The Age Of Odin

Forty-Six

I dreamed I was in the car again. Back in that fucking Vauxhall Astra. Alone. Upside down. Cold. Numb. So numb, I felt I was floating. I didn't have a body any more, I'd slipped free of it and was just this shapeless entity called Gideon Coxall, an insubstantial thing in the darkness.

Then there was light.

It filled the tunnel Abortion had dug in the snow, highlighting every scoop and groove his hands had left. Bluish, coming from outside, it wavered, now bright, now less so.

A torch?

No. A mobile. The glow from a phone screen. Held in someone's hand. Someone who was approaching. Abortion. Had to be.

Maybe he'd found help. Maybe he'd got a phone signal and was coming to tell me the ambulance was on its way. Better yet, a search and rescue helicopter to airlift us the fuck out of here.

I tried to say his name but I didn't have a throat that worked properly. Didn't have a throat at all, it felt like.

The blue light brightened, whitened, rapidly. The end of the tunnel became a flaring dazzle that I couldn't look at any more.

I shut my eyes and opened them and I was in my bunk bed in Asgard. Around me were a couple of dozen men, snoring, snorting, turning over on creaky springs, mumbling in their sleep. A cabin full of slumbering bodies, restless and writhing.

Soldiers — a breed who seldom slept soundly. Always unconsciously keeping an ear out for the enemy… or else grappling with nightmares.