by Kane Gilmour
TWENTY
Endgame Headquarters, White Mountains, NH
Lewis Aleman was returning to his senses after the sonic blast of the creature’s roar in Shanghai, as he had listened in on the battle with Knight and Bishop. He had acted quickly at the sudden auditory siege, but not quickly enough. His hand had reached the toggle switch to kill the audio from the Shanghai location, but by that point, Aleman had vomited in sheer terror, before rolling out of the command chair, hitting the carpeted floor and crawling in his own stomach contents, crying and screaming.
Around the room, Matt Carrack had scrambled into a corner and was hugging his legs. Sara Fogg had also vomited. She was on the floor on her hands and knees with a long string of saliva dripping from her mouth to the floor, reminding Aleman of a drooling St. Bernard. George Pierce was nowhere to be seen.
Aleman could only remember the creature’s roar, and his instantly reaching for the audio dampening switch, before his biggest fears seized him. The fear of falling was tangible and terrifying, as he rocketed out of a clear sky with a parachute that refused to open. He realized now that he had hallucinated, but his mind was once again his own. As he struggled to his feet, his mind grappled with what had happened. The creatures ripping out of the domes had a roar that somehow induced panic in their opponents.
Not opponents.
Prey.
That was the only explanation. But what the hell can do that? He recalled the noise of the roar had been low and keening, a little like a foghorn, then rising in pitch as if the foghorn were being tortured.
“Are you okay?” Aleman reached to help Fogg stand.
“What the fuck was that?” Fogg shouted, wiping spittle from her face.
“Some kind of sonic attack. I was terrified. Had some kind of fear-induced hallucination. You?”
Fogg simply nodded.
Across the room, Carrack popped up from where he had been huddled in the corner, pulling his M9 pistol and scanning the room for hostile targets.
“Stand down, Matt. We’re fine here. Are you okay?”
Carrack blinked a few times and looked around the room again, as if he couldn’t believe it was just the three of them. Then he was all business again. “Where’s Dr. Pierce?”
“He ran out,” Aleman grabbed a handful of tissues and wiped down the now-soiled computer seat, then climbed back into it. “Can you check on him?”
Carrack raced out of the room. Fogg looked at Aleman, shaking her head. “Thought I would never get out.”
“What?”
“I have some mild claustrophobia after what happened with the team a few years ago in Vietnam. The attack made me think I was stuck in a tight cave.”
“Did it sound a bit like a foghorn to you?” Aleman asked as he worked the keys to adjust the incoming audio, setting up a filter to keep out the sound of the roar should it come again, so he could continue his role of keeping the field members in touch.
“I’ve got a sensory processing disorder, remember? For me it was a smell. I heard it, but I also smelled it. Like wet dog dipped in dead skunk.”
Aleman smiled sympathetically at her.
“That’s it!”
Aleman and Fogg turned sharply to look at George Pierce, who had just reentered the room with Carrack. Pierce looked haggard. The effects of the creature’s roar had affected him as well.
“What is?” Aleman asked him.
“I’ve been trying to remember where I had seen an image of the creatures the team is facing. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with it and pouring over old books of mythology-but I was checking the wrong mythology.” Pierce ran to a computer desk and started typing in a search as he explained. “Sara’s wet dog comment jogged my memory. When the creatures run on all fours-remember, Ale, when you slowed that video down so we could all see it clearly-they moved like pumas, so my mind locked on feline features. Plus, the odd chameleon-like eyes made me keep thinking of insect species and reptiles. All of that pointed to a Greek mythology connection, which as you know is filled with creatures large and small.
“But I was in a museum in Oslo years ago, and I saw something from Norse mythology…” Pierce found the page he was seeking on the computer and slid his chair back for the others to see. Aleman hopped out of his ergo-chair and came over to stand next to Carrack and Fogg as they peered over George’s shoulder to view a photo of a rough woodcut. The piece of wood was a thousand years old and was housed in a Viking exhibition. It showed a creature very similar to those attacking the cities of the world. The eyes were not entirely correct, squashed and elongated, but the group could see that the artist had definite carving skills. Details like the teeth and claws were carved with careful attention. The body had the same powerful shape and the head looked accurate, too, despite the obvious Norse stylization.
