Free Ragnarok Rising: The Awakening (Book One of The Ragnarok Rising Saga) by D.A. Roberts Page A

plan,” I said. “Where’re your weapons?”
    “I still have my Glock, but the shotgun was in the Charger.”
    “How’d you end up out here in the middle of nowhere? I didn’t think that there were any checkpoints out this way.”
    “We weren’t supposed to be out here,” he replied. “O’Brien and I were escorting the ambulance back to the hospital with a VIP patient.”
    “Who was it?” asked Spec-4.
    “The Sheriff’s wife,” replied Southard.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “She turned inside the ambulance and attacked the crew. It couldn’t have been at a worse time, either. We were almost surrounded when the ambulance started swerving and collided with a civilian car. Then it flipped onto its side in the ditch. We got hit by swerving traffic and caught fire. The five of us were in my car and we all got out. We fought our way to the ambulance and we only managed to save one of the crew. Then we headed for the visitor’s center, but we didn’t make it.”
    “I’m sorry, Chuck,” I said, softly.
    “We hit them with everything we had, but it wasn’t enough. I ran out of ammo and O’Brien told me to run. So I shoved the EMT towards the ladder and hoped for the best. I thought they were right behind me, but no one else made it. I pulled up the ladder and watched those fucking things eat my friends. There were so many of them and they just kept coming. I wanted to do more, but I was out of ammo and my asp [2] was in the car.”
    “You did everything you could, Chuck,” I said. “You did your best. It’s a miracle that any of you survived.”
    “Yeah,” he mumbled sourly, “fucking miraculous.”



Chapter Five
The Gauntlet
     
    “A ll that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.""
    - Edmund Burke
     
    We drove in silence for a few minutes, until we were approaching Springfield city limits. We were emerging at Glenstone Avenue, right where it turns into H Highway. We were passing through a residential area, and the dead were everywhere. Overturned vehicles were burning, houses were burning and chaos reigned supreme in the streets. Everywhere you looked was blood and death. It wasn’t a big stretch of the imagination to believe that this truly was the end of the world or whatever you wanted to call it. If this was happening everywhere, then humanity was finished.
    We were seeing fewer and fewer signs of life. That’s when we arrived at the stoplight next to a convenience store, or what we referred to as a “Stop ‘n’ Rob.” There were a large number of zombies, and they were chasing people around the parking lot. The Stop ‘n’ Rob had been completely taken. Next to it in a strip mall was a Dollar Store with several other small stores. A crowd of zombies was trying to get in the doors, and we could see survivors trying their best to keep them out by holding the doors shut. Some were piling anything they could find against the doors and windows.
    Southard and I exchanged glances, and he took a deep breath and sighed.
    “I know that look,” he said, frowning.
    “Better hand out the weapons,” I said to Spec-4.
    She quickly handed Southard three magazines for his Glock and one of the M-16’s. I took an extra Glock and my Mossberg. Spec-4 handed one of her Berettas to the EMT, but he looked at it like it was going to bite him.
    “Have you ever fired a gun before?” I asked.
    “Not really. Unless you count all the first person shooter games I’ve played on my X-box.”
    “This isn’t a video game, ” said Spec-4, shaking her head.
    I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. Spec-4 took the pistol back from him and handed him a Remington shotgun.
    “Here,” she said. “This is the trigger and the bullets come out of the end of the long tube. You put another round into the chamber by working the pump like this.”
    She worked the action on the Remington and chambered a live round.
    “There. Now you’re ready to get your hands dirty,” she added,