Ragnarok

FORTY-TWO

Midtown, New York, NY

Deep Blue pulled the trigger on the confetti launcher as soon as the elevator doors parted. Instantly the hallway was a riot of white, pink, and pastel greens and blues, as shredded paper filled the air with a loud popping noise. The effect was surreal. Everything that had been moving a second earlier-King and the five dire wolves-just stopped as if turned to stone.

Even with the colorful airborne flak, Deep Blue knew he wouldn’t have much time. King was near the shattered window and the dire wolves were between them, stopped where they had been and so still that he couldn’t even see an eyeball moving. He wasted no time in firing on the dire wolves with the MP5. He ran through the falling confetti as he fired. He aimed at three of the beasts and drilled two of them in the eye, hitting a third in the chest, before the first two managed to fall off the walls, where they had crouched sideways.

As Deep Blue got up to where King stood, he could see that King had regained his senses but was unarmed. A quick peek back toward the portal showed King’s weapon on the floor, just in front of the glowing wall. Two dire wolves stood hunched over by the walls further down the hall, between him and the rifle. It was a loss. But the other thing wasn’t on the floor at all.

“Jack, where’s the nuke?”

“Sorry, Boss. I chucked it into the portal when I was under its control, but I forgot to arm it. The portal is putting something in the air-”

“Yeah, I got that part. I-”

“They’re moving again.” King pointed down the hallway.

King was right. The confetti had mostly fluttered to the floor. Deep Blue leveled the second confetti cannon he had nabbed from the nearby party supply store and fired it high in the air. One of the two dire wolves ran headlong at them and King snatched the pistol from its holster on Deep Blue’s leg. He fired three shots at the creature and hit its head each time, but the beast kept barreling toward them down the hallway.

“Look out!” Deep Blue shoved King into a door marked Stairs that had no handle-just a metal hand plate for pushing. King slammed into the door and it opened wide, spilling him onto the landing. At the same time, Deep Blue gambled that with the confetti in the air, the charging dire wolf really couldn’t see but was just striking out where it had last seen them. When the beast was nearly on him, Deep Blue lunged to the side, against the hallway wall. The dire wolf ran right past him and out the shattered window, into open space.

Deep Blue looked out the window to see the animal fall. Ole! he thought. Then he leveled the MP5 at the remaining dire wolf. This one had been content to wait for the confetti to settle, but its eyes swiveled in anticipation of being free to move unobstructed through the soon-to-be-clear air. Deep Blue put a burst of bullets in its cranium. The skull erupted in a gout of ichor resembling warm mayonnaise. The perforated beast sank to the floor as King was getting to his feet.

“You back to your normal self?” Deep Blue looked King up and down.

“Completely. Fresh air from the broken window helped. Shit. More of them!” King opened fire down the hallway as more of the creatures crawled and ran out of the wall of yellow light. As Deep Blue looked, he realized they wouldn’t be able to hold off that many.

And he was out of confetti.

“The stairs,” he said.

King stopped firing and bolted into the stairwell.

Deep Blue followed at his heels. “They were all over the outside of the building too. Keasling’s men are having a hard time of it.”

King leaned over the railing and looked down the stairwell, but turned quickly back to Deep Blue, his face grim. “Too many. Up!”

Deep Blue sprinted up the stairs until he hit the landing. King was still at the bottom of the stairs and fired as soon as the door opened, cracking the skull of the first dire wolf through the door. The body’s momentum carried it forward and down the lower flight of stairs to the next landing.

Deep Blue covered the door from the upper landing as King raced up the industrial gray steps to meet him. Just as King reached the landing, another creature leapt through the door and Deep Blue blasted it with a carefully controlled burst.

They continued up flight after flight of stairs, carefully picking off any of the monsters that got too close. When King passed a foam fire extinguisher on the wall of the 45 ^th floor, he halted and nimbly unlatched the bright red tank from the wall. He then leaned over the railing and blasted the contents of the extinguisher down the space between the flights of stairs. It was a narrow space, but it was enough for the burst of white foam to spatter into the air and cascade down several floors. The extinguisher ran dry as the first dire wolf reached a landing below them, stopped and opened its jaws in a snarl that looked almost comical.

Deep Blue fired two shots at it before the MP5 ran dry.

King threw the empty fire extinguisher canister down the flight of stairs, knocking the animal back and off balance slightly. Then he pulled up the pistol he had taken from Deep Blue. He had only one round left and no more magazines, so he aimed carefully and then fired.

The creature’s head crumpled inward. The bullet liquefied the brains, exited the back of the skull and pulled the white slurry out with it, splattering white gore across the wall. His stomach turned at the sight. If only I could unsee some of this shit. He turned and raced up the next flight of stairs with Deep Blue. The much-older man had managed to reload the MP5 faster than King had ever seen anyone do.

“How many more magazines?” He asked.

“Last one. Run faster.”

As though in response, the horde of dire wolves on the steps below resumed their loud pursuit, closing the distance.