Ragnarok

FIFTY-SEVEN

Fenris Kystby, Norway, 4 November, 0100 Hrs

Rook activated the LED backlight on his wristwatch and saw that it was just after one in the morning local time-he’d been down in the pit with the dead for hours.

“Fuckity McFuck Sauce,” Rook hissed through his teeth, not for the first time.

He understood that the pheromones from the big energy doorway were controlling Asya the same way the other scientists working for Fossen had been. He also realized that she must have been fighting the pheromone control to some degree. She had given him the little LED flashlight and told him to hold it tightly. He just wished she had been able to stop herself from kicking him down into this hellhole.

He sat on the heap of dead dire wolves and fondled the little plastic light in his hand. He didn’t activate it. He had already seen the pit and the bodies. He had scoured every part of the pit looking for a way out. He had tried scaling the walls too, but his bulk was all wrong for delicate rock climbing, and his center of gravity didn’t help. Every time he got a few feet up from the pile of mashed dire wolf corpses, he would fall off the wall, landing in the spongy mass. The last time he had cracked his head on the side of the pit, too, and that had put an end to any further climbing attempts.

He sat on the pile with his back against one of the lumpy walls. His head hurt, he was ravenously hungry and his mood was as dark as it ever got. Fossen was up there, opening a freeway for monsters from the outer limits to come destroy the world. Rook’s team was on the other side of the planet. He was trapped and helpless.

And Queen was up there somewhere.

Where are you, Zelda? Has that bastard controlled you like Asya? Did you run into a dire wolf? Are you lost?

Rook had done a lot of thinking on Queen during his time in Norway. He knew he had feelings for her. Couldn’t deny that any longer. She was smart, bad ass tough, trustworthy and looked good slathered in head-to-toe mud.

He smiled at the memory of the two of them, covered in mud for camouflage, hiding in a tree from a bunch of human-Neanderthal hybrids. Good times. He’d been on the receiving end of Queen’s fury that day, too, when she’d mistaken his muddy form for the enemy. But today was different. When he hung up that phone and turned around to see Queen…the look in her eyes. She was hurt. Queen was hurt. And he’d done the hurting. He regretted it, but it also confirmed what he suspected.

His growing affection was mutual.

Of course, all the affection in the world did diddly-squat for him right now.

He growled in frustration until his voice was hoarse. Then he heard a scraping noise on the other side of the pit. Something sliding.

Sonovabitch, what now?

He pressed the button on the little LED flashlight and the scene was suddenly as bright as day in the blue-white light. The grayish-white skins of the piled-high genetically engineered dire wolf pups were everywhere. He saw nothing that might have caused sound. Nothing A small mound of dire wolf corpses shifted to his left. Then they stopped.

Then the same pile moved again.

Something was moving under the dead monster babies.

Rook played the light around the confined space and the pile of dead shifted again. He stopped breathing and moved a hand over the light to dim it, but not extinguish it entirely. He wasn’t afraid. Wasn’t capable of it. He was filled with so much seething rage at his confinement that fear didn’t exist. The presence of something living in the pit with him filled him with a desire to fight it. He was a hunter now and whatever it was that shared this pit with him, it was his prey.

Slowly, Rook moved his legs under him so he could pounce if necessary. The shifting of the mound stopped. He waited, still holding his breath. When it emerged, it happened so fast that Rook fell backward, startled.

A few of the crushed baby dire wolf bodies launched a foot into the air as a furry gray snout erupted from the pile. The creature’s head was rounded but with a short elongated snout. Its eyes were beady black specks in its fur, and its nose was a black lump at the front of its head. When it opened its mouth and Rook saw the teeth, he knew without a doubt what it was. He had seen plenty of them in the woods around Fenris Kystby.

Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf? Course, you’re bigger and badder than most.

Rook let the light hit the creature fully as it struggled out of the vertical tunnel it had dug through the corpses. The wolf was huge. At least six foot long, with a wet matted coat that was dark in front and gradated to white by the time it reached the hindquarters. Rook had never seen a wolf like this.

The creature had elongated, white-furred legs and no tail. Its front half looked normal, but its back half had powerful muscles that looked almost human. The rear paws weren’t paws, but feet. With talons.

Damn, Rook thought. That batshit Fossen left a half-wolf, half-dire wolf abortion down here to die. Looks like death didn’t take.

Then he realized he was the one who’d been left to die. There was no way Fossen didn’t know about this beauty. Rook stayed perfectly still, wondering if the creature would attack or not.

Then it opened its huge jaws like a cat yawning-large enough to swallow most of Rook’s face. And the thing snarled at him.

Right, that’s it for you, Benji.

The hybrid lowered itself, its muscles tensing, preparing to spring. But Rook surprised it. He lunged across the the pit and slammed his body into the startled creature.

