share her troubles, and maybe doesn’t want to share her happiness either. Is that really the woman you want to marry?
Guilt washed through him. He loved her, and didn’t regret that love. But sometimes Meryam didn’t make it easy. Adam had viewed her as the perfect partner, someone with whom he could chase his dreams, side by side with her as she chased her own, each lending strength to the other.
Everyone with any sense was in the middle of taking whatever refuge they could find, firing up the heaters, and huddling down together, but he needed time to himself. A chance to clear his head. There were meetings going on, he knew that. A lot of decisions to be made. Dr. Dwyer had patched up Father Cornelius, and Hakan was observing while the priest tried to decipher the writing inside the coffin, with Walker and Kim assisting, and Calliope getting the process on film. Dev Patil and Zeybekci were still under Dr. Dwyer’s care, though both were protesting that they were fine.