Mountain of the Dead Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Jeremy Bates

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

  First Printing: 2018

  ISBN 978-1-988091-21-1

  For a limited time, visit www.jeremybatesbooks.com to receive a free copy of the critically acclaimed novella Black Canyon, WINNER of Crimer Writers of Canada The Lou Allin Memorial Award.

  Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  EPILOGUE

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The following story is based on true events.

  PROLOGUE

  NORTHERN URAL MOUNTAINS, USSR, 1959

  LAST DAY TO LIVE

  It was the coldest day of the expedition yet. A strong wind blew in from the west, slicing through their layers of clothing and freezing their exposed faces. Heads bowed against the elements, the Dyatlov group skied in single file over virgin snowpack four feet deep, the work so exhausting they were soon sweating despite the subpolar temperatures. Every so often Igor paused to rest, but Igor was rarely one to rest, and it became clear to everyone this was a thinly veiled excuse so he could study the way they had come, to make sure they weren’t being followed. Zolotaryov wanted to tell him to cut this out. It wasn’t helping the morale of the group. Yet he held his tongue. He was an outsider among these students, a last minute tag-along. He didn’t feel it his place to question Igor’s actions, especially in front of the others.

  When they stopped for lunch, they snapped a few photographs, but the typical smiles and spirited poses had been replaced with determined faces and bleak landscapes, nine young hikers pushing the boundaries of their endurance.

  Over the next hour the coniferous Siberian forest opened around them as the trees struggled to survive in the high elevation and harsh climate until only the occasional stunted birch or emancipated pine poked through the white crust of snow. Many of these leaned at drunken and twisted angles, and depending on your state of mind, they were either pictures of sublime beauty or hellish abominations.

  Abruptly Igor brought the group to a halt. Zolotaryov looked up from his ice-crusted skis. He couldn’t see much through the milky haze of snowflakes. He slugged off his rucksack and was about to slump down in a drift next to Zina and Lyuda when he noticed Igor and Rustem speaking quietly to each other but using forceful gestures.

  He glided over to them. “What’s happening?” he asked, stopping himself with his ski poles.

  Rustem snorted. “Igor has taken us to the midpoint between Hill 1096 and Hill 805. He wants to climb the ridge.”

  Zolotaryov frowned. Hill 1096 and Hill 805 shared the same steep slope rising over one hundred meters. It was possible to climb it to enter the pass to Mount Ortoten beyond. However, the plan was to camp at Hill 611 today, where there would be trees to protect them from the wind, and firewood. “The sun sets at five o’clock, Igor,” he said. “It will be dark soon. We can’t ski in the dark.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling him!” Rustem said.

  “If we leave now,” Igor said, “we can make it to the northeast tip of Hill 1096.”

  “There will be no shelter up there,” Zolotaryov said.

  “We have the stove. I filled it with firewood this morning. We will be warm.”

  “But why don’t we simply go to Hill 611?” Rustem said, almost whining. He could become petulant when he didn’t get his way, Zolotaryov had observed. “That is the best spot to make camp. On the other hand, if we get caught up there…”

  They turned toward the miasma ahead of them.

  “Then we should stop talking and get moving,” Igor said.

  “This is about what you saw, isn’t it?” Rustem said, shaking his head. “Come on, Igor! You’re acting like a child.”

  Ignoring Rustem, Igor faced the group and announced in a loud voice: “Time to go! Follow me!” He started off, his chin tucked against his chest to protect his face as much as he could from the savage headwind.

  The others climbed back to their feet. Some appeared doubtful, but they all obediently followed. They had too much respect for Igor to question his judgment.

  Grumbling, Rustem fell into line too, and Zolotaryov took up the rear.

  The going proved arduous, and when they reached the bottom of the ridgeline, they were forced to turn their skis and sidestep up the gradient. During the ascent they could see nothing but looming snowdrifts and rocky outcroppings. When they reached the top, the already truculent weather took a drastic turn for the worse. Dark storm clouds corralled the setting sun. The headwinds doubled in force, churning the fresh powder into a wall of uncompromising white that made it impossible to distinguish land from sky.

  Yet Igor persisted in a northwest direction, and just before sunset at five o’clock he signaled a halt in what appeared to be a barren wasteland of snow. Zolotaryov could see no landmarks by which to navigate. The damned blizzard had deadened visibility to zero. He had no idea how far they had gone and no real idea where they now found themselves, except somewhere on the western face of the unprotected pass.

  Turning in a circle to observe the inhospitable environment, squinting against the barrage of icy spicules pelting his face, Igor announced they would make camp where they stood.

  Rustem immediately protested. “This is madness! We need to return to the valley and start over in the morning.”

  “We will not!” Igor snapped. “We’ll lose an entire day’s progress! And do you want to repeat that climb tomorrow?”

