Ragnarok

by Michael Smorenburg

  “Teegs?”

  “Hello Mom. Just thought I’d call.”

  “Hello darlin’.” The melodious Irish lilt that her mother had retained always felt like a warm downy blanket of comfort as it draped over Tegan. “Was just t’inkin’ about you, love.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “In the shower. Got an early rise tomorrow.”

  “I really wish he wouldn’t… Just for a while.”

  “He’s been fishing fifty years, Teegs. This whole thing’ll blow over. Everyone’s so reactive these days.”

  “Mom… I don’t know. It’s pretty extreme. Something very dramatic hit our plane not far from you and two in the vicinity went missing. I’ve just been watching the news with a guy on about ‘Harp’ or whatever it’s called.”

  “Me too. They’re nuts, lass. All nuts.”

  “Sure, mom.

  “And yo’r new man?”

  “He’s not my ‘new man’, mom. Just a guy I met on a plane.”

  “And haven’t stopped babblin’ about ever since…. When last did y’a talk about anything other than your work? We’ve been getting worried you know. Y’re not getting any younger…”

  Her mom was right. Gaby Mulholland knew her daughter too well. Then again, moms generally do, Tegan thought.

  They were going to have this conversation about Tegan’s biological clock again, and it wasn’t one she felt like having now.

  “I just don’t think Dad needs to go out tomorrow. He’s supposed to be retired.”

  “You want to kill him? Stop him from fishing and y’ll do it.”

  “I know… And I know you’re a thousand miles from all of this, but still….” She let the thought hang, but her mom didn’t pick up on it.

  “Well….” was Gaby’s only response. “So when’re you visiting?”

  “There’s just not time.”

  “Can’t you make a gap? Bring the new man…”

  “Mum…!”

  “I’ve got your room ready,” Gaby sang her lilt enticingly. “And lobster… Dad’s sure t’ get.”

  “Well, if I come and can talk him out of putting to sea, then, yes I will.”

  “You can give it a try,” her mom’s voice had all the warmth and engagement of a salesman trying to close the deal.

  “I’ll see. Anyway, I’ve got a ton of work to still get through and I want to catch an early night.”

  They signed off.

  Chapter 8

  Los Angeles, Malibu, CA

  Saturday, 21 August

  Latitude: 34°00′20″N

  Longitude: 118°47′43″W

  The howl of jet engines and the shuddering cabin blended with the screams of the doomed.

  In their death plunge, service carts careened past, out of control down the vertical aisle toward the cockpit.

  Beyond the porthole glass, swirling ghosts of rainbow hues were on spin cycle.

  Tegan found herself clinging to the seat in front her with the desperation of a maniac.

  She looked down the length of the row and there they were, the faces of strangers now so familiar since their loss, resurrected by endless TV news repeats.

  Where Pete should be seated, sat her father, John. He turned and smiled with that bizarre incoherence from the delirious dream world… and then she realized, it was her mother’s face.

  Tegan jolted into her body as if plunging from the rafters.

  In the pitch black, the white noise of the ocean sighing gently up to the foundations of her bungalow seemed claustrophobic.

  It took a few confusing moments for reality to crystalize.

  That nightmare again!

  She snapped the bedside light on.

  The comfort of her warmly decorated bedroom came grudgingly into focus through squinted eyes in the electric glare.

  “Shit.”

  Her bedding was sweated through. Three nights in a row.

  “This is ridiculous!” she admonished herself, opening the curtain and pulling the fitted sheet back for laundering.

  Outside the window, the first flecks of dawn were beginning to gobble the stars. On impulse, she flicked the TV on.

  BREAKING NEWS—the crimson banner emblazoned the bottom third of the TV monitor.

  “BREAKING NEWS” was welded to every news logo.

  Every hour, some new obscure detail was sewn into the patchwork of a wildly confused evolving global drama.

  News tickers ran on every channel, trumpeting urgent and dire headline snippets at the foot of the screen.

  So accustomed had Tegan become to all the red splatter of threats and breathless reporting from charged-up anchors, that most of it washed past her indifferent reaction.

  Each new story had become just another rainsquall plaited into the belly of a passing storm.

  It was the headache inducing flashing blue police lights against the darkness of the night scene that pierced the veil of her swelling indifference.

  The blue lights plucked this report from the ordinary and unceasing parade of catastrophes streaming by.

  “Racist Attack,” the white title card headlined.

  The subscript gave the location, “Gussetts Cove,” a coastal hamlet on a northeast finger of Newfoundland Island jutting into the Labrador Sea.

  Newfoundland.

  Again—Newfoundland. Weird.

  Two missing planes, a handful of vanished boats, strange weather and now a ‘racist’ attack.

  What kind of ethnic community lived in Newfoundland that could even provide fodder for a racist attack?

  Tegan sank down onto the bed and hopped back in the Tivo-recorded buffer to the start of the news report.

  Nothing was making sense anymore.

  The world has lost its mind, she decided.

  “In a week of unprecedented global turmoil, Canada awoke this morning to what appears to be a homegrown terrorist attack on one of its smallest and sleepiest corners. Up in the very northeast tip of Newfoundland Island’s peninsula…” the news anchor reported.

