Ragnarok Rising: The Crossing (The Ragnarok Rising Saga) (10 page)

Spec-4 came in dragging Becca’s stuff with her own. Becca was nearly catatonic now, mumbling incoherently and sobbing. I could hear debris from the roof falling onto the ceiling right above us when I finally got the lock to break free. Yanking the door open, I stared down a darkened concrete stairwell. Flipping on the light switch inside the door, the lights along the stairway began coming on and illuminated our way down into the ground beneath the building.

“Get everyone inside,” I shouted, no longer concerned about the noise.

Elliott grabbed Becca’s gear and headed down the stairs. Spec-4 grabbed Becca’s weapon and headed down behind Elliott. Southard and I grabbed Becca by each arm and tried to lift her. She screamed and pulled away from us. Before I could grab her again, she dove inside the bathroom and shut the door, locking it behind her. Above us, I could hear the scratching of fingers on the ceiling. They were inside the building. Our time was officially up. We had to get inside the cache or die here.

“Damn it, Becca,” I snarled. “Open the fucking door! We can’t stay here!”

“We’re gonna die if we stay,” yelled Southard, aiming his weapon at the ceiling.

“Open the damned door!” I bellowed.

“Wylie!” shouted Spec-4. “You’ve got to get down here, now!”

“They’re coming!” yelled Southard.

He fired a round through the ceiling and I heard a snarl from one of the
Stalkers
. I knew he’d hit one, but it didn’t sound like a kill-shot. I could hear more of them scrambling up the outer walls and onto the roof. Soon, they would be swarming inside and we would be screwed.

“Go on!” I shouted to Southard. “I’m not leaving without Becca.”

“You go with me or we both stay!”

“Fine,” I snapped and let my M-4 drop around
my neck by the strap. “I’m breeching this fucker.”

Grabbing my shotgun from my pack, I quickly flicked off the safety. I knew there was already a round in the chamber. Southard stepped back and got ready. Bringing the shotgun up to my shoulder, I fired three rounds in quick succession. BANG! The first round destroyed the bottom hinge. BANG! The second round took out the top hinge. BANG! The third round obliterated the lock.

As I pumped another round into the chamber, Chuck stepped forward and drove his heel into the ruined lock, knocking the door off of the hinges and into the room. Becca screamed as the door crashed down on top of her. With a quick motion, Southard tossed the door aside and grabbed Becca. She screamed and started clawing his face. I could see that she drew blood beneath his left eye and he recoiled from her.

I’ve never been one to hit a woman, but this called for drastic measures. I stepped inside the door and punched her in the face. Her head snapped back and she went slack as her eyes rolled back in her skull. She was out cold.

“Grab her and I’ll cover you!” I screamed.

“On it,” yelled Southard, pulling her up into a fireman’s carry across his shoulders.

I looked up in time to see the snarling face of a
Stalker
emerging through a hole in the ceiling. Extending the shotgun with one hand, I shoved the barrel in its mouth and squeezed the trigger. The resulting explosion sent the creature back into the darkness above. Instantly, several pairs of hands appeared in the opening and began pulling out pieces. The hole was getting bigger by the second.

Southard entered the stairwell,
going slowly so he didn’t fall down under the added weight of the unconscious Becca. As soon as he cleared the door, I stepped inside and started to shut the door. I almost had the door all the way shut when two sets of hands grabbed the door from the other side. I hadn’t seen any of them drop through the hole above me, so they had to have made another hole in one of the other rooms. Now it was a life and death game of tug of war.

I pulled with all my might, but their combined strength was more than I could match. They were coming inside and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. If I let go with one hand to try to shoot, they would overpower me. A ruined face of a
Stalker
appeared in the opening, inches from my own. I could smell the rancid stench of it as it tried to bite me. The teeth were snapping open and shut with force, mere inches from my left cheek.

I felt a tug at my belt, but barely had time to register the touch when I saw my Army Colt appear over my left shoulder and the barrel press against the forehead of the creature now scant centimeters from my face. All I could do was close my eyes and cringe away as the thunderous report of the big Colt exploded near my left ear.

Instantly, I felt the door lose some of the resistance that had been keeping me from closing it. With a final scream, I pulled with all I had and heard the metallic clang of the door slamming shut. Whoever had shot over my shoulder reached past me and locked the bolt. On the ground near my feet were the severed fingers of whichever
Stalker
had been pulling against me.

With a massive ringing in my ear, I turned to see who had saved me.
I looked into the smiling face of my son. Elliott had come to my rescue. Handing me my pistol with a smile on his face, I could only take the gun and grab him in a bear-hug. I had promised my wife that I would take care of him, and here I was with him saving my butt.

“Well done, son,” I said, hugging him tightly.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling.

Our brief reverie was shattered when the dead began throwing themselves against the door. It opened outward, but I wasn’t sure if they would be able to get inside or not. They were relentless and far more dangerous than any type of the dead that we had faced before. I wasn’t going to take any chances. With my ear still ringing, we headed down the stairs.

“Let’s get inside the cache,” I said. “I’m sure that door will be heavier.”

