Chapter 862

The zombie cops opened fire almost immediately.

Muzzle flashes erupted across the street as Coulson and the others dove for cover. Then more figures poured out of the bar—more than twenty of them.

The motorcycle gang.

They were dressed exactly as the earlier reports had described: leather jackets, leather pants, and the general aesthetic of people who had made questionable life choices and decided motorcycles were the answer. Every one of them was armed with something.

Their movements were stiff. Their aim was terrible.

Unfortunately, their guns were real.

A single bullet was still enough to kill someone.

Coulson had no intention of finding out whether SHIELD agents were any harder to resurrect than ordinary people, so he ordered everyone behind cover while they prepared to switch to live ammunition.

Nobody seriously believed tranquilizer rounds were going to work on zombies.

The more troubling question was whether normal bullets would work at all.

"Oh, shit!"

A SHIELD agent fired twice before ducking back behind a vehicle.

His name was Tom. He was a veteran agent, although his career had progressed more slowly than his experience deserved. He had neither powerful connections nor anyone pulling strings for him.

That didn’t mean he lacked combat experience.

In fact, he’d survived enough dangerous operations to have earned his reputation.

But this was easily the strangest situation he’d ever encountered.

"I hit them in the head!" Tom shouted as he reloaded. "Why aren’t they going down? Aren’t zombies supposed to stop moving when you shoot them in the head?"

The younger agent crouching beside him, James, stared at him with something approaching admiration.

"You’ve fought zombies before?"

"Of course not! Otherwise, how do you think I’d still be alive?"

Another shotgun blast slammed into the hood of their vehicle.

James ducked.

"Then why the hell are you assuming shooting them in the head will work?"

Tom looked at him as though the answer should have been obvious.

"Because that’s how it works in the movies!"

James stared at him.

He was beginning to suspect surviving long enough to become Tom’s subordinate was itself an impressive achievement.

"These guys have terrible aim."

While the rest of SHIELD was being pushed back by the unexpected attack, Mackena remained remarkably calm.

"Fighting them is like shooting a dead donkey."

She casually raised her oversized revolver, a cigar clenched between her teeth.

Yellow runes appeared along the barrel.

The weapon fired.

The bullet struck one of the zombies, and a six-pointed star suddenly appeared across the point of impact.

The corpse collapsed instantly.

Mackena lowered the revolver.

"Someone call the undertaker."

Sigrun was even less concerned.

The Valkyrie stepped forward without hesitation and slammed her shield into one of the undead.

The attack was meant to be a rapid charge, something designed to stagger and stun an opponent rather than inflict serious damage.

The zombie apparently disagreed.

It flew into the air.

It spun once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then it completed an absurdly elaborate aerial rotation before crashing onto its back hard enough to come apart.

Sigrun stared at the remains.

"All show and no substance."

Her flail whipped around.

The spiked head smashed into another zombie’s skull, reducing it to fragments.

"You disgrace that legion!"

Her anger was unmistakable.

She swung again.

The flail’s weighted head shot forward like a rocket and drove another undead corpse into the ground.

Three attacks.

Three bodies.

Sigrun’s definition of subtlety was apparently still being developed.

Sigrun had once belonged to the Valkyrie Corps.

After the battle that had ended Hela’s reign, the hatred between the Valkyries and Hela’s forces had become absolute.

But before that final confrontation, things had been different.

When Odin’s armies had conquered new territory, the Valkyries and Hela’s warriors had been two of his sharpest weapons. They had fought beside one another and trusted each other with their lives.

To Sigrun, that history still mattered.

Hela and her followers were enemies now. If they met on a battlefield, there would be no mercy and no hesitation.

But outside the battlefield?

Nobody had the right to disgrace what those warriors had once been.

And these creatures were doing exactly that.

They looked like Hela’s soldiers.

They had the same faces.

But that was all they had.

Their fighting ability was laughable compared with the warriors Sigrun had once fought alongside.

If these pathetic creatures could be placed in the same category as the Valkyrie Corps, what did that say about the corps’ honor?

What would it mean if the Valkyries had supposedly fallen to an army like this?

Sigrun would rather die than accept that insult.

"The woman..."

Sif hadn’t been frightened by the undead either.