  “…A witness to the attack claims that half a dozen attackers with the appearance of a motorcycle gang burst through the doors of a neighbor’s house just after midnight.”

  “Carrying axes, eh… We was already asleep and next t’ing there’s a ruckus o’er by the Taylor place, eh. Thought nothin’ of it. Sometimes, y’a know…? The old man at the bottle, eh. But, next thing it gets serious. I was just getting’ up to take a look, eh. Pulling on some pants, and… BAM-BAM… the shotgun. ‘Course, I ran out, eh. No moon. Can’t see much, but four-five of ‘em come hurling outta the kitchen with loads-a stuff. Gone into the bushes. Set the dog on them, eh.”

  The man looked wired up, round faced and seagoing.

  “Why do you say it was racist?” the anchor posed.

  “Well, eh? The sort that did it. Biker gang. Those white supremacists, Aryan Brotherhood sorts or whatever, eh.”

  The anchor thanked the man and confirmed that an intensive aerial search of the island had delivered no results.

  The camera cut from location back to the studio.

  “Police say they arrived a little before 1:00 a.m. and combed the area. Sniffer dogs are being flown in. It is the first incident of serious violence in thirty-seven years for the Island of Newfoundland.”

  The anchor turned in his seat to face a new camera angle. Behind him was a map with color-coded sectors that illuminated as he spoke about each in turn.

  “A decade ago, biker gangs terrorized Newfoundland, but recently the situation has spiraled out of hand on the mainland. This is the first incident where mass murder has been perpetrated on the island just across the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

  “Royal Newfoundland Constabulary’s Chief, John Robertson, confirmed that in early July a shooting in the territory was just another notch in an ongoing feud between various drug cartels. It was also linked to an arson attack in St. John's. Police say that both incidents were linked to biker gangs. This new situation seems to be a spillov
er.”

  The camera cut to Chief Robertson.

  “The situation in Central Newfoundland is fast running out of control. By the description of the assailants in this incident, we’re almost certain that there is a link.”

  “I think our viewers would be surprised to hear that there are these types of problems here. It doesn’t fit the image of the sleepy northeast fishing communities.”

  “Well…things change. A chapter of the Outlaws recently opened and within days a brawl between gang members and police officers soon followed.”

  “A brawl? Out of control? Oh, boy, Chief Robertson… if that’s ‘getting out of control’, don’t come to L.A.,” Tegan spoke to the TV.

  The news was back in studio.

  “…A spokesman on the scene in Gussetts Cove confirms that two member of the family have been found hacked to death, evidently surprised as they watched television. Police also confirm that a gun known to be owned by the residents was fired during the attack. The shotgun was found on the scene along with a large amount of blood not matching the victims and believed to be from one of the attackers.”

  Again, the anchor re-oriented and a new camera angle picked him up.

  “The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, announced a combined initiative to track down and eliminate organized criminal activity, especially linked to the violent Hells Angels and Outlaws Motorcycle Clubs.”

  The anchor shuffled a paper.

  “In other news…”

  Tegan hit the mute button and the newscast went about its silent business.

  She couldn’t afford to be distracted for the rest of the morning, as she knew she would be by whatever other calamities had befallen the world or developed during the night.

  Back from the kitchen, she lifted the lid on her laptop and swallowed a gulp of medicinal strength coffee. Sixty-three new emails awaited her attention. She sipped and scanned the sender list.

  One in from her mom confirmed in sarcastic terms that, “Dad managed to survive another day at sea.”

  “Yay, mom… But have you seen the news today?” she spoke to the screen. “Well, at sea he couldn’t be safer from the Hells Angels, could he Teegs?” she spoke back to herself in her mother’s voice.

  A message from Pete said he’d concluded business in San Diego and, by all accounts, turned Tijuana inside out and drained it of all surplus tequila.

  “Hmmm…” she contemplated. Bragging to the lady you’re trying to swoon about your constitution for alcohol that has the properties of paint stripper is probably not your best foot forward, dear handsome Pete.

  As soon as all funerals had been held for the killed-off brain cells, he joyfully reported, he would be up later in the day for their dinner date. As far as he was concerned, dinner was a foregone conclusion.

  “We’ll see,” she said. But the flutter of her heart betrayed all pretenses at playing cool.

  An email was in from Lynne Sunter.

  Tegan had worked with Lynne five years earlier, producing an award-winning documentary on the implementation of a giant astronomical antenna network in Southern Africa that had caused a ruckus of discontent for all parties involved.

  “Hey girl… how’re you doing?” it read. “Ages since we talked. Heard you were on a flight the day of ‘The Incident’…. Tell me about it.”

  As the Challenger Disaster and 9/11 had entered common language as specific events, events that anyone could relate to and tell you where they’d been standing or what they’d been doing at the instant they’d occurred, so too The Incident meant one event only. The day the earth had shuddered and the planes had gone missing.

  Inside of a week, the incident that had united the world in shock and confusion had a name. ‘The Incident’ was all one need mention and everyone knew what was meant.

