Ragnarok

THIRTY-FIVE

Westminster Bridge, London, England

Knight couldn’t believe it, but he was starting to run low on ammunition for the Barrett. The Crescent lowered down to the middle of the Westminster Bridge and stayed in place, hovering about a hundred feet above it. Knight was now lying in the same open doorway he had used to fire down on the Eye. Night began to fall in shades of dark blue and purple. A tiny flicker of golden sunset was still visible on the horizon through the trees of St. James Park, at the end of Bridge Street.

It would have been a perfect view, if not for the huge portal of light enveloping Portcullis House, the office building just across the street from Big Ben, at the end of the bridge. Knight watched as wave after wave of dire wolves peeled out of the energy globe and turned left onto the bridge toward their deaths at his hands. He fired shot after shot, and with the speeding creatures coming directly toward him, he had no problem gauging their speed. At this point, the entire surface of the bridge was covered in viscous white fluid that leaked from the mounds of dead monsters. Some of the beasts even slipped in the muck, allowing Knight to fire on them while they were on the ground. Easy targets. He must have shot a hundred of them, but they were still pouring from the portal. He needed something with a higher rate of fire if he was going to get them all.

He had no idea why none of them chose to turn right out of the portal and head deeper into the city, toward the parks. It was like they were a flock of birds, or a shoal of fish, moving always in the same direction. He lined up one last shot with the Barrett’s Leupold scope, and squeezed the trigger. A bloom of fluid erupted from the front of the fast moving dire wolf’s chest.

Knight pulled his eye away from the scope and watched as the dire wolf fell forward on its chest and face, its legs grotesquely in the air behind it. It slid forward for another dozen feet, its intense momentum carrying it onward, before it rammed into another dire wolf corpse that lay on the bridge.

More dire wolves emerged from the portal up by the clock tower, but he had cleared them from the bridge for the moment. He took the opportunity the brief lull provided to stand up and abandon the Barrett. He headed deeper into the Crescent, running to an armory closet. Normally, Bishop was the one that used heavy machine guns. For one thing, he was the only team member strong enough to lug one around all day. Although Knight was smaller, he could still lift the 127-pound gun Browning M2 with its tripod, but he wouldn’t be able to carry it far. He brought the weapon over to the door and set it down.

“Black One, can you set down? I’m gonna hop out with a Browning.” Knight spoke to the pilot and before the man replied, the VTOL engines slowed and the ship began to lower the last hundred feet to the bridge.

“If you’re sure, Knight. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be on the ground with those assholes.” One of the things Knight had come to like about Black One was that the man was always congenial and upfront with his thoughts, but he complied with requests almost before they were issued. His copilot, Black Two, was usually taciturn to the point of sullen. Knight tried to remember when he had last heard the man speak. He couldn’t.

“I’ll be fine.” The Crescent gently set down on the surface of the bridge and Knight hopped out of the open door, pulling the giant Browning with him. He set it down in the middle of the bridge on its tripod, just behind an effective barrier of dire wolf corpses. Then he went back to the open doorway and pulled out a couple of boxes of belt-fed. 50 caliber ammunition.

“Pull back to a safe distance. I’ll call when I need you.” The Crescent pulled up and moved away toward St. Thomas’s Hospital on the south side of the bridge.

Knight set one of the boxes of ammunition next to the Browning and loaded a belt. The weapon had an effective range of around 2000 yards, so he’d be able to hit the dire wolves pretty far down the bridge. He was only about 500 feet from the portal, so he would have to be careful not to strafe the buildings on either side of the road as the monsters ran at him. He felt certain that while Britain would be grateful for US assistance in putting down the dire wolf incursion, they might look less fondly on him turning Big Ben into a Swiss cheese building full of eight-inch holes.

Knight opened fire on the end of the bridge with the huge gun, simply rotating it on its tripod to mow down an entire line of dire wolves that were heading his way. The gun’s violent recoil shook his arms as he fired an arc of. 50 caliber death back across the bridge again, ripping through a second wave of dire wolves. All that remained were the creatures still emerging from the portal. He waited for them to make the left turn and come at him.

Just like birds. Or bats. Bishop said they couldn’t see well in the rain. Maybe they do have some flocking instinct and don’t know what to do when the leader is confused. Or dead.

The thought of Bishop, and the knowledge that he had a second or two before he needed to fire again, made him look to his right along the river, toward the London Eye. He looked at the exact moment that the wheel crashed down vertically on its lower rim. A quarter of the wheel was gone. The tie rods flailed in the middle like a broken bicycle wheel. The entire wheel was off the support-because the top third of the cantilevered struts were just missing. Vanished. Like the portal.

Oh shit. Bishop was still on the top of the wheel. Knight could just barely see him clinging to the top, as the remaining structure toppled slowly forward into the river, mashing the small pier that ran parallel to the river’s shore, where the wheel had sat. The steel buckled and flopped as it came crashing into the river, and Knight followed Bishop with his eye, the man riding the falling pile of metal like a bucking bronco, until the splash from the impact with the water sent up such a plume of murky brown water that the tiny figure was obscured.

Knight was about to call out to Bishop over the microphone in his helmet when he felt something slam into him. He wasn’t hurt at all-the armor absorbed the impact perfectly, but he was startled to find himself several feet in the air, being carried over the shoulder of a dire wolf. The Browning was already far behind them.

The collapse of the Eye had distracted him, when a wave of dire wolves had been headed his way. Stupid! The creature carrying him ran fast. Knight tried to grab at the creature’s face with a hand, but it batted his arm away with a swipe of claws. Knight could see the tears in the armor from the beast’s claws and knew if he wasn’t wearing it, he’d likely be dead already. Up close and over the monster’s shoulder like a burlap sack, all Knight could easily see was the creature’s broad back. The muscles rippled and tensed under the see-through skin. Knight tried to push back away from the dire wolf, but it suddenly turned at the end of the bridge and began sprinting back the way it had come. The force of the high-speed turn threw its balance off and allowed Knight a look around. The other dire wolves were already heading back toward the portal from which they had come. Knight reached for the low-slung holster on his left leg, pulling out his Glock, but again, the creature swept claws at him and the gun was knocked from his hand. He watched helplessly as the gun sailed over the edge of the bridge and into the river.

Next, Knight twisted his torso, lunging his head and knocking the dire wolf in the back of its head with his armored helmet. The creature loosened its grip for just a second. Enough for Knight to slide his right hand up to his sheathed knife on his chest. The dire wolf tightened its crushing grip again and Knight’s hand was trapped against his chest on the handle of the knife.

Bastard.

He struggled and peered around again to see that they were nearly at the portal, and many of the other dire wolves had retreated into it. He began frantically kicking his knee toward the dire wolf’s chest and once again, the creature loosened its grasp for just a second. But this time Knight was ready for the short respite. He ripped his arm outward, pulling the knife and driving it deeply into the back of the creature’s neck. He was surprised that the beast didn’t drop from the blow, so he tore the blade out and began stabbing at the creature’s back repeatedly, aiming for the heart-if it was where a human heart would be-and the back of the head and neck as much as he could.

The creature faltered and slowed. He could feel the descent in velocity as the dire wolf staggered. Then it began to fall forward, pulling Knight’s body with it. Knight pulled his legs up hoping to spring off the creature before the weight of it pinned him to the ground, but he was too late.

The dire wolf collapsed right through the wall of the glowing energy portal, and just as it hit the ground, the energy portal closed with a sucking sound and a strong gust of wind. The portal left a crater in its wake.

And a pair of feet.

The dire wolf’s.

There was no sign of Knight.