Ragnarok cta-4

by Kane Gilmour

  She moved steadily through the snow, heading toward what she expected would be a much more obvious entrance back into the facility. The room with the giant metal cage had huge hangar-style doors. She knew they must open to the outdoors somewhere. The land was hilly with small rises and valleys, but she moved at a rapid pace, despite the snow. She kept looking back, waiting for the white-skinned creatures to appear. They would blend perfectly into the snowy landscape-natural camouflage. But she knew they couldn’t see properly with any kind of obstacles in the air. The sleet would play havoc with their perceptions. They might even still be back at the hatch.

  She couldn’t waste time. She needed to get closer to the hangar doors-wherever they were-and then find a place to make a stand. If the snow and sleet stopped, those things would be after her.

  Queen crested a small rise, and ahead she could see a rectangular hill in the snow, which looked to be about four or five feet taller than the rest of the hill. Like a bunker, she thought.

  She moved toward the shape, at times in snow almost up to her hips. As she got closer, she could see that her original thought about a bunker wasn’t far off. The structure was a gray concrete, although it was difficult to see it clearly, as she approached it. Snow coated its flat roof. Small ice crystals clung to the vertical sides of the building. Its most notable feature from a distance was the small window set into the side of one wall. Light poured out of the tiny window like blasting rays of the sun.

  When she reached the wall, she could see decorative swastikas carved into the cement. The bunker had the look of a WWII-era German structure. Each symbol was perfectly centered above a feature of the building-one above the small window, which was too small to climb through and not much larger than her face, and the other above a long-since-rusted metal door. The symbols had faded with time and weather, and upon closer inspection, it looked like someone had made a concerted effort to chip them away. The small bunker-like building sat atop a hill, exposing Queen to harsh winds. The top of the building’s roof, just a few feet above the snow, was mostly clear of piled snow, blown away by the wind.

  She inched close to the window, but couldn’t make out anything more than the blisteringly bright light that streamed out, making the rest of the un-illuminated area around the bunker darker by comparison. She swept away the snow covering the door and discovered it was covered by earth as well. The upper hinge was on the outside of the door. There would be no way to get the thing open. It reminded her of the double doors in one of the abandoned labs that Rook had shown her. That room had a small window that was covered over almost entirely by soil and snow, too. She hadn’t seen that window on her way to this hill. She assumed it would be completely covered by snow now.

  The snow was letting up. Her hand began to throb and swell. Her gloves were long gone, so she reached into a pocket of her jacket and pulled out the fleece headband she had worn earlier to hide her brand. Her ears were cold too, but they would have to wait. She needed her hand. She used her teeth and ripped the fleece along its seam, and then wrapped her broken hand with it, using it like a bandage.

  With the additional warmth and support from the fleece, she then wrapped the wire around her hand again, to use it as a garrote, when the time came. Then she looked again at the way the window cast light onto the snow and had an idea. She moved to the side of the window and began to scoop snow away from the bottom of the huge drift against the side wall. Soon she had to get on her hands and knees to move the snow out of the makeshift cave she was creating. The hole would be just large enough for her to squat in, and the top would come just a few inches under the top of the snow drift. The snow packed nicely, and she could tell that the roof wouldn’t collapse in-at least not until she needed it to. Once she could fit inside the small shelter, she started scooping more snow, but this pile she placed at the entrance, sealing herself in. By the time she was nearly done, Queen was soaked with sweat. She hoped the white beasts didn’t have a good enough sense of smell that they could detect her even through the natural sensory countermeasure provided by the falling snow.

  She left a small window at the top of her doorway, about three inches in height-just enough for her to see out and into the field of light the window of the building provided. She could see that the sleet had lessened and turned into a light gentle flow of large, two-inch snowflakes. She had never seen such large flakes-not even in the Arctic islands of Russia, several degrees north of where she was now in Fenris Kystby. The flakes fell, but they lessened in intensity. The beasts would be coming soon. She would have to work quickly. This last part was delicate. She used the end of her electrical wire to gently prod holes in the ceiling of her snow cell. One wouldn’t be enough. She made a dozen holes, enough to see the roofline above her drift.

