Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End

by James Curcio

  Dionysus and Loki crawled from under gravel and debris. They were alone. The entrance to the outside was partially open.

  “How–?” Loki asked.

  “I’m a drummer, dumb ass.” They grinned through a coating of blood and dust.

  Loki looked around. “We’ve got water, food and a collapsible entry. Worst case, we hide out for a month or so.”

  “Artemis? Mary?” Dionysus asked.

  Loki shook his head. “If they’re smart, they took cover and are high-tailing it out of here. This is over.”

  Dionysus nodded, and picked up a handgun. The two of them went down on their haunches. “A while back,” Dionysus said contemplatively, “you told me you didn’t think it mattered if people are unique.”

  “Huh?” Loki shook his head. “Wouldn’t you rather be playing cards or something?”

  “Nah.”

  “Alright.” He tried to recall the conversation Dionysus was referencing, and then remembered. “Well, you can easily boil down the infinite complexity of humanity to a simple truth: everyone wants to matter. The other stuff...doesn't so much.”

  “Sure, but. You can pick any premise, any myth and spin everything around it. Make it the axis mundi of the universe. You can hang Foucault's Pendulum anywhere. That's the nature of all our myths about the world. They conceal and reveal, they invent in their own image.”

  “Goddamnit. You are the only person that could get me talking about this, at a time like–”

  “–It doesn't hurt anything to focus away from this madness for a moment,” Dionysus said. He grinned.

  “Seriously, man. Okay, I have my breath,” he wiped his eyes, blinking. “Hey. Is that Lilith?”

  There she was, walking by the entrance to the cave, looking like she didn't have a care in the world.

  “Lilith!” Dionysus said in a hissing whisper. Loki shot a glare at him, but he didn’t catch it. Loki closed his fingers around his dagger as she approached.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “Caught. Questioned. Escaped,” she said.

  “Good to have you back. