Ragnarok Rising: The Crossing (The Ragnarok Rising Saga) (18 page)

I dropped the
Stalker
as I pivoted on my left foot, spinning the blade in a blinding arc. Before it could react, I severed the head at the neck. The head fell into the water and the body stood there for a moment, before falling over backwards and disappearing into the torrential river.

I stood with my breath coming in deep, short bursts as I fought to calm down. The sun was just cresting over the horizon and beg
inning to illuminate the carnage all around us. Spec-4 stood, open-mouthed and in shock at all of the bodies that lay around us. I could still fell the blood raging through my veins as I looked about for another enemy to fight.

"What the hell was that?" asked Spec-4, surprise and shock in her voice.

"What do you mean?" I said, lowering my sword.

"Where did you learn to fight like that? she demanded. "You looked like something out of a movie!"

"I don't know," I replied honestly. "I just let go and fight when we're attacked. It just happens."

"It's pretty damned amazing to watch," she said, smiling. "How do you move that fast?"

"I just move," I replied. "I can't explain it any better than that. I just give in to the fury and attack."

Before she could ask more questions, I turned around and started cleaning off the blade in the water. Once it was free of the gore, I wiped it down with a rag and returned it to its sheath. The old sword had proven that it was still battle-ready. This was the first time in over a century that the old steel had tasted the blood of an enemy. I knew in my heart that
it wouldn't be the last.

We both set to the task of breaking camp and loading our gear into the canoe. Within minutes, we were packed and ready to go.
Breakfast consisted of a bottle of water and two protein bars for each of us. It wasn't the greatest breakfast in the world, but I didn't want to wait any longer. I knew we couldn't be far behind Elliott's abductors and I hoped that we could catch them before midday.

We both climbed into the canoe and pushed off into the current. Soon we were speeding away from the bodies of the dead
Stalkers
that we had left on the gravel bar. The speed of the current carried us swiftly downstream as the gravel bar disappeared around a bend in the river.

Spec-4 reloaded both of our weapons as we drifted along. Ahead, I could see the uprooted stump of a tree. The root wad was only half submerged in the water and a
Stalker
was clinging desperately to it as it tried to climb out of the water. Spec-4 casually shot it in the head as we passed by less than ten yards away. It had to be one of the ones swept away by the river as they tried to reach us on the gravel bar.

We drifted along with the current, neither speaking as we went. Spec-4 was busily checking the weapons and I was scanning the river ahead of us for any sign of the boat that we had been chasing for almost an entire day, now. The river had widened out and was deep enough that the flow wasn't nearly as strong
, when a campground came into view on the left-hand side of the river.

I slid my paddle into the water and angled us towards the shore.
It was likely that we would encounter more of the dead here, but it would be worth it to scavenge for supplies. I was too old to spend another night sleeping on the rocks. We needed camping gear if we were going to continue pursuing our quarry.

As we slid ashore, I could see where another boat had been here in the recent past. It was much wider than our canoe, so it must have been a flat bottomed
Jon boat. The tracks around it didn't look more than a few hours old. This must have been where they spent the night. We were definitely gaining ground on them.

“Look at the tracks,” I said, pointing.

“Are they the same?” she asked. “Is it the ones we’re after?”

“I doubt anyone else is on this river,” I replied, grinning. “It has to be the guys we’re chasing.”

“Then we
are
gaining on them,” she said, excitedly.

“We aren’t going to be here for very long,” I said as the canoe slid to a stop in the mud. “We’re making a quick supply run, then we’re out of here.”

“Are we looking for anything in particular?” she asked, stepping out onto the ground.

“Camping supplies,” I said, splashing to shore. “We want anything we can use when we make camp.”

“Got it,” she replied, raising her weapon.

It was a good sized canoe rental/campground. There had to be camp space for almost a hundred campsites. I could even see a few tents still in place, the owners either abandoning them or long-since turned into the dead. There were four buildings, the closest of which was full of canoeing gear. Mostly life vests and paddles. We had plenty of each of them, so I just took note and moved on.

The second building was closer to the campground. In it were lanterns, several machetes, a couple of axes and some firewood. I snagged two lanterns, two cans of lantern fuel, one of the axes and two of the machetes. I even found a military-style entrenching tool. That went into my pack.

Just as we were about to
move off, I spotted a bundle in the back of the shed. It was a rolled up military tent. The kind that was meant to be used by soldiers in the field. In my day, we called them shelter halves. Both pieces and the tent poles were rolled up into a tight bundle. I added them to the pile of gear that Spec-4 was putting in the canoe.

I had to raid two of the campsites to find the main goal of my little foraging expedition. I gr
abbed three sleeping bags, so Elliott would have one of his own once we found him. I had no intention of returning without Elliott. I promised Karen that I wouldn’t allow anything to happen to him and I wasn’t about to break my word. We were going to be forced to hike back, since taking a canoe upriver was out of the question. That meant walking through the woods that were infested with the dead.