  The bunker was a natural rise. The roof would provide a natural vantage point. She suspected that at least one of the creatures would utilize both it and the light the window cast onto the snowy valley below the bunker. She saw movement through her roof holes, as one of the monsters moved past her line of sight to crouch on the edge of the roof and scan the valley below with its bizarre head cocked askew and the large reptilian eye rotating on the side of its head.

  She could also see movement outside her door. At least two of them. A gust of wind howled across the hill, bringing a curtain of white sweeping along the ground with it, like nature’s broom, sweeping things clean.

  The movement outside the door ceased. Queen checked through the peepholes in her roof. The squatting creature above her remained locked in place, its powerful chest and arms per-fectly still. They wouldn’t move until the gust of wind stopped blowing snow around.

  Now.

  Queen tensed on her bent legs and thrust up through the roof of her snow cave, launching her body onto the concrete roof of the bunker and rolling in one swift move. The big white monster turned its head, but it was too late. Queen leapt onto its back and threw her cord over its head, pulling tightly with both hands and leaning back like she was riding a mechanical bull at a Texas dive bar.

  The beast stood and wobbled backward as it clutched at its throat and the thick insulated cord that was cutting off its air flow.

  Needing to breathe is a bitch, ain’t it? she thought, and held on harder as the twitching, bucking creature began to flail uncontrollably around the roof of the small 10 foot square bunker.

  There were two more creatures in the dooryard of the building, illuminated brightly by the window, but snow still fell, obscuring their sense of the world.

  Queen pulled her knees up and rammed them against the monster’s spine, using her powerful leg muscles to add thrust to the pull of the wire across the throat.

  The creature was out of air and out of time. It staggered closer to the front of the building, and tipped over the lip, head first, with Queen riding its back like a trick equestrian. They dropped toward one of the stationary beasts and at the last second, Queen abandoned her cord and leapt off the falling creature’s back. As it hit the snow, she struck the head of a second beast, digging her thumb straight into its large tennis-ball like eye. The sound it made was horrendous. Not the roar that had incapacitated her earlier, with fear and trauma hallucinations, but a screeching wail of pain and dismay. She wrapped her broken hand around the other side of the thing’s head as a white jelly-like substance juiced over the thumb of her attacking hand. This beast was going down too, and she rode it into the snow, then rolled.

  As soon as she landed in the drift, she moved her head up to check on the location of the third white creature, and then she froze in place. A few feet away, it twisted its head, swiveling its eyes in alternating directions, trying to make sense of the white noise wreaking havoc with its strange senses.

  She stood slowly.

  Confidently.

  Then the last beast let loose its dreadful roar. She was expecting it this time; she knew that one or all of them would try to use the roar. She didn’t know how it worked, but she knew it had been responsib
le for her flashbacks and hallucinations last time.

  Even expecting it this time, it brought her down, trembling in fear. Tears filled her eyes.

  Her body shook more violently from the fear than from the cold, but the hallucinations did not attack her mind.

  She knew where she was and what was going on around her, but she was scared shitless.

  Drawn to her emotional fallout, as though it could smell her fear, the beast swiveled its eyes in her direction. It opened its maw slowly, showing a mouthful of jagged pointy teeth, all sharp and long in the front. Her fear spiked again and she shrieked.

  The beast stalked toward her.

  The snow stopped.

  She watched in horror as the last flakes floated to the ground.

  The creature opened its mouth wide enough to engulf her head. The muscles beneath its clear cheeks coiled. The jaws looked powerful enough to pulverize her skull.

  The only response she could manage was a scream, but it wasn’t simply a primal fear response. It was a name. And it lent her strength. “Rook!”

