Ragnarok (11 page)

There were two doors in the room. Rook knew one was a closet. He nodded to the other door. Queen went to the door and opened it quickly with the M9 leading. Inside was a larger room with offices and two doors sporting bright orange, biohazard symbols.

“Kiss kept the wolves for his experiments down here before he started injecting himself with the stuff.” Rook opened one of the biohazard doors. The room was filled with built-in metal cages that rose to the ceiling, but each was now empty, their doors ajar. “Huh. Nobody home. Fossen must have taken the wolves out of here.”

“Fossen was the man that helped you find this lab and stop Kiss?” Queen asked, stepping back into the main room and making for the other biohazard door. Asya stood to the side, saying nothing.

“That’s right. Don’t bother with that one. Empty room.” Rook walked to the other door leading out of the large office space. Queen opened the biohazard door she was near, despite Rook’s explanation and peeked inside. The room was as Rook had said, completely empty. She moved with Asya, following Rook through the last door.

The new room had a single source of natural light—a small window set in a wall close to the ceiling. Most of the window had dirt packed against it, and the portion above that was nearly covered by snow. The small corner of the window that still allowed light to flow into the room was no larger than a coin.

Under the window was a set of double doors that Rook knew from a previous visit were also covered over with dirt. The entirety of the lab had been buried when it was abandoned.

Or had it?

Rook looked quickly around the room. “What the hell?”

“What is it?” Asya asked.

“Kiss is missing. This was his den. The floor was littered with animal bones. His corpse should still be here. It was only a few days ago.”

“The other man…Fossen. He probably cleaned up when he left with the wolves you said were in the cages,” Queen guessed.

“But there’s more than that, Queen. There was a sofa here that Kiss was using as a bed.”

“So?”

“So if those doors,” Rook pointed at the double doors beneath the window, “are covered with earth, and there are no other ways in or out besides the tunnel we came in, how the hell did someone move a full-sized sofa out of here?”

SEVENTEEN

Chicago, IL

“RUN!”

Deep Blue and King sprinted down Michigan Ave. toward the National Guard barrier that had been set up at the intersection with Chicago Ave., fifty feet south of the edge of the lightning-hurling monstrosity that chewed further into the buildings to either side of the wide retail strip.

Large slabs of concrete and steel debris rained down from the upper reaches of the buildings on either side of the men as lightning discharges slammed the structures repeatedly. King and Deep Blue reached the Guardsmen, who allowed them behind the barrier. A short barrel-chested man wearing Captain’s bars and a nametape that said WEST, approached them.

“Who’s in charge, Captain?” Deep Blue asked.

“I am. Who the hell are you guys?” West seemed shocked more than angry.

“We’re Delta. You should have received a call from General Keasling—”

“Yeah, King and Blue, right?”

“Close enough.” Although it wasn’t strictly true anymore—Chess Team had been a Delta assault team at one time, but now they and the entire Endgame organization were so far off the books that few people knew they existed. Deep Blue and General Keasling had decided for the duration of the current threat that Keasling would notify any military presence on the ground that a Delta operations team was inbound, allowing Chess Team the freedom to act. In a situation less chaotic, they might not have been able to get away with such theater and keep it a secret from the rest of the US Military, but with energy domes popping up globally and vicious creatures darting out of the globes, no one would recall one small two-man Delta team once the dust settled. “Get your men ready to fire everything they have at the dome. A lot of targets are going to be coming out of it. And they are coming fast.” Deep Blue, done talking, turned to face the dome up the street.

“Seriously?” West’s face was appalled.

“Damn serious, Captain. You saw me parachute in through the dome and out again? I just saw them. They’re coming. Fast. Be ready to shoot.” King turned to the barrier and aimed his MP5.

The Captain passed orders to the Guardsmen—most of whom took up defensive positions around the wooden sawhorse barrier, and a few took to ordering the civilian bystanders further from the upcoming fight.

