Ragnarok Rising: Desolation: Book Five of the Ragnarok Rising Saga

by D. A. Roberts

  Jumping out, I yanked the jumper cables off of the battery and slammed the hood down. Latching it quickly, I dove back inside and threw the cables into the back. I didn’t wait around to see what was going to happen next. I glanced at the mirrors before grabbing the steering wheel and slamming the door.

  "Hang on to something!" I called, sliding the transmission into gear.

  Punching the accelerator to the floor, I spun around and headed for the gate.

  "Want me to open it?" asked Spec-4.

  "Not this time," I replied.

  "Oh no," she said, grabbing the dash with both hands.

  Straightening out, I headed directly at the gate that would take us out onto Cox Road. I re-drew the mental map in my mind. No GPS system left to guide us, I needed to go off of pure memory and hope it was accurate. I knew that if we went to the right, that would take us south and towards the edge of town. It would also take us away from the eruption and that was the most important part.

  Luckily for us, it was the right direction to head for Pensmore. The drawback was that it took us father away from home. I knew that we had a long journey ahead of us before we could even think about going back. The road ahead of us was long and fraught with danger. Whatever end came, I was going to see this all the way through.

  We hit the gate and I felt the impact shake through the Humvee. Although it was a heavy gate, it was designed to keep things out, not in. After only a heartbeat's hesitation, the gate exploded outward and knocked an abandoned economy car careening out of our way. I knew that we couldn't have come through that without taking damage to the vehicle. However, we were still driving and it didn't feel like it had done anything significant to the frame. Whatever happened, we would figure it out once we were clear of Springfield.

  I slid sideways as I shot into the street and headed south. We had been this way before when we first found this place. There was a clear enough path for us to get all the way to Nixa. The bridge was out over the James River, but I figured that we could still cross on the main highway that ran from Springfield to Nixa. I just had to get us there.

  With rubber squealing in protest, I accelerated hard and slid around abandoned vehicles. I could feel the tremors growing more intense as each moment passed. We had to get out of here before the ground began to split apart and it became impossible to drive. The worst part was that I knew Missouri was riddled with caves. It was only a matter of time before the ground started opening up beneath us as caves collapsed and sink-holes appeared.

  "Wylie, LOOK!" yelled Spec-4, pointing to a large house to my right.

  Every window and door seemed to explode outward as Stalkers erupted out of it like a plague of locusts. Just like the birds, their instincts were telling them to get clear of the area, too. That wasn't good news for us since that meant the dead would be everywhere. This situation just became more intense with each passing second.

  In the mirror, I could see more and more Stalkers appearing with each passing second. What was worse, I could see the shapes of the massive simian nightmares leaping through the trees.

  "How are they coming out into the light?" called Spec-4.

  I glanced towards the sky and saw that the black smoke and ash cloud was slowly blotting out what little light was managing to filter through the grey sky.

  "We're losing the sun!" I called. "The volcano is plunging us into darkness!"

  Spec-4 hit the locking mechanism on her door and then leaned into the back seat to make sure that the other doors were locked, as well. I followed her lead and locked my own. Not that it would make that big of a difference. If the dead didn't get us, the volcano was going to. If they swarmed the vehicle and we had to stop, the game was over. We couldn't escape and we damned sure couldn't fight our way through that crowd. At least, not without a tank or an armored personnel carrier.

  "Hang on!" I bellowed and gripped the steering wheel as tight as I could.

  Spec-4 whipped her head around in time to see me run right into a pack of the Stalkers. I struck them with bone crunching force and scattered them like so many leaves in the wind. The vehicle shuddered from the impact, but kept going without so much as a complaint. For their part, the Stalkers were completely ignoring us. They were totally focused on getting out of the area as quickly as possible. That might be our only advantage in all of this.