  FIFTY

  Midtown, New York, NY

  “Black Three!” Deep Blue was shouting into his headset to the helicopter pilot. “The building’s coming down. So are we! Move before you slice us to ribbons!”

  King flipped over face first to spread his arms and legs in a classic skydiving stance, as he and Deep Blue fell from the roof of the collapsing Exxon Building. Thankfully, the building tipped away from them, not quite yet to a forty-five degree angle. He watched the helicopter peeling away toward the Time-Life Building fire two rockets at the lower portion of the Exxon Building below him. The rockets sank into the concrete of the building a few hundred feet below him. Stretched out between the underside of the Black Hawk and the impact sites of the two rockets was a black net, reminding King of the nets he had seen at the circus when he was a kid. Only this time, one side of the net was held up by a helicopter, and he was the one falling into it-from the roof of a skyscraper. Also, he had two otherworldly vicious brutes about to fall on top of him and rake his eyes out.

  The air squealed with the rending of concrete and steel as the upper twenty floors of the Exxon Building fell over. When it reached a forty-five degree angle, the center of the building sheared, and tore from the hollow space created by its central elevator shafts. Some of the building ripped away and dropped above the heads of the falling dire wolves.

  The helicopter dipped, allowing some slack in the net. King heard the distinctive sound of repetitive gunfire. Black Four, the co-pilot, was firing a side-mounted machine gun at the dire wolves above King.

  Deep Blue slammed into the net a second before King did. Both men quickly grabbed onto the netting, which was a thin, nylon and elastic substance coated in black threads. The net bounced under the weight of the bodies, but almost as soon as King hit the net, the helicopter rose up and pulled the net taught at a sharp angle, leading up and away from the crumbling Exxon Building.

  Then the first pursuing dire wolf, now dead from withering gunfire, smashed into the net and rolled down toward the side of the building, where the net’s rocket-fired mounts had attached. The second dire wolf had been hit, but was still alive and managed to snag the net with a clawed hand.

  A ten-story slab of concrete came down next. Completed in 1971, the Exxon Building was the second-tallest building in the Rockefeller Center Plaza, and was also one of the 100 tallest buildings in America, but today it would become another casualty in the war on terror-against both human and otherworldly threats.

  The giant slab of falling steel, concrete and glass was almost to the net when the lower portion of the building began its collapse.

  “We’re on!” Deep Blue was shouting. “Detach, detach!”

  King clung to the netting as the last living dire wolf climbed toward him. Small explosive charges on the net’s mounts detonated in clouds of smoke. The bottom of the net swung away from the Exxon Building with King, Deep Blue and the dire wolf all clinging to it. The dead dire wolf tumbled away as the net swung across West 50 ^th

  Street, still some twenty stories in the air. It slammed them into the side of the Time-Life Building, high above its distinctive wavy cement walkway, shattering windows.

  King lost a handhold in the impact and dropped a foot lower toward the dire wolf, but his other arm tangled firmly in the netting. The dire wolf was unfazed by the impact, but it stopped moving and held on as the net swung.

  The Black Hawk dropped fast and banked hard. The massive chunk of rubble whooshed past, missing the chopper, but snagging the end of the net, which snapped taut. One of the net’s two moorings on the underside of the Black Hawk came loose, sending the net twisting and spinning in the air.

  Then the rest of the gigantic piece of building was past them, crashing into the pavement below and sending up a choking plume of dust. The helicopter raced along West 50 ^th, until it was clear of the dust storm.

  King looked down. The dire wolf was climbing again. He grabbed onto the net with his other hand and untangled his left. Then he climbed down to meet the dire wolf climbing up. He kicked down with his armor-plated boot, catching the beast in its snout. The thing recoiled and tried to bite King’s foot, then swept a clawed hand up at his leg. King pulled back just in time. He knew the armor would provide some level of protection, but he didn’t know how deep those claws could cut.

