Ragnarok Rising: The Awakening (Book One of The Ragnarok Rising Saga)

by D. A. Roberts

  “Well, I can’t honestly say about Shu, but I know for a fact that Henderson was never in the military. I heard they wouldn’t take him. Something about a spine requirement.”

  Henderson just shot me a dirty look, but didn’t say anything. Shu chimed in about then, laconic as expected.

  “Air Force. Germany. Mid ‘90s.”

  It was the first thing Shu had said since we’d left the Justice Center. Right about then, a fresh round of gunfire erupted from Fair Grove and we all turned our attention back that way. This time, the firing was less sporadic and more concentrated. Someone was laying down some serious firepower inside the small town of Fair Grove.

  “Forget Fair Grove,” snapped Henderson. “Our assignment is to keep 65 closed. Fair Grove is the responsibility of Fair Grove P.D.”

  “There’s just one problem with that,” said E-2, through clenched teeth.

  “What’s that?” returned Henderson, turning to face him.

  “I don’t take orders from you, asshole,” snarled E-2, anger flashing in his eyes.

  E-2 got in Henderson’s face and started poking him in the chest with his finger.

  “I’m in charge here,” whined Henderson.

  “Sure, you are,” said E-2 acidly, “of them. I don’t fucking answer to you and I can’t understand why they do.”

  He was gesturing at me and Shu.

  “You’re a complete moron who couldn’t lead a fly to shit.”

  “Alright, you two,” said Spec-4, breaking them apart. “Knock it off.”

  “Yeah, back off Rickie,” I said, moving to assist Spec-4.

  E-2 stormed off and took his position back beside the Humvee. Henderson just glared at me and stomped off, muttering under his breath. By unspoken agreement, Spec-4 and I stood between them to prevent anything else from happening. Personally, I would have been happy to see E-2 knock the crap out of Henderson. It would serve the little jerk right, to get knocked on his butt and taught a lesson. For the moment at least, we had bigger problems to deal with. All of that gunfire couldn’t mean anything good for us.

  There was a tense silence that followed for the next half hour or so. We watched the road, we watched the town and we watched each other. Henderson did his best to look tough, but none of us were impressed. He strutted around like a little banty rooster. His attempts to act tough were humorous at first, but started getting old quickly. Henderson glared daggers at all of us, when he realized that no one was taking him seriously.

  At one point, I looked at Shu and whispered, “I swear, I’m gonna knock his damned teeth out if he doesn’t cut it out.”

  Shu just shrugged and nodded in agreement. He shot Henderson a dirty look and went back to watching the road north of us with binoculars. This went on for a few moments longer, when I felt Shu tapping me on the shoulder. I turned to look at him to find him still looking through the binoculars and pointing to the north. I could see a few dots on the horizon. They were too far away to see details but they were flying. Shu handed me the binoculars and I took a peek.

  “We’ve got inbound choppers,” I said to the group.

  “How many?” asked Spec-4.

  “Several,” I answered. “They’re too far away to tell.”

  We watched in silence as the choppers got closer to our position. There were several of them flying in formation. I counted six Blackhawks, four Chinooks and two Apaches. The Blackhawks are your basic utility chopper for carrying anything from supplies to troops. The Chinooks were cargo choppers and they each had a large conex box dangling below them by cables. The Apaches are gunships built solely for combat. The noise of their rotors was now so loud that we had to yell to be heard above it. They weren’t more than a hundred feet off of the ground.

  “Those aren’t ours,” said Spec-4, indicating the National Guard. “We don’t have any Chinooks or Apaches.”

  They were heading almost due south from us, following the path of the highway. They didn’t slow down and ignored us when Spec-4 tried to signal them from the radio in the Humvee. It didn’t take long before they were well past us and the sound was slowly fading away.

  “Think they’re heading for the Evac-center?” asked E-2.

  “No,” I answered. “They’re heading the wrong way for the airport. I don’t know where they’re going, but it ain’t the Evac-center.”

  We didn’t see or hear any more aircraft after that. We sat in a tense silence, nervously anticipating whatever was going to happen next. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we were pretty sure that it wasn’t going to be good. At about 0945 hours we got our first look at the “rioters.” E-2 was standing up and pointing back towards Fair Grove. They were coming our way. The video on the internet didn’t even come close to doing them justice.

  “Here they come!” yelled E-2.

  Even from a couple hundred yards way, we could see they weren’t right. They didn’t move right and seemed to be stumbling along. Some of them were covered in blood. They didn’t scream. They didn’t yell. They just came at us and they were faster than I thought they should be, too. The silence was really terrifying. I think I would’ve almost preferred it if they’d been screaming.

  “Lock and load!” I found myself yelling, my voice booming above the crowd.

  “Hey, Grant,” snapped Henderson. “You don’t give the orders around here. I do!”

