Ragnarok

THIRTY-SIX

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

Asya screamed as she fell.

She had made her way to the lower level of the lab and stared up at the giant cage of metal that dominated the space before exploring the doors and tunnels that led off from the cavernous room. Many of the doors were locked, but she found old crumbling tunnels that burrowed into the earth, leading off each wall of the giant room. She had ventured into one just a few feet past the point where the lights from the main room offered any illumination.

She was about to turn back when she heard a tiny sound from deeper in the tunnel. It might have been a pebble scraping along the stone floor. Or maybe a small animal. It was impossible to tell. The tunnel, which was wide but low, was pitch dark. Asya felt along the brick walls with her hands and moved deeper into the space. She smelled dust and something wet, which surprised her, because thus far everything in the lab had been very dry.

It was when, for the second time, she was about to give up exploring and go back to look for a flashlight that she stepped forward into nothing and toppled over in the gloom. She screamed as she fell, the sounds of her voice echoing through the tunnel. She landed on something that was soft mixed with tiny sharp pokey spines. She felt the surface under her in the dark and the sensation on her fingertips was like spongy rubber with toothpicks sticking out of it. She touched one of the sharp things and applied a gentle pressure to its side. The thing snapped, just like a toothpick would. She ran her fingers over the break and felt the tiny barbs, but they were more jagged than the fibers from a snapped toothpick-more solid too.

“Bozhe moi. What is this?” She whispered in the dark, afraid suddenly of what else might be in this pit with her. She struggled to find footing on the squishy surface and instead walked on her knees with one hand on the mushy uneven ground for balance and the other reaching out in the dark for a wall. She felt the barbs poking her knees as she moved forward, but her splayed out fingertips soon grazed brick. She ran her hand over the bricks and they felt similar to the ones that formed the tunnel up above-smaller than normal bricks today. She ran her hand left and right along the wall looking for anything different than a flat wall surface. A door or a ladder. Or a light switch.

The smell in this new space was wetter than up in the tunnel, but the squishing surface that made up the ground was dry to the touch. She tried again to stand but quickly gave up. It was like standing on top of a ball pit. What she had thought was solid-if rubbery-ground was actually a pile of something. Several small somethings.

Stupid! Asya suddenly remembered that she had a small LED light in a survival kit that she wore on her waist in a tiny fanny pack. She had picked it up at the store in Olderdalen when Stanislav- no, Rook, she corrected herself-was buying his new coat. The kit would have some wooden matches as well, but the LED keychain light would be easier to find in the dark.

She unzipped the pouch and carefully slipped her fingers inside the scratchy nylon, so she didn’t disgorge the contents into the pile of mystery things on which she kneeled. Her fingers found the plastic casing of the tiny flashlight. She pulled it out. Before lighting it, she zipped the pouch again, and slipped a finger through the ring on the end of the light. She didn’t want to lose it.

Then she depressed the spring-loaded button, illuminating the small room around her with a garish blast of blue-tinged white light.

She wished she hadn’t.

Against her will, a second scream rose up in her. This one far longer and far more distressed than the yelp she had let out when she fell.

She was in a graveyard. She was on a graveyard. A grave mound. And it was heaped with the tiny corpses of small white creatures unlike any she had ever seen. There were hundreds-maybe thousands-of the little things, their rib bones poking though the desiccated chests of the small white puppy-like creatures. They had miniscule clear claws on each paw but strange small pinpricks of eyes on the sides of their heads. They were not puppies, nor wolves. She could see their musculature under their whitish skin. They were not any animal she had ever seen or heard of.

They were something else.

Something unnatural.

Hideous.

Asya’s breath caught in her chest. The mound of tiny bodies moved.