Johnson was a basket case. It took Wally, Crater, and Brunowski to get him into his bunk. When Wally and Crater returned, leaving Johnson in Brunowski's care, we gathered around the coffeepot. No one seemed willing yet to meet anyone else's gaze.
Crater spoke first. "Did, uh, anybody hear anything kind of, well, weird—"
"Yeah," Chuck cut in, his ruddy face sweating. "Kind of like screaming and shit, and metal hitting or scraping or something—"
I didn't want to listen to the half-whispered comparisons of what I'd heard over the phone tonight. I didn't like thinking about it; it soured my stomach thinking about it.
Nobody mentioned Sleipnir, and I sure as hell didn't either. There's a reason pilots who report UFOs get the rest of their careers scrubbed. I scowled into my muddy coffee and saw those impossible eyes staring back.
The door flew open with a bite of ice in the wind and Pritchard staggered in, pulling off gloves with hands that shook. He drained a cup of coffee in one gulp and poured a second, then let out a sigh that was mostly shudder. We waited.
"Bad wreck," he muttered, his voice choking.
"Say again?" Wally asked.
"Bad wreck. Somebody go find Brunowski."
Nobody moved.
"What happened, Sarge?" Wally asked quietly.
Pritchard stirred, looked around, saw we were waiting. He seemed to brace himself. I knew, without a word spoken, that the biggest shoe of all time was about to squash us flat. I found myself gripping my coffee mug until my knuckles showed white.
Pritchard finally spoke. "One of our trucks missed a curve; hit the trees doing sixty-five."
The ensuing silence was broken by a reverent whisper.
"Fuck..."
"Rosetti's got a busted skull and no teeth in front. Hill broke both his arms. A couple of guys in the rear broke damned near every bone you can break. —Shit!"
He'd spilled coffee on his shoe.
"Gonna be hell on you guys, 'til we get a full complement again on the other relief."
Pritchard still wouldn't meet anyone's eyes—he had more to tell, and didn't want to spill the really bad news. Memory of Sleipnir standing taller than the trees, something grasped in his wicked teeth, hit me hard. I felt sick, didn't want to think it, wanted to throw up, rather than ask...
"Gary Vernon?" I barely recognized my own voice.
Pritchard looked up again. He met my eyes for a second, then let his gaze slide away.
"He bought the farm, Barnes. Dead before the pieces quit bouncing. Sorry."
I slammed my fist down on the table. I never noticed the hot coffee that sloshed over my hand as the mug I was holding shattered. I just stumbled outside. The stiff breeze from the north compounded the effect of the sub-zero temperatures to freeze the moisture on my cheeks instantly; but after the skin froze I hardly noticed.
The air smelled like more snow. I didn't care.
He'd come for a warrior, bloody goddamned monster.
He'd gotten one.
Chapter Six
I heard water long before I found it. Sound travels almost forever in a cave; and this sound wasn't a quiet dripping splash, it was a running, rumbling roar, loud and wet through the darkness. The floor began to slope sharply downward; I had to brace with both hands as I picked my way carefully along a sixty-degree slope.
The air was moist, and the walls were damp to the touch; but there wasn't any visible seepage yet. Just the noise, much louder now, beginning to sound almost like the roar of a waterfall—although as long as it had been since I had heard anything but the sound of my own footsteps, my perspective was, perhaps, suspect.
Finally the walls began to curve around in a tight, left-hand, downward spiral; before I was completely around a final, sharp corner, cold, wet spray hit my face. I dug in along the very edges of the slope and stopped.
It was a waterfall.
A dark spout thicker than my torso shot straight out of a hole in the "cliff face" fifteen, maybe twenty feet above my head. The water tumbled down into the same crevice where I stood, pouring away downslope in an honest-to-god underground river as it followed the bend. Wet stone glistened in the lamplight. The surface surrounding the falls rippled in a beautiful formation Bjornssen had identified as flowstone, which glistened in the light with stunning shades of ruby and fiery orange from whatever minerals had been dissolved in the water. The opposite wall remained the dirty, ugly grey that had characterized the rest of this passage so far.
And then I saw that a good-sized side passage led off to the right, also sloping down, just this side of the waterfall.
For a moment I just stood there, staring stupidly from one passageway to the other.
Crossroad.
Finally my brain kicked in like a rusty carburetor, and I got busy doing first things first. I unstrapped my pack and broke out the filter pump. Since the water was moving fast enough to pick up all kinds of sludge, I didn't want to risk drinking it unfiltered, despite a raging thirst. I filled both canteens, slaked my thirst, refilled the second canteen again; then repacked my gear and contemplated the two possible roads.
There was no telling how far this "river" flowed, or how deep it got. If the floor continued to slope down much farther at this angle, the water would be above my head in no time flat.
Scuba gear was one item I hadn't brought with me on my journey to hell.
On the other hand...
I took off my helmet and held it as far down the right-hand passageway as I could. I flashed the light around, and studied the opening. The floor fell away at a slightly smaller angle of slope. It appeared to be completely dry, and it didn't appear to narrow down at all.
It looked like a much easier route, and probably a survivable one. I jammed the helmet back onto my head and studied the river passage again. My Sunday-school teacher had always said the road to hell was an easy passage; but I didn't think Christian ideals necessarily applied here.
As I squatted there at the very edge of the black river, I felt an almost subliminal humming along my calf. The knife strapped to my leg seemed to quiver in anticipation.
That wasn't necessarily a good sign.
Involuntarily I glanced down; then wished I hadn't. I spat and watched the tiny blob of spittle vanish as the tremendously swift current swept it away.
Hell, I still didn't know what to make of that knife.
And, though part of me wished bitterly that I'd never laid eyes on it, another part of me knew that nothing in the known universe could have prompted me to refuse accepting it. Call it guilt; call it cowardice. Hell, a case could even be made for compassion... .
I wondered what Gary's grandmother would make of me if she could see me now. I snorted. Probably ask to borrow the knife back, then call the cops to come and lock me up once I was unarmed. She'd seemed an extraordinarily capable old lady. Granted, we hadn't met under the best of circumstances. But then, they do say stress and grief tend to bring out a person's real personality. Which said a lot about her—and even more about me.
Even through the numb shock and the sick anger that had gripped me, once I had met Gary's grandmother, I'd discovered I envied my dead friend every minute of the time he'd spent growing up in her house. I'd never met anyone quite like her and knew I never would again.
Either the Vernon family had been a rare breed, indeed, or my life had been emptier than even I had thought.
I rubbed my eyes with thumb and forefinger, then tried to ease a cramped knot in the back of my neck. If I'd had any doubts before the funeral about Who—or What—had killed Gary Vernon, I certainly didn't have any afterward. I probably shouldn't have been surprised; but the last place I'd expected to encounter more of Odin's legacy was at Gary's funeral.