Thor's Serpents (4 page)

T
hey’d been walking through the Black Hills for hours, hopefully heading toward Rapid City. Finally, as they crested a ridge, Matt saw the glow of a town below. He squinted into the darkness and spotted the landmark he’d been searching for.

He pointed. “There’s—”

“Ooh! I see it!” Baldwin said. “The floating face.”

It was indeed a face, carved in the side of a mountain. The Crazy Horse Memorial. It was supposed to be a huge monument, carved into Thunderhead Mountain, showing Crazy Horse on his steed. Seventy years after construction began, it was still just a face in a mountainside. There was lots of
controversy surrounding the memorial, but what mattered now was that it told him exactly where they were.

“Rapid City,” he said with a flourish at the lights below.

“We always stopped there on the way home from camping,” Baldwin said. “There’s this great ice-cream stand just off the highway. But I guess we aren’t going for ice cream, are we?”

“Probably not,” Ray said. “Unless it’s being served by monsters.”

“That could be cool,” Baldwin said. “An ice-cream fight. Like a snowball fight, with fifty flavors of snow. Good, safe fun. No one ever died from ice cream.”

“Unless they drowned you in a giant vat of it,” Reyna said. “Or forced you to eat it until you choked. Or—”

“You’re no fun at all, you know that?” Baldwin said.

“Depends on your definition of
fun
. Besides, unless there’s mistletoe in the ice cream, you’d be perfectly fine.” Baldwin was a descendant of Balder, so the only thing that could kill him was mistletoe. And it had, until they rescued him from Hel.

Reyna and Baldwin went on bantering like that as they walked, with Ray chiming in when he could keep up. Matt stayed quiet and kept them moving toward Rapid City.

Even without seeing the Crazy Horse Memorial, Matt would have known where they were as soon as they crested the next rise. Rapid City had around seventy thousand people,
making it the second-biggest city in the state. He looked at the sprawling glow stretching from—

The lights went out. All the lights. Like someone hit a switch. Matt blinked hard, rubbing his eyes.

“Did that city just…?” Ray began.

“Go poof?” Reyna said. “Looks like it. Massive power failure. Meaning we’ve lost our compass, so get your bearings now.”

She said it so calmly. The lights are off. No big deal. But she was right. There
must be
a logical explanation. The city hadn’t been swallowed into a giant sinkhole as the Midgard Serpent broke through the crust. If that had happened, they’d hear the collapsing buildings and the screaming victims and—

Matt swallowed and tightened his grip on Mjölnir. It was just a power failure. As Reyna had said, they should carry on and not lose sight of their destination.

But when they drew closer to Rapid City, they
did
hear screams.

“Something’s happening,” Baldwin said.

“Um, yeah,” Reyna said. “The sun and the moon have been devoured by giant wolves.”

True. Still, Matt noticed that, like him, Reyna kept scouring for monsters as they passed the edges of the city. He could hear people inside the homes, shouting and arguing as they tried to figure out what to do. Ahead, the roads
were filled with cars of those who’d tried to escape the city. Angry people, yelling at one another because the cars weren’t moving. They weren’t jammed too tight or stuck behind a collision. They’d just stopped.

“Um…” Baldwin said. “Does anyone see a problem here?” He looked at Reyna. “And don’t tell me the lights are off.”

“The power’s out,” she said.

Baldwin rolled his eyes. “Same difference.”

“Actually, no,” Matt said. “She means
all
the power is out. The cars have stopped. The batteries are dead. Which isn’t simple electrical failure.”

He looked out at the road, packed with cars and trucks and people shouting, bickering, crying. It was like something out of a movie. The start of the apocalypse.

Because that’s exactly what it is.

His gut clenched.

“What could cause it?” Baldwin asked.

“Maybe an electromagnetic pulse?” Ray offered.

“Sounds good to me,” Baldwin said. “Well, it wouldn’t be
good
…”

“Does it matter what the technical explanation is?” It was Laurie. The first words she’d said since they started their walk. “It’s Ragnarök. It doesn’t need an explanation.”

As they continued forward, a figure ran from the darkness, and Matt swung up his shield and Mjölnir but it was just a teenage guy. He raced past, wild-eyed, as if he didn’t
even see them. Matt watched him tear down the empty road, running toward more empty road, not going anywhere, just running.

“Monsters chasing him?” Baldwin whispered.

“Panic, I think.” Matt wrapped his hand around his amulet and closed his eyes as he tried to pick up the vibration that suggested otherwise. The amulet lay in his hand, cold and still. “No monsters detected.”

Even as he said it, he felt a tickle at the back of his neck, like a little voice saying
Are you sure?
As they kept walking into the city, he clutched his amulet in his free hand, and listened for real screams or shrieks or any sounds of absolute terror or pain. All he heard were the same shouts of anger and confusion. Which meant no monsters.

Does it?

He rubbed the back of his neck.

Owen fell in step beside him. “Trust your instincts, Matt.”

Matt looked over.

Owen gave a slight smile. “I know you wish I’d do more, but you’re handling this just fine. You came to Rapid City for a reason. Now you need to find that reason. Keep following your gut.”

Matt nodded. He tried to focus on whatever he was feeling, but as soon as he did, that weird tingling vanished. When they reached an intersection, instead of continuing
on, he stopped and looked at all three options, mentally searching for a sign. He stepped one way. Then another. They felt exactly the same.

