Gatekeepers

by Sam Ferguson

  “I could cut the cables,” Bjorn suggested.

  “No!” I said quickly. “We’d fall to our deaths.”

  “At least our deaths would be quick,” Arne muttered.

  “Patience, brothers,” Rolf said as he took inventory of the many weapons dangling from various belts and straps on his body. “We have not come here to die. Not today. Not until the engine is destroyed.”

  The elevator stopped and a bell rang out. DING!

  Each of us took a step away from the door and readied our weapons.

  The doors opened slowly to reveal an empty, dark hallway.

  Nothing was there.

  “I’ll hit the button,” I said. I reached for the button to close the doors once more, but just as my hand came within an inch of the panel, a dark, slimy tentacle reached in and wrapped around my wrist. It pulled me toward the hallway. Rolf was there in a flash. Steel cut through the gooey tentacle, slopping slime and black blood all over the elevator floor while the severed bit clung to my wrist and dug in with sharp suckers. I cried out as a terrible stinging erupted in my arm.

  Two more tentacles shot into the elevator. Arne stabbed one with a spear and Bjorn severed the other with his axe. There was a great hissing sound coming from the dark hallway, followed by a gurgling scrape along the marble floor. Whatever was out there was coming closer.

  I set the mithril blade down and reached for the knife that Rolf had given me. I used the blade to pry the constricting tentacle from my wrist and then I bent down to dig in Marcus’ bag. I wasn’t sure what all of the different devices were. I saw yellow and red wires, rectangular blocks of what appeared to be C4, and several different canisters and grenades. Not wanting to blow up more than I needed, I reached through the explosives and pulled a pair of emergency flares out of the bottom. I opened the top and then lit the stick. A brilliant red flame roared to life.

  As another set of tentacles came in, the three Vikings hacked and slashed, throwing slime and goo all over the floor and walls. What was worse, the severed bits writhed on the ground like leeches, hungry for our flesh and stretching out to seize us. I tossed the burning flare into the hallway, illuminating the darkness and allowing us to see our foe.

  A great, jelly-like glob of blue and black ooze swelled in the hall and slid away from the flare until the stick spun to a halt and hit the wall. I then noticed that the creature was extremely careful to stay away from the flame as it surged back toward us. I struck the next flare and pointed the flame down at one of the still writhing tentacle pieces. The limb curled away in protest as I quickly burned a hole through it. I stepped toward the opening and took a more careful aim with my next throw. The flare whooshed through the air and slapped into the side of the goo-monster.

  It hissed and moved away, but the flare was stuck to it. Smoke and steam erupted out the top and there was a sound somewhat like a whoopee-cushion as the goo seemed to deflate and fall flat to the floor.

  I turned and pressed the button to resume our descent.

  “Interesting creature,” Arne said as he wiped some of the goo from his weapon.

  “This place is filled with the creatures of hell,” Rolf noted. He then looked down and pointed at my wrist. “How is your arm?”

  I raised my wrist and saw a network of red and purple welts running down the top of my hand and around to my palm. “It stings,” I said. “Maybe it was like a large jell fish or something.” I had heard once that peeing on a jellyfish sting was beneficial, but I was not about to pee on my own hand in front of three immortal Vikings. I put the pain out of my mind, figuring it would subside eventually.

  We passed three floors and then there was a terrible tremor that shook us all so that we fell to our knees in the elevator. Something exploded high above us, and then I got that feeling you get when a roller coaster goes up and down really quickly. I would have enjoyed the sensation if not for the fact that it meant the cables to our elevator had been severed and we were still far too high up to freefall without certain death being the outcome.

  We sailed downward at an alarming speed. I could hear metal scraping and screeching outside the elevator, but we didn’t seem to be slowing. Then, we slammed to a halt. I fell backward into the wall, but was mostly unharmed. Rolf hit the floor, but absorbed the impact. Arne fell on top of him, which cushioned his blow, and Bjorn had propped his long axe up on top of the hand rails on either side, and so kept his balance. The rest of us clambered back to our feet and went to work prying the door open. Unfortunately, we hadn’t landed directly in front of any floor, and were greeted only by the wall.

