“Now!” screams Joel. Sailors leap into the water. The cannon’s pistons go taught. The sound dies for a moment.
The gun fires.
A massive beam of light hits the boats. The wooden ships incinerate instantly under the heat. Wood explodes.
Water near the boats boils. Some sailors scream. Currents form. The other sailors are caught in the spinning water. Clouds of ash and splinters of wood rain down on the scattered crew.
The radio on the bridge crackled to life. It was the ship’s gunner.
“Direct hit, Mr. Hugin. The fleet is sunk.”
Hugin let the radio die. There was no need to respond. “That was no fleet,” he said to himself. “Really, Joel. You disappoint me.”
The navigator turned to his commander. “Shall I set course for Nifelheim, sir?”
Hugin scowled. “No. We have to play mailman for Dumah first. We’re making a brief stop in Pusan.”
Chapter Six: Pusan
“What is this place?” Smalls sounded worried. Surprised.
The jeep pulled up to their destination—an abandoned complex near the city of Pusan. The former city of Pusan. It had hardly been anything for eight years. The whole place was in shambles. Only a handful of buildings were still standing, most of them with broken doors or windows. Rubble littered the street.
In the setting sun, the place looked like Hell.
“Ain’t no hospital, that’s for damn sure,” said Charlie.
“Looks more like a prison.” Daniel pointed at the buildings. “See, that tower over there? It’s sturdy, tall. No windows. Like a guard post. Over there, that building that has taken a lot of damage looks like a dormitory.”
The others agreed. They were all silently unnerved about being sent to a prison. After a long silence, Jae-Ho spoke. “Well, we gotta get out and start looking. We’re not going to find anything sitting in the car.” He reached for the door handle.
Zeke’s hand shot forward to stop him. “Wait,” he said. They paused, waiting for an explanation. He didn’t speak.
“What is it?” asked Daniel. “You see something?”
“Just ahead. In the rubble.” He pointed.
A small monster shambled out of the rubble. He pushed a sheet of metal off his hiding place. Rocks slid noisily off the sheet.
“Holy shit!” shouted Charlie. “Draugr.” The monster walked around, sniffing the air. It scratched at the rubble with a single claw.
“Looks fast, too. Probably intelligent.”
“Shit, there’s another one!” shouted Jae-Ho. “Coming up on our right.”
They looked. A larger monster ambled slowly toward the first. It was slow. Zombie-like. Both its hands had massive claws, but they were heavy. Clumsy.
They heard the first draugr scream, and they all looked back. A third draugr had wandered over. The two of them were fighting over the body of a squirrel.
Charlie remained confident. “Three of ‘em. Big deal. We can take ‘em.”
“Daniel, think you can get a shot of them?” asked Jae-Ho.
The gunner stood up and unzipped the canvas roof of the jeep. “They’re out of range. I might be able to hit them with my pistol.”
“Just use the damn rifle, hot shot,” Smalls protested.
Charlie ripped the lid off one of the crates and handed the gun to Daniel. “Better take out that speedy little bastard first,” he advised.
“I’ll give it a shot.” He raised the gun.
Zeke smelled the stench of death. He panicked. Something was wrong—the smell was too strong. “Stop!” he shouted, pulling Daniel hard back into the car. “We’ve got a few more than three.”
They sat still as hundreds of draugr poured from every crevasse in the ruins. Hoards of them, all coming out for the hunt. They smelled blood. Fresh blood.
Human blood.
“God damn.”
“I’ve never seen so many in one place before,” Jae-Ho remarked.
“Well,” said Zeke smugly, “I’ve heard rumors.”
Daniel missed his comment. “Uh, guys, I hate to interrupt your awe inspired stupor, but how about we find a new hang-out. Preferably one without canvas walls.”
The draugr were advancing on the transport.
“You’re right. This won’t hold them back. We might as well be hiding behind a newspaper,” said Zeke. He turned toward the crates.
“We can fight the dumb ones easily enough,” suggested Charlie.
“And the fast ones?”
