Not much longer now, she told herself.
Ulrik’s injuries from the fight with the ape had been minimal. All the others were in shape, although she feared if they needed to stay cooped up much longer the men might begin to lose their fighting edge. Morten had taken to the castle’s massive library, whiling away the hours and days with books. Without his conversation and comradery, Oskar had resorted to what he knew best—complaining. At least until Anders had shut him up a week after the old man’s death by telling him he could learn a new skill, picking up hunting at Anders’s side. It was that, or Anders would stop finding the moaning man food when they were on the road again. Nils and Ulrik worked on shoring up the castle’s defenses, should anything or anyone decide it looked like a good place to winter.
Heinrich, like a puppy, had been available and at Val’s side whenever she needed him. She suspected he was attracted to her, but she wasn’t interested. She just wanted to get on the road again. When they were traveling, she had felt a sense of purpose beyond simple survival, which was what she had known all her life. She had feared their immobility would make the men crazy, but instead, she was the one losing her patience. Her dreams were restless. She paced the empty echoing halls of the giant building. Stagnation ate away at her.
Too much time alone led to horrible, awful questions she should have asked Halvard before departing from Stavanger. It led to thoughts of failure. What would happen to the human race if they did not make it across the mountains? And now that she had her Vikings, her berserkers, her family, what would happen to her if they all failed to make the crossing? They had fared fine without Erlend’s mechanical expertise so far. They had prevailed in their battles without Trond and Stig. But would they be able to continue without Nils’s steady historical guidance? Could she continue on without Ulrik’s strength and support?
She didn’t like to think of it. There had been wild times in her last decade, when she had been more animal than young woman. She had no desire to revisit those times. Ever.
She took one last look at the ice-encrusted crags, and then shut the window.
Soon.
She began the long descent down the stairs of the tower.
They might not be able to depart just yet, but she could get them ready. Get them packed up. The ATVs needed to be fueled. They would take whatever they could from the castle, and close it up tight. As soon as the ground was warm enough, they would bury the old man and take their leave.
She didn’t think she would ever come back to the castle, despite the wishes of sweet old Werther. She had a second mission to fulfill, after the first. And of them all, she was the only one who knew what would come next.
38
“This lake is not supposed to be here,” Val said, frustration creasing her brow.
Ahead of them, spread out like a glittering blanket of arctic blue, was a huge, sprawling lake. It filled the valley between the sloping hills and mountains, now green and speckled in yellow, instead of coated in white, as the Alpine wildflowers ran riot in the warm weather.
A square stone tower with not one, but two clocks on each face, jutted from the lake. The rest of the building was fully submerged under the water. There were no other indications of human habitation—or even prior existence—present in the valley.
“This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened,” Nils offered. “I saw photos in one of Halvard’s books of a different town here in the Alps. The entire town and all its buildings were deluged. Only a church bell tower stuck up from the water. Like this one.”
“What causes it?” Ulrik asked, his ATV idling between his bare thighs. He had stripped his shirt off and wore only shorts and boots.
Nils thought for a moment. “Well, that town I saw was flooded when the river had been dammed up, many years earlier. I think a few other towns were also drowned. But it was intentional. The towns had been evacuated first.”
“They had so many towns in those days that they could afford to just throw some away?” Morten asked, shocked.
“Apparently,” Nils said, shrugging his shoulders.
“And this town, Nils? On the map, there is no lake here.” Val pointed out at the expanse of water before them. The paved road ran right into it, disappearing in the clear blue.
“I am not sure. Maybe a collapse of one or more mountains during the Utslettelse? It could have blocked up the river on one end of the valley and formed a natural lake? There are not enough people left in the world to perform such a task again. Those big projects, like the construction of the bridge back in Sweden, would have involved thousands of people and taken years to accomplish.”
“If we skirt the lake edge, will the road still be on the other side?” Val asked him.
“I am a scholar, not a prophet,” Nils grumbled, before heading off the road and following the edge of the lake, across an Alpine field of low grass.
“He has been in a bad mood for some time now,” Ulrik observed. “I will talk with him.”
“No,” Val said, starting her ATV and rolling forward slowly. “Leave him be. He will come around. He was not meant for this kind of life.”
Then she sped off across the grass, the thick wheels of her ATV chewing muddy gouges in the field at the side of the lake.
He waited for the others to follow Val, until it was just he and Morten at the end of the convoy. Morten had yet to start his engine.
“You remember he had a cold, back at the castle,” Morten said, his face creased in concern.
“It was just a cold.”
But now that Ulrik thought on it, he had not seen the slim man eating much of anything in the last three days, since they left the castle.
“When the wars came, during the annihilation, many people grew ill from sickness that had been used as a weapon. Entire nations were destroyed by snot. I imagine at least one of them must have uttered that phrase you just did.” Then Morten started his engine and drove across the field, following Oskar and Anders.
Ulrik waited a moment, allowing the others to gain a lead. He stared at the oddity of a bell tower rising from the depths of the lake. They had been on the road only a few days, and he was glad for it. None of them had grumbled about departing. The winter had dragged on, and they were all ready for action, but as they had finally gotten under way, there was little to be found. The roads were surprisingly good, despite the constant freeze and thaw, because the Alpine vegetation was so thin, and the soil so rocky. As a result, the road’s asphalt was mostly intact, and in many places it was as smooth as a baby’s face.
They still traveled slowly, wary of falling into traps, and they needed to decide where to stop for the day, when there was still light left to do it.
The only things that had concerned them until this unexpected lake, were graffiti signs they had seen spray-painted along the roads. It was impossible to tell how old the paint was, but they had seen the word several times now:
No one had any good guesses what it meant—least of all Nils. But it was everywhere: on the road, on low concrete and brick walls, and at a huge roadblock after a town called Imst. The sign at the front of the town was all that had been standing of the place, the rest long since burnt, either a casualty of war or natural disaster.
Ulrik scanned the valley, checking behind him, and then slowly advanced his ATV onto the field. He had seen nothing amiss besides the unexpected lake, but something still felt wrong. He stopped the ATV unexpectedly and swiveled, spotting a blur of white in the window of the bell tower. It was so fast, that if he hadn’t been looking for just that very thing, he wouldn’t have noticed the movement.
But he had been. And he had seen it, although he acted as if he hadn’t. Realizing that the sensation of being watched was not just his imagination, he raced ahead, wondering whether the watcher was an individual they would leave far behind in the flooded valley or a capable hunter, like Heinrich, who would track them on the road.
Or worse, was it an advanced guard for an even greater t
hreat?
Rejoining the group as they skirted the edge of the lake on low sloping hills, Ulrik sped past the others until he reached Val’s position in the lead.
She looked over at him as he rode by her side.
“We were spotted.”
“By who?” Val asked, but the question was answered by a horn blast that rolled out of the mountain pass ahead.
39
The thunder of several motors roared to life, echoing from the valley ahead.
A loud horn sounded again, and several large men with long beards and longer hair, came roaring down the hills on either side of a dirt road that carved through the mountains, perpendicular to the lake’s broad side. They rode on vehicles similar to the ATVs, but far louder, and with just two wheels each. The two-wheelers required that the riders balance on them, and the handlebars were strangely high—higher in some cases than the rider’s head—so that the vehicle’s operator had to reach upward to hold the throttle. But what was terrifying about the vehicles was that they were caged and armored in bones. Human bones. An intricate framework covered the sides of the bikes, and long leg bones filed to a point extended over the front wheels of the bikes like the fenders on the ATVs.
As horrific as the bones were, the clothing on the men was worse. The leather was scabbed and scarred, but the strange leathery fabric was still identifiable as human skin, stretched and stitched into vests and coats. The still-extant human faces, their mouths stretched open in permanent screams on the chest of the riders’ vests, were all the evidence needed to determine the fabric’s origins.
Even though the riders’ clothing and mounts would strike terror into the hearts of any passing traveler, what gave Ulrik pause was their faces. All but one of the riders had their mouths stitched shut with thick cord that could be more human leather. Some of the men had odd metal spikes extending out of their skulls, right through their scalps.
Plumes of dust rose up behind ten riders skidding down the rocky hill’s slope toward the dirt path. None of the men appeared to be armed, but that was probably because they needed both hands to steer.
Val saw the men descending the hills ahead of them, but instead of stopping, she cranked her ATV’s throttle, racing forward, past the bottleneck and through the pass between the hills. The others followed suit, with Anders and Nils close on her heels. Oskar and Heinrich sped away just before the first two-wheeler reached the bottom of the hill—heading straight for Morten. Instead of steering away, Morten angled his ATV to the right, close to the shoulder of the narrow dirt road. As he came along the rider, who was turning his two-wheeled steed to give chase after Oskar, Morten raised his arm from his throttle long enough to throw an elbow at the man’s throat.
The rider saw the move at the last second, and released his grip from the overly high handlebar, lifting his forearm up just in time to deflect the blow from its original target. Unfortunately for him, Morten’s original target had been the man’s throat. The deflected elbow instead rammed into the bridge of the man’s nose, knocking him back into the huge seat. In the process, his other hand came loose from the high handlebars, and the front wheel instantly jolted to the right. As soon as it did, the bike flipped, its rear end launching into the air. The leather-clad rider flew forward. The bike landed on top of the man with a rending crunch. Bones—both those from the bike and the man, cracking and piercing skin with pointed fragments.
Then Morten was past the intended blockade, as another rider came rushing in toward Ulrik from his left. Ulrik leaned hard, his ATV moving right and letting the side of his vehicle smash into the bone cage surrounding the other man’s ride. The unexpected crash sent his bike off the road, careening into the rocks.
Ulrik raced ahead and glanced back to see the other riders giving chase. One rider had reached the dirt road ahead of Ulrik and was speeding away ahead of him, racing toward the rear of Morten’s ATV.