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I found just how right I was. The door looked like it belonged on a bank vault. It was surrounded with what I would guess was steel-reinforced concrete. It would take a team of demolition experts using heavy explosives a week to blast through that door. If I hadn’t had the code book that First Sergeant Gregory had given me, there was no way in the nine worlds that I was getting through that door. That meant that the zombies weren’t coming through it either.

Behind us, I could hear the frantic pounding of the dead as they tried to batter their way through the door. I wasn’t sure how long it would hold, but I didn’t want to stick around to find out, either. The only thing I was certain of at this point was that I wasn’t willing to bet my life on that door. We had to get inside the cache.

Reaching into my cargo pocket, I removed the green notebook and began going through it carefully.
There were three locks on the door and they had to be opened in the correct sequence. Otherwise, the door would seal and it wouldn’t open at all until the locks reset themselves. According to the book, you got one shot per day. The problem was if I got it wrong, I doubted we had twenty four hours to wait. I was willing to bet that we only had a few more minutes.

With a quick prayer to the All-father for guidance, I selected what I thought was the first lock. Just as I was about to begin turning the dial, Elliott stopped me.

“Wait a sec, dad,” he said. “Isn’t that the locking handle here?”

He was pointing at the picture on the diagram in the book. I stared at it a moment and concluded that he was right. Turning the book so that the handle and the locks lined up with the layout on the door, I realized that I had been about to turn the wrong lock.

“Nice catch, son,” I said, nodding my approval.

With a sigh, I started turning the first dial. There were six digits in the combination, unlike the usual three on a normal lock. I was sweating profusely despite the damp chill in the air as I finished the combination. I swallowed a lump in my throat and released the breath I didn’t realize I was holding as I heard the lock clunk into the open position.

“Wylie!” shouted Southard. “You might want to hurry. I don’t think that door is going to hold much longer.”

“Gee, no pressure there,” I muttered as I went to work on the second lock.

I could hear the door at the top of the stairs groaning under the onslaught that was being brought against it. It wasn’t going to be much longer before they were launching themselves down the stairs and onto our backs. Spec-4, Southard and Elliott shouldered their weapons and got ready to fire while I went to work on the last lock.

What felt like an eternity later, the last lock clunked open
. The door slipped free slightly from the positive air pressure on the other side. I swung the door open, revealing a grey painted hallway beyond. It led away from the building above us and into the side of the bluff. We were inside the cache. Behind me, I could hear the door screeching as it began to give way.

“Everyone inside!” I shouted.

Spec-4 and Southard kept their weapons up as Elliott and I quickly dragged our gear and the still unconscious form of Becca inside the door. Once we were all inside, Southard and I began to pull the heavy steel door shut. I glanced up to see the door at the top of the stairs collapse under the weight of what looked like more than a dozen of the dead. They poured in through the opening and started bounding down the stairs, taking them almost a dozen at a time.

With a primal scream, I threw my weight into pulling
the door shut. We had less than two inches to go when the first of the
Stalkers
slammed into it from the other side. The force of their impact shoved the door the rest of the way shut and I swung the heavy lever on the inside of the door, locking it firmly from the inside. The door was so thick, we could barely hear them slapping futilely against the other side.

We were safe inside the POMCUS cache. They couldn’t get inside, but it struck me that we couldn’t get out, either. Our salvation was about to become our tomb.

“Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price.”

- Sun Tzu

The hallway that stretched out behind us looked to be about forty yards long. There were red and yellow lines painted on the floor and doors along both sides of the hall, spaced about thirty feet apart. The doors were painted different colors, but I had no idea what that signified. The first two doors on either side were painted yellow.

I motioned for Spec-4 and Elliott to stay put and watch Becca, while Southard and I headed down the hallway with our weapons ready. Just because the
Stalkers
couldn’t get through the door didn’t mean that there wasn’t another way inside. Complacency would get you killed and we couldn’t afford to let our guard down. We had to clear this place before we could relax.

I paused beside the first door and nodded to Southard. He readied his weapon and we both clicked on our tactical lights. I turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, revealing the darkened room inside. We swung our weapons in and cut the pie, sweeping the room. There was a desk and large quarters for a single occupant. It also had a door that led to a private bath with a shower.

“Senior Officer’s quarters,” said Southard. “Very nice.”

We swept each door, one at a time. Directly across the hall, the room was very similar. I figured they were for the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer of whatever unit took possession of the cache. The next two rooms, behind red doors, were set up with four desks and sleeping quarters for four. Junior officers quarters, I assumed.

The remaining four doors were blue. The first two blue doors were very similar to the junior officer’s quarters. Most likely they were for senior NCO’s
[10]
. The last two blue doors were set up barracks style and could sleep close to fifty men in each bay. There was a large bay bathroom at the end of each barracks room that the men would share.

There were two doors at the end of the hallway that led to what looked like medical facilities and a dining hall complete with kitchen. It looked capable
of feeding about a hundred people at a time. The big freezers were empty, but the racks of canned goods were full of all types of foods from vegetables to canned meats and pastas. It would feed our group for quite a while. When you added the food we already had stored, it could last well through the winter.