Jae-Ho stepped in. “We gotta do something. We’re going to end up fighting some of them, at any rate.”
“So any plans?” asked Daniel.
An explosion sings just outside the car. Bloody shreds of draugr slap against the window. The rest of the monsters scramble away. The four men see Zeke jump into the clearing.
“Make for the buildings!” he shouts. “I’ll try to distract as many of these bastards as I can.” Sword drawn, he dashes away. A mob of draugr follows him.
“One problem solved,” says Daniel.
Claws tear through the canvas. Smalls punches through the hole, knocking back the draugr. “What’s say we get out of here?”
Charlie tosses him a rifle. “One step ahead of you. You and I blast out a path in front of us. Jae-Ho, Daniel, watch our backs. We stay together and make for that building.” He points to a nearby office. “It don’t look in too bad a shape.”
The car begins to rock back and forth. They hear gurgling from the bloodthirsty monsters outside.
“What about the bombs?” asks Daniel.
A corpse-like head pushes through the canvas and hisses terribly. Charlie’s gun fires. A brown mess explodes in the car. Ears ring from the deafening blast. “No time! Let’s go!” He jumps out of the jeep, shooting into the crowd of draugr.
Smalls follows suit. “These guys are pansies!” he shouts over the rifles. “Won’t even need the grenades!”
“I’ll ask for scarier monsters next time. That okay?” Charlie answers. They both fire madly into the hoard. The building is up ahead. Zeke thinned out enough monsters that they can reach it easily. Jae-Ho and Daniel leap out of the jeep, landing in the small clearing cut by the other men.
Felling monsters, like demon lumberjacks.
The two big men begin advancing toward safety. The others stay back and pick off draugr at a more relaxed pace. Just enough to keep them at bay.
But it’s not enough.
More and more draugr crawl out of the rubble. Charlie nears the building, Smalls close behind him. Daniel is a short distance away.
But Jae-Ho falls behind.
More and more draugr pop out at him. A large, quick one darts out in front of him. It grabs his throat. Its hands are clawless, but strong. It has long, human hair, but a grotesque, monstrous face. One eye, the other swollen closed. No nose to speak of, and teeth that seem to leap out of its mouth. Jae-Ho looks into the dead face. He panics and fires his gun below him. It knocks out the beast’s lower torso.
Unhindered by the injury, the monster grabs his boot, tripping him as he tries to dash to safety. He lands hard. A heavy weight pushes into him.
Another draugr. Large. Slow.
It claws at him. The first bites into his legs. Jae-Ho screams.
A bullet explodes and the weight is lifted from his back. Another shot crashes into the monster near his feet.
He doesn’t feel anything this time.
Daniel stands over him. “Can you walk?” He keeps his attention on the encroaching monsters.
He glances down at his bleeding legs. No pain. “I’m no doctor,” he says trying to be calm. Instead he sounds terrified. “But I’d have to say, oh . . . not at all.”
“Then let’s get a second opinion.” Daniel shoots a quick burst to scare away nearby draugr, then quickly bends down to give Jae-Ho some support.
They begin to limp towards the building. Charlie and Smalls defend the doorway to buy some time. “Damn! There’s no end to these smelly jerk
s!” calls one.
“Hurry up!” calls the other.
Progress is slow. Demons attack from all angles. Daniel struggles.
Click.
The bullets stop coming out. He flicks a small switch on the rifle.
Charlie and Smalls see nothing more than the ball of fire exploding in the road.
A short distance away, Zeke struggles. The pursuing hoard increases. He’s running out of places to run, and getting tired fast. He has to stop soon. Any further and he’ll be running up the mountain slope. In the other direction, lies the ocean.
The sun hangs low. He squints. Can draugr swim? He wonders. But there is no time to learn, and too much to risk. He isn’t strong in the water.
He spins, whipping his sword around. The sudden change causes one of the draugr to impale itself on his blade. He pulls the sword out of the corpse and attacks.
Stepping swiftly, he evades their blows, but they’re fast. The sword moves with him, and after a few minutes there is a mess of demon parts littering the ground.
