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

by D. A. Roberts

  Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. I could see Sanders spinning his turret around when the first bullets struck him in the chest. I couldn’t tell if they penetrated his armor or not, but the hits struck him like a jackhammer. It pressed him hard up against the back of the turret and he slumped forward when the hits stopped. I didn’t know how bad he was hurt, but he looked out of it.

  To my right I could hear the SAW that Griffith was on come to life. He started raking the front of the restaurant, screaming silently. He was still screaming when the first bullet stuck him in the face, followed by two more. He fell back against the turret, but his finger stayed tight on the trigger. In seconds, the belt emptied and the SAW fell silent. Griffith slid back inside the Humvee and disappeared from view.

  Bullets started chipping away at the pillar that Spec-4 was hiding behind. Southard rolled over on his back and pitched a grenade in through the shattered window. I felt the CRUMP of the explosion and saw the windows explode outward, but I still couldn’t hear anything but ringing. The firing seemed to stop then. Southard waited a few seconds, then climbed to a kneeling position and started to peek over the edge of the window.

  I could see the bullet dig a path down his cheek and take off a chunk of his ear. Southard fell back down to the ground, screaming in silence.

  “No, Goddammit,” I screamed.

  My hearing was starting to come back, and I could barely hear myself.

  “NO!” I screamed, and stood up.

  Spec-4 looked at me and silently screamed, “Get down!”

  I wasn’t listening. My rage was beyond controlling, now. I could no more stop myself than I could stop the sunset. Time slowed down and I felt disconnected from what was happening around me. It was more like watching it on TV. I walked right into the restaurant. The front doors were completely smashed, so I didn’t even slow down. I could feel the glass crunch under my feet as I entered the lobby.

  The darkness inside was blinding for a few seconds as my eyes adjusted, but I didn’t break stride. I was almost to the cash register when I saw the first of them. He was standing behind the salad bar. Everything still seemed to be in slow motion as he raised his rifle to fire at me. It was a military grade assault rifle. It looked like an M-16. All of this registered in my brain in the split second that I saw it all. Then I was reacting.

  As if of its own accord, my right hand shot down and drew the big Army Colt on my hip. I snap-drew the big .45 like a gunfighter and fired from the hip. Miraculously, my shot stuck him in the forehead and his head erupted in crimson gore as he fell over backwards. I spun to my right and fired again, taking another target in the heart from about twenty paces away. He crumpled to the floor, not moving.

  Two more came around from behind the buffet, firing as they came. I’ll never know how I avoided getting hit, but not a single bullet struck me. They weren’t so lucky, though. I fired twice and stuck them both in the center of the chest. Neither of them was wearing body armor and the big hollow points did their jobs. Both men went down in a heap to lay dead among the debris on the floor.

  Two more men came out from behind the half wall at the back of the dining room. Both were armed with shotguns. They appeared to be AA12’s. I fired first, killing the first one instantly with a head shot. The second one dived to the side and my round struck him in the shoulder. He spun in the air and disappeared from my view behind the salad bar.

  Without hesitation, I reloaded the cylinder. Then I was moving again. I headed for the salad bar and dove on the ground as I approached it. I slid on my back past the edge and into the walkway. The man on the ground did exactly what I was expecting him to do.

  He’d been aiming at about head level and fired just as I appeared. His shot went harmlessly over me, but he wasn’t so lucky. I shot him in the face at less than ten feet. By the time I got back to my feet, I could see that everyone was down. In the span of a few brutal moments, the fight was over. I still played it safe and swept the room with the pistol leveled and ready, but there was no one else alive in here.

  “Clear,” I yelled back outside.

  Southard and Spec-4 came in though the front door, both of them looking at me like I was insane. There was shock and something like fear on their faces. I could still feel my heartbeat in my temples and hear the blood rushing through my veins. The rage that was boiling inside me was now containable…if only just.

  “Are you ok?” asked Spec-4.

  “I’m good.”

  “Jesus Christ, Wylie,” said Southard. “Are you fucking insane?”

  “Probably.”

  “How many were there?” asked Spec-4.

  “Six,” I replied. “They’re all dead.”

  Spec-4 continued to look at me with wide eyes. Southard just shook his head and took in all the carnage around me. I did a quick assessment of myself and found that the only hits that I’d taken had been when we were on the front steps. My vest had saved my life, again. I would never again question the value of wearing my body armor.

  “Chuck, check the cooler.”

  “On it,” he replied.

