Homecoming

Something’s wrong.

Don stopped, toolbox in hand, and glanced back at the job site, reviewing the wiring. No, nothing wrong there. Stowing the toolbox in the back of the truck, he started for the cab.

Something’s wrong.

Don scanned around the half-built development. At six foot five, broad-shouldered and powerful, he’d never had a problem with muggers, but one never knew …No, that’s not it either. He looked up at the heavy clouds. No thunder in them, but there was snow, and soon; he had to get home before it started. With a shrug, he climbed into the cab and set out.

Rika the cat fawned around him as he built up the fire and reluctantly took out his laptop. Its vibrations bothered him, itched at his senses, scratched at memories best locked away. Still, the sense of wrongness clung to him, and he needed to find the cause.

Countries around the world were closing their borders against a new disease.  They’re scared of a disease? Again? Pah! What do they know of disease? And yet … and yet … perhaps it’s time to go home.

Finding his way at last to the airline reservations, he booked his flight. He had a passport, of course; he’d always kept the option of leaving, though it was getting harder as the United States kept ever better records on its citizens. Another reason to go home, then.

As an independent electrician, Don made his own contracts, and within days, he had closed out all accounts and was free to fly away with Rika complaining in her carrier. He could deal with his house and other property by long distance, if at all. He didn’t need the money, after all.

Oslo was sick. Don felt it as soon as he stepped off the plane. The airport was almost deserted, quiet but for coughs and sneezes and the sobs of two people huddled together beside the boarding door. As the staff struggled to understand his Norwegian, he was forced to speak English to his own people.

The masked customs agent gave his papers the most cursory glance before coughing and waving him on, and only with difficulty did he find an agent to rent him a car. She stood back, pushing the documents and keys towards him at arm’s length, not even checking the paperwork. Oslo was sick and scared, and he was glad to escape into the countryside, even in the driving rain. Far up the coast, the rental car stalled, and he could not restart it. Well, he didn’t mind the rain, though Rika did. He climbed out and picked his way down a side road to a village deep within a fjord.

The villagers welcomed Don and Rika, bedraggled though they were. Radio and television reception was poor in the fjord and the Internet had never quite made it to them, so the villagers were eager to learn what was happening in the wider world from someone who’d actually been there.

“Is it true that nobody gets better? That everyone who gets it, dies? Or they become, uh, zombies?”

Don looked around the crowded coffee shop but didn’t see the woman who had spoken.

“That’s what I heard. There’s a lot of fear — a lot of fear. The disease is everywhere.” He gestured up the fjord outside. There was a shrinking away from him as the villagers realized that he himself might have brought the disease to them. “I don’t believe I’ve been exposed. It hadn’t reached America — or at least not the part I was in — when I left.”

“What’s done is done,” said a gray-haired elderly woman from near his elbow. “If the disease is here, it’s here. Hell, I could have brought it myself.”

“No, don’t say that!” A young woman beside her wrung her hands. “You’re fine. We’re all fine.”

“There, now, don’t worry.” The woman turned to address the crowd, raising her voice to be heard over murmurs. “All right. We’ll suppose for now that the disease isn’t here. If things are that bad outside, we are on our own. We need to make an inventory of supplies, especially weapons …”

Don stepped back to listen to her marshal the townspeople like her own army. When she confirmed he knew how to shoot and assigned him to help guard as they built a fence around the village, he decided this was the place for him.

Weeks became months. Zombies ripped apart a couple gathering firewood outside the village, and the villagers had to learn to survive in this strange new world, stalked by hidden peril. Don fought alongside them; when he was bitten by something that might once have been a man, he didn’t succumb to the disease. Several others likewise survived their injuries, and the village divided into those known to be immune to the disease and those not yet exposed. And the dead, of course.

Ingelin Holmeseth was one of those not yet exposed. Though Don had thought her lazy and unmotivated when he first met her, she pitched in with a will to make the village self-sufficient. Every open area within their hastily constructed wall was soon planted with her crops, while she enlisted everyone with free time to help weed and remove pests. Don helped with every task in the village, and the survivors came to value him. It was not quite worship, but it was close.

By late Spring, Ingelin’s crops were failing. Thick clouds, pregnant with rain, hung over the village, but no rain fell. As Don weeded beside her, Ingelin looked up at the clouds, wringing her hands. “God, why doesn’t it rain? We need that rain so bad!”

“Do you pray to the Christ?”

“Uh, what?”

“You said ‘God’. You meant the Christ, did you not?”

“It’s just an expression and —”

“The Christ has failed us.” Don stood and waved at the empty houses whose residents had died, at the wall that held off the monsters, at the guards patrolling with their rifles ready. “The Christ has failed us, and magic has come back into the world.”

“Magic has always —”

“Yes, of course, in a small way.” How could he, of all people deny that? “But those monsters are magic made manifest. They are supernatural. You must see that.” As she gave the wall a fearful glance, he went on, “So it’s time for us to turn back to the gods who have not failed us. The old gods.”

“Old gods?”

“Old gods like Thor. Pray to Thor for rain, and he may answer.”

“You mean, like, ‘Oh great Thor, please give us rain’?”

“You don’t believe. Thor will not answer if you mouth the words without belief. But he hears, and if you believe, he may answer.”

“Do you believe? In Thor, I mean?”

“I have always believed.”

Ingelin looked up at the clouds, tightening her lips. After a moment, she turned to Don. “I tried the Tarot last night. Just three cards; I wasn’t centered enough for a full reading.” Don raised an eyebrow, and Ingelin shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, maybe you don’t believe, but the cards can speak to me. I got the Hanged Man, reversed. That means rigid thinking, like maybe you’re hanging onto a fantasy that makes you a victim. Then I got the Wheel of Fortune. That was reversed, too, so it means bad luck, but maybe the bad luck will end if you adapt and begin again.” She looked around the field and then up at the clouds once more.

“And the third card?”

“The Tower,” she whispered. “The Tower is struck by lightning. It means disruption and overthrowing wrong ideas. Wrong ideas.” She looked back at Don. “The Tower stands strong in the storm. You see, the cards do speak to me!”

Ingelin’s was a pure soul, full of faith. She closed her eyes, clasped her hands, and prayed, truly prayed, “Oh great Thor, please give us rain. Our need is so great. We’ll — or I’ll, that is — worship you forever if you help us now.”

Drawing on that tendril of faith, Don closed his eyes and pulled.

The rain fell.

Don stayed for over a year, but at length he bade the villagers farewell and strode away up the abandoned and deteriorating road. Much as they hated to see him go, they would not hold him captive, though Ingelin kept Rika. The cat had produced a healthy litter of six kittens, and Don would not take those innocents into danger. Not that he himself was in danger, strengthened as he was by the faith of the village; the zombies felt his power and fled at his approach.

As he reached the old highway, he stopped to look back to the west, to distant Iceland. They had officially forsaken him a thousand years before, but old beliefs die very hard, and he’d been sustained by a trickle of half-embarrassed faith until just decades before when the last believer died, forcing him to live as a man. He would return to Iceland in time, but for now he would seek out other surviving communities in Norway.

Donar Wodansson — Thor Odinsson — had come home.