  I had to hit the brake hard as I slid around a corner and headed east towards the highway. Although the road was mostly clear, the Stalkers were swarming over it like a quasi-living wave of water. I could hear them leaping over the vehicle and the snarls as I hit the occasional one that got too close. The scratching shriek of their claws as they scrabbled over the armored surface of the Humvee was almost maddening.

  We were heading towards the neighborhood where we found Maddie at almost eighty miles per hour. That's when I started noticing that there were the occasional patches of snow on the ground. We were rapidly approaching the edge of the warm zone around Springfield. If we ran back into the frozen wastes, that would at least eliminate the bulk of the threat from the undead. Although I wasn't certain how it was going to affect the gorillas.

  With rubber screaming in protest, I smashed through two vehicles and slid out onto the highway. I had to slide into the median to avoid the massive amount of abandoned vehicles that were left when the citizens of Springfield had tried to abandon the city in the early days of the fall. I could see the occasional skeleton still sitting behind the wheels of vehicles as a testament to the futility of that attempt.

  "The snow is getting thicker," shouted Spec-4.

  "I know," I replied. "At this rate, we'll be heading back into heavy frost and snow before we reach the river."

  "How close is that?" she asked.

  "Two, maybe three miles," I said, not taking my eyes off of the road.

  I kept sliding around vehicles and the hordes of the dead as they raced along trying to get away from the impending explosion of the volcano. I could see glowing red embers rising into the sky among the growing darkness of the black clouds of ash and smoke.

  "This is going to be close!" I called, sliding around an overturned semi-trailer.

  Beside us, two of the massive gorillas leapt from the trailer and landed on top of the Humvee with enough force to shake the wheel in my hands. I whipped the wheel back and forth and sent one of them sprawling into a group of Stalkers. It disappeared in a flurry of arms, claws and fur. I knew that one on one, the gorillas were more than a match for the Stalkers. However, one on thirty was bad odds for anyone.

  The amount of abandoned vehicles was beginning to thin out a bit and I was able to get onto the highway. I had to slow my speed considerably, but progress was safer and easier on the road than it was in the median. The Stalkers were close to matching our speed, now. So far, the cold hadn't seemed to affect them much. That would change the colder it got and the farther away from the heat we went.

  "Wylie!" screamed Spec-4.

  I could hear the fear in her voice. I glanced in the direction that she was pointing and could see dozens of the Hrimthurssar mounted on Vargr racing through the trees and appearing from between houses. It seemed that we weren't the only ones trying to get out of the path of the coming volcanic eruption.

  Glancing the other direction, I could see the same thing. There were more of them to my left and they just seemed to keep coming. I had no idea just how many of them there were and I knew for certain that the cold wasn't going to affect them at all. We might get free of the dead, but they weren't going to stop coming.

  "Fuck," I hissed. "What's next?"

  "Why do you ask that question?" she said shaking her head. "Every time you do, it ALWAYS gets worse."

  We cleared the top of the hill that looked down onto the James River Valley. I could see that the bridge on the north-bound lanes had collapsed, but the south-bound bridge was still intact. I also noticed that despite the snow, the road had been cleared for over a hundred yards on this side of the bridge. A heavy mist hu
ng in the air, obscuring the view of anything beyond the bridge.

  "What the fuck?" I muttered. "What's going on down there?"

  "It looks like mist," said Spec-4. "Keep going!"

  The road down the hill and into the valley was mostly clear with the majority of vehicles having been shoved off into the median and the ditch along the side of the road. There was even a pair of tractor trailers on their sides near the bottom of the hill. The road passed directly between them.

  I could see that the Stalkers were beginning to slow down and fall back. Most of the area head of us was covered with snow, leaving most vehicles only large lumps of snow along the road. Something began to buzz in the back of my head, sounding a warning that I knew couldn't mean good news for us. The problem was that I couldn't see anything that might be causing it.

  "Get us across that bridge!" called Spec-4. "Once were on the other side of the river, we should be out of the range of the volcano."

  "Well, maybe," I replied. "Depends on the size of the eruption. It will slow down the lava, though."