He tires quickly, but doesn’t stop.
There is a deafening roar. The draugr tone down their attack. A small, strong-looking beast steps forward. The others form a ring, as if to let their champion match his strength one-on-one.
Odd behaviour, but Zeke has no time to question it.
The monster snarls. It flexes thick, dead-looking muscles. Blood drips from pointed teeth. Zeke holds up his sword defensively. The demon leaps. Metal hits bone, deflecting a set of sharp claws.
The draugr strikes again. He blocks. But the monster learns. It catches the blade between its claws and twists. The sword drops from his hands. Without stopping to consider his foe’s intelligence, he steps forward and pounds the monster’s face with his fist. The draugr falls back. Zeke finds his sword.
Another draugr, eager to take his comrade’s place, rushes forward. The blade plunges deep into its gut. The strong draugr rises. Zeke pulls his sword hard.
It doesn’t move.
He holds the blade and kicks the draugr off it. The blade slides free, but he stumbles backward. He collides with the strong draugr, knocking it over.
Zeke regains his balance first.
Standing quickly, he stabs down. His sword runs through the draugr, then into the earth. The monster gurgles and coughs up blood.
Other monsters hiss and scream.
He glances quickly down at the corpse below him, but doesn’t take his eyes off the hoard for very long. “How many of your rancid friends did you invite to this party?” he asks between breaths.
Suddenly, a blinding light flashes in his eyes. He pinches them shut for a moment, then opens them cautiously.
Before him stood a large malak, glowing pale white and armed for battle.
He was tall. Humanoid, which was unusual for a malak. And he had weapons. The hilts of two broadswords stuck up behind his shoulders. They were big. The points stuck out far below the being’s waist.
The monster stood silent for a few moments. Zeke still held his sword defensively, though he knew he could do nothing against such a monster. The katana would pass through the malak like air. The draugr also seemed unsure of this new entity, almost scared of it. They circled warily, but did not attack.
The malak turned to the hissing monsters around him.
The tall being stretched out a ghostly white arm. The wind, just a mere breeze, picked up to gale force in a matter of seconds. The sound roared. A whirlwind surrounded the malak. The wind picked up the draugr as if they were paper, although Zeke held fast to the ground with no effort. Suddenly the monsters began to scream. It was terrible. Zeke had personally done in many of the creatures over the years, but he had never heard a screech so ghastly. They were being tortured.
As they spun madly in the wind, their bodies seemed to expand. They looked bloated. The horrible screams became distorted, almost comical.
Then they exploded into a cloud of fine, brown mist.
The vortex narrowed. The wind spun faster and faster. Zeke squinted to see what was happening. He felt the wind die down, as the vortex spun closer and closer to the malak’s outstretched hand. Then the wind, draugr and all, stopped dead and vanished, as if it had all been swallowed by this creature’s palm.
It turned back to Zeke.
“A human with a sword? Is he strong?” No one had ever heard a malak speak before, but he was in too much of a panic to consider it. He took a quick step back, still holding up his sword.
The malak pointed his hand forward. Once again, the wind rose from nothing. Zeke’s hair danced on his head, but he was otherwise unchanged. “Get away from me!” he cried. He swung the sword, which passed easily through the malak’s ghostly body.
“He can not be absorbed? Is he the one I was sent to find?”
He didn’t care what the malak was talking about. “You have no business with me, demon!” he shrieked. His voice cracked.
The malak tore the two enormous broadswords from his back. “You will fight me.”
Zeke swallowed.
The demon raised the sword in his left hand and brought it down vertically where Zeke was standing. The movement was swift, but he managed to step aside in time. The sword hit the earth harmlessly. The right-handed sword was already swinging though, and came in parallel to the ground towards his waist.
Zeke had no choice. He fell back hard, hitting the ground. The giant sword whizzed above him. The malak seemed upset.
“This is the man he chose? What a fool! Trusting the power of a mouse!”