“As soon as you tell someone to follow his gut, he can’t,” Reyna said to Owen. “At least not if he already overthinks every step and agonizes over his choices.”

“I do not,” Matt said.

Ray nodded slowly, as if reluctant to be quite so blunt about it. Matt looked at Baldwin, who said, “Maybe a little, sometimes. But that’s a good thing. Otherwise, you’d be like the myth Thor, thundering into battle and getting us all killed. Well, getting everyone other than me killed.”

“Matt,” Laurie said, getting his attention.

He turned to her and she walked over, lowering her voice.

“You were walking straight, right? So just keep doing that until your amulet buzzes or you really feel like you’re going the wrong way.” She turned to Owen with a mock-stern look. “And advice is good, but it needs to be more concrete than ‘follow your gut.’”

Owen looked confused, but he murmured something like agreement.

Matt resumed walking. At some point, he turned—he didn’t even consider his choices, just followed his feet as they went down one street and then another. None of the locals paid any mind, which seemed perfectly rational, given the circumstances… until he realized he was striding down the
road with a wooden shield on his back, a hammer in his hand, and a gang of kids following him.

He slowed and looked around. They were on a quieter street, narrow and lined with homes. He could hear arguing in one house. At another, a couple of younger kids bickered on their lawn. Matt walked toward them. Behind him, the others stayed on the road, all except Reyna, who dogged his steps, whispering, “What are you doing?” He ignored her and walked up to the kids.

“—and you read my diary,” the girl was saying. “I know you did!”

She was about twelve, the boy a few years younger. They looked like brother and sister.

“Hey, guys,” Matt said. “Can you tell me—?”

“Why would I read your stupid diary? It’s all about boys and
feels
and TV shows.”

Matt cleared his throat. “Um, guys?”

“How would you know what’s in it if you haven’t read it?”

“Yo!” Reyna said, stepping between them. “Time out, kiddies. We need to talk to you.”

“I don’t need to read it to know what’s in it,” the boy said. “All the same stupid stuff you talk about with your friends when you’re supposed to be babysitting me.”

The boy didn’t lean around Reyna to yell at his sister. He just kept talking, as if there weren’t someone standing between them.

“They don’t see us,” Matt said. “We’re invisible.”

Reyna took the girl’s hand, lifted it, and then dropped it. The girl kept arguing. Reyna tweaked the boy’s nose. No reaction.

“We aren’t just invisible, Matt. They can’t see
or
feel us. And they’re fighting about everyday stuff… in the middle of a freaking apocalypse.”

Matt clutched his amulet. It still gave him no clues, and he let out a hiss of frustration.

“You were walking,” she said. “Did you
decide
to come talk to these kids or feel
compelled
to do it?”

“I was wondering why no one was reacting to us.”

“Okay, so your
gut
was still telling you to keep moving. Ignore this and do that.”

He started to turn away when he noticed an old man in the window, watching the kids. Matt thought of his grandfather. He didn’t want to—he’d been trying so hard not to for the last day—but seeing an old man brought it all back.

Granddad betrayed me. He betrayed us. Our family. Our town.

His grandfather was leading the monsters. His grandfather expected Ragnarök to happen, exactly as it did in the old stories. He expected Matt to die.

Reyna swirled her hand, fog billowing over the children. “Whoops, they’re gone. Too bad, so sad. Guess you’ll have to just keep walking, Matt.”

“I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking—”

“Don’t. You need all your energy for fighting or you’ll do something stupid like use an aikido pin on a wolf.”

“Um, pretty sure
you’re
the one who—”

“Nope, you did.” She winked at him. “I’ve rewritten the scene. You pinned the wolf. I saved your butt. It was epic. Now, back to the road, or I’ll call the Berserkers to carry you.”

When Matt’s amulet began vibrating—signaling the presence of actual monsters in Rapid City—it came almost as a relief. He felt guilty thinking that, but in a weird way, it settled his nerves. These days, monsters made sense, far more than anything else.

The buzzing amulet lit his trail in neon. It let him know when he was getting closer. Like a little voice saying
Hot, hotter, cold, hot again
…

It led him to the Journey Museum. He’d been here on a field trip last year. He’d thought it was fascinating. Cody and his other friends had nearly died of boredom. They’d ended up touring maybe a quarter of it, at Matt’s insistence, just enough to complete their assignment. Then he’d led them on a very different kind of tour, one exploring the areas clearly marked
DO NOT ENTER
.

“The monsters are inside?” Reyna said as they stopped outside the front doors.

Matt started to say
I think so
, then changed to a simple “Yes.” His amulet and his gut told him they were inside. Qualifying that made him look indecisive.

“I don’t hear screaming,” Ray said. “If it’s anything like that creature at the water park, there should be screaming.”

“Maybe there’s no one left to scream,” Reyna said.

Matt gave her a look.

“What?” she said. “It’s true. Although, I suppose, if the monsters killed everyone, they wouldn’t still be in there. Unless they’re busy eating—” She stopped herself then, and her pale face turned even whiter. “Sorry. There, uh, aren’t any Norse monsters that… do that, right?”

Matt thought of Nidhogg—a giant serpent that gnawed at the roots of the world tree. When Ragnarök came, it would finally break through into the world and… Well, it was called “the corpse eater” for a reason.

“Maybe the monsters are locked inside alone,” Baldwin said. “Without any people to eat.”

“The doors
are
locked,” Ray said. “But I do hear people inside. While they aren’t screaming, they don’t exactly sound happy.”