Ulrik twisted the throttle, felt the burst of speed between his legs, and wondered how much fuel this chase would eat up. The ATVs had always been meant for carrying them long distances—not for battle on mountain pathways.
As he caught up with the sole rider ahead of him, he saw that the man had a word burned onto the back of his leather jacket.
Hangers.
Ulrik remembered the signs he had seen. That explains that. They are a gang of some sort. Road bandits.
He rushed ahead, and in the moment before he rammed the rear wheel of the Hanger ahead of him, he swerved right, riding onto the pebble strewn shoulder of an actual paved road, when the dirt pathway intersected it. He straightened out the handlebars and released the left side, still holding the throttle with his right hand. His left hand reached to the quick-draw leather holster he had created for his ax on the side of the ATV.
The Hanger glanced over at him, and realizing that Ulrik was armed, he leaned away. His bike swerved, but put the man in the perfect range for the broad-headed blade at the end of Ulrik’s long ax. He swung out, letting the handle slide through his hand, until the leather wrapped pommel on the end caught in his grip. The long handle swung through the space between them, and the blade slid through the side of the man’s face, cleaving off beard and shaving away the side of his head in a spray of red droplets. Then the blade continued on to its true target.
The razor edge slammed into the base of the man’s wrist, cleanly severing the throttle hand from the arm, before the weight of the blade and its velocity, sent it arcing through the high-hanging metal handlebar as well.
The Hanger screamed and flailed, tugging his wheel left. The bike and the man rolled sideways over and over, leaving a long streak of machine parts, bone and human gore on the gray road.
Ulrik brought the ax back, and slid it down into the holster.
He grinned and grasped his left handle before pouring on the speed.
The road curved sharply to the right where a large, craggy rock wall rose up, fringing the roadside. Several large boulders lined the shoulder on the other side. Ulrik swerved around the boulders, slowing slightly.
As he rounded the corner, he could see that the road was suddenly straight for a few hundred feet. Val and Anders were stopped ahead, while the others continued on beyond them. Anders had his bow drawn and an arrow nocked.
Understanding the plan, Ulrik steered toward the shoulder, allowing Anders a clear line of sight. Ulrik didn’t look back. Instead he pressed ahead with more speed, planning to catch up with the others. Anders released arrow after arrow, some of them whistling past, dangerously close, but still on target. Ulrik heard a few crashes behind him, as Hangers were struck by the deadly projectiles.
Val turned her ATV and raced off down the road. Anders shouldered his bow and turned his own ATV just as Ulrik closed to within twenty-five feet of him.
Over the noise of Ulrik’s and Anders’s ATVs, a deep, throaty mechanical growl echoed off the close mountain walls.
The surviving Hangers were still giving chase, and by the sound of the engines, there were a lot more of them coming.
40
Val had only caught a glimpse of the Hangers up close, when they had launched their initial attack, but their terrifying features—with the human leather, sewn mouths, long hair and beards and the ridiculous upraised arms on the bonecycles—had lodged in her head. Now that they fled down the curving mountain road, the angered Hangers not far behind, she realized that all the groups of humans they had encountered had been homogenous. The Blue Men, the swastika-bearing psychotic Long Knives in Germany, and now these ‘Hangers’. She wondered if belonging to these groups required visual conformity. The end of civilization came with no explanations, only more questions.
And rarely the time to think on them.
“They are falling back,” Morten shouted over the whine of their ATV engines. “But they are still following. And there are more of them now. A lot more.”
They took the curves as quickly as they dared. They were all expert riders now, but the vehicles were not design
ed for tight curving mountain roads.
As long as our brakes continue to work, Val thought, recalling a time in Sweden when Erlend had needed to repair the brakes on Trond’s quad.
“Press on,” she told him, and she slowed to pass the message to the others at the rear of their group. When she reached Ulrik at the back, she matched his speed. “We have hours through the mountains yet. We need a plan.”
“Actually...” Nils was just ahead of them, and he slowed to let them catch up, pulling on the ATV’s silver brake handles. “I have a plan already.”
On the front of his ATV, Nils had attached a box-like, black nylon case. When unfolded, it exposed a clear plastic window, revealing the contents within. He usually kept one of their many paper maps inside the sleeve, folded into tight squares, so he could glance at their route without removing the map—or his hands from the vibrating handlebars.
Now he took his brake hand off the bars quickly and pointed to the map under the waterproof plastic shield. “Here,” he said. “We can go off the road here, and lead them up this route, into the mountains.”
Val exchanged a glance with Ulrik, then asked the question both of them wanted to ask. “Why?”
“We will not be able to outrun them. At least not once the road straightens out.” Despite carrying on the conversation, Nils was focusing on the twisting road, standing on his footboards, and leaning with each turn.
“Again. Why?” Val asked, mimicking his swaying hips with her own vehicle.
“Those motorcycles have much larger engines than these ATVs. They were meant for long distance road travel, and not the kind of rough terrain we can handle.”
Viking Tomorrow (The Berserker Saga Book 1) Page 17
