Ragnarok (38 page)

The giant’s brain, which was visible beneath the clear skin and skull, was the size of a VW Bug, but it looked better formed than the sponge-like dire wolf brains. And it moved, pulsing inside the head, like a heart.

As the top of the torso slid out of the portal, a pair of shorter arms emerged. They were connected to the body below the head, but set back. The fifteen-foot-long limbs resembled
Popeye’s
arms, thin at the top, but with muscular forearms. A three-fingered hand tipped each arm.

When a third leg stepped into view, Rook had seen enough and for the first time in his life, he tried to speak and found himself speechless.

SIXTY-SIX

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

4 November, 0330 Hrs

KING WATCHED AS a fourth massive foot stepped out of the portal, this one crushing a dead dire wolf under foot. He’d seen a lot—the Hydra reborn, living stone giants, man-eating praying mantises—but this...this put them all to shame. At eighty feet tall, it was by far their largest adversary, but it was also just plain nasty.

Rook scrambled backward on the floor over the rubble with his hands and feet, shoving to gain some distance from the titanic creature. “Thing is fugly!” He turned and climbed to his feet, racing across the room to the others.

Deep Blue, King, Carrack, and the remaining three White team soldiers all heard Lewis Aleman’s voice over their earpieces. He was seated back on the
Persephone
, outside the lab. “I’ve lost visual contact. Not sure what’s going on inside. Be advised. I’ve done linguistic analysis on the name you saw above the hangar doors outside the place.
Gleipnir
. It was a mystical cord used to capture
Fenrir
, a giant wolf in Norse mythology. Not sure how much that helps, but watch out for giant wolves I guess.”

Deep Blue touch activated his microphone and the others heard his reply, “Nice to know, Lew. Better late than never, I guess. See what else you can find on Fenrir. Like how to kill it.”

“Seriously? Is now the best time for—oh shit. Really?”

“Well, it’s not a wolf,” King said. “But it’s off its leash for sure.”

“Somebody please shoot it,” Rook said.

King opened fire on the creature with an MP5. The bullets ripped a line into the creature’s chest. It raised its head, below which hung a white, fleshy waddle.

It tilted the head back.

The waddle expanded.

And it howled.

The sound shook the facility’s walls. Ceiling fragments rained down, crashing into Beck and the Russian woman. The floor shook like a 7.7 earthquake, knocking people off their feet. Some of the team fell to their knees in abject terror. Those who had yet to deal with the roar of the dire wolves were unprepared for the effect.

King remained unaffected, as he had been the last time, with the roars of the dire wolves in Chicago and New York. Queen had mastered battling the effect with her rage, so Fenrir’s roar only made her feel weak. The men in the white armor—Carrack, White One, White Three and White Five—were shielded by the audio dampeners in their helmets. They each opened fire on the gargantuan creature. Deep Blue wasn’t wearing his helmet and he fell to the floor in a fetal position. The roar affected Rook, too. He fell to a sitting position, curled into a ball on the floor and rocked back and forth.

King fired again at the creature, this time aiming up near the ceiling of the huge room, at the giant beast’s head. The White team kept shooting and Queen fired at the narrowest parts of the creature’s leg in a concentrated burst, sending globs of fish-like meat spinning off in an arc from the limb. The wounds looked large until King looked at them in context. They were like scrapes to the giant. Barely noticeable, if at all.

As bullets ripped into the beast’s hide, a meaty, salty scent wafted across the room, adding to the electrified stench of the portal and the choking dust from the roof collapse. This new smell made King’s stomach turn. He wondered if they had hit a weird gland on the creature.

Then he noticed that the shooting had stopped. He looked behind him to see Queen standing calmly next to four of the white armored men, all of them with their weapons lowered. He couldn’t see Beck anywhere. The woman that had been with Rook looked to be okay, as she staggered to her feet from under fallen debris. Deep Blue and Rook were out of it. He didn’t see Black Six either.

He looked up at the giant and saw that one of its eyes was locked on him, the other on Rook’s friend—the only two still with it.