I found a pile of dead
bodies at the edge of the camp. Since they had all been shot, I assumed that the men we were chasing had dispatched them last night. None of them looked to have been dead for very long. The bullet wounds still looked fresh and a couple of them were still oozing fluid. It wasn’t a huge stretch of the imagination to assume that the men we were chasing had cleared out the campsite so they could stay there. It’s what I would have done.

In less than half an hour, I had found the gear I was looking for and headed back to the canoe. At the edge of the camp was a large pile of wood that someone had been splittin
g before everything went to Hel. There was a large splitting maul stuck in a stump. It was heavy, but I needed a heavy weapon to replace my missing hammer. It would do until I found something better.

Snagging the heavy maul, I hefted the weight and smiled. It
was easily a fifteen pound head and would have no trouble splitting a zombie’s skull. My only worry about it would be the weight. Swinging that much steel would wear me out, quickly. Fortunately for me, most fights with the undead were over fast. You either won or you died.

When I reached the shore, Spec-4 had swapped our little canoe for a
Jon boat of our own. I climbed into it and we slid back out into the current. Seconds later, we were putting the campground behind us. The advantage that the Jon boat gave us was space. With it, we could carry more gear and passengers. We didn’t have a motor, but the size of it added a great deal of stability in the rough waters. It was much harder to tip a Jon boat over than it was a canoe. It could still be done, though.

“I found a tackle box and two fishing poles,” said Spec-4, pointing out the gear under her seat.

“Fantastic,” I said, smiling at her. “We’ll eat better with that. I, for one, wasn’t looking forward to MREs the entire trip.”

“Me either,” she agreed.

The Jon boat wasn’t quite as fast as the canoe, but I didn’t have to worry as much about hitting a snag and flipping over. All in all, it was an excellent trade. If we hit the water, we would most-likely drown. I had a life vest, but I preferred to sit on it instead of wear it. I refused to remove my body armor.

It was nearly midday when we passed another campground. It was infamous as a party place along the river. I had been there many times, but never with the kids.
I could see several campers and quite a few tents, but there was no sign of life. Well, no sign of the living, anyway. There were several
Shamblers
stumbling around the campsite. They came out to the edge of the water and watched us pass by. It was a little creepy.

Once we cleared the campsite of the dead, we broke out some of our MRE packets and took in a little nourishment of our own.
We munched in silence and I decided it was a good time to check in with the others.

“829 to 917,” I said, keying up my handset.

Static was my only reply.

“829 to 917,” I repeated, with the same results.

“We must be out of range,” said Spec-4, turning around to look at me.

“I knew we had to be getting close,” I said, nodding.

I turned off the radio and put it back into my pack. There was no sense in wasting the batteries if I couldn’t contact the others.              I knew we had to be well over ten miles away from the bunker, maybe even more. It was hard to tell with the river looking so different from all of the flooding. I knew from the location of the party place we passed that we were a long ways from the bunker. I wasn’t certain how far, but it was quite a distance. Our next major landmark would be Lake of the Ozarks.

“
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

-
John F. Kennedy
 

It was nearly sundown when the lake came into view. I could see two marinas and the bridge that spanned this end of the lake. The evening sun had turned the lake
the color of molten gold. We had another hour before the sun sank beneath the tree line, and maybe another half hour after that before it was full dark. I could see signs of the dead along both shores of the lake. Spending the night in the area was not looking good.

We had to row to clear the bridge. I almost expected the dead to leap off to try to reach us, but they never came. I think the water must have made them wary. Despite seeing numerous dead
up there, none of them gave us more than a passing glance. As we rounded the end of the cove, I could see resorts and expensive homes along the shoreline. All of them belonged to the dead, now.

A group of the dead was following along the shore as we continued around towards the main body of the lake.
There was no sense giving the undead any chance to come after us, so we stayed in the main channel and well clear of the shore. I knew the water here had to be extremely deep and there was no chance of any of them wading out to get us. We were attracting more than enough attention as it was.

Lake of the Ozarks twisted and turned
its way through the heart of the Ozarks, ending at the famous Bagnell Dam. Between the twists, turns, coves and inlets, Lake of the Ozarks had as much shoreline as the entire state of California. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation, Lake of the Ozarks contains approximately 646
billion
gallons of water behind the dam. That's under normal circumstances. With the rain and flooding we had going on, it had to be way more than that, now.

In the dying light of the sun, I could just make out the wake left by a motorboat at the far end of the peninsula that we were heading for.
Snagging my binoculars from my pack, I brought them to my eyes and scanned the wake. It was still clearly visible. We weren’t all that far behind our target. If we had a motor, we could easily catch them before they reached the dam. With the large population around the lake and the numerous undead that we had seen so far, I couldn’t think of any safe place for them to put ashore that wouldn’t be crawling with the dead. That left their options severely limited.

“They have to be headed for somewhere in the water,” I muttered, lowering the binoculars.