  I strapped Marcus’ duffle bag to my back and after getting a boost from Rolf, climbed up to undo the access panel at the top of the elevator. It was dark in the shaft, but there were a few emergency lights flashing that offered just enough light for me to see how far up we needed to go. Luckily, we had come to rest just a few feet below an opening, so it didn’t appear to be a difficult transition. I reached down and pulled Rolf upward. Once he was up he went to work prying the doors open while I helped Arne and Bjorn climb out of the elevator. We then clambered up into an open hallway and stopped to take stock of where we were.

  “How much farther?” Rolf asked as he pointed to the number panel near the open doors.

  “I think we’re still quite a ways up,” I said with a sigh. “Another six floors if I remember correctly.”

  The Vikings checked their equipment while I dug out another couple of flares just in case the lights went out again. We moved out around to the left and searched for the stairwell access. Lights flickered in the hall and doors stood closed on either side. I looked back to Rolf and shrugged.

  “Do we just search for stairs, or do we need to clear the rooms too?” I asked. The last thing I wanted to do was walk half way down a hall only to get swarmed by vampires coming out of every door.

  Bjorn stepped up to the first door on the left and then glanced back to Rolf. Rolf gave a nod and the massive Viking kicked the door in. We all filed in after him, ready to put down anything that moved. What we saw inside made my stomach churn.

  There was a long couch along one wall, and a stone slab directly in front of it with old blood stains darkening the gray surface. Near the back of the room sat a man behind bars. He looked up at us with hollow eyes. He didn’t make a sound, he just pulled his long, scraggily hair back from his neck and then turned his head as if offering us a vampire’s meal.

  “Kill him,” Rolf said.

  “Wait, doesn’t a vampire have to choose to turn someone?” I said. “I mean, I read in books that they can feed on people without transferring their… vampire-ness.” Admittedly, I didn’t finish that statement very eloquently, but I got the point across.

  “If you get to them early enough that’s true in some cases, however, this man is obviously a long term feeder. He’s been exposed for far too long. There are dangers other than just the victim turning into a vampire. He could have all sorts of diseases that vampires carry as hosts and pass on to their victims. Besides, you could see it in his eyes. Odin’s fire has left this man a long time ago.”

  Arne walked forward and deftly thrusted his spear into the man’s heart. The man made no sound. He didn’t fight back. His body simply went limp and he fell to the floor.

  “Trust me, we did him a favor, there’s no coming back from that,” Rolf said as he slapped my shoulder. We went through the rest of the hall, checking a few more rooms as we went. To my horror, we discovered that each room held a similar cell. Some had one person inside, others as many as four or five, but the scenario was always the same. The doors would open and the victims would offer their necks willingly.

  In the interest of time, Arne stayed behind to end each prisoner’s suffering while the rest of us made a more direct line for the end of the hall where the stairs were located.

  “How can they take so many people and no one notices?” I asked.

  Rolf shook his head. “Some of them are stolen from people w
ho look for them afterwards. Others are taken from people who never noticed they existed in the first place. It is a dark evil that festers in this home.”

  We pushed into the stairwell and bumped into a pair of tall, gaunt men. We all stopped and stared at each other for a moment, and then the vampires hissed and made to lunge at us, but Rolf and I were quicker. I plunged my mithril blade deep into the first vampire’s chest and Rolf lopped off the second vampire’s head. Had I only been using a regular sword, I doubt I would have survived, but as my blade burned the vampire, the creature was unable to react before Bjorn stepped in, held up a wooden stake over the vampire’s chest, and then pounded it in with the bottom of his right fist. The vampire hissed and then fell backward down the stairs.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Bjorn sniffed and grabbed another wooden stake from his belt. With his right hand, he pulled out a warhammer and then he took the lead. Rolf put me in the middle and glanced at my duffle bag.

  “We’ll get you to the door, and then it’s up to you to finish this.”