But instead of attacking, she stood with her small shield raised and watched Sigrun.

There was something about that woman.

Something Sif couldn’t quite identify.

"Okay... I think I’ve figured it out."

Tom cautiously peered over the top of the vehicle.

After watching Mackena and Sigrun tear through the zombies, he reached a conclusion.

"These aren’t infected humans."

James looked at him.

"What?"

"They’re probably undead created through some kind of supernatural magic."

James considered that.

"So that’s why normal attacks aren’t working?"

Their reasoning was questionable.

Their conclusion, however, was surprisingly close.

The zombies’ movements were sustained entirely by necromantic magic, and the spell’s core was indeed located within their brains.

Unfortunately, an ordinary handgun wasn’t powerful enough to destroy it.

Something closer to a Barrett anti-materiel rifle would be necessary.

And no, before anyone asked, an anti-materiel rifle did not count as a normal attack.

That was simply common sense.

Even the magical community—including Evenson—had reached a unanimous agreement on this point.

Nobody called getting shot by a Barrett a basic attack.

Anyone who disagreed was welcome to volunteer as a test subject.

"So we need magic to fight magic?" James asked. "Then what? Carve crosses into our bullets? Replace the ammunition with silver?"

"If the bullets were silver, we’d run out before the fight started."

Tom shook his head.

Then he glanced toward the others.

"Besides, we have someone who uses magic too."

The SHIELD agents had spent the last several minutes watching Mackena and Sigrun slaughter the undead while feeling increasingly useless.

Now, almost as one, they turned toward Evenson.

Their eyes said everything.

Your turn.

Evenson did not disappoint.

He stood in the middle of the chaos, completely motionless, his expression calm.

Gunfire hammered against his magical barrier.

He didn’t move an inch.

From the outside, it looked incredibly impressive.

Almost heroic.

Internally, Evenson was having a very different experience.

His thoughts were a complete mess.

He still hadn’t figured out what the hell was happening.

His eyes remained fixed on the sword that had been thrown from the bar.

Black.

Long.

Very black.

And very long.

A rather large sword, in fact.

Evenson stared at it.

There was no way he wasn’t going to have some unpleasant thoughts about that.

He’d assumed this mission would be simple.

Sif’s primary reasons for coming to Earth were to find books for Frigga on governance and discuss when Evenson would be ready to send troops.

The hunt for Lorelei was merely a convenient cover.

How difficult could that possibly be?

Then he’d listened to Sif describe Lorelei’s powers.

Evenson wasn’t particularly worried.

He’d spent years around Sarah without anything inappropriate happening between them, and he’d also received more than enough training from the Eredar twins.

After being repeatedly lectured, threatened, and generally bullied into learning how to survive around seductive demons, he was fairly confident that he possessed enough survival instinct to avoid getting charmed by an enchantress.

So he’d expected this to be little more than a formality.

At worst, the only complication would be a disagreement between SHIELD and the Black Chapter over what to do with Lorelei.

And that wasn’t even really his problem.

He was supposed to remain behind the scenes.

Let Mackena and the others deal with the bureaucratic headache.

Instead...

Why had everything gone completely off the rails?

Evenson glanced around.

Umbrella was his company.

The zombie apocalypse was supposed to be his thing.

And now someone else had gone and started one without even asking permission.

He could forgive the lack of a royalty payment.

He could even forgive the lack of a proper credit.

But not even a citation?

Outrageous.

Still, that wasn’t the real problem.

The sword was.

Because judging by that enormous black blade, there was only one person who could be responsible.

Hela.

And that raised another question.

What exactly was going on in Asgard lately?

Frigga had apparently decided she wanted to become an empress, and Hela seemed to have developed the sudden urge to become some kind of terrifying royal revolutionary.

Which made Thor what?

Evenson thought about that for a moment.

Then he decided Thor was better off staying on Earth.

For his own safety.

He glanced sideways at Sif.

She was completely devoted to him.

Thor, meanwhile, had apparently decided to ignore her feelings and then somehow ended up betraying her anyway.

If Sif ever snapped, Evenson suspected Thor might eventually receive a very unfortunate homemade pie.

He decided not to think about it.