  The adrenalin was leaving me and my hands started to shake. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, forcing the shakes to subside. I didn’t have time for them right now. The rage was subsiding, and with it went the strength in my arms. I felt weak and suddenly very, very tired. I took in a deep breath, held it for a few moments, then let it go in a rush.

  “Wylie, are you ok?” asked Spec-4, putting her hand on my arm.

  “Not really, but I’ll be fine. I just get the shakes sometimes. It’s probably the Bushmills.”

  “That’s not funny,” she said. “It’s your nerves. I’ve seen it before, in Afghanistan. You should take a break.”

  “I can’t. We have to keep going. I’ll rest when my family’s safe.”

  “You’re no good to them if you breakdown.”

  “I won’t,” I assured her.

  I could tell she wanted to say something else, but Southard interrupted us.

  “Wylie!” he shouted, urgency in his voice. “You’d better come see this.”

  I turned and headed towards the coolers at a run. Southard was standing outside the door, a grim look on his face. I slid around the corner and saw what had made him so upset. The four officers we came for were lying in a pool of blood inside the cooler. They’d all been put on their knees and shot in the head, execution style. They were all unarmed and had their hands cuffed behind their backs.

  “Why would they do this?” asked Southard.

  “I don’t know.”

  “For the food,” said Spec-4. “Look.”

  Stacked near the back door were boxes and boxes of canned goods and other supplies that had not gone bad. We’d been ambushed by a raiding party. They murdered four officers that probably didn’t care if they took the food. Everyone was doing whatever they had to in order to survive. No one would begrudge someone food. They murdered those officers in cold blood.

  “I didn’t see a truck at the back of the building when we pulled in,” said Spec-4.

  “Me either,” I replied. “They must have been waiting for their ride when we showed up. Who the hell are they?”

  “I don’t know, but they were all carrying military gear. No armor, but the weapons are all military,” said Southard.

  “They were decent marksmen, too,” added Spec-4. “Probably former military.”

  “Some sort of survival group?” asked Southard.

  “No way to know, now,” I said. “Take everything we can use. No sense going away empty handed.”

  “On it,” said Southard.

  “Go check the front,” I said to Spec-4. “See if we’re about to have company.”

  She nodded and headed out. The scavengers had been using a two wheeled dolly to move the canned goods to the back of the store. I grabbed it and loaded it up with boxes and headed out towards the front of the store. Spec-4 was waiting when I got there.

  “Looks lik
e we’ve got a large crowd of Z’s heading our way from down by the mall,” she said. “They’re moving slow. They haven’t seen us, so they must have just been attracted by the noise. If we move quickly, we should be able to load up and get out of here before they see us.”

  I just nodded and started unloading the boxes into the nearest Humvee. Wells came over to me, his face red with sorrow.

  “Weaver and Griffith are both dead,” he said. “Did you get them all?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Good,” he replied. “Now what?”

  “Help Southard grab all of their gear. We need to load up and get the hell out of here ASAP. We’ve bypassed SNAFU and TARFU and headed right for FUBAR.”

  Wells just nodded and headed inside. I could see Sanders sitting on the hood of his Humvee. Spec-4 was bandaging a wound on his left shoulder. Cal was alive, but he wasn’t going to be joining us on anymore raids any time soon.

  “Cal, it looks like Maddie’s gonna have to pull a bullet out of you when we get back,” I said.

  “Beats the hell out of the alternative,” he replied. “I’m glad I didn’t take one to the head.”

  “I doubt it would have pierced your skull,” said Spec-4, smiling reassuringly.

  Sanders just chuckled and nodded.

  “I’m ok, Wylie,” he said. “I’m still in this fight.”

  “I know, Cal,” I said. “Just take it easy until Maddie can take a look at that wound.”

  Less than five minutes later, we were closing the backs of the Humvees. We’d taken everything that we could. I had four more badges in my cargo pocket, two from the Highway Patrol and two from County. We lay the bodies of Weaver and Griffith side by side on the ground. We took their gear and equipment. I added their badges to my collection, as well.

  As much as I wanted to give them a decent burial, it just wasn’t going to be possible. We had to be pragmatic and think only of the living. As much as it pained us, we had to concentrate on survival. I put Wells in the Humvee with Heather and her kids. He wouldn’t have a working SAW, but he didn’t have anyone who knew how to use it anyway. Spec-4 and I would take his Humvee and take point. Southard and Sanders would bring up the rear. Cal insisted that he could still shoot, and I believed him. They didn’t come any tougher than Cal Sanders.