George turned to look at them. “This woodcut was made by a Viking named Agnarsson. A one-armed man who claimed such a creature attacked him. The Norse called it a Dire Wolf.”
“That can’t be right. Dire wolves are an extinct species of wolf in North America.” Aleman frowned and jumped back in his chair, checking the screens for the battles in Chicago and Shanghai, before devoting a second to checking another screen for information on the dire wolf. His fingers flew over the split keyboard. “Here it is. The species was named by an American
paleontologist named Joseph Leidy in 1854.”
Pierce stepped closer. “Was he from European descent?”
“Name like Leidy? Most likely.” Aleman typed a bit more. “Yep. German.”
“So it’s possible that this man had heard of a Norse version of such a creature and named the North American variant after it. In any case, the Norse called the creature we are facing a dire wolf. We’ve got a name for it, now.” Pierce moved over to another desk and sat down. “There’s more. The most famous of the Norse dire wolves was named Fenrir, or Fenris Wolf. It’s mentioned in a lot of Norse poetry as the son of Loki, and is regarded as the lone parent of the dire wolves, whether that’s the actual species of terrestrial wolf or these monsters, I can’t say. But legend says it will kill Odin during the time of Ragnarok-the end of the world, which is kind of where we’re headed.”
“Any instructions on how to kill them?” Aleman asked. He didn’t sound serious, but Pierce missed the sarcasm.
“No, but listen to this.” Pierce cleared his throat and read a block of text written below the dire wolf carving. “Much I have travelled, much have I tried out, much have I tested the Powers; from where will a sun come into the smooth heaven when Fenrir has assailed this one?”
“What’s that from?” Fogg asked.
“A poem,” Pierce said and then butchered the title as he slowly pronounced it. “Vaf?ru?nismal.”
“From where will a sun come into the smooth heaven when Fenrir has assailed this one?” Aleman repeated the line. “A sun.”
“Yeah, sounds familiar, right?”
Aleman nodded. “I think it’s safe to say this isn’t the first visit these things have made to Earth. Let’s keep digging. See if we can’t find a how-to on closing these portals.” Aleman frowned at his screen. “Hopefully we’ll find something sooner than later.”
Fogg was about to take her own seat and pitch in with Pierce’s research. She paused and turned back to Aleman. “Why? What is it?”
“Since this thing began, I’ve been tracking the appearance of these dire wolf portals around the globe. I’ve also been keeping track of how long each appears, how much damage is done, the size of each occurrence and so forth.”
Pierce pushed his glasses up his nose “And?”
Aleman turned to him. “The globes are getting larger and they are occurring with more frequency around the world. Also, they flicker less.”
Fogg turned in her chair. She was wiping her face off with a wet-wipe. “Flicker?”
“Flicker. As in the strength of the electricity coming off the portals varies in strength the way a lightbulb does when th
e power is struggling.”
“Wait,” George stood up and walked around the room. “You’re saying these domes aren’t at full power yet? They’re already chucking lightning bolts around like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum with his toys. You’re saying these domes will…what? Get more powerful?”
“Well, yes, but no.” Aleman leaned his head to the side, loudly realigning the vertebrae in his neck with a clunky popping noise. “It’s worse than that. They will get more powerful, but these globes of light are clearly portals for the dire wolves. So far, we’ve only seen a few hit-and-run incursions. They come out, they tear shit up and then run back into the portals. The portals close or collapse or whatever.”
“How are portals even possible? Portals to where?” Fogg asked.
“Don’t know yet, but you’re all missing the point.” Aleman looked at them each slowly. Even Carrack was paying full attention to every word Aleman said. “If the portals grow in strength, then like with a lightbulb, one of two things will happen. Either they will reach full power and stabilize, which means nothing could stop the dire wolves from flooding into our world…or the other thing will happen.”
