Ragnarok

SIXTEEN

Fenris Kystby, Norway

3 November, 1130 Hrs

Rook led Queen and Asya down the steep slope of the hill toward a bush at the bottom of the rise. When he reached the large squat bush, he bent down and swept some of the snow away from the base of it with his bare hands until they were wet and pink. The snow had fallen for the last few hours, through their breakfast at a small inn and their impromptu shopping trip for Rook to buy a warmer coat.

Asya had arrived with her own pack full of warmer clothing, when she had come looking for Rook. Queen had her own supplies as well. But Rook had had only the clothes on his back and the Desert Eagle pistol that was now probably melted to slag in the fire back at Peder’s barn. The thought of Peder’s death brought Rook to a dark place and instead he turned his mind to the present task.

He reached down for the roots at the bottom of the shrub and hauled on them with all his strength. The bush lurched upward and then sideways, as the secret entrance to the lab, concealed beneath the bush, flipped open with the fake bush on top of it. Snow blew down into the four-foot-square, darkened opening. The air smelled stale. But Rook could still clearly see the rungs of the ladder that led down the vertical tunnel to the horizontal tunnel at its bottom, which would take him to the old lab he had discovered.

“You found this when you were hunting a scientist?” Queen was skeptical.

Rook turned to her and then to Asya. Both women wore similar expressions. “Look, something was eating Peder’s animals. I thought it was a wolf at first-there are several around here-but it turned out to be this Nazi scientist that had been here since the ’40s, and had experimented on himself, to the point that he was nuts. The guy’s corpse is down here, so you’ll see for yourselves. I don’t know what the hell is going on in this town, besides this old Nazi science lab, but I was told it had been shut down for ages. No one even knew Kiss was still alive. The place looks abandoned, but I figure it’s the best place to start looking for information. I didn’t have time to search it properly last time, because, you know, I was trying not to die.”

Queen nodded at him, her blonde hair bouncing. “Booby traps?”

“Down there? Nah.”

Queen dropped into the hole, her hands gripping the sides of the ladder. She slid out of sight. Asya looked at Rook and nodded. “You have strange friends, Stanislav. And strange stories.”

“Call me Rook.”

“Finally being honest with both of us, then?”

Rook widened his eyes to say, Shut-up! He realized Asya had heard more of the conversation at the store than she’d let on and whispered, “Don’t go listening in on people’s conversations. It’s rude.”

“I could not hear you. Your body language said everything.” Asya grinned. “You have feeling for-”

Rook raised his hand quickly, pinching his fingers together and hissing like Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer,” to an unruly mutt. “Not another word.”

Asya shrugged and dropped into the tunnel after Queen.

Rook shook his head and grumbled, “Friggin’ women, always getting in everyone’s business.” He looked around the field and back up the hill. Nothing moved in the snow except for his misting breath as it slowly rose from his mouth and met the frigid air. Then he dropped down the ladder, and pulled the trap door shut over his head.

At the bottom of the ladder, the stone tunnel led away down a slope toward the old Nazi laboratory. The tunnel was small, and Rook had to stoop in places to make his way. Crumbled stone still littered the floor. The air smelled dry and dusty. Rook doubted anyone else had been down here. After five minutes of travel down the sloping tunnel, he caught up with Queen and Asya, who both stood before a metal door with a frame embedded in the rock. Queen wore a Petzl headlamp on an elastic strap where her fleece headband had been. The light illuminated the door and the word stenciled above it:

Ragnarok.

Queen turned to him with an upraised eyebrow. “Destruction of the Gods?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Rook saw the confused look on Asya’s face. “The word refers to the end of the world in Norse mythology. I’m sure the Nazis thought it was suitable for their kooky experiments.”

The door had no handle. It was just a smooth metal slab. Rook reached past the women to the upper-right edge of the door, where he knew a small crevice existed in the frame of stone around the metal door. He remembered the worn-smooth feel of the stone on his fingers. He exerted the right amount of leverage and the metal door began to creak open. Queen stepped up and braced her arm against the wall to help Rook with the door. In her other hand, she held an M9 pistol-the only weapon any of them now had.

They stepped through into a small laboratory. It clearly had not been used in some time, but the room was still well organized, with the exception of a few bullet holes in things from Rook’s recent battle with Edmund Kiss, the scientist that had experimented upon himself until he was practically a feral, yeti-like creature. But Kiss was dead. Nothing Rook had seen in his previous visits to the lab-first hunting for the creature that turned out to be Kiss, and later battling the creature he had become to the death-hinted at mind control or anything else that could be connected to the townspeople of Fenris Kystby going glazed and attacking him and Peder at the farm that morning.

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?”