  “He’s right, Igor,” Zolotaryov said. “This storm is bad. We should go back—”

  “No!” Igor said. “We will camp here!”

  Too exhausted to argue, Doroshenko and Kolevatov and Zina were already shrugging off their packs, and soon everyone was helping to pitch the tent on the western slope of Hill 1096, or in the tongue of the indigenous Mansi tribesmen, Kholat Syakhl—the Mountain of the Dead.

  ⁂

  As the group worked in the glacial conditions, daylight faded to a phantom twilight before surrendering to complete darkness. By the time they realized they had set up the tent with the entrance facing the wind, they couldn’t be bothered to rectify the mistake. In fact, they were so bone-weary they didn’t bother assembling the stove for dinner, settling instead on a meal of cold meat and dried bread. They ate silently in candlelight. No songs were sung. Nobody instigated the usual discussions on love and poetry and science.

  All the while gale-force winds pounded the walls of their canvas refuge, an ubiquitous reminder they were imprisoned on a mountainside in the midst of a harrowing blizzard. Some of
the members of the group, if not all of them, blamed Igor for their dire predicament. They would not speak the accusation aloud, but their smoldering hostility was palpable. Zolotaryov could feel it poisoning the atmosphere in the tent as surely as he could feel the cold in his bones.

  This would not have been the case a day earlier. They were all experienced hikers. They knew what they had signed up for, the dangers associated with any expedition into remote wilderness. They knew nature could turn against you without notice. They knew people sometimes made mistakes, and you had to take those mistakes in your stride.

  But today was not yesterday. Igor was not the man he had been twenty-four hours before. He remained withdrawn, fidgeting with his ice axe and mumbling to himself. He refused to eat with the rest of them, instead choosing to sit sentry at the threshold of the tent’s south-facing entrance, staring into the snow-ravaged night.

  When Rustem remarked that Igor was allowing the scant heat generated by their combined bodies to escape outside, Igor glowered at him. Then, without a word, he secured the door flaps and nonchalantly cut slits in the canvas wall, so he could continue his vigil.

  This was the point when concern tipped toward enmity, when the seeds of mutiny sprouted within the team. Even so, they were in the middle of nowhere, as effectively isolated as a galleon at sea. They could not banish Igor into the storm, for this would be a death sentence. They could do nothing but put up with his paranoid antics until morning and perhaps try to talk some sense into him then.

  After dinner, with everyone preparing for bed, Igor said, “We need to keep watch.”

  This was met with collective groans.

  “Igor—” Zina said.

  “We don’t know how far north we are. We need to monitor the weather, hope for a break, so we can get a fix on Hill 611. A reverse compass bearing on the map will show us where we are.”

  “Why not wait until morning?” Doroshenko said.

  “If the weather hasn’t cleared, then what?”

  “We wait—”

  “There will be no discussion! One hour each. That should not be too hard, should it? I’ll take first watch.”

  He left the tent.

  “Who’s turn is it to write in the group journal?” Rustem remarked.

  “Mine,” Zolotaryov said. “But I think we should skip writing anything today.” Admitting they had camped on an exposed mountain slope, in blizzard conditions, would surely disqualify them from earning their Category III hiking certification.

  In a low voice Rustem said, “He’s acting—”

  “Enough,” Zolotaryov said. “We’ll reach the summit tomorrow, then we’ll start back. Forget about this night and get some rest.”

  And they did just that. Igor returned inside the tent after completing an hour on watch. Kolya put on his boots and outerwear and braved the cold outside. Zolotaryov couldn’t sleep and decided to sneak a cigarette. He was pulling on his boots when Kolya shouted.

  Igor, who was sleeping by the front of the tent, jerked awake. He stuck his head through the door flaps. Zolotaryov scrambled past the others, who were rousing drowsily, and peeked through the flaps also.

  What he saw froze him with terror.

  ⁂

  By the time the sun rose over the Northern Ural Mountains, all nine members of the ski-team expedition were dead, some having received horribly gruesome injuries. The official investigation into their deaths would last months, though there would be no definite answer as to what happened to Igor Dyatlov and his comrades on that night, only that they had succumbed to an “unknown compelling force.” Soviet authorities would close the area to the public for the next three years and lock the case file away in a classified archive.

  To this day, the incident remains one of the most chilling unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century.

  PART 1

  “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  CHAPTER 1

  PRESENT DAY

  “Passport,” the immigration official said. He had a blond buzz cut and a round face with squinty eyes, like marbles pushed deeply into dough. His nametag read: “Ivan Suslov.”

  I placed my passport and migration card on the booth’s high counter. He slid the passport’s identity page through an electronic reader, then glanced at his computer monitor, then at me.

  “Tourist,” he said. It was a statement.

  “That’s right,” I replied.

  “How long will you be in Russia?”

  “Ten days.”