Fogg looked confused. “What’s the other thing?”
Carrack spoke up from the corner of the room. He understood what Aleman was driving at. “You know when you go to turn on a light and the bulb is done, and the tungsten filament kind of pops? A sort of mini-explosion, but contained inside the glass of the bulb? If I understand what Ale is saying, these things could go boom.”
Pierce turned from Carrack’s laid-back features to Aleman’s tense visage. “How big of a boom?”
TWENTY-ONE
Chicago, IL
King leapt out of the Humvee as it hurtled into the suddenly dark abyss, and landed on the scoured-clean side of the crater. With nothing to grab onto, he slid down the steep grade. He could see in the dim light where different pipes or cables had been before the dome had appeared, but the entire surface of the crater wall was now as smooth as glass, the lightning ball having melted soil, asphalt, concrete, metal and everything else into a smooth paste before rapidly cooling and solidifying.
He slid face down, picking up speed as he went. His hands scrabbled for purchase, trying to find a nook or hole to grab, to stop his descent. Behind him, the abandoned Humvee smashed into the center of the hole with a loud crump but no huge explosion. The twisting, shrieking sound of impacting metal was horrible enough and he was glad he had bailed, even though his body slamming into the crater had hurt plenty.
He wasn’t really worried about sliding to the bottom of the crater. He was worried about what had happened to the creature. Did Whitey make it back into the dome before it blinked out?
He looked below him as he slid down into the dark, but couldn’t see anything in the dim light. He strained to hear the beast in the dark below him, but the noise of sirens from rescue vehicles up on the panicked streets drowned out any chance he might have had to detect movement. Moreover, there was the whispering hiss of his uniform gliding on the silky-smooth crater wall throwing up a white noise barrier.
Then, instead of coming to the bottom of the crater, he felt himself lurch downward, falling through the open air. What the hell? But before he had time to finish the thought, he hit solid ground again unexpectedly, the force driving the air from him lungs in a loud cough. He was no longer moving.
He was laying down on a lumpy horizontal surface. He reached under his back with his hand and felt wood spaced out by concrete. Railroad ties. But there’s no subway anywhere near here. King slowly moved to a sitting position and toggled his communications gear.
“Blue, you out there?”
“King! You’re okay?”
“Bruised and battered. I’m in some kind of underground railroad tunnel that shouldn’t be here. Plus I’m going to have trouble getting back to the surface. The sides of the crater are smooth.”
“There were a number of mining projects after the turn of the century, King. Over 110 miles of tunnels and caverns are now under the greater Chicago area. You must have found one of them. What about the hostile you were after?”
“No sign of it. I’m going to give pursuit.”
“Understood. Just be careful. I’ll be down for you once we wrap of the last of them up here. Two of them didn’t make it back to the sphere before it closed down.” King heard the audible click of Deep Blue signing off. He stayed still in the dark of the tunnel, waiting for his ears to adjust to the ambient noise of the tunnel, before he proceeded deeper inside. There was always the chance the creature missed the tunnel and slid to the bottom of the crater, but King didn’t think so. The small hairs on the back of his neck raised; he could tell the beast was in the tunnel with him.
It was colder up on the city streets, with the November wind blowing hard. In the tunnel, the air was dry and mild. The dark was inky black. King knew he would have to use a flashlight. He removed a small tactical light and laser sight from one zippered pocket on his flight suit and attached it to the barrel of his Glock 23, which the Air Force had issued him before his ill-fated F-16 flight. It took some work to get the thing attached in the dark, but he managed it.
With the lights off, he slowly stood and moved to his right. Leading with his hand outstretched, he searched for the wall of the tunnel. It took him only a few steps before his fingertips brushed the edge of the smooth rock wall. His ears strained at the silence, hoping to detect some small sound of movement, but all was dead quiet. King laid his body against the wall and took a slow breath, then flicked on the flashlight and targeting laser.