  “When’re you going to get with social media? We should do something together again. All the best, L”

  “Time wasting social media? Well… never,” Tegan laughed at the notion and then hit “Reply” icon.

  “Hello, Lynn,” she typed. “Yeah, quite something. You may have heard, three years ago I got a big-deal executive position with Sony Pictures. Hating it. Cash is great, but hankering for another doccie. If you see an opportunity, I’ll take a sabbatical.”

  She hit Send.

  And then she saw something on TV that jarred her, something that made the hair rise along her arms and roiled her to her core. She snatched up the remote and raised the volume.

  “…found just near the beach. There is blood spatter on the head but also blood on the handle. The axe is being taken away for forensic testing.”

  She rewound to the start of the segment.

  The police dog had sniffed along the trail and found an axe of peculiar design; a long haft, with a remarkably small, scalloped head.

  Evidently it had been used in the attack, its head and shaft both covered in blood and gore.

  It struck Tegan like a gong to the temple and her brain seemed to vibrate like a tuning fork to the thought.

  Was this the story for her and Lynne?

  Was this connected… somehow… somehow? Was it somehow connected to ‘The Incident’?

  It just seemed so unlikely, yet her instincts were screaming against all logic and reasoned thought that there was something here.

  She hit Reply, to write to Lynne again.

  Hey, L. I think I have it!

  Chapter 9

  Viking Encampment, near Biscayan Cove

  Saturday, 21 August

  Latitude: 47°48'08"N

  Longitude: 52°48'21"W

  The first raid on the savage skræling had been a disaster.

  For two days, Raol had watched the sky and Odin had repeated that signal over and over, drawing his finger across the roof of the world toward the other side of the bay.

  But now it was confusing. Right overhead, came swift birds or perhaps dragons of mythology of a kind never seen on this earth in his lifetime. With great roars they went this way and that. Four counted on the first day and three on the second.

  The Norsemen kept a low profile, hiding from these devils.

  No doubt, the skræling had powerful spells and had perhaps brought these flying creatures from the nether world, from their dream state.

  But the time had come to strike back, and all but two of the men went out on the first raiding party.

  They went at night, the moonless sky giving cover to their dark vessel. The pull of oars and silent slip of their longboat through the inky flat sea of the enclosed bay giving no hint of their approach.

  They reached the opposite shore where they had seen the camp lights every night before—not too many foes to deal with, but enough to announce that they were back.

  Enough blood could be spilled tonight to make Odin proud. Enough casualties to make a first statement of war, but sufficiently few enemies to handle easily.

  After it was over, the savages would rush to that place to defend it against further attack, so the next raid would be elsewhere. This, Raol had already planned well ahead of time.

  They’d come ashore quietly and knew immediately that the savages were not anticipating them. Although every tent seemed to have a fire within and at its door, nobody was about, no sentries had been posted.

  Good.

  They turned the longboat’s bow back out to sea to give them a rapid withdrawal after the attack.

  Raol posted two of his seventeen men on the boat, each to keep watch and a keen ear. As they went, he posted more men to guard and cover their flank and retreat if they were ambushed.

  He’d picked the first dwelling they came to and was immediately alarmed by its structure.

  It wasn’t a skræling tent.

  It was like nothing he’d seen before; not the tall tents of the savages and not made of earth like a Norse longhouse either.

  No.

  These looked strange. More like wooden boats… the walls… clinker design
with overlapping plank cladding.

  Underfoot, grass not growing high but sickle cut low in a uniform short fashion such as he had never seen before either.

  Then roads.

  He went down on a knee and scratched at the surface. It was hard as rock. He rubbed it. No grit.

  There was a boat, considerably smaller than their longboat. It stood on a cart upon wheels.

  He instantly appraised it in what light there was and recognized it as a beauty in design. It would be swift, but it puzzled him also. There were no oars, no ports through the gunwale to hold the oars, no sign of a mast or place for one. No seats for rowing.

  At its stern, were fixed two great monstrosities like battering rams. Perhaps that was the bow on this vessel, he pondered a second. What else could these things do but to ram into foes? But rams on a blunt stern made no sense.

  He approached and gingerly reached out. They were icy to his touch, cold as the steel of his blade or axe.

  He pushed one and it rocked. Locked to the other one as it was, they both rocked together. They seemed not fixed fully to the boat but hinged, not a part of the boat but fixed to it on some kind of a frame.

  It was puzzling.

  Both had a star of some kind at their ends that was loose when he touched it. As he experimented, he found it could turn around on a shaft.

  His men looked frightened now.

  These were not the shores they had left a week ago. They had come to a familiar place, but utterly different.

  Now the fire up near the house had his attention. The fire above the door. It did not flicker, it had no tongues of flame—it just burned bright and steady.

  This was strange magic indeed.

  He approached and came around the side—and within the dwelling, a blue light danced.

  A blue fire perhaps?

  In this strange world, that seemed possible.

  Terror gripped his heart, but he knew his men and his son were looking to him for strength. He knew that Odin was judging him, so he crept forward, and they matched him a step behind—five of them, the rest at the boat and strung out along the path they’d taken.