Then the lightning stopped all at once, as if the globe, which had been trying to solidify itself, finally achieved a kind of stasis. The wind died down, too, and everything was eerily silent. Time ticked by. No one spoke. But the lull was short-lived.

Eight white streaks blitzed out of the brilliant wall of the dome, racing in all directions. The Guards opened fire haphazardly, and the wall of noise from fifty M-16 rifles firing was deafening after the momentary quiet. King returned fire with the others, but the creatures were just too damn fast. He watched in horror as two of the streaks tore into the line, decimating men on either side of him. Their blood spattered him in the breeze kicked up in the wake of the fast-moving creatures. The other racing creatures had gone in a variety of directions—some behind the Hyatt, and others toward the lake. King suspected the creatures had no specific targets in mind, but instead just ran in a variety of directions and ripped into anything they encountered.

He saw Deep Blue rolling on the ground and picking up a fallen soldier’s M-16 rifle and leveling it at a creature that was returning. He fired a confident three-round burst, each round punching through the monster’s rounded forehead, widening the wound, shattering what looked like a clear skull and shredding the spongy white brain beneath.

King had seen a lot of people shot in the head, but had never witnessed the bullet’s progress after it entered the target. The explosive effect on the creature’s brain was...horrible, but in this case, a thing of beauty.

As the life went out of the creature, it crashed through the group and over Deep Blue’s head before slamming into the wooden sawhorse, sending a spray of wooden splinters and larger pieces of wood into the street beyond the small group.

“How the fuck—” King began.

Deep Blue tapped the faceplate of his helmet. “Targeting software.” He fired another sustained burst of rifle fire in a direction none of the other Guardsmen were targeting. Once again, a racing creature moved from a blur to white bulk sliding on the pavement and kicking up dust into the blowing wind. “King. The Humvee.”

King glanced around and saw a parked National Guard Humvee, an armored all-purpose military vehicle. He raced over to it and slipped behind its wheel. The remaining Guardsmen were firing M-203 grenade launchers at the creatures streaking through the park toward them. And King was about to drive through the maelstrom. Deep Blue took down another creature further up Michigan Ave., just as King crashed the Humvee through the one remaining wooden sawhorse. He cranked the wheel left and drove up onto the curb and into the small park that surrounded the castle-like 19
^th
-century Water Tower. One of the creatures tore around the corner of the structure, heading right for King’s vehicle.

King floored the accelerator pedal and hit the creature dead center. The impact jarred the vehicle as if it had been hit with an IED. The rear end of the Humvee tilted up and the vehicle spun, its back end slamming into the limestone monument, tearing out a small block of stone. The Humvee would still roll, but the monster was done. The corpse on the roll of steel cable attached to the snub hood of the vehicle was a mangled mess of white translucent flesh that reminded King of a jelly fish,
if jelly fish had bones and muscles
.

Up close, the thing was hideous. The misshapen head was blocky and curved down to its wide mouth, which was full of clear, sharp teeth, like jagged icicles.
It’s not just the skin that’s clear
, King realized,
but the bones, too
. The smooth curve of its dolphin-like forehead was marred by a pug nose and framed by two orb-like eyes positioned on either side of its head, giving it an insectoid look. The clear skin allowed King a view of the white veins, taut ligaments and coiled cables of bulging muscle beneath.

His Humvee impact had cut this creature in half at the waist, and only the head, torso and powerful arms were on the hood of the vehicle. King looked out the window for the other half. Even though the glowing energy sphere, which King decided was some kind of portal transporting these creatures from one place to another, provided abundant light, it was still the middle of the night and the park was crisscrossed by long shadows from the tower and the surrounding buildings.

King hit the gas and chased after the next creature he spotted. This one was retreating back toward the energy dome and King gave chase, moving the Humvee up to 50 mph before he felt he was pacing the beast. They were headed right for the wall of the dome. King decided that if it went through, he would follow it and mash the fucker into the road on the other side.

