Ragnarok

by Michael Smorenburg

  He was certain that this peninsula and these bays were in his very recent memory.

  He had been ashore here some months ago, and briefly explored the coast. If he was right, then around the headland in the distance he would find a particularly sheltered bay.

  Oddly now, though, the more he studied the land and skyline, the less familiar it seemed. At least, he concluded, it seemed different and changed.

  He frowned as his mind worked to understand what had changed. The more he pondered it, the more doubt crept in.

  The landmass he’d left just three days earlier and this one were structurally the same but somehow cosmetically altered.

  All of the other anomalies added to his disquiet: the collection of strange floating castoff skins they were accumulating on deck, the city-sized vessel sent by the savage gods, then another vessel hauling a net jeering them as they passed, the grumbling beast locked within churning the water at its stern, and a vast village showing fires at every door.

  He wondered if Ragnarök had begun.

  Ragnarøkkr was the twilight of the gods.

  Ragnarök was the great battle, foretold. It would be the death of the gods Thor, Odin, Freyr, Týr, Loki, and Heimdallr.

  It would begin with natural disasters. Raol contemplated this fact.

  …Hadn’t they already seen the ocean suddenly change its state? he asked himself. Each man smashed from his seat? The ocean surging up and down as it had never done before? Then a vast swell marching toward them from the coast and suddenly switching and running with them as it had never done before—almost as though they had rowed over the spot where a vast boulder had been cast down?

  He saw it in the eyes of each of his men, silent and exhausted by the effort and stress. Privately wrestling tenacious foes within.

  The event of Ragnarök, the end of civilization, would submerge the world in water. Afterward, the world would resurface new and fertile. The fallen gods would return to meet the surviving ones and the world would repopulate itself by two human survivors.

  Privately, Raol knew he was too old—but perhaps his son, Gansi could be the one?

  It was possible. Every man would be pondering the same thought.

  They rounded the northerly cape and struck southward down its west coast, Raol searching with failing eyes for the bay.

  “Father!” Gansi called at last, pointing.

  And there it was, the perfect inlet Raol had remembered and was seeking.

  This was the same coast, he thought with relief, his mind wasn’t failing him.

  The bay was almost like a fjord, with a deep approach and no hint of swell lumping as it would if it ran over shoals and reefs. Raol saw at a glance that it would give them passage in the wildest weather.

  Towering cliffs either side topped by an impenetrable forest and tangle of bush above, denying the savages any chance of amassing or attacking them from that quarter.

  It would make the ideal base to attack from a distance from until Odin brought their comrades in the other boats as well, if that was his pleasure.

  The deep throat of the gully ran away, bending out of sight.

  Raol leaned on the tiller, bringing their bows about on a tack into the neck of the passage.

  As they closed the distance, more of the crag could be seen beyond it; like a keyhole, it opened to a bowl with a fine shale beach. Their vessel could go in bow-first with ample room near the beach to be swung about and make passage back out, bow into the swell.

  “Good man, Gansi. Good work.”

  They slid silently in toward the beach and ran their bow ashore with a sigh as it touched bottom. The men shipped the oars and jumped off, quickly fanning out without any need for instruction to scout the land.

  The slight dogleg of the channel and cliff overhang would make the longboat invisible from above and from the sea. The crag was excellent and as good as Raol remembered it.

  On the beach, they quickly found more of the colorful floating detritus they’d collected en route.

  It didn’t take long to discover a small trickling brook delivering sweet water that ran out through the thicket that would provide shelter from both weather and prying eyes.

  They followed it up into the throat of a gully to a pool and small cliff.

  With an eye for battle strategy, each man saw immediately that it would provide an easy bottleneck where they could defend against the savages if they came by land.

  Alternatively, it would also allow them an escape route if an attack came by sea. They would prepare and then hide a set of steps to ascend fast if the need ever arose.

  Satisfied that they had done all they could, they rested.