  At that point, I had reached the limit of my considerable patience with that little turd. I turned around and worked the action on my shotgun. In one swift motion, I stuck it to Henderson’s forehead. My finger was tight on the trigger as I thumbed the safety off. Henderson’s eyes were wide-open with fright as I pressed it tight against his skull.

  “Listen to me, you snot-nosed little shit,” I hissed through clenched teeth. “This isn’t a fucking game. This is for real, and I won’t be led to the slaughter by a complete moron like you. You’ll do exactly what I say, when I say, and how I say or I swear to the Gods, I will fucking end you. Do you understand me?”

  The color drained out of Henderson’s face. I could tell he wanted to say something, but the look in my eyes told him he’d better think twice about it. He just swallowed hard and slowly nodded. Since he was wearing dark colored pants I couldn’t be sure, but I think he pissed himself. I swear I could smell the acrid stench of urine. I gave him a little shove with the barrel of the shotgun and he backed away from me, slowly. The shotgun never wavered from where I was aiming.

  “When this is over, I’m reporting you to the Sheriff,” he said, almost under his breath.

  His tone was like a child threatening to tell on an errant sibling.

  “Knock yourself out, asshole. Now everyone get to the other side of the barrier! Move!”

  As everyone repositioned themselves, Henderson began to recover some of his composure. He still reeked of urine, but at least he was moving. He went to the trunk of the Charger and got out his bullhorn. Once safely behind our makeshift barrier, he keyed up the bullhorn and shouted at the oncoming crowd now less than two hundred yards way.

  “Attention rioters! You are in violation of local, state and federal law!”

  “Sick ‘em, Barney,” muttered E-2.

  As they closed to within one hundred yards, we began to clearly see the horrific bloody wounds that were evident on most of them. These were not the slow-moving, plodding zombies that I saw on the old movies. They were fast, terrifying and quickly eating up the ground in between us. I felt like someone had just poured ice water down my spine.

  “Mary, Mother of God,” whispered Shu, crossing himself.

  “Attention rioters!” shouted Henderson. “By order of the Nathanael County Sheriff, you are hereby ordered to cease all violent activity and disperse immediately!”

  “Wow,” said E-2, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “I bet no one ever thought of ordering them to cease and desist before. What a dumbass.”

  “If you do not disperse immediately,” yelled Henderson, “we are authorized to use deadly forc
e.”

  “I really don’t think they’re listening to you, idiot,” said Spec-4, glaring at Henderson.

  I counted well over forty of them and they were closing fast. My heart felt like it was about to beat its way out of my chest. Shu and I exchanged a quick glance. I could tell that he felt about the same way I did. Henderson climbed onto the hood of the Charger and started to raise the bullhorn to his mouth, again.

  Spec-4 threw me a look that seemed to say, “Want me to drill him for you?”

  I had to think about it for a second, but gave her the, “We might need him” look and a slight shake of the head. Henderson kept screaming orders at the advancing zombies as they closed to within fifty yards. Somehow, the zombies paid even less attention to him than we did.

  “You two,” I shouted, indicating the two guardsmen. “Start picking your targets! Keep it on semi-auto and conserve your ammo! Fire when ready!”

  Henderson whined at us, “Do NOT fire until I give the order! Don’t listen to him! I’m in charge, here!”

  Thankfully, everyone ignored him and took their cues from me. If we’d have followed Henderson’s orders, we’d have all died. Spec-4 and E-2 began squeezing off shots. Their first few shots hit center mass, just like they were trained. I found myself falling back on my Army days and calling out orders in my loudest command voice. It was the same voice I used in a Pod when I wanted the inmates to do what I said. No one put me in-charge, I just knew that someone needed to be. Someone other than Rickey Henderson, that is.

  “Hit the heads!” I bellowed. “Shoot the goddamned heads!”

  The next few shots dropped their targets, and this time they stayed down.

  “Shu, don’t shoot until you’re sure of your target! That Glock doesn’t have the range of their M-16’s.”

  Shu just nodded as I placed my shotgun on the hood of the Charger and lay my extra magazines for my Glock next to it. Then I took up a Weaver Stance with my pistol, legs shoulder width apart and left foot slightly forward. My left hand was cupping the bottom of my right hand on the pistol. I noticed that Shu was using a different method for his pistol. He held the pistol firmly in his right hand and braced his wrist with his left. I didn’t have time to give him shooting pointers, but his way gave him less control of his weapon.

  As the zombies closed to within 20 yards, their numbers had been reduced to about 30. Henderson finally got the point that they weren’t going to follow his orders and drew his sidearm. He started shooting as soon as his weapon cleared the holster. He was in a near complete state of panic and pumped an entire magazine into the chest of the nearest zombie. It had no effect, other than to make it stumble but not fall.

  Shu and I opened fire and for the life of me I can’t figure out why I did it, but I shot the zombie that was about to grab Henderson. I let fly out of instinct and hit the bloody postman with the Mogadishu Drill. My shots hit it twice in the chest and once in the middle of the forehead and it dropped like a stone. Shu was being calm, selecting his targets and conserving his ammo. That was good. Shu also looked a hell of a lot calmer than I felt.

  “Henderson, aim for the head, you dumbass!”

  Henderson was still in full blown panic-mode as he tried to change the magazine with fingers that appeared numb. He managed to drop the empty magazine and fumbled for another one from his belt. He was completely oblivious to the zombies that were nearly on top of him. The rest of us were making steady progress, but our accuracy was down to about one kill for every four or five shots fired.

  It’s one thing to put fifteen rounds from a Glock into the 10 ring on a paper target. And it’s quite another thing entirely when the adrenalin is pumping and you’re facing targets that will eat you if they get close enough. To say we were scared was the understatement of the century. That’s right about the time that Henderson decided to try and run for it. He dropped his pistol and jumped off the hood of the Charger. He didn’t make it very far.

  “Get back here, you idiot,” I yelled as my slide locked back.

  I had to take my attention off of him to reload. While I changed magazines and dropped the slide, I heard a blood curdling scream. I looked up in time to see two zombies, one a young girl of about 15 and the other a big hillbilly in bloody over-alls, drag Henderson to the ground. Before I could get off a shot, he was completely covered with zombies. His screams abruptly began to gurgle and then cut off entirely.

  “Henderson’s down!” I called out.

  “Changing mags,” yelled E-2 from the other end of the barricade.

  “Hold the line!” I screamed, and returned to my own shooting.

  “More approaching on our nine!” yelled Spec-4.

  “There’s a fuckload of then, too,” called E-2.

  I stole a quick glance to my left and swore at what I saw. Another group, this one much larger than the one we were facing, was rapidly approaching. There were probably close to a hundred of them, maybe more. They were still a few hundred yards out and I knew we had only a couple minutes before we’d be overran completely.

  E-2 returned to the firefight, after loading a fresh magazine. We were making good progress when suddenly E-2 went down screaming. A zombie had crawled under the Humvee and pulled him down. It was savagely taking chunks out of his legs and he was bleeding profusely. I mentally named those kind Crawlers. I don’t know why that came to me right then.

  Spec-4 snap fired a quick shot and blew the back of the skull off of the Crawler, but the damage had been done. E-2 was screwed and we all knew it. The slide locked back on my final magazine in the Glock and I dropped it without hesitation. Quickly, I snagged the big Mossberg off of the hood in front of me. Then I let fly with the lethal .00 buckshot as fast as I could work the pump on the shotgun. I emptied the 8 round tube in less than twenty seconds, the last round taking the head completely off of Henderson as he stood back up.

  I saw all of this like it was in slow motion. Henderson had only been recognizable by the gray uniform that he wore. Most of his face had been chewed away and he was covered in blood. Shu was falling back towards me as the last few zombies began to come through the barrier. We needed to get the hell out of there, in a bad way. Screw the roadblock.

  “Cover me, I’m reloading,” I yelled.

  “Last mag!” answered Shu.

  “Grant!” called Spec-4.

  I looked up in time to see Spec-4 toss E-2’s M-16 at me. I dropped the shotgun and caught the assault rifle with my left hand. Although it had been years since I’d fired an M-16, it all came flooding back to me in an instant as I shouldered the weapon and shot the last three on our side in quick succession.

  “Clear!” I yelled.

  “Clear,” echoed Shu.

  “Not for long,” yelled Spec-4. “The next group’s inbound and closing fast.”

  150 yards and closing

  I assessed the situation as fast as I could, my mind racing from adrenalin. The Humvee was definitely the better choice. It was a 4 wheel-drive and it held more gear. But the best of all, it was armored. Once we were inside and locked down, they shouldn’t be able to get to us. The Charger couldn’t offer that kind of protection.

  “We can’t hold. We’ve got to fall back. Grab everything you can and get in the Humvee.”

  Both Shu and Spec-4 jumped into action instantly. I ran around the area and snagged all of the fallen guns, including Henderson’s. I yanked his duty belt off and took his radio, too. Then as an afterthought, I ripped the silver badge off of his chest and stuck it in my pocket. Shu grabbed the range bag full of ammo off the top of the Charger and headed for the Humvee.

  100 yards

  Spec-4 started to drag E-2 towards the back of the Humvee when she noticed he wasn’t moving anymore. One of the bites had severed the femoral artery. E-2 was dead. Unlike Henderson, E-2 would be missed. Pausing only long enough to sigh and shake her head, Spec-4 started pulling the gear off of him. Deftly, she removed the Interceptor vest and extra equipment. She tossed them to Shu, who p
ut them into the back seat of the Humvee. Then she grabbed her own gear and headed for the front seat. Shu leaned over to pick up E-2’s helmet just as I saw his eyes open.