“What the hell?” King was about to ask why no one was doing anything, but instead, Fenrir spoke.

In his head.

Why are you here, children of Adoon?

Adoon?
King wondered.

Does it mean, children of Adam?
King knew that in the Bible, human men are sometimes referred to as “sons of Adam.” So men and women are “the children of Adam.” But Adoon? That was a new one. And the question was irrelevant. This was his planet.

“Why are
you
here?” King asked.

The time of Ragnarök has come. The devouring has begun anew.

“You’ve come to Earth before?” King asked. He was curious, but he was really just hoping someone would snap out it and launch an RPG down the monster’s throat.

The giant head swiveled, but the eye locked onto him never moved.
You know this already.

Is it reading my mind?
King wondered, but then decided against it because he
didn’t
know that already.

Rook’s friend took a bold step forward and shouted with a thick Russian accent. “We will stop you!”

King
felt
the thing’s humor at this comment, though he did not hear a laugh, audibly or in his mind.

This world does not belong to you, children of Adoon. The fracture between worlds will remain open. Leave now...or—

“I’m not going anywhere,” King interrupted.

The giant eye watching him shifted to the side, landing on Queen. She turned toward King and raised her weapon.

She’s being controlled!

King dove to the floor, rolling behind rubble as she fired at his position.

Asya stood wearily, but when the white-armored men leveled their weapons at her, she reacted quickly, firing two shots from her handgun. She crouched behind a 12-foot slab of the ceiling propped up at an angle.

King stood and looked to where Queen had been, but the woman had abandoned the gun and was rushing him from the side. He rolled out of the way to avoid a devastating kick that would have knocked him down, although he doubted it would have injured him through the body armor. Few people could match Queen in a hand-to-hand brawl, but the armor would help. He leapt and swung his leg as he went, aiming his shin for Queen’s head. She nimbly ducked at the last second and King cleared her, landing in a crouch. He turned and swept his leg, catching her by surprise and sending her flying.

He looked across to see the Russian, the only other person around that wasn’t affected by the fear effects of the roar or the mind control. She leaped clear over Carrack as he lunged at her in his body armor. She landed in a crouch, just like King had done, and spun in a 180-degree arc, sweeping her leg out to catch Carrack off guard. The man toppled from the impact of her leg behind his knees.

King was stunned. The move wasn’t part of a martial art or something he’d been trained to do. It was a part of his natural fighting style. He wondered if the woman had some kind of physical eidetic memory, and had copied his every move, but then she rolled backward and sprang from her feet to a twisting side kick that connected hard with the back of Carrack’s helmet. King had never seen such a strike, and he certainly couldn’t do it himself.

Distracted by Asya, King almost got clobbered as Queen struck again. If it hadn’t been for the armor and the fact that he turned at the last second, she might have done some serious damage with the combination of strikes she landed.

Her fists hit his chest repeatedly in a pattern he recognized from Queen’s barehanded fighting style.
She has her instincts and practiced moves, but she isn’t thinking, or she’d be attacking my face.
He also noticed that one of her hands was all swollen and red, but she was using it as if it were uninjured.
That’s gonna hurt like a bastard, later on.

He struck out hard at Queen’s midsection and she pivoted away as he knew she would. But if she had complete command of her senses, she would have been far more aware of her surroundings.

She wasn’t.

The woman planted a foot backward, expecting level ground. What she got was a jumble of metal wreckage that had fallen from the cage struts around the portal. Her foot landed badly and the ankle buckled. As she turned to see what happened, while falling, King struck hard with the side of his hand to Queen’s neck, knocking the merciless combatant to the ground. He was grateful he wasn’t fighting her with all of her senses intact, or he might not have survived the encounter.

King removed two of the grenades from the bandolier he wore across his chest, and rolled behind a pile of rubble. He came up next to Rook. The man’s eyes were glazed and he slowly rocked on the floor. King set one of the grenades down and slapped Rook’s face. “Rook,” he hissed. “Snap out of it. Rook!” He slapped hard a second time and the glazed look on Rook’s face dissipated.

