“You still want to save that big hard bugger, Cap?” Wiggins said softly.
Banks didn’t answer — he wasn’t sure anymore and he was saved from speaking by a yell from a soldier on top of the rubble, who was looking out northwest across the city.
“They went this way.”
- 20 -
The university complex backed onto a two-lane road at the north. Traffic was at a standstill on either side of a coach that had been tossed over onto its side and then pummeled — the bodywork bore the telltale signs of having been pounded by huge fists. The large window at the front of the bus had been torn out forcibly and a body — presumably the driver — lay half-out of the hole. His head was gone and his torso was brutally caved out and hollowed, blood running in a sheet down the buckled front of the bus to pool on the road.
Farther to the north, in what looked to be a suburban area, high screams rose in the air, accompanied by the sound of screeching, tearing metal and the now familiar wailing that sounded like rock clashing on rock.
“Looks like they won’t be difficult to track so there’s that at least,” Wiggins said.
“Aye, just following the screaming,” Hynd added.
“It is not the tracking that worries me,” Olsen said quietly. “There is only sea to the north and west of us here, so we will have them trapped with their backs to the water soon enough. But between here and there are at least two schools and if legends are true, these beasts are not particular about the age of their prey.”
As they crossed the road and followed the screaming into the maze of suburban roads, Olsen was on the radio, presumably urgently requesting evac of the aforesaid schools. Dark clouds lowered overhead and Banks felt spits of cold rain in his face. Studying the sky, he saw there was little hope of the sun coming to their aid.
The Norwegian soldiers around them had grown tense and quiet, moving quickly and with purpose. They went speedily through empty streets and found evidence of the trolls’ passing everywhere, from mangled cars to houses with front doors — and sometimes their whole walls — caved in. And everywhere around was more evidence of the trolls’ hunger in the pitiful remains of the newly dead men, women, and children, whose partially eaten pieces were strewn across doorways, lawns, and into the roadway, as if the beasts were eating on the move. Several times, Banks saw curtains twitching nervously at their passing but no one still alive was daring to venture out into the charnel house they were walking through.
They moved fast, double-time, but the sound of screaming and the accompanying howls of the trolls were becoming more distant. Wherever it was the beasts were trying to get to, they were in a hurry about it. Olsen had the soldiers up the pace further and soon they were all running.
They had to step out of the road only once and that was when a succession of coaches carrying children came from the opposite direction. The pale, fear-filled faces at the windows told Banks all that he needed to know of the horrors the kids had endured.
Minutes after the coaches passed, they came to a deserted school. The kids hadn’t all escaped; three armed cops, all of them weeping inconsolably, stood in an otherwise empty playground above the too-small, torn remains of dead children. When Olsen asked where the trolls had gone, one of the cops managed to raise a hand and point north.
They came out of the suburban sprawl where it bounded a river, arriving at one end of an old stone bridge, only wide enough for a single vehicle to pass at a time. The bridge was empty of traffic but a trail of blood spatter told them that they were still on the trolls’ path. On the far side, a narrow strip of land between that and the sea contained a mish-mash of old and new factory units. But silence had fallen now; there was no more screaming, no howling, and no sight of their quarry.
“Have they gone to ground?” Banks asked but Olsen seemed distracted and didn’t answer. He wasn’t looking out over the factory complexes but had his gaze fixed on the old stone bridge that stretched for a hundred yards across a swiftly flowing river.
“Captain?” Banks said. “What has you worried?”
“Bridges and more old legends,” the Norwegian said. “Knowing what we do now about their aversion to sunlight, the tales of them lurking under bridges seems to make more sense.”
“Really?” Wiggins replied. “I’m glad it makes sense to somebody because I’m as confused as fuck here.”
“So what else is new?” Hynd replied.
“Well, your wife got a tattoo on her arse,” Wiggins replied. “Not that you’ll ever see it.”
That earned Wiggins a cuff on the ear but Banks saw that neither of them really had any heart for the banter; they’d been as badly affected as he had by the sight of the dead children in the playground and the pale, frightened faces of those who had escaped. Thoughts of saving McCallum were far from his mind now; all he wanted to do was find these trolls and put them down hard and fast before they harmed any more kids.
Olsen was still gazing out over the bridge.
“I don’t like this, Captain,” he said.
Banks agreed.
“It feels hinky to me too. My guts are telling me this is a trap.”
“But trap or no trap, we have to get over there,” Olsen said and echoed Banks’ own thoughts. “We can’t let them get near any more children.”
Olsen led them forward, with S-Squad still bring up the rear of the troop of twenty-four men.
“Who’s that walking on my bridge?” Wiggins said in a gravelly voice, trying for a bit of levity. He didn’t get it but was answered instead by a roar like clashing rocks. The far end of the bridge where it hit the northern bank buckled upward, the old stone surface crumbling as something pounded its way up from below.
The soldiers were still in the process of raising their weapons as the squat, barrel-like troll they’d first seen in the bunker pulled itself up from under the arches, through the structure of the bridge itself, to stand smack-center in the road ahead of them. As with McCallum, Banks was reminded of nothing so much as a silverback gorilla, claiming its territory. It stood upright, shucking off pebbles and rubble, looked down the length of the bridge at them, black eyes deep under furrowed brows, and roared an invitation to battle.
“Remember, they are vulnerable in the eyes,” Olsen said then repeated it in Norwegian, raised his weapon, and led the men forward.
The troll didn’t wait for them. It put its head down and lumbered into a run, its pounding footsteps setting the bridge underfoot to shaking.
Olsen called for his men to stand firm. The front rank sent a volley of fire directly at the oncoming troll. Chips of rock flew and the troll roared again, loud even above the gunfire, but it still had its head down, its eyes defended by the shield of its rocky brow.
Then it was on them, barreling past the front rank and sending them flying like skittles. Two men went over the wall to splash in the waters below, Olsen was thrown roughly to the ground, landing heavily, and another man tumbled at the troll’s feet only to have his chest caved in by a stomping foot that left a fine spray of blood in the air. The beast wasn’t slowed at all and treated the second rank of men with equal disdain.
Banks was about to throw himself to one side when he saw that both Wiggins and Hynd had lowered their weapons and were instead holding the syringes of sedative, grasped in their hands like combat knives.