The pair crashed against the brick wall. Rook ignored the jarring impact and mashed his head down on the thing’s snout as it dug its two-inch-long fangs into his shoulder, which wasn’t the best move in hindsight since he helped push the wolf’s top canines deeper in the meat of his shoulder. He shouted in pain, but so did the wolf. It released his shoulder, snarling and snapping at Rook’s face.

Rook growled, too, as he pummeled the side of its head with his meaty fist, aiming for the soft temple behind the eyes. A hard enough strike should knock the thing out. But it squirmed and flailed, slipping from his grasp.

The creature leapt away and barked at him, then leapt at his throat. Rook tucked his chin and fell back into the soft mound of Fossen’s failed experiments, pulling his legs up and kicking the flying wolf up and over him, smashing it into the far wall of the pit.

Rook, still desperately clutching the LED light in his left hand, spun around on the mound to see the beast hit. He was shocked to see the creature violently twist its body in mid air like a cat and land with its hind legs on the wall. The claws dug in, and the thing stayed attached to wall as if he had tossed a spaghetti noodle up to see if it would stick. The strange creature’s front legs hung away from the wall. They looked like normal wolf paws, unable to find purchase on the wall. The wolf craned its head up and opened its mouth, showing its teeth. Rook was certain the bastard was smiling at him.

It shot off the wall and rammed his stomach, slamming him back into the wall, where he hit his head yet again.

“That’s it!” He shouted. “Time for a fuckin’ lupine barbeque.” He doused and pocketed the LED light. He wouldn’t need it in these close confines, and he needed his left hand free.

Darkness engulfed the pit.

But not all his senses were blind.

The creature smelled horribly, and Rook guessed that he did too. He could hear it breathing and it could probably hear him. They would have no problems fighting each other in the dark.

Rook rolled as the beast snapped at him again, just clipping his forearm with its long muzzle, drawing a line of blood down his arm. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel the warm drip. Rook snatched out and grabbed the hybrid by the middle of both of its front legs, and rolled. His arms swung hard and the beast went with them. He slapped the entire creature’s body hard against the wall of the pit. While it was stunned, he wrapped his arms around the thing’s thin front legs and applied sudden, sharp pressure.

He winced at the sound of breaking bones, but the monster’s pain-filled howl drowned out the noise. Feeling merciful now that the creature sounded like any other wounded dog, Rook moved a hand to the creature’s neck and then moved his other hand up to join it. The wolf resisted, snapping at him, but it was a half effort. The pain from its broken limbs sapped its fight.

With a violent crack, Rook twisted the head 180? around, and the body slumped in his hands. He dropped the hybrid creature and fished out his LED from his pocket, admiring his handiwork.

“Who’s afraid of the big bad Rook?” he grumbled and then felt glad no one had been around to hear that particular gem.

“Now where the hell did you come from?” He moved over to the side of the pit where the thing had clawed its way free from the tiny dire wolf corpses and he found a tunnel.

Rook thought about it for a second. He rationalized that if the creature had gotten into the pit’s bottom, there must be an exit out somewhere. It couldn’t have just lived down here. There wasn’t enough for it to eat. The thing’s fur was wet too, so the tunnel must lead to water. He tried to remember any lakes or ponds in the area around the lab, but nothing came to him. Then again, it had been pretty cold for a while, and any nearby lakes must have frozen over.

I’m gonna get halfway down the friggin’ tunnel and another one of those things is gonna try to eat my head.

“What the hell,” Rook said and then moved over to the hole. He pushed some of the carcasses out of his way so he could slide down the tunnel head first. About a foot under the bodies, the tunnel made an S turn, and he had to struggle, grunt and squeeze to make the turns. He kept the LED illuminated ahead of him and saw that after the S turn, the tunnel widened out and moved upward at a slanting slope. The walls and ceiling were dark damp soil, but the floor was rough with yellow, grainy sand. As his legs came out of the S turn, Rook found he could actually get up to his hands and knees and crawl. It was better than wriggling like a worm.

The tunnel continued to slope upward, but the temperature dropped the further away from the pit he moved. Rook guessed he had gone about three hundred yards when the tunnel widened out to the inside of a large stick structure. Rook quickly recognized it as an abandoned beaver lodge in the rough shape of a dome. The ceiling was still low, but the room was large enough for maybe four adults to lie down side by side. It reminded him of a camping tent.

The wolf was using this for a den after eating Mr. Beaver.

He crossed to the far wall of the circular chamber and found a puddle. He guessed that he’d be able to glide through the underwater beaver tunnel. The only question was, what he would find on the other side? Was the lake or stream or whatever this puddle was connected to, frozen?

Goodbye crazy-ass wolf, hello hypothermia.

“Here goes nothing.” Gripping the LED in his teeth, Rook took a deep breath. Then he slid headfirst under the water and kicked with his feet until he was completely submerged in ice cold water.