Rook looked startled and his eyes darted around the room, confused. When his eyes landed on King, they cleared and his face moved from surprise and fear to serious. “What the—”

“Shh,” King silenced him. “Time to blow some shit up.”

SIXTY-SEVEN

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

4 November, 0345 Hrs

KING AND ROOK stood from behind their rubble barrier, each with two grenades in hand. One of the White security men, who had already been in mid-leap, immediately tackled Rook. The two bodies sailed past King, but he kept his focus on his target—the colossal monstrosity, whose body
still
had not fully emerged from the glowing portal. He had removed the safety clips behind the rubble. Now, he pulled the pins for both grenades and let the spoons fly. He counted two seconds and then threw both grenades across the room where they landed near Fenrir’s massive feet. The first to land bounced and disappeared in a crevice, in a pile of white stone rubble. The second landed close to a foot.

Both devices detonated, the first grenade sending up a shower of flame and stone debris. The other grenade exploded near Fenrir’s leg and the creature wailed. When the initial blast of churning black smoke from the explosion cleared, King could see that Fenrir had lost the outermost toe off the foot.

One toe. We’re gonna need a bigger explosion.

Then another of the White security men was firing at him. Bullets ripped into the rubble near his legs and King fell over backward in surprise. He tried to turn it into a roll, but found himself stuck to some jagged pieces of rubble that clung to his armor like oversized Velcro hooks. No matter which way he moved, the armor would not let him get up. He reached his hand under the plating on his left side and found the buckles. He unclasped them and the chest plate was free to hinge open on his left side. He slithered out of the chest and back armor. The lower abdomen and sleeves of armor plating attached to a black neoprene-like suit woven through with impact resistant fabric. Those parts of the armor came with him as he slid out of the chest plate. He stood up and turned to find a jagged piece of metal skewering the back plate of the armor. He slipped his hand behind his back along the neoprene suit and felt a small tear in the suit, but the skin under it was not ruptured. The suit had saved his life. The piece of metal piercing his armor’s back plate would have gone through his heart.

King looked up to see Rook wrestling with the White team member. He raced over to help, but the White soldier that had shot at him was now plowing toward him. He dodged to the side, running up a small hill of rubble, then spun around and jump-kicked at the man’s head. Although the soldier wore the armored helmet, King hoped the kick would at least knock the man unconscious. But the soldier ducked the kick.

As King flew over the man, he saw Beck was up and duking it out against Matt Carrack. And the Russian still fought one of the other White security men. She leapt nimbly and gracefully, while her opponent bull-rushed her.

King landed on his feet, glancing at the woman. She looked incredibly familiar to him. He couldn’t understand exactly why. He had never met her.

The woman slipped up the soldier’s back, wrapping her legs around his upper chest, then her hands quickly found the buckles on his helmet and pulled it off. King saw that it was White Five, a quiet man with blonde hair and an always serious face. Five threw himself over backward with the hope of crushing her with his weight. She unwrapped her legs from his chest, and cartwheeled away from the impact of his body. She arrested her spin, reversed and leapt. A second after White Five hit the floor, her hand chopped at his neck. Then she was up and away.

The neck strike was the same he’d used on Queen.

He tried to remember where he’d learned the move, but couldn’t.

King heard Rook growling behind him and turned to see his friend hefting a massive slab of concrete and dropping it on the armored chest of his opponent. The armored man struggled but didn’t have the leverage or the abdominal muscles to get up from under the slab. Then Rook sat down heavily on top of the slab, adding his 200 pounds of muscle.

King almost laughed.

Then he heard a scream. He looked behind him. Fenrir had stepped further into the room, and as King turned, a giant three-fingered hand swept across the floor, scooping up one of the still-helmeted White security soldiers and flinging him against the wall of the room—over sixty feet up. Then the man’s armored body plunged to the floor, crashing hard again. King hoped the body armor could withstand such blows.