Baldwin looked in the direction Laurie had pointed and then at the shaking map in her hand. “Woods. Cave. Got it. You go first.”
“And Matt,” Fen added, still pushing the boat closer to shore. Getting into the zombie-filled waters was becoming increasingly unappealing, so he wanted to get them as near to shore as he could. “Matt, go with Laurie.”
Matt opened his mouth, no doubt to object, but Fen shook his head.
“You just about drowned, Thorsen,” Fen pointed out. “You’re not at your peak fighting shape.” He glared at Matt. “You and Laurie go first. Baldwin and I will take the rear and deal with any dead people.”
For a change, Laurie hadn’t objected to a plan that kept her out of danger, and Fen realized that she was as scared as he was, even if she didn’t sound like it. He hoped that meant he didn’t sound it, either. Matt probably wasn’t alert enough to be scared, just injured and exhausted. Only Baldwin seemed truly calm, but when Fen glanced at him again, he revised that theory. Baldwin stared at the growing piles of dead people and shivered.
“Acid-water and zombies? Your Aunt Helen could’ve mentioned that.” Baldwin pushed the oars one last time and muttered, “I hope these aren’t running zombies.”
“You and me both, brother,” Fen agreed. Then he looked at Laurie. “You lead and keep Matt upright.”
“I’m okay,” Matt said, his voice still scratchy. “Thank you for pulling me out, but I’m fine—”
“No,” Fen interrupted. “Go with Laurie.”
Matt hesitated. Then he nodded.
Fen gestured to the shore. “Leap and run toward the exit.”
“If we get separated, we’ll wait for you at the cave,” Laurie added.
“Right. We head through the woods to the cave,” Fen repeated.
They jumped into the shallow water and scrambled toward the shore.
As soon as the kids’ feet touched the ground, the zombies began to surge toward them. It was as if the touch of the living kids’ feet on the shore had been a signal. The waters roiled as the masses of zombies tumbled over each other, pushing toward the land, trampling other zombies in the process. Fen had the brief thought that he’d stumbled into a horror movie, but then he pushed it away and yelled, “Don’t look back, but run faster if you can!”
To their credit, both Matt and Laurie did as Fen asked. However, Laurie also yelled, “If you don’t catch up with us, I will come back here and kick your butt, Fen!”
Baldwin grinned, but Fen knew she wasn’t joking. “We’re right behind you,” he called out. “Just keep running!”
To Baldwin, he added in a low voice, “They need a few minutes’ head start before we can follow.”
“Got it,” Baldwin said.
Within an instant, the dead were trying to follow Matt and Laurie.
“Not going to happen,” Fen growled as he shoved one of the zombies back toward the water.
Baldwin darted to the boat, grabbed an oar, and began swinging it like it was an oversized baseball bat. Fen seized another oar but decided it was too unwieldy to use. He shifted into a wolf and charged at the zombies that were making their way onto shore. He had no expectation of being able to stop an entire troop of shambling dead, but he and Baldwin would buy Laurie and Matt enough time to get farther away. That was Fen’s best plan.
Baldwin continued playing a twisted version of Whac-A-Mole with the zombies, and Fen tried not to think about how gross zombie tasted as he bit them to deter them from moving forward. His biting didn’t seem to stop them, and it was exceedingly gross—so much so that he thought he might end up a vegetarian. Zombie meat? Not so tasty. He didn’t swallow it, but the taste was hard to get out of his mouth. And Matt swallowed mouthfuls of zombie stew with acid-water! It was no wonder he had puked.
Fen considered shifting back to human shape, but he was faster as a wolf. He ran toward the zombies and figured he’d switch shapes when he was beside Baldwin. As Fen ran, though, he realized that the zombies had swerved out of his path. Testing his theory, he ran at them again. They turned as he came their way, several of them toppling into the water.
After that, he started herding them. It was a little lame, like being a sheepdog instead of a wolf, but it was a lot better than having to have the taste of zombie in his mouth.