The dome loomed large before him, reaching a hundred feet above the road now, and it had stretched the width of the road and through most of the buildings that had been to either side of it. The sound of lightning began to crackle again. The kinetic white creature nearly reached the sizzling yellow energy, when the wall of light winked out, muting the crackling sound. The creature continued on directly ahead.

And then down.

The dome was gone, and in its place was a crater in the Earth that stretched almost 150 feet in diameter. The creature’s momentum carried it well past the lip of the crater and it arced down into the suddenly empty space.

King cranked hard on the wheel of the Humvee and slammed on the brakes. The vehicle turned an abrupt 90 degrees to the left, its thick tires screaming, but it was no use. The armored 5000-pound vehicle rolled in empty space as it plummeted down into the abyss of the ruined Chicago street and the cauterized clean edges of the crater below it.

EIGHTEEN

Shanghai, China

SHIN DAE-JUNG COWERED against the low concrete wall. His eyes squeezed tightly shut. His whole body shook with fear. He couldn’t bear to open his eyes even a slice, because he knew with the certainty of a gambler on a winning streak that if he opened his eyes, his vision would fill with the sight of his grandmother having her innards eaten by one of his best friends.

Knight shook his head. His thoughts made no sense.
Why is it so dark? It was daylight. We were in a fight…

When Chess Team had first gone up against the malevolent genetics company Manifold, run by the twisted egomaniac Richard Ridley, the company’s security team captured Bishop and their scientists experimented on him. He had become what the team termed a “Regen”—one of Ridley’s twisted regenerating soldiers. But there had been a heavy price attached to regenerative healing and near-immortality. The regeneration process slowly ate the soldier’s mind, filling it with aggression, until he was nothing more than a raging, hulking terror. Bishop had been well on his way to becoming such a mindless beast of anger, and Knight was the only one that had fought the big Iranian American when he was in his full-on Regen state. But Bishop had been cured, Ridley was gone and Manifold was no more. Questions formed in Knight’s terrorstruck thoughts. Why was he certain Bishop had reverted to his Regen form? How had his ailing grandmother arrived in Shanghai? And why was the Regen Bishop trying to eat her?

Knight cracked his tightly clamped eyelids and daylight burst through them like stabbing skewers. He squinted and blinked a few times until his eyes adjusted to the glare. His head felt heavy and his limbs didn’t want to move yet. He was curled in a ball on the concrete floor of the balcony on the Customs House clock tower. He groggily sat up. A chill ran up his back. His body was soaked through with sweat.
What the hell
?

Knight stood and swayed. Things went out of focus and he thought he would fall, but then reality reasserted itself and the world around him slammed into focus again. He looked over the wall. He had dropped the EXACTO rifle. The glowing, pulsing sphere was still crackling down the street and throwing sharp, jagged bolts of lightning to strike the street, the buildings and the river. Debris or water pluming up with each strike.

The river! Bishop!

“Bishop! Can you hear me?”

Static was the only reply. He looked over the parapet wall again, expecting to see Bishop’s body on the ground with the few creatures they had managed to kill. But there were no bodies. Either the beasts had managed to get back up, or the surviving ones had pulled away the corpses of the dead.

Then a blur caught Knight’s eye. One last creature streaked out of the glowing energy dome and headed to the base of the clock tower where Knight watched from above. The thing stopped its hectic race across the pavement just shy of the base of the building and slowly craned its head sideways, so its chameleon-like eye was looking up the tower, directly at Knight.
This can’t be good.

Knight was about to consider alternate means of escaping the Customs House building, but the creature didn’t enter the lobby. It continued to stare up at Knight for another few seconds. Knight didn’t know how its vision functioned. Maybe if he didn’t move at all, the thing wouldn’t spot him. The creature squatted low and lunged toward the stone base of the building. The leap carried it twenty feet into the air before its claws extended and the beast snagged the side of the building. It hung on in a crouch, its bizarre head still tilted like a dog listening to a faraway sound, its eye still glaring up the building at Knight. Then it began a galumping, leaping climb, straight up the side of the building toward Knight’s position.