  The closer we got to the bridge, the worse the feeling of dread became. I couldn't see through the mist well enough to know what we were heading for at well over fifty miles an hour. Behind us, a massive explosion sounded like the end of the world. I caught a glimpse of the area behind us as I passed over the crest of the hill. A rolling cloud of burning ash was roiling across the city of Springfield. All around us, burning debris began to rain down from the sky.

  "GO!" screamed Spec-4.

  Punching the accelerator to the floor, I watched as the blast wave from the explosion blew through trees and houses on either side of the road and sent both flying like children's toys. Only the crest of the hill had saved us from being blown through the air with the rest of the debris. I smiled with grim satisfaction knowing that scores of the dead had just been blown to smithereens. The sky was turning as black as the darkest night and it seemed to be snowing heavily, although I knew it was ash.

  The speedometer slipped past sixty as we shot down the hill and towards the bridge. Just as we shot between the two semi-trailers, the alarm klaxon in my skull went screaming into overtime. Too late, I saw the trap that had been laid for us.

  "FUCK!" I screamed and hit the brakes as hard as I could.

  Spec-4 grabbed onto the ceiling for support and I mashed down on the brake pedal with everything I had. Despite the screaming of the brakes, we continued to rocket forward on the snow covered road. We weren't slowing down at all.

  The lumps in the snow around the trailers began to move and stood up. We had just ran into a group of Frostbiters. I had nowhere to go and there was nothing I could do. The massive ice-encrusted monstrosities stood and stepped into the road, digging in and grabbing hold of the front end of the speeding Humvee.

  I could feel the crunching of the steel and felt the front end dip down as we struck a nearly immovable barricade of the dead. Their heavy ice-covered forms were like striking a thick concrete wall. As they smashed down onto the hood and grabbed hold of the bumper, I could feel momentum bringing up the rear end of the vehicle. Then we were flying through the air.

  As we flipped end over end through the air, I knew that the impact was going to tear the vehicle apart. I just hoped that we survived it. As we sailed into the air, I could see figures emerging from the mist on the far side of the road. Waiting in the mist were massive numbers of the Hrimthurssar. One figure stood apart from the rest. Waiting in the middle of the bridge was Thrym. If I survived the crash, he had already decided where our final battle was going to take place.

  Spec-4 reached over and took my hand. I could see the resignation in her eyes. Time seemed to slow to a crawl and stretch out to infinity as we stared at each other for what could easily be the last time. I could feel the sensation in my stomach as we flipped upside down. Then I heard the crunching of metal as we struck the frozen ground backwards and inverted. That small miracle would be all that saved us.

  The Humvee was designed to take punishment but I doubt that even the most dedicated of the engineers had envisioned what we had just done. The back part of the Humvee burst open and sent all of our cargo flying out all around us. The back doors broke open and the driver's door flew off into the snow.

  Steel groaned and shrieked as the dying vehicle stood up on the mangled back end and slowly continued on its final roll. With excruciating slowness, we pitched forward onto the wheels and hit the ground with enough force that it felt like my teeth would come out. Pain blurred my vision and I heard Spec-4 cry out.

  My head lolled forward onto my chest and I fought to remain conscious. I could still hear Spec-4 screaming in pain, but it seemed like it was miles away. Reality ebbed and flowed around me as I tried desperately to focus. I could see the bright red of my blood as it stood out in stark contrast to the drab military green of the steering wheel and the dash. I could feel the warmth as something liquid ran down my face and dripped off of my nose and chin.

  The sensation of the cold air blew through the vehicle as the engine died and the heater stopped keeping the frozen air at bay. Glancing up, I could see that the Hrimthurssar were keeping their distance and the dead were not closing in. Only Thrym was moving and he was slowly coming towards us with his massive sword in his hands.

  "Ragnarok will go forth!" I could hear him bellow. "It is over, Grant!"

  For just a moment, my vision turned to black and I could hear the Old Man.