  Chapter 7

  Los Angeles, Malibu, CA

  Friday, 20 August

  Latitude: 34°00′20″N

  Longitude: 118°47′43″W

  “…In other developments, Japan and South Korea have put aside a naming dispute for the territory in order to ratify a statement brought before the Security Council of the United Nations insisting that North Korea stand down war exercises in the East Sea, otherwise known as the Sea of Japan.

  “Russia, in emergency meetings with the US Secretary of State, has imposed a 48-hour deadline for a report on allegations that America has implemented a HAARP-like device in the Antarctic Ocean, one thousand nautical miles south of Australia… In an unusual turn of events, Australians turned out by the tens of thousands in every city of the nation, demanding that their government establish precisely what happened last Tuesday. Our correspondent, Geoff Kaufman has more—”.

  The camera cut to a location shot.

  ‘Royal Botanic Gardens’ was displayed in the lower third title card and Sydney Opera House lay in the background of the visuals.

  A sea of seething banner-waving humanity stretched to the far distance and the anchorman smoothly took over.

  “Thank you, Kate. Underscoring Prime Minister Moseley’s endorsement of the Russian President, Australians took to the streets across the nation today, demanding answers.”

  The sun was streaming in through her west-facing front windows, washing out the TV monitor, so Tegan put the salad knife down, hit Tivo’s pause button, and went across to draw the curtain.

  She looked out over Malibu’s Dune Cove, and saw the Pacific was calm as a lake, preparing for an epic sunset. Stand up paddle boarders were taking advantage of conditions, exploring closer in where waves usually broke. Laughter and the sounds of beach life tinkled in through the windows.

  She picked up her mobile, selected messaging and found Pete’s name.

  “Hey Pete… Go to CNN, your homies are getting a little excited about us Yanks…. And, hey, listen. I’m really sorry I couldn’t make dinner, but I did warn you, I’ve been swamped. And… Jeez, yes. I ran the flight numbers like you suggested. Wow! Both planes and half a dozen boats were right in our vicinity. Just… just… WOW! I can’t even think about it, no wreckage found, like a regular Bermuda Triangle, hey. Shew. Well… Of anyone I could have gone through that with, I must say… thank you. You were great… Let’s see if we can make it work before you fly out.”

  She cut the message and admitted to herself that her pulse was fluttering so she listened to her own message again to see if the quaver had been apparent in her voice.

  He was very much her type.

  She restarted the newscast, but her mind stayed on Pete.

  She wasn’t sure if he was brave or stupid or just a very good actor, but he took the whole thing in stride, making light of it for the six long hours it took to fly across the continent to LA. Everyone was on the edge of their seats, rumors doing laps around and around Business Class, and no doubt First and Economy Classes too.

  Everyone was glued to their phones, tears were shed, loved ones loved, messages sent. The tiniest flight turbulence had sent some into hysterical terror. Sporadic outbreaks of aggression over minor disputes broke out, praying and preaching became commonplace during the long haul. TV reports had inj
ected any number of speculations into the passenger buzz.

  News of the missing planes had come in… just one; no—five! were missing.

  And then someone among the passengers knew-someone they’d called who had inside information on HAARP, and the story had spread.

  They were evidently testing it in Greenland, close to where they’d hit the turbulence and the missing planes were last seen.

  A concern over missing shipping in the area was escalating. No wreckage whatsoever had been found.

  The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, Pete had explained to Tegan, was a staple for the conspiracy nuts. It involved some or other ionospheric research program jointly funded by the US Navy and Air Force back in the 1990s, and a defense research wing of government whose name or acronym he couldn’t recall. The story, as he explained it, involved using vast arrays of antennas to change the weather, purportedly aiming to use weather as a weapon of war.

  She’d laughed most of the way through his peculiar Australian turns of phrases.

  By the time their plane had landed, Tegan and Pete had gone their separate ways—he off to a conference south in San Diego, and she to back home in Malibu.