  I nodded and we redoubled our pace running down the steps as quickly as we could without tripping. We made it two floors down before one of the access doors opened and another vampire came rushing at us. Bjorn ducked under the swipe of a sword and then came in hard, planting his shoulder square in the vampire’s stomach and driving the creature back into the wall. The vampire hissed and raised his arm to strike down, but I was there first. I thrusted my sword into the vampire’s right bicep and kept him from bringing his sword down on Bjorn. The large Viking then quickly set the wooden stake with one hand and drove it in hard a second later with his hammer. The vampire cried out in pain and then gasped his final breath before falling to the ground. Rolf took the creature’s head for good measure as we continued on our way.

  That was when the door on the floor below opened and out came three more vampires, only the first one had a pistol, and began taking shots at us. We ducked into the open hallway behind us. Bjorn threw his hammer into the stairwell as one vampire came up over the railing. The monster caught the spike on the back of the hammer in the face and fell from the railing. Bjorn then pulled his mighty axe and stepped just inside the door to wait for the next one to come.

  A shower of sparks exploded from the wall and ceiling as the first vampire kept raining bullets after us.

  “Don’t you have one of those fancy boomsticks?” Rolf asked me.

  I shook my head and raised my mithril blade. “I was prepped more for this,” I said.

  Out of nowhere we heard Arne shouting a warcry that stirred our very souls. I looked out to see Arne leaping downward from the floor above us, his shield out in front as the vampire turned to fire at him, and his spear out over the side. I was stunned by the sight, but Bjorn and Rolf were quick to rejoin the fight. Bjorn buried his axe deep in the gun-wielding vampire’s back as Arne came down and ran his spear through the vampire’s chest. Rolf spun around the mess to strike down the other vampire that had been following the first up the stairs. Black blood painted the walls, but miraculously none of the Vikings were given so much as a scratch. I stared in disbelief as Arne stood up and checked his bullet-riddled shield.

  “Are you hit?” I asked him.

  Arne smiled and shook his head. “Today is not my day.”

  A blur of black and gray movement came down from somewhere above us and pinned Arne into the wall.

  “Arne!” Bjorn shouted.

  It was too late. The valiant warrior fell to the floor, his throat ripped out by a tall, slender vampire. Bjorn cut off the vampire’s right arm, and Rolf stabbed through the vampire’s chest, but even as they hacked the monster to pieces, there was nothing to be done for Arne.

  A chorus of snarls and wicked laughter came from above. I looked up and saw a group of at least twenty vampires making their way down the stairs. Some were jumping between the flights, others were climbing down the walls and over the rails. We had just a few seconds until they were upon us.

  “Rolf, there was a glass box with a hose inside back in the hallway, can you go and grab it?” I asked.

  Rolf looked at me curiously, but I didn’t have time to explain. I grabbed the duffle bag and started fishing around for something I could conceivably use with minimal prep time. Bjorn decided that he would do as I asked and rushed back into the hall. I heard shattering glass and then the sound of the thick hose fabric rubbing against the side of the metal box and sliding along the floor as he brought it out.

  “Here, dream walker,” Bjorn said.

  “Tie it around us, we’re going to jump the last few floors,” I said.

  Rolf looked over the edge and then back up to the vampires coming for us. It must have clicked for him then, because he quickly joined Bjorn. The two measured the hose and then Bjorn hacked off what we needed. They tied one end to the railing and then looped the other around the three of us. I found what I was looking for by then and smiled.

  “All right, let’s jump!” I said. I left a small brick of pre-wired C4 on the floor where we had been and then took the remote detonator with me as we all clambered over the rail and dropped down.

  The vampires hissed and sneered as they came ever closer. Time seemed to slow as we gave in to the arms of gravity and trusted our lives to how well Bjorn had tied the hose around us. I watched as we fell, waiting for the pursuing vampires to get close enough to make the trap effective.

