Kane Gilmour - Ragnarok

She took two more steps forward, but this time moved closer to the center of the tunnel, and directly behind the stream of sand and dry dirt trickling from the ceiling. She took one more step right up to the dust, so the stream of dirt was coming right down in front of her face. The upside-down monster hung less than a yard from her position on the other side of the little falling soil.

Queen raised her knife.

The creature’s eye twitched in her direction.

The stream of soil slowed-her only cover, about to be gone. Queen abandoned caution and leapt forward, the wicked blade of the KA-BAR leading as she burst through the trickle of dust and plunged the knife into the creature’s eye.

The knife slid into the creature’s clear skull, up to the hilt, from the force of her thrust. She pushed until the beast’s body toppled over. She didn’t release her pressure on the knife until she felt the tip of the blade strike the stone floor.

She squatted next to the creature and wondered what it could be. She was about to remove the blade from the dead thing when a small skittering sound came from down the tunnel behind her. She withdrew the blade with agonizing slowness. Have to make it like I’m not even moving.

A rock rolled across the floor and hit the wall of the tunnel with a loud clacking noise.

Queen drew in a breath.

The newcomer was less than ten feet behind her. The blade of the knife came free and Queen spun in a whirl, raising the knife for another killing stroke.

But that stroke never came. Instead came a noise. A roaring vibration like a hundred jet aircraft in her head.

Her arms turned to limp spaghetti.

The knife fell from her hand.

Her legs quivered and her teeth chattered.

Her eyes watered and a thick river of drool slipped from her mouth. She never saw the second beast. Its roar filled her world, and her eyes clamped shut trying to force out the terror, but as she fell to the ground, her whole body shaking like an epileptic in the throes of a seizure, she could utter only two words:

“Daddy, no!”

Manhattan Island, NY

3 November, 0630 Hrs

Major General Michael Keasling’s permanent scowl didn’t alter when he saw the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter settle in the middle of the cordoned-off city street, but he did breathe a sigh of relief as its rotor blades whipped dust and grit into the sky. The situation in New York hadn’t gotten out of hand yet, but he knew it would. He had 200 men out of Fort Dix, and another 200 on the way, but he knew they wouldn’t be sufficient for this mess. He also suspected the two men emerging from the helicopter might not make much difference against such an alien threat. Still, these two men were among the most capable soldiers he had ever known, and they were both his friends.

Keasling absently raised the fingers of one hand and stroked the smooth skin under his nose, where he had worn a mustache for most of the last twenty years. With the recent receipt of his second star, he’d made a few simple but profound changes in his life. No more coffee and more time in the gym for one-although with his short, stocky barrel shape, he’d been muscular enough. He wasn’t looking to become more intimidating but to increase his lifespan with cardiovascular exercises he hadn’t bothered with since long before he had become a General. His wife was long in the grave from the cancer, but his daughter had just had her first little blonde-haired son, Liam, and Keasling now wanted to live long enough to see the boy become a man. Funny how family changes everything, he thought.

The loss of the mustache wasn’t as physically life changing as the exercise, but he found his hand returning to the lack of it repeatedly, as if the loss of hair signified this new phase in his life as much as it reduced the appearance of his age by a decade. As the two men approached him on 6 ^th Avenue, and the helicopter took to the dawn sky behind them, Keasling thought about the chaos of the present situation and wondered, not for the first time since he had received his second star, if maybe it was time to stop. He knew he never would, though. The vicious cycle of thought further fueled his gruff demeanor as he stepped forward to greet his friends.

“King, you look like the fucking Michelin Man.”

Both of the recently arrived men were dressed in personal body armor suits that looked to Keasling like they were wearing sculpted pillows on their bodies. The General knew the suits were an extension of research carried out by the Pentagon and a Canadian man that started out making a suit impervious to grizzly bear attacks. Lewis Aleman’s genius had been further applied to the designs and the result was an incredibly lightweight, tactical battle-suit, which, while it would not stop a large-caliber bullet, would significantly reduce damage from impacts, falls and knife-or in this case, claw — attacks. Keasling’s people in the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) had been involved in the Pentagon’s end of development on the suit, so he was aware of its capabilities. He understood the necessity of such body armor. Still, they looked like the Tempur-Pedic memory foam pillow he used during the few hours of sleep he got at night.

The suits had multiple sculpted angles that resembled the boxy radar-reflective surfaces of stealth aircraft, and the color scheme for the entirety of the suits was a grayish black, reinforcing the similarity. Both men wore full-face-mask helmets that kept their identities hidden as well, but Keasling knew each man by his gait.

“General,” Deep Blue said from behind his armored faceplate. “If King is the Michelin Man, what does that make me?”

“Very dignified and presidential, sir.”

“I was going to say my valet,” King started, “but dignified works too.”

“Show some respect, Delta Boy,” Keasling said, but he was smiling as he said it. King and his Chess Team cohorts were all former Delta, and they were used to a level of informality and a lack of ranks not approved of in other branches of the service. However, in just a few short years, Keasling had gone from being constantly irritated at the informality to having immense respect for Jack Sigler. The two men had become close friends.

He shook hands with both men, noting with approval how supple the gloves on the suits were. While still padded with a thin layer of the experimental armor material, the fingers would still be able to operate triggers and even keyboards if necessary.

“Sorry about the switch to the chopper, but Persephone would have trouble with how tight the buildings are in Midtown. Plus, no easy rooftops for VTOL nearby, like you had in Chicago. There’s crap all over the roofs here.” The general led the other men up 6 ^th, along the sidewalk.

“No problem. We came in low from Jersey and couldn’t see much. How bad is it here?” Deep Blue asked the general as they began walking up to West 49 ^th, where soldiers from Fort Dix stood and crouched behind sandbags, weapons trained down the street.

“Well, let’s just say that I’ve been wondering whether it’s too late to join the Peace Corps and get assigned to the ass-end of Botswana. I can tell you it was no damn fun getting all the civilians out of these buildings in this part of town. NYPD played a big part in that, but it would have been impossible later in the day.”

The men rounded the corner of a small concrete-bordered city-planning park with about ten trees, all still tenaciously clinging to their orange leaves before winter’s inevitable pull. Beyond it stood five abandoned hot dog carts with brightly colored umbrellas. Keasling’s stomach rumbled at the thought of wolfing down a few dogs with brown mustard and sauerkraut. They turned onto West 49 ^th Street and saw an empty road, cordoned off a few bocks west, down the narrow corridor of tall buildings before them. Steam gently seeped up from manhole sewer covers on the asphalt, and a discarded sheet of crumpled, dirty newspaper caught an errant breeze and wafted along the street, wrapping around the leg of a squat black fire hydrant with a silver top on the other side of the street.