And it buys Laurie more time. Protecting her was his number one goal in life; it had been for years, since back when Uncle Stig, her dad, asked for Fen’s help in keeping an eye on her when he wasn’t around. Having one clear focus had made it a lot easier to figure out the right thing to do: whatever made Laurie safest. Lately he had started adding Matt and Baldwin to his list, too. Right now, keeping them safe meant herding zombies.
Fen couldn’t get all the zombies into the water, or even half of them; there were just too many. However, he drove some of them to the river in groups. At the same time, Baldwin kept thwacking them with the oar. It was a system—not the best system, but considering everything, it was a pretty decent plan—and more important, it was working.
Between rounds of shepherding the zombies back into the river of acid stew, Fen looked toward the edge of the woods where Laurie and Matt were headed. As soon as they entered the cover of trees, Fen raced back to Baldwin, scattering zombies as he ran.
When he reached Baldwin, Fen became human-shaped again.
“Whoa!” Baldwin blinked at Fen. “That was just, like, one step and then bam, you’re not furry.”
“It’s been a lot faster switching between shapes since being in Hel,” Fen answered, hoping as he said it that the change would stay like this once they reached the land of the living again. He showed his teeth to a zombie and took a menacing step toward it, experimenting with the tactic that worked as a wolf.
The zombie faltered but didn’t alter its path.
“Guess that only works as a wolf,” Fen said, and then he grabbed a bone that had washed up—one far too large to be from a person—and used it as a weapon to knock the zombie down. “Start toward the woods. I’ll shift back and follow. I’m faster on four paws.”
Baldwin knocked out two more zombies and then ran.
As soon as Baldwin was a few steps away, Fen dropped the bone and returned to wolf form. He had to charge at a few zombies that were getting too close to Baldwin, but most of the seemingly mindless dead were staying near the water. Fen ran at the ones who made it closer to the woods, and then he loped toward the woods to keep pace with Baldwin.
Fewer and fewer of the zombies pursued them, and when the two descendants reached the first trees, the zombies all started walking backward into the river as if the water was drawing the creatures back to it with invisible tethers. Fen switched back to human so he could speak to Baldwin. He nudged Baldwin’s arm and said, “Look.”
For a moment, they stood at the edge of the woods together, watching zombies shuffle backward toward the once-more seething river. The water bubbled and churned as the dead returned to it. If not for the fact that they were watching zombies and acid-water, it would be kind of cool. Fen shook his head. Actually, it was still kind of cool, but that didn’t mean they had time to keep watching it.
“Come on,” he said.
Baldwin nodded, and they headed deeper into the woods.
The path looked pretty clear, so Fen hoped that they’d catch up to Laurie and Matt shortly—and that there wasn’t some other monster waiting between them and the exit from Hel. They’d run into a Jotunn, a giant multi-eyed guard dog, his creepy Aunt Helen, grumpy dead Vikings, and now acid-dwelling zombies. Fen was ready for something a little less exhausting. Somehow, though, the clear-cut path through the woods wasn’t doing much to convince him that he was about to find what he wanted.
After a moment, Baldwin said, “Sorry you were sad about my dying. It’s cool that you all came to get me, though. I was having an okay time, but I’m really glad I get to come back to help fight the Raiders and the big snake.” He paused and looked at Fen with a very serious expression before adding,
“Do you think I’ll have to come back after the fight or will I stay alive? Oh! I hope I don’t start rotting when we get back. I mean, I’m not going to be a zombie now, am I?”
“No,” Fen said, not actually knowing if he was right but trying to be comforting. “I think you’ll be as alive as I am.”
Baldwin sighed. “Okay. That’s good. I really don’t want to be a zombie.” He smiled and shuddered all at once. “That was fun and all, but they’re sort of gross, right? I miss my heartbeat. And breathing. I hope I’ll get those back, too.”
Fen wanted to laugh. Baldwin’s mood was never anything other than cheerful for very long. His cheeriness made it hard for Fen to be grumpy around him, and that was saying something. He smiled at Baldwin before he said, “Yeah. You’ll probably be just as alive as before, and you’re right: they were gross. I learned something that’s not in any of the movies, though.”
“What?”