  What I hadn’t thought about until we were most of the way down was the fact that the C4 was likely going to obliterate the railing, and the top of the hose. Whatever support we were counting on to catch us, was going to be gone by the time we needed it. My fingers hesitated as the vampires swarmed over and around the landing we had leapt from. I could already calculate by the vampires’ speed that they would reach us before we made it to the bottom unless I hit the trigger, but there was no way of knowing if we would survive without the safety of our make-shift rope.

  One of the vampires picked up the C4 and moved to pull the wires out. Instinct kicked in. It was now or never. There was no more time for doubts.

  I pressed the button and heard the click.

  A blinding flash like nothing I had ever seen before erupted overhead. The vampires were vaporized in an instant. We fell for another couple of seconds that seemed to stretch on forever, and then finally we crashed down in a heap. We grunted and groaned. I heard snapping bones and lost my breath upon impact. Before I really knew what was happening, bits of vampire and cement were raining down all around us. I tried to move, but the hose held me tight to the other two. A piece of some vampire’s hand slapped me in the face, and then there was the heat wave from the explosion. It felt like I had stepped into a kiln for a few moments, and then everything was quiet as smaller particulate continued to fall over us.

  Rolf managed to undo the hose and free us. He reached over and picked me up, helping me finally catch my breath. That was when I noticed that Bjorn had been on the bottom. His left leg was broken in at least two places below the knee, and twisted horribly up under him. To make it worse, the jagged edge of his broken femur protruded through the side of his right leg. There was no way he was going to make it. Rolf turned the bear of a man over onto his back. Bjorn’s nose was broken and crooked, a couple of his front teeth were missing, and there was a large gash in his forehead.

  “Bjorn, I’m sorry,” I said.

  Bjorn shook his head. “We never could have outrun them,” he said. “It was the right decision.” He shakily raised a right arm and pointed to the duffle bag. “Give me one more, and I shall keep watch from here. If any more come, then I will turn them to dust.”

  “Die well,” Rolf said as he placed Bjorn’s axe in his left hand.

  Bjorn nodded. I handed the broken warrior a block of C4 and a second detonator.

  “It was an honor to know you,” I said.

  Bjorn smiled. “May Odin give you knowledge on your path, may Thor grant you strength and courage on your way, and may L
oki give you laughter as you go.”

  “Godspeed, my friend,” I replied with a nod.

  Rolf and I turned to the door behind us and made our way into the long, bare concrete hall. The familiar metal conduit was running along the corner, but it only lit a few of the lights. The portion that I had ripped out while in the dream world remained unfixed. Sparks spat out of the ragged end, hissing and popping every few seconds. We were careful to step around it as we continued toward the red door.

  We were met with no resistance here. Either everything was dead, or we had finally managed to scare them off.

  I tried the handle of the red door only to find it locked. I knelt and looked into the duffle bag. Unsure of how much to use, I grabbed the last four bricks of C4. I placed one on each hinge, and then the last one I put on the handle, figuring that would destroy all of the strongest points and let us in.

  “This will destroy mithril?” Rolf asked.

  I shrugged. “This is what Marcus brought, so I’m hoping it’s enough.”

  “Maybe use more, just to be sure,” Rolf said. He reached in and grabbed a few grenades and was about to pull the pins, but I stopped him. “What? I have seen others use this. They pull pin and then it explodes.”

  “If you put those here, we won’t have enough time to run away,” I said. “Just, put them back in the bag.”

  Rolf frowned and angrily dropped the grenades. My heart jumped into my throat for a split second as I half-expected one of them to go off with how rough he was handling them. A moment later, realizing that I was still alive, I gestured for him to follow me back to the elevator shaft. We pried open the doors and looked up.

  “Will it fall down?” Rolf asked.

  “I’m not sure, but we have to get out of the way of the blast.” I measured the cut out in the hallway and saw that we had four feet of wall we could back up against and hope the blast wave shot down the hall past us. We were about sixty yards from the door, but I had no idea if that was the right distance for safety. Still, Rolf could be right. The blast could very well shake the elevator loose once more, and then we would be pancakes. We were in trouble regardless of how we proceeded.