Before he knew it, both swords were coming down towards his head. He did the one thing he could think of; he swung his sword upwards to block. Metal clanged on metal. The blows were deflected, but the malak hit strong. Zeke dropped his sword.
At least I can touch his weapons, he thought, immediately wondering whether that was really a comfort.
He soon decided it wasn’t, as the demon thrust one sword into the earth, slashing his side open. Zeke grabbed himself in pain.
Trying to hold the blood, his life, in his body.
The ghostly monster ignored its sword and picked him up by the neck. Zeke panicked. The touch of a malak usually meant death.
But this malak seemed different. He was in control of his power.
“You are no god,” sneered the being into his face. “Know that if I wanted to, I could snap my fingers and shatter your spine.” The malak jabbed his remaining sword into the ground by the first. Then with his free hand, he drew a finger across the bloody gash. It burned in pain. Zeke smelled cauterizing flesh. His clothes became singed around the wound.
The monster threw him to the ground. He clutched at his side. It was completely healed. “You are a disappointment. You believe strength is entirely in your hands. I will give you a new objective. Become stronger or perish.” The malak pulled his swords out of the ground. In a blinding flash of light, he was gone.
Zeke sat on the ground alone and rubbed his neck.
The world was green through the rifles’ scopes. From a second storey window, Charlie and Smalls panned the green rubble. Green monsters fought green fights and bled green blood. It was like watching twisted television.
The Un-Nature channel.
“There’s one! To your left!” said Smalls in a whispered shout.
Charlie swung his rifle, a green blur whizzing past his eye. “Which one? There are hundreds of ‘em!”
“On top of that pile of rocks.”
He groaned. “You’re not getting this. Let’s try narrowing it down. Give me something to go on there ain’t a whole bunch of.”
Then he saw it. A slow, zombie of a draugr ambled up a pile of rocks, groping with clawless hands. At the top, another beast was waiting. The second one was small. It looked eviscerated. Skeletal. But still strong. It planted its hands behind him on the ground. It pulled its feet into the air like an un-dead monkey.
The claws on its feet tore the head off the zombie draugr.
“That
mean mother with the pedicure?” asked Charlie.
“That’s the one.”
“What are you giving on him?”
“Let’s say three to one odds you can’t bring him down with one shot.”
“You’re on.”
He put his eye to the scope. The monster was devouring its prey. A macabre, green meal. But it was relatively still. Money in the bank, he thought.
Boom!
The shot exploded in the closed quarters. It echoed off the other buildings. Charlie checked the draugr. It wasn’t moving. “Pay up!”
“Look again, Chuck,” said Smalls, who was still watching through his own rifle.
He put his eye back to the scope. A shriveled green foot twitched. Moonlight shone brightly off the claws. “He’s down, ain’t he?”
“Just keep watching. We’ll see.”
The monster slowly picked itself up. Dark green fluid dripped from its shoulder where an arm used to be. The monster took a few week steps.
“Well I’ll be damned. I just nicked the bastard.”
Smalls’ hand was already out. “Don’t be stingy. You owe me for that last one, too.”
“Hang on. Hang on. Let me finish him off first.” The gun echoed again. The draugr’s head exploded.
“Satisfied?”
Charlie pulled out a small wad of cash and slapped it in his hand. “Here you go,” he grumbled.
Suddenly a door in the corner of the room began to rattle. Something was kicking it from the other side. Nervous, the two men swung their rifles around.
The room took up the entire floor. Like the street, it was a mess of rubble. All of it an eerie green in the rifles’ scopes. The offending door was in the corner.
Thump. Something kicked it again.
“Where does that door lead?” Smalls asked.
Thump.
“I don’t know. The roof, maybe?” It was just a guess.
“Did we check the roof?”
“Didn’t think we needed to. Can draugr climb?” Thump.
“I don’t know. Maybe some can.”
“Oughtta be hard with them claws.”
Thump, thump, thump. “Well, obviously something can climb, and it sounds like he wants in pretty damn bad.”
Ragnarok: The Fate of Gods Page 7