“Zombies taste like dirty shoes.” Fen could almost gag at the memory.
Baldwin made a blech noise in sympathy before saying, “There they are!”
As Fen looked up, he thought he saw two black birds flying away at their approach and wondered if they were the same birds he’d seen earlier. They were leaving, though, and he wasn’t going to waste time worrying about anything that wasn’t attacking them.
Matt and Laurie were standing near the mouth of a cave. He was facing the darkened cave, and she was watching the path they’d traveled already. Even with everything that had happened, they were attentive to the potential risks. Anything could come out of that cave.
“Are the zombies still coming?” Laurie asked.
“Nope. It was like they were on rewind.” Baldwin started to gesture. He shot one hand forward, fingers splayed out like a spider with not quite enough legs, and then slowly pulled it back toward him. His fingers kicked out like they were struggling against some force. “The river sucked them in as soon as we hit the tree line.”
Matt glanced at Fen, who nodded.
“We’re done with zombies, then. Good.” Matt motioned toward the cave. “Any chance you still have that lighter?”
Fen pulled it out of his pocket.
Matt peeled off the remains of his shirt, twisted it, and wrapped it around a stick that he’d apparently picked up along the walk to the cave. He knotted the ends of the shirt, and then he held the end of the stick with the shirt on it out toward Fen. “Light it up.”
Fen flicked the lighter and held the tiny flame to the cloth. It blazed brightly. Evidently, zombie-filled acid-water was an accelerant.
Torch in hand, Matt led them into the dark cave. The air felt clammy after only a few steps, and it felt increasingly so the farther they went into the darkness. Without the torch, they would’ve been in trouble. The main path was wide enough that they could walk two across, but as they descended farther into the ground, it grew narrower.
They could hear water somewhere nearby. About ten minutes into the walk, they turned a corner and discovered why: a river of phosphorescent water raged below them.
“Whoa!” Baldwin breathed the word, dragging it out with the sort of awe reserved for the truly amazing or decidedly awful.
“Yeah,” Fen agreed.
“Good thinking on the torch, Matt!” Laurie added.
Thorsen just nodded and looked around for any other threats. The ghastly light from the river below now illuminated the whole area around them; it gave everything a sickly greenish tinge. Matt’s hand tightened on the torch.
As they walked, Fen wondered if their way through the cave was going to get more complicated, but aside from a few narrow passageways that required crawling through on hands and knees and some tunnels where they needed to stoop, they found no other challenges.
They were about to reach a narrow rocky ledge that crossed the glowing river. It looked like a natural bridge, created over many years when the water had worn away the stone. The bridge looked like it was only wide enough to walk in a single file, and it was a dangerous drop to the suspicious-looking water.
“I think we might be coming to the end. I feel… better.” Baldwin sounded more excited that usual, but that made sense: for Baldwin, reaching the end of the cave meant returning to life.
“Me, too,” Matt murmured. “It’s like the closer we get to the world, the more energy I have.”
Fen paused, realizing that Matt and Baldwin were right. He felt stronger, too. It wasn’t even that he’d felt that awful before, but it suddenly seemed like he was lighter, as if he hadn’t noticed how tired and heavy his body had felt in Hel until he started feeling better again.
“I think just being in Hel is depressing. It wears you out without you noticing.” Laurie frowned. “Do you think we’d have died if we stayed here? Right now, I feel like living is seeping back into me. Does that make sense?”
Matt and Fen nodded.
“I don’t know about you, but my mind is clearer. I’m glad you rescued me. I can’t believe I considered staying here. Death is not cool,” Baldwin announced.
In silent agreement, they all started walking a little faster then. Fen stopped at the bridge and motioned Baldwin forward. He was stronger than Matt right now, so he would take the lead. Fen would take his usual position at the back. The dead boy stepped onto the narrow bridge; Laurie was right behind him. Before Matt could follow, they heard a growl from their left. A low, long grumbling noise followed the first growl.
Fen and Matt both stopped and turned to face the sound. They stood side by side with their backs to Laurie and Baldwin, who were already on the bridge.