The tiny LED light and red laser beam illuminated the ten-foot wide concrete tunnel as if the sun had just been turned on. Ten feet deeper into the tunnel and hanging upside down from the ceiling by its claws, its back was to King. He was in its blind spot.
He stood stock still, moving the targeting laser to the back of the creature’s head.
Almost. Almost…
King took a slow deep breath and released it, preparing to take the shot, when the bulbous white orb on the side of the creature’s upside-down head swiveled back to look directly at King. He fired the Glock, but the beast was already on the ground, flipping and landing couched on all four limbs, like a cat.
Then it roared.
A huge, echoing, hideously loud roar that vibrated in King’s chest like the thumping bass of a high-end car stereo. He squinted in momentary pain from the volume of the roar, but then fired another shot and dropped to a crouch of his own.
The creature lurched to the side, a gout of thick white blood spraying from its shoulder. King could smell the fluid, and it didn’t smell coppery like human blood. More like spoiled fish. And metal and plastic.
The beast paused and moved its head to the side, as if it were considering something. One of the white eyes swiveled, peering down at its fresh wound.
King watched, fascinated as the bundles of cable-like muscles under the thing’s translucent skin tensed and released, as the creature moved its head.
King opened up with the remaining 13 rounds in the magazine of his Glock.
The beast’s head erupted with spurts of white fluid, before its perforated corpse collapsed in a heap on the dusty concrete floor of the tunnel.
King stood and ejected the magazine, allowing it to clatter to the floor, the sound of it drowned out by the still echoing gunshots. He reached into another zippered pocket on his flight suit for the only spare magazine he had.
He just finished inserting the fresh rounds when Deep Blue’s voice returned.
“You alright? We heard the roar up here, although my sound dampeners in the helmet kicked in. Aleman says the fear response that the roar creates is pretty devastating.”
“Uh, the what?” King asked.
“Fear response. Did you experience a debilitating terror from the roar?” Deep Blue sounded perplexed in King’s earpiece.
“No. It was loud, but that was all. What are you talking about?”
>
“I’ll explain later. Come to the edge of the tunnel, we’re lowering a winch from the second Humvee.”
After King was winched up, Deep Blue led him to an exterior door on the side of the John Hancock Center, where he inserted a key and a door opened to reveal a private elevator. “One of the Secret Service evac routes from when I was the President.” Once inside the elevator, he used the same key to activate the lift. The men felt a tug at their stomachs as the fast-moving car raced for the roof, 100 stories above them. Deep Blue relayed the intel from Aleman about the fear response generated by the creature’s roar.
“Didn’t experience anything like that,” King said.
“Odd. Maybe you can’t hear certain frequencies, or have an odd ear structure. Whatever it is, be thankful for it. The National Guard topside were pissing themselves and screaming like little girls. Ale assures me I would have done the same if he hadn’t warned me to calibrate the audio pickups in this helmet to dampen any noises on that frequency.”
“We might all need helmets like that, then.”
The doors to the elevator opened and the men stepped out onto the roof of the building, its two massive antennas towering overhead. A huge fixed-wing, crescent-shaped craft idled on the roof.
“Looks kind of like the Crescent,” King said as they boarded the aircraft.
“Similar. The Persephone. The Pentagon is messing around with the design. Keasling is loaning it to us.”
They sat and strapped in, surrounded by a complicated computer array. Deep Blue removed his helmet and contacted Aleman, back in New Hampshire. The craft launched vertically and then King felt the thrust as it banked and accelerated.
“Aleman, catch us up,” Deep Blue began.
“Cape Town is gone,” came the sober response.
Deep Blue sighed. “How many dead?”
“No, you don’t understand. It’s gone. Completely.”
TWENTY-TWO
Shanghai, China
Knight staggered through the street, his body sore from the fall onto the creature on the ground floor of the Customs House building. The creature had remained inert after cushioning Knight’s fall from the chandelier. He didn’t know if it was dead or just unconscious, but he stuck his KA-BAR knife in its head five times to make sure it wouldn’t get up again either way.