  “What do you do?”

  “In Russia?”

  “What is your job?”

  “I’m a teacher,” I told him, repeating what I’d written on the migration card. It wasn’t the truth.

  “What do you teach?”

  “Teach?” I shrugged, the question catching me off guard. “Everything.”

  Something shifted in Ivan Suslov’s expression that made me think of a bloodhound picking up a scent.

  “I’m a substitute teacher,” I added. “I teach high school, elementary, different subjects.” I shrugged again, parlaying indifference. “Everything.”

  Ivan studied me a beat longer. “Where are you staying?”

  “The Hyatt,” I said.

  He wrote HYATT on the migration card with a black felt pen in a space I had overlooked.

  “You are staying there your entire trip?”

  “Yes,” I said, though this wasn’t the truth either.

  “You are by yourself?”

  “No, with a friend.” I hooked a thumb toward one of the queues to my right. “He’s over there.”

  But Ivan Suslov didn’t bother looking. Instead, he leafed through my passport, glossing over the palimpsest of inked impressions, until he came to a blank page. He added his own inked impression with a heavy-handed thump of a rubber stamp, scribbled the date on top of it, and returned the booklet to me.

  “Have a good stay in Russia,” he said.

  ⁂

  There was space to walk behind the immigration booths, so I made my way three booths down, to where my buddy, Disco, spoke with a female immigration official sporting a long, glossy ponytail. His legal name was Richard Brady, but when you’re a redneck from a small town in Louisiana named Disco, and you move to a big city like LA to become an actor, chances are you’re going to be called Disco.

  I could see Disco’s photograph on the immigration official’s computer monitor. Tight, dark skin, a hairline so straight and perfect it appeared penciled in, lidded but highly expressive chestnut eyes, monumental cheekbones, and a wide mouth prone to smiling, as if he found humor in all the minutiae of life, which he often did.

  Right now, towering before the immigration booth, he was about as out of place as a scream in a monastery. It wasn’t that he was black in a land of homogenous white people, or that he stood six-foot-five without shoes on. It was the sharkskin two-button worsted suit he wore. It had been flashy even for LAX, but here, in the hinterlands of Siberia, where the biggest fashion decision for most of the locals appeared to be whether to don track pants with one stripe down the legs or two, the sharkskin suit was turning heads and causing an infection of surreptitious smiles.

  Disco conversed with the immigration official for another minute, then flashed his white choppers, hiked the strap of his Roman duffle over his shoulder, and strolled past the booth toward me.

  Clapping a big hand on my back, he said, “Did you see her, neg?” His twangy Cajun dialect would best be described as Quebecois meets Deep South. You got a lot of “dis” and “dat” instead of “this” and “that,” as well as French and slang tossed in to shake things up.

  “Who?” I asked redundantly.

  “Hot hot!”

  “With the power to send you home on the next plane.”

  “Maybe I should’ve asked her for coffee.”

  “An immigration officer?”

  �
��They people too, Whitey. Just misunderstood.”

  Like Disco, I didn’t choose or approve of my nickname, but “Whitey” had always seemed appropriate enough, given that with my green eyes and Vitamin-D deficient complexion, I was about as Caucasian as you could get.

  Unlike Disco, I wasn’t dressed to impress. For most of my life I had been in pretty good shape. I worked out, ate right, checked all those boxes. But over the last seven months I’ve been in a bit of a downward spiral, smoking too much, drinking too much, checking all those boxes. And you could tell. Bags lurked beneath my eyes, and if you stuck me in a police lineup, I’d probably be called out as the “disheveled-looking guy.” Today I was as unkempt as usual in a long-sleeved checkered shirt over a scrappy tee, wrinkled black jeans, and a scuffed pair of Converse. My shoulder-length blond hair felt greasy, and I smelled a little, though my poor hygiene should be forgiven as I’d just endured a thirty-hour flight.

  Disco and I followed the crowd of recently disembarked and security-cleared passengers to a large room with pastel-colored pillars. We went to the sole functioning baggage carousel. My black rucksack was one of the first to emerge from the small opening in the wall. It was tough to miss with the American flag patch I’d ironed on the top pocket before I’d left LA. I wasn’t overly patriotic, but you’re always hearing not to advertise that you’re American while oversees—lest a terrorist chops off your head, or a French waiter turns up his nose at you—and I take idiosyncratic pleasure in bucking idiotic advice.

  Although Disco and I had checked in together, his rucksack—sixty liters like mine, necessary to hold all our gear during our trek into the mountains—was one of the last to appear.

  “Doesn’t go with the suit,” I told him when he lifted it from the conveyor belt.

  “Tell me about it, Whitey. Where’s the help when you need it?”

  A few minutes later we exited Koltsovo Airport and were greeted with face-numbing temperatures and a blitzkrieg of snow.