Unfortunately, the more his thoughts wandered, the less he understood the situation.

Meanwhile, inside the small bar, a beautiful woman with long brown hair sat at the counter.

She wore a leather motorcycle outfit.

Steam rose from the food in front of her.

An unusual fragrance filled the entire room.

Some people might have called it the scent of death.

Under its influence, even someone who had just eaten a full meal would suddenly feel ravenously hungry.

The woman closed her eyes reverently.

"Thank you, great goddess, for this divine blessing..."

She inhaled.

"Slurp."

After finishing her prayer, she picked up a plastic fork and attacked the instant noodles in front of her.

She ate with the desperation of someone who had just discovered the greatest invention in human history.

I used to live in luxury. When did I ever get food this good?

Soup.

Vegetables.

Meat.

Enough to fill her stomach.

This truly is food fit for the gods.

Then her expression suddenly tightened.

She slowed.

Set the noodles down.

Her hand rose to her throat.

A long, narrow scar ran across her neck.

The wound was relatively fresh, its edges only recently healed.

Its position was almost unnervingly precise.

It crossed directly over her vocal cords.

She’d reopened the injury slightly by eating too quickly.

The woman sighed.

Outside, gunfire continued to echo through the streets.

She picked up her cup of noodles and walked toward the window.

After lifting the blinds, she peeked outside.

A faint smile appeared on her lips.

"Sif..."

Slurp.

"And..."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Your High Cleric..."

Slurp.

The woman was, of course, the fugitive Sif had been hunting.

The earlier report had been accurate.

She had escaped when the Cursed Warriors broke open her prison.

She had intended to use one of Loki’s hidden passages to flee Asgard.

There had only been one small complication.

Why the hell was there a hole in the passage?

Who had dug a pit right in the middle of the route?

And why had she been unlucky enough to fall directly into it?

The answer involved an unfortunate chain of coincidences.

Evenson had once traveled through that same passage.

So had Loki.

Loki had used it countless times without incident.

Evenson, however, possessed certain mysterious passive abilities that had a tendency to turn ordinary situations into disasters.

He had somehow ended up inside Hela’s prison.

Naturally, he hadn’t been willing to spend the rest of his life sitting in a cell.

So he’d used the Scepter of Sargeras to punch a small hole through the prison’s dimensional space.

It wasn’t large.

But it was large enough for one person to crawl through.

That was how he’d escaped.

Unfortunately, the Scepter of Sargeras was not an ordinary artifact.

The hole he’d created had remained.

That was why he’d later been able to communicate with Hela.

It was also why he could send people through.

The opening wasn’t large enough to attract attention.

And the passage wasn’t used frequently enough for anyone to discover it.

But the hole was still there.

So when Lorelei attempted to escape through the same passage, she stepped onto the wrong spot...

And fell straight through.

When she emerged on the other side, she froze.

The sky was locked in an eternal twilight.

The ground beneath her feet was black and barren.

Jagged mountains rose toward the heavens like enormous blades.

Lorelei’s eyes widened.

She knew this place.

Or, at least, she’d heard stories about it.

The kind of stories adults told children to frighten them into behaving.

Then swords began flying through the sky.

Several of them streaked overhead, each carrying a person.

Four people to a group.

Twenty-five groups.

A hundred people in total.

The swords carried them to different locations, where they were deposited onto the barren ground.

The people immediately began collecting weapons.

Daggers.

Short swords.

Long swords.

Black armor.

Then they turned on one another.

They fought like gladiators in an arena.

Men and women hacked at each other while shouting the same bizarre battle cry.

"Winner takes all! May fortune smile upon you! The goddess rewards the victor with a bowl of chicken-and-mushroom noodles!"

Lorelei stared.

She didn’t know what she was looking at.

She didn’t know who these people were.

She didn’t even know why they were fighting.

But one thing was becoming increasingly clear.

This place...

Is this the legendary Abyssal Prison?

Before she could make sense of what was happening, someone appeared behind her.

A woman floated silently through the air.

She wore a grotesque helmet, but there was nothing crude about her bearing. Every movement carried an unmistakable nobility.

She stopped behind Lorelei.

Her voice was cold enough to freeze the air.

"Kneel."