  She’d felt emotionally drained. She’d normally have gone to show her face at the studio, but given the day’s global disruptions, most businesses had closed anyway.

  It was 9/11 all over.

  She sighed and hit ‘play’ on the buffering recording.

  Images of the rally played out before her eyes, but she heard none of it, lost as she was in thinking about Pete and the bond they’d formed under stress.

  When her brain tripped back to the present, the newscaster was just winding up.

  “…Prime Minister Moseley gave assurances that HMAS Warramunga is holding station and monitoring the situation closely. HMAS Melbourne, a Majestic-class light aircraft carrier of the Royal Australian Navy, is steaming south out of Hobart, Tasmania at this time and anticipated to join what is widely speculated to be some kind of recovery operation conducted by US ships in the area.”

  The newscast ended and cut back to the studio.

  “Thank you, Geoff…. In other news, the search area for the missing planes out of Heathrow and Schiphol since Tuesday has widened—”

  As she spoke, the scene cut to footage shot from the belly of a plane on a grid-pattern search over a lumpy, grey ocean, while a battleship grey naval vessel ran under them. A title card read, ‘Search Area: Labrador Sea, East of Newfoundland’.

  “Nav Canada, who owns and operates Canada's civil air navigation system, confirms that they had taken over control of both flights from Isavia, the Icelandic Air Navigation Service Provider—”.

  Tegan found herself sitting on the sofa again, drinking in every last detail, emotionally invested in this search operation for so many reasons.

  Her own plane had been within the same area as this search. They’d slammed into something atmospheric and survived, and she found herself mentally living out the moments of passengers on these planes who evidently hadn’t.

  The roll-call of the missing were phantoms in her mind, her narrow escape from that lineup joining her to them, wherever they may be.

  It was probably the wrong thing to do, she admitted to herself, to keep watching the drama.

  Already, the trauma of her own flight and proximity to these events was playing havoc with her mind. She found herself startled, awakening from nightmares throughout the night.

  But it was impossible to drag herself away from it. Her emotional attachment and the media obsession on every channel conspired to keep her invested.

  She couldn’t help wondering if this HAARP business had a grain of truth to it. That thought triggered feelings of suspicion about her government and its vehement denials.

  “…A spokesman confirmed that both planes were within fifteen nautical miles of one another, flying on the same westbound route. Two trawlers, a small freighter and two pleasure yachts are also missing without trace.”

  A title card reading ‘Labrador Sea’ gave the position of the planes’ last known locations plotted onto a map:

  Latitude: 47°25'.26"N

  Longitude: 50°17'.31"W

  Latitude: 47°27'.02"N

  Longitude: 50° 00'.91"W

  “…The location, some pressure groups claim, is important. They assert that it is related to the diplomatic storm unfolding at the Security Council and naval tensions still escalating off Antarctica.”

  It emphasized another gnawing worry—her parents lived on the East Coast, still in the family home in Maine.

  The thought was ridiculous, she knew that.

  It was a thousand miles south of this presumed HAARP event, but still… It was on the same coast, and if CNN saw fit to interview a man arguing as passionately as he was on-screen, that the technology had somehow reached right through the earth’s core to create a furor near Antarctica, south of Australia… Well!

  “An antipode in geography,” a shaggy-haired latter-day hippie with berserk eyes was explaining, “is any point on the Earth's surface directly opposite another point.”

  He was using a desk globe as a prop on the table with the grubby index fingers of each hand pointing to opposite sides on the globe.

  “The South Pole is the antipode of the North pole. Auckland in New Zealand,” he spun the globe putting his finger on it, “is the antipode of Malaga in Spain… Now,” he sought the spot in the Antarctic south of Australia and stuck his right index finger on it, “here’s where half the world’s navy is facing off… and here,” he placed his left index finger near Greenland in the Labrador Sea, “is where we have missing planes and strange weather anomalies… and of course… HAARP.”