  The lash ripped a few of the threads of the net, but not enough to pose a problem. He looked up and saw Deep Blue climbing the net toward a small, open access hatch in the bottom of the helicopter.

  The Black Hawk reached 7 ^th Avenue and turned a sharp right toward the park, the net swinging away from the banking turn. The lower portion of the net swung out and slammed into a huge billboard on 7 ^th advertising an upcoming Peter Jackson film. The dire wolf dented the board, but didn’t relinquish its grip. King was high enough on the net that only his foot hit the billboard, and he barely felt it through the armored boot.

  King climbed while the dire wolf was recovering. When he reached the underside of the Black Hawk, Black Four extended a rope ladder that ran just a few feet out of the hatch. Once King was on the ladder, and off the net, he raised a thumb up to the man. The helicopter swept over Central Park and Black Four disappeared inside the cabin of the helicopter.

  High over the park’s lake, the last coupling for the net detached, dropping the net, and the dire wolf, to the water eighty feet below them.

  King scrambled up into the moving vehicle just before the helicopter banked hard and circled the lake. King stood just in time to see Black Four manning the port side machine gun again.

  The helicopter rolled right and Black Four loosed a barrage into the lake. King looked out the window, watching the dire wolf spasm as. 50 caliber rounds tore into its chest. The pilot circled again before turning north and speeding away from the city.

  King turned to Deep Blue and then slid down the side wall of the Black Hawk into a troop-carrying canvas seat. He pulled on a seat belt as Deep Blue did the same. Black Four moved up to the cockpit, climbed over the central console and took his seat next to the pilot.

  Deep Blue removed his battered high-tech helmet. His face was drawn and pale. He looked battered, exhausted and much, much older than he was.

  Something happened. Something bad.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Bishop and Knight. They’re down.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  Somewhere

  Hours after his meal, Bishop was back to his senses and walking along the edge of a cliff. The hallucination of killing and eating a dire wolf was hideous and nasty, but that was all it was. The fear and uncontrollable rage had left him, and then, when he came to his senses, he was walking. Bishop walked for hours until he came to the edge of a rocky waterfall without the water, a cliff that ran to both sides of the orange horizon, and dropped hundreds of feet down.

  Far off to the right, the land rose along the cliff’s edge to what looked l
ike a natural rock tower. To his left, the plain stretched out for miles. At the bottom of the cliff, the land went flat again, sweeping out as far as he could see, but the ground wasn’t featureless, it was pocked with what looked like impact craters. Thousands of them. All different sizes.

  He looked behind him, searching for craters. He couldn’t see any, but the land was so flat and devoid of features that he could be within a mile of one and never know it was there.

  He peered over the edge of the cliff again. A flicker of movement caught his attention-a small moving spot near the base of the cliff. Something living. It climbed up the cliff close to where Bishop stood.

  Bishop considered his options. Climb down, walk forever to the left, walk forever backward, or walk forever to the right, toward the pinnacle of rock on the horizon. Maybe get a better vantage point. Maybe see another portal somewhere.

  The final option was to wait for the climbing thing and see if it could reach the top of the cliff. The ground along the edge was scattered with large rocks and even a few boulders. Bishop had no doubt that he could nudge one of the rocks over, crushing and killing whatever was climbing the cliff face if it presented any danger. He was also sure it wasn’t a dire wolf. It wasn’t white, but rather was a grayish pink. Like it was coated in the salmon dust of this place.

  Bishop peeked over the edge again, to look at the thing. He couldn’t see it clearly enough yet to figure out what it might be. It just looked like a speck. He walked a few yards to the right until he was directly above it, then found a good-sized boulder nearby and sat down on it. He let his gaze sweep the distant plains and the craters below the cliff.

  A portal appeared, far away on the horizon. The thing looked no bigger than a marble but cast its bright light far across the orange plain. He didn’t think it was dark out there until he saw the portal appear, then, with its new brilliance added to the scene, he realized how dim things had been.