Fen could see two big yellow eyes looking out of the darkness. He muttered an ugly word that caused Laurie to gasp and Matt to say, “Yeah.”
“Plans?” Baldwin asked.
“Keep moving,” Matt whispered. “You and Laurie head for the exit. Fen?”
“Right here, Thorsen.” Fen kept his attention on the yellow eyes. The creature hadn’t come any closer yet, and Fen was wondering if it was waiting for the opportunity to charge at them. He was glad they were all feeling better, but better didn’t mean that Matt was at his usual fighting ability. Fen darted a glance at him and asked, “You up to this? Or should Baldwin—”
“I can do it.” Matt looked like he was thinking for a moment, and then he said, “I just need to get angry. When it tries to stop us, I’ll be angry.”
Fen let out a short sigh of relief, but he added, “This trip to Hel bites.”
“No argument here,” Matt said, “Are they going?”
Fen glanced behind him while Matt watched the glowing eyes. Baldwin and Laurie had gone several more feet, but they weren’t yet over to the wider space on the other side of the cave bridge. He told Matt as much, and then added, “I don’t want to fight over that river.”
“I know. We’ll hold it here,” Matt said, so low that Laurie wouldn’t hear. “Then once they’re across, we let it follow us onto the narrow section, and I’ll Hammer it.”
Fen nodded. It was a good plan, even if it meant facing a monster on a bridge over presumably toxic water.
The creature started to creep out toward them, and as it did, the greenish light revealed the body that went with the eyes. It wasn’t quite as big as a troll, but it was close. Mangy brown fur covered a massive body. Dirty claws clacked on the stone ground, and oversized, dripping teeth looked even grosser than they would in normal light.
Fen started, “Is that really a…”
“A cave bear?” Matt finished. “I think so.”
“Of course. What else would be in a cave in Hel?” Fen braced himself, even as the urge to run was starting to hit him. It made no sense to stand still while a giant monstrous bear from old Icelandic sagas stalked toward them—except they had to for Matt’s plan to work.
“It’s almost here,” Matt murmured. “Can you shift?”
“And do what?”
“Taunt it until it charges over to the narrow area, and I’ll use my Hammer on th
e stone and push it into the water. Stay low when I blast it.”
It took a lot of trust to follow Matt’s plan, but Fen nodded. “Got it.”
As soon as the cave bear was close enough to lunge, Fen thought he might gag. The stench of the thing was overpowering, smelling like a combination of rotting meat and an overfilled portable toilet in the hottest South Dakota summer.
And I’m going to run toward it.…
Fen shook his head at the absurdity of it, and then he shifted into a wolf and ran at the cave bear. He wasn’t quite within swiping distance when it lashed out with its claws and roared. Fen turned, twisting his body so quickly that his right foreleg hurt like he’d ripped something. He ran back toward Matt.
At the same time, Thorsen had retreated onto the narrow bridge. He stood with his legs wide, bracing himself. “Crouch, Fen!” he yelled.
As Fen dropped to his belly, Matt’s energy bolt smacked into the cave bear.
It roared again and kept advancing.
Matt backed up. “It needs to come closer!”
Hoping he wasn’t about to take a bath in that nasty river, Fen jumped up and ran at it again, and then he darted back to Matt. Still in wolf form, Fen dropped back to his belly a few feet in front of Matt.
The cave bear followed, and Matt hit it with another burst of energy from his Hammer.
A loud thump was followed by a scraping noise as the cave bear scrabbled for purchase. Immediately after that came a roar and a splash. Fen looked down at the cave bear as it dragged itself toward the bank of the river far below them. It was wet, coated in green glowing goo, but otherwise uninjured. Fen let out his breath in a whoosh. Fighting that head-on would’ve been impossible.
“Let’s go,” Matt said. “Now.”
Fen returned to his human shape, and they hurried after Laurie and Baldwin. Luckily, the others were at the gate to the living world. It hovered in the air, not quite on the rock wall of the cavern, but close enough to it that there was no way to reach behind it. It looked identical to the portals Laurie created, but permanent.
Odin's Ravens (The Blackwell Pages) Page 6