  Of all the outrageous apocalyptic claims on the table, HAARP seemed to be winning the war for media attention.

  “Alright,” the interviewer nodded in agreement, “what is HAARP?”

  Tegan paused the newsfeed again and messaged Pete once more, “Pete, your favorite stalker here…. You gotta take a look at this. They have that HAARP business on.”

  She un-paused…

  “HAARP is a military weapon. They use it to modify weather, mess with satellites and even exert mind control over populations. But in this context, it’s much bigger than that. It causes earthquakes, storms and droughts….”

  The man seemed to be done, but before Bob could say anything, he swerved down another obscure tangent.

  “…You’ve got the space shuttle Columbia mysteriously exploding on re-entry—”

  “Wasn’t the shuttle disaster caused by damage to Columbia’s heat shields on lift-off?”

  “Sure… Officially… yes. But, like I say… mind control, Bob.”

  The interviewee poked his tongue inside his cheek and nodded knowingly at Bob, alluding to Bob’s credulous nature.

  “Alright,” a light smirk tugged at the corners of Bob’s mouth. “We have mind control, and I grant you that they may have me convinced that the Columbia space shuttle was destroyed on re-entry for purely mechanical reasons. Fine. But anything else?”

  “Well, Bob, HAARP caused flight MH370 to crash and the 2011 Japan earthquake, and…”

  The man seemed ready to rattle off a litany that included just about any disaster, natural or technological, that had occurred after the mid-90s when HAARP was built.

  “But surely HAARP has been decommissioned some time ago?” Bob quizzed.

  “Officially, yes,” the guest was not to be derailed by such trivialities.

  Interviewer Bob interjected, “Alright. We understand your claims. But what are they based on? What science have you got to prove the claims you’re making?”

  “Data released by NASA shows ‘some strange atmospheric anomalies’ over Japan before the earthquake of 2011.” The man put quotation marks in the air. “You can check that out for yourself. There was heating of the ionosphere above the site of the earthquake. Clear indication of HAARP. So HAARP caused the earthquake and tsunami and
the nuclear plant meltdown, Bob…”

  “Again… speculation. What actual science do you have to back it?”

  “Well, it’s all classified, Bob. That’s the whole point. We don’t have the science because they’re withholding it. But the pattern is clear…”

  “I’m not sure the pattern is clear. Not to me, anyway.” Bob didn’t use the man’s name; almost as if he was embarrassed for him. “I’m not quite sure I understand why you’re calling it a pattern.”

  “They’re disasters and they’re happening across the globe at very regular intervals.”

  “But surely that’s just disasters? Disasters have always happened at regular intervals across the world.”

  “Fine. Then look at what happened in the last few days,” the man changed tack, effectively contradicting what he had just said. “Multiple disasters at two specific sites on the Antipodes—tunneled right through the earth. You don’t see this as evidence, Bob?”

  “Well… can we be sure there was a disaster in the Antarctic…”

  “You think not? Then what’s half the world’s navies doing down there, bristling around a sea mound?”

  “I don’t think anyone knows. I think that’s the point. So far as we can tell, there isn’t anything down there for a disaster to have occurred to it. There seems to be a territory dispute, the Russians say their spy satellites picked up a US rig. Probably oil prospecting then. We just don’t know.”

  “Then again, Bob, you work for the media so you’re controlled. I understand, you can’t afford to face the facts.”

  Tegan’s mobile pinged and she gave the message from Pete a listen, “Yeah mate, get y’a tinfoil hat on… Okay… y’a on. I’ll be in LA tomorrow and have a day t’ kill. It’s a date.”

  His voice was an antidote to the rising stress the hippie on TV had managed to sneak into her mind.

  It gave her the push to mute the TV and go back to polishing her pitch.

  But first, she opened her mobile’s contacts, hit the ‘Favorites’ icon and the phone began to ring on speakerphone. She put it down next to the half-chopped lettuce and other ingredients.