  "It's not over until you give up, son," he said. "You're not dead, yet."

  My vision cleared and I shook my head. That sent spasms of pain through my head and I knew that I was indeed still alive. I had a nasty laceration to my forehead and part of my left ear was missing. Blood ran down my face and neck, but it wasn't enough to kill me. I took a moment to take stock of the rest of my body. Everything hurt, but it all moved when I told it to.

  Glancing over at Spec-4, I could see that her left leg was broken. What was worse was it was her left thigh. The femur was the most difficult bone on the body to break and also to heal properly. She was going to be out of the fight for a long time to come. I could see the pain etched clearly on her face but there was still determination in her eyes. She was the toughest person I knew. How could I not continue to fight when there was still so much fight left in her eyes?

  "Don't let this son-of-a-bitch win," she said through clenched teeth.

  I think it was the first time I'd ever heard her use a curse word.

  "I won't," I vowed.

  "Finish this fight," she said, tears in her eyes.

  With a grim nod of determination, I reached for my weapons and stepped out of the vehicle. Thrym stopped dead in his tracks, with a look of shock on his face as I stood up. Clearly, he had expected to behead my corpse and proclaim himself the victor. He wasn't ready for a fight. I just hoped that I was.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Hrimthurssar's Bane

  When can their glory fade?

  O the wild charge they made!

  All the world wondered.

  Honour the charge they made!

  Honour the Light Brigade,

  Noble six hundred!

  - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  My body ached from the punishment that it had just endured, but I was still standing. Reaching down into the snow, I picked up a double handful and used it to clean the blood from my hands. The crimson stained snow fell away from me and seemed to be the only color left in the world for that moment. Only the white of the snow and the black of my boots and pants seemed to register in my mind, and the imagery perfectly mirrored my fate. There were only two choices left to me. Fight or die.

  Picking up more snow, I cleared the worst of the blood from my face and held the cold lump to the wound on my forehead. The cool feeling eased the pain and slowed the bleeding. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best I could do at the moment. It would have to be enough.

  With a glance at Spec-4, I stood up and placed my hands on the hilts of my
twin swords. This battle wasn't going to be decided with guns. Thrym and I were going to finish this like warriors. I could see that the dead and the legions of Hrimthurssar were keeping their distance, marking off the edge of the field of battle with a massive circle around the area. There was nowhere to run, even if that had been an option. There was no way that I would leave Spec-4 here to die alone.

  Only the sound of the wind whispering through the trees seemed to break the stillness. The darkness of the sky only seemed to make the area all that much brighter from the white of the snow. Even the rumbling of the growing volcano seemed to die away in the distance as we faced each other for the last time. For good or for ill, only one of us was walking away from this battle.

  "So it comes to this, Grant," said Thrym, cocking his head to the side.

  "Did you expect anything else?"

  "I should have known that you would not be so easily killed," he replied, smiling. "Honestly, I prefer it this way. We should finish this as warriors. Blade to blade."

  "And then what?" I asked, still not drawing my steel.

  "It is a small matter," he said, darkly. "You either fall before my blade or you will fall before the vengeance of my people. No matter the outcome, you will die here. Ragnarok will be fulfilled."

  "Grimmr bardagi," I muttered, drawing my blades slowly.

  The ancient words seemed to well up from deep in my psyche. I knew their meaning as well as I knew my own name. It was ancient Norse for fierce battle. I had dreamed those words in my visions of the warrior named Wygliff. I had said those words the day we lost Chuck Southard in battle against the Lacland County deputies. I had even whispered them before more than one fight, but I had never felt them in my core as deeply as I did at this moment.

  The old saying was that the All-Father wove the skein of your life long ago. It meant that your fate was fixed and that there was no point in worrying about when and how you were going to die. To me, it had always been sort of a mantra. That I was going to keep fighting as if each battle were to be my last. Only this time, it probably was going to be. I could feel the strands of my tapestry as the fates were reaching the end of my skein.