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

by D. A. Roberts

  “We can try it,” I said. “Our only alternative would be backtracking all the way around the old cemetery.”

  “Waffle Road it is,” said Spec-4.

  “We’re all gonna die,” whined EMT.

  “Shut the hell up,” snapped Southard, giving him a dirty look.

  I turned around in the middle of the road. It was only about fifty yards back, and the first of the Sprinters was just arriving as we turned left next to the waffle place. I swerved and crunched the first three as I made the turn. The remaining three slammed into the side of the Humvee at full speed. I felt the impact jar the vehicle, but it didn’t cause us any damage. I can’t say the same for the zombies. Blood streaked down the passenger side rear window as they slid to the ground. Then we were heading down the road.

  Behind the waffle shop, the traffic had been thick. Abandoned cars clogged the road, but there looked to be just enough room to slowly pick our way through. We might have to knock the occasional vehicle out of the way, but for the most part it looked passable.

  “If we’re lucky, we should be able to get through,” I said.

  I should’ve known better. My luck wasn’t exactly legendary.

  We picked our way through several blocks of traffic, passing a hotel and a bunch of apartment buildings. The area was crawling with zombies. We kept going at a fairly slow pace, picking our way around cars until we were within sight of an intersection with a Stop ‘n’ Rob. There were several apartment buildings on our left hand side and I could see numerous zombies lying dead in the parking lot. At that point, I had to stop because the road was completely blocked with abandoned cars. I noticed that one of the apartment buildings had hastily constructed barricades blocking the entrances to the bottom floor stairs.

  “Hey, look,” said Southard, pointing. “Think there’s survivors in there?”

  Before I could answer, we heard a gunshot and a bullet impacted with the side of the Humvee. Then the bullets began to rain down on our vehicle from a wide assortment of weapons. I could see a group of gangster wannabe’s on the top floor balcony, shooting at us. They were using everything from pistols and shotguns, to a Tech-9 and an AK-47. EMT dove back into the floorboard and stayed there.

  “Glad we’re in an Up-armored Humvee and not my Charger,” said Southard.

  I recognized a couple of them right off the bat. I’d seen most of their faces in Bravo Pod, and had taken at least three of their mug-shots, personally. Most of them had rap sheets as long as my arm, with crimes ranging from drugs to armed robbery. One of them had resulted in the death of a college girl, but had somehow gotten thrown out of court on a technicality. Show’s what an expensive unscrupulous lawyer can do for you. Two of them had been arrested for selling dope to kids. They were both still on probation. If there really was any justice in the world, they’d all be in prison right now.

  “I know most of those assholes,” I said. “Chuck, I bet you’ve arrested most of them at one time or another.”

  “Yeah, I remember that fucker with the dreadlocks,” said Southard. “He spit in my face a few months ago.”

  “Yeah, you should be glad we’re in the Humvee. They’d have shot at a cop car, too.”

  “Don’t they know they can’t punch through this armor with gunfire?” said Spec-4.

  I wasn’t worried about the small-arms fire, but the Molotov cocktail that hit the ground about twenty yards away got my undivided attention. It wasn’t even close, but it did catch a parked car on fire. The second Molotov was much closer, but equally as ineffective. If they hit us with one of those, then armor or no armor…it was going to do some damage. It might even catch our fuel tank on fire and kill us all.

  “Wilder, light ‘em up!”

  Spec-4 popped up out of the hatch and immediately brought her M-16 up to fire. A third Molotov cocktail hit about ten yards away and she had to take cover back inside. I swear I could feel the heat of off that one, myself. But seconds later, she popped back out and took aim. Before the little gang-banger bastard could throw another one, she shot him right between the eyes. He flailed around like he was in some sort of modern-dance video and hit the ground.

  The fourth Molotov had been lit, but he died before he had the chance to throw it. It fell and exploded right next to him. There must have been numerous other Molotov’s prepared and ready, because the fireball completely engulfed the balcony that they were standing on. Three others didn’t make it off the balcony in time to avoid the conflagration. Within seconds, the fire was spreading to the rest of the top floor and licking out the windows onto the roof. Without firefighters to respond, that entire block of apartments would burn to the ground.

  Ten of these inner-city douche-bags came running out of the building, firing wildly at us. It was painfully obvious that not a single one of them was a trained marksman. We didn’t hear a shot hit the Humvee. In fact, they were such lousy shots; I was beginning to think that they were shooting blanks. They were all running towards a pair of Cadillac Escalades with twenty-one inch rims. One was white, the other black. The Escalades, that is.

  “No you don’t,” said Spec-4.

  She fired three shots into each engine block. You could see the coolant and oil pouring out of the engines. For the second time the thought struck me, “she’s done this before.” The would-be rulers of this ‘hood found themselves without transportation and their home-boy base of operations burning to the ground.

  I don’t know which of the rocket-scientists had the idea first, but they decided to charge the Humvee. Even if they had managed to overrun us, there was no way they would all fit inside. It just wasn’t possible, unless they wanted to get up close and personal with one another. Even then, it would be one hell of a squeeze.

  Spec-4 dropped back inside and slammed the hatch shut. The rejects from a Rap video came charging at us, firing everything they had. I was truly amazed that the occasional bullet actually struck the Humvee. Most of the rounds passed harmlessly by, without even a ricochet. But as badly as I wanted to see them fail, I really didn’t want to stick around the area. They were making one hell of a racket and attracting a lot of hungry undead.

  While I was trying to find an opening to push the Humvee through, a large group of zombies came around from the Stop ‘n’ Rob at the corner. It was just fifty or so meters to our west. I didn’t bother trying to count them, because they just kept coming. I had to fight the urge to get the attention of our collection of idiots and point it out to them, but I thought it would be better to let it be a surprise. It did mean that we had to get moving…and fast. Before we were surrounded and trapped.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an opening to squeeze through. So I made one. There was a little blue hatchback parked in front of me and slightly to my right. I aimed for the rear bumper and gunned the engine. Now, the contest between a little economy car and an Up-Armored Humvee is pretty much one sided. I shoved the little car out of our way and into a small group of Shamblers who were trying to get through to us.

  The ghetto fabulous crowd was still concentrating on us and failed to notice the zombies until it was too late. By then, they had all emptied their weapons in a futile attempt to punch through our armor. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling and waving at them as the zombies waded into them. Good riddance, I say.

  “I almost feel bad for those idiots,” I said.

  “Seriously?” asked Spec-4.

  “Almost,” I replied.

  I turned my attention back to driving and shot through the opening I’d created. I kept on the accelerator and knocked another little car up onto the curb, and then I was in the intersection tacking a hard left. Tires squealed as I gunned the engine, gathering momentum to punch through the crowd of zombies in the road ahead. There were still quite a few of them, but not enough to keep us from getting through.

  Once I’d scattered the zombies out of my path, I was pretty much clear to navigate. The road was thankfully clear for the next few blocks. As we passed a small hospit
al on our left, I could see that it was on fire and crawling with zombies. Several police vehicles were in the parking lot, but I couldn’t stop to loot them. There were at least a couple hundred zombies swarming over the place. A few guns and some equipment just wasn’t worth the risk.

  I hit the gas and made a quick shot south. We slowed down as we approached the intersection because of the heavy blockage on Kearney Street. The Drug Store at that corner was a veritable zombie jamboree. There were zombies everywhere. They were savagely attacking a group of people unfortunate enough to get caught in the open. Everything from little old ladies to a uniformed postal carrier went down in the massive zombie onslaught. No one was spared. One zombie was wearing a Drug Store jacket. I think it was the Pharmacist.

  One individual was running towards us and being chased by five zombies. He was in his late-twenties and had shaved head and numerous facial piercings. He was wearing a baggy Insane Clown Posse t-shirt and baggy jeans seven sizes too big on top of combat boots he’d spray painted green and orange. He was close enough to us that we could see his rotten meth-teeth and facial piercings. There were a lot of them, too. Piercings, that is. Not teeth.

  Suddenly, he lost the battle holding up his pants. He fell in a heap and they were on him in an instant. He didn’t have a chance in Hel. There was nothing we could’ve done for him, even if we’d wanted to. One of the zombies bit a huge piece out of the tattoo on his neck. It was an ugly, crude jail-tattoo with writing of some sort across his throat. I think it actually did him a favor by removing that. It was certainly an improvement.

  “Aww, man,” said Southard. “I know that douche-bag. He’s probably got enough meth in his system to kill every one of those poor zombies. Dumb bastard would be alive right now if he’d bought a pair of pants that fit him.”

  “I guess he should have bought a belt,” I said, grinning. “I know that meth-head, too. He’s a frequent flier at the jail and he’s always a pain in the ass.”

  “Wow,” said EMT. “You guys are all heart, aren’t you?”

  “No sense being broken up over it,” said Southard. “Not a damned thing we can do about it. Besides, that’s one guy that I can promise you won’t be missed. Hell, I’ve arrested him five or six times, myself.”

  “That guy has been in the jail more times than I can count,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Well, I think that’s just messed up,” said EMT.

  “We used to do the same thing in the ‘ghan,” said Spec-4. “It’s just how some people cope. You either joke or go insane.”

  “Did they eat a lot of people in Afghanistan?” asked EMT, snidely.

  “No, but how many of your friends have YOU seen blown in half by IED’s?” snapped Spec-4, angrily. “Death is death. Even when they don’t get back up, it takes its toll on people. We deal with it the best way we can.”

  “Well, it’s still pretty messed up,” mumbled EMT, pouting.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” said Southard. “I’m the poster-child for the inappropriate.”

  “And that’s why we all love you, Chuck,” I said.

  “Says the guy who laughed his ass off when that Cho-Mo took a header down a flight of stairs,” he retorted.

  “What’s a Cho-mo?” asked Spec-4.

  “Jail slang,” I said. “It’s what the inmates call Child Molesters.”

  “You’re all sick,” mumbled EMT.

  “And damned proud of it,” said Southard.

  MC Baggy Pants was getting up to join the ranks of the other side when I finally cleared the intersection. The other side was mostly clear, so I angled into the turn lane in the center and took off. We gladly left that slaughterhouse behind us and sped on south towards the jail. A small group of the dead was pursuing us, but we weren’t having any trouble staying ahead of them.

  We were approaching the next stoplight when we saw an SPD cruiser in the intersection, sitting sideways with the lights flashing. I didn’t see any zombies in the immediate area, so I slowed down to investigate. There was a liquor store on my right along with a strip mall. To my left was a garage of some sort with numerous cars parked around it. Some of them had been stripped down for parts.

  The cruiser was empty with the driver’s side door standing wide open. There was a large puddle of blood on the ground next to the open door and it still looked fresh. There wasn’t a body, though. But since I didn’t see any zombies close-by, I decided to scavenge the car. I had it firmly in my head that scavenging all the extra gear and equipment I could find would only serve to give us a better shot at survival. Besides if this really was the end of the world, then ammo would soon be at a premium. Best to get everything I could, while I could.

  “Wilder,” I said, “cover us from the turret. Southard, you come with me and let’s strip that cruiser bare. Let’s make this quick.”

  “Got it, boss,” she said, smiling at me.

  “What about me?” asked EMT.

  I clearly remembered him cowering in the floorboard while I was nearly zombie chow back at the C-store. It didn’t exactly inspire me with confidence that he would be of any use to us whatsoever. EMT was a liability, at this point. I didn’t want to just say that, but we all were thinking it. We couldn’t afford to have someone watching our backs who didn’t know how to shoot and ran at the first sign of trouble.

  “You stay put in here until we need you,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.

  “How will I know if you need me?” he asked, looking apprehensive.

  “Hell will freeze over,” whispered Southard, just loud enough for me to hear.

  “I’ll yell for you,” I said, trying not to laugh.

  That seemed to satisfy him. Spec-4 popped up out of the turret and started looking around over the sight of her weapon. Southard and I hustled to the cruiser. Neither of us wanted to be out here any longer than we had to be. We both had our weapons drawn and ready. I had the MP-5 and he had his M-16. We made a quick sweep of the interior of the car and swept around it, even pausing to look underneath it. Once we were sure it was clear, we started our search.

  “Let’s make this quick, Chuckles.”

  “Ya think?” he said, grinning.

  In less than a minute, we were back inside the Humvee and locking the doors. Spec-4 dropped back inside and sealed the hatch.

  “What’d you get?” she asked.

  “I snagged a shotgun, another Glock .40 caliber and a couple boxes of .40 ammo,” said Southard.

  “Not too shabby,” said Spec-4. “What about you, Wylie?”

  “I grabbed his gear-bag out of the trunk. That’s two more boxes of .40 caliber ammo and three boxes of double aught buckshot. I also found a set of body armor, a first aid kit and some road flares.”

  “Sweet,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of ammo for the pistols and shotguns, but not a lot for the M-16’s. We need some 5.56mm in a bad way.”

  “Yeah, I’d kill for a few more rifles,” I said. “We could damned sure use them.”

  “How many do you think you’d need?” she asked.

  “The more the merrier. We have Glocks and shotguns at the jail, but not a lot of A/R’s or rifles. Why?”

  “I work in the armory,” she replied. “I can get us into the weapons locker.”

  “Don’t you think it’ll be guarded?” asked Southard.

  “Probably not,” she said. “Most of us got shipped out to help in St. Louis and Kansas City. The few that were left were deployed to help here. If there’s anyone there at all, it’ll only be a couple of admin staff pukes. They probably all left when it hit the fan. There should be plenty of weapons and ammo.”

  “Outstanding!” I said, smiling. “Change in plans, Chuck. We’re going shopping at the armory.”