  The first of the zombies were coming through the intersection next to the Target store when we headed out of the parking lot. I could hear a chorus of Shriekers sound off just as we hit the road back. We already knew the route back to the park and it only took us a few minutes to get there.

  “We’re not going back down the railroad tracks,” I said when we reached the park.

  “Why not?”

  “That crowd of zombies on the bridge. By now, they’re all over the tracks. We just barely beat them.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said.

  “We’re going to take some back-roads. If I can get close enough to the jewelry store at Battlefield and 65, I’m going to see if we can rescue that jackass O’toole.”

  “If you don’t like him, why risk it?”

  “I don’t really have an answer for that.”

  Spec-4 just nodded as I reached for the mic on the SINCGARS.

  “Listen up, folks,” I said. “Follow me and stick close. We’re taking a different route from here. The tracks aren’t safe, now.”

  Fortunately, I knew these back streets pretty well. I headed south until we reached the first road, just past the end of the park. We were heading into residential areas and I didn’t figure there would be a lot of zombies around. We took this road east and up the hill. At the top of the hill, the houses started getting newer and nicer. I had to avoid several abandoned cars, but there weren’t very many zombies.

  This road took us all the way across US 65. I could see that 65 was blocked with cars for miles in both directions. There were lots of zombies moving among the cars, but they couldn’t get to us easily. By the time they made it up to where we were, we’d be long gone. Once we crossed 65, I took the first left. We were entering a subdivision, and I had only driven through here a couple of times when Karen and I were looking at houses for sale. I was hoping my memory was good. If we got trapped on a dead end street, we could easily get overran. I was going to have to be very careful.

  I took a left on the first street we came to and had to drive up into a yard to avoid a wreck. I continued on down this street and took the second street on the left. I wasn’t paying any attention to street names, now. I was driving purely by memory. We drove a couple of blocks and I had to smash through a group of about twenty zombies. This group was made up of what looked like families. Men, women and children dressed like the average suburbanite. I tried not to think about it too much as I plowed through them. The other two vehicles stayed right on my tail, not slowing down.

  I stayed on this street until it came to a “T” at a stop sign. I turned right and didn’t slow down. This street had more houses on it and they were newer than the last neighborhood. Their well manicured lawns and expensive houses reaped the same rewards, zombies in the driveway. Thankfully, the road was mostly clear and we made good time. Minutes later we emerged at where the street intersected Battlefield. From here, I could see the jewelry store. It was surrounded completely. There had to be five hundred zombies swarming around the building.

  “He’s done,” I said. “There’s no way we can get to him.”

  “Not without a tank,” replied Spec-4.

  I turned right and didn’t look back. I didn’t like O’toole, but I didn’t like leaving anyone to die like that. I had to avoid several abandoned cars, and took the first left I came to. I knew it would take us all the way to Sunshine. I didn’t slow down for anything, but we did keep our eyes peeled for signs of survivors. We just weren’t seeing any. We made it all the way to Sunshine with minimal contact. At Sunshine I had to decide which way to go. Turning right would take us away from town, but into roads that I didn’t know all that well.

  If we turned left, I knew that we could take the road just this side of the overpass since it ran parallel to US 65. The only problem with that was that 65 was literally crawling with zombies and they’d be able to see us. There was a fence along the road, but it wasn’t a very good one. Unfortunately, I didn’t know if it would hold long enough for us to make it to Chestnut. It was riskier to go that way but I didn’t want to risk getting lost, either.

  I grabbed the mic and keyed up.

  “Listen up, people,” I said. “I’m going to try and take the outer road along 65. It might get ugly. If it does, don’t wait for us. We’ll draw off as many as we can. You guys concentrate on getting back to the jail.”

  “No way,” replied Southard. “We all go back together, or not at all.”

  “Absolutely,” said Wells.

  “Alright, then,” I said, smiling. “Then let’s just hope this works.”

  I hit the accelerator and headed left. I could already see the intersection at Sunshine and 65 was completely blocked. There was no way to get through there. There were a shit-ton zombies in the area, too. They were formed up in a pretty large crowd. I cut right onto the side road, just as the leaders saw me.

  Even with the windows closed, I heard the horrible sound of dozens of Shriekers sounding off at one time. The road I’d taken had a lot of cars abandoned on it, but there was enough room to get through. I was able to dodge cars and keep going, but the best speed I could get to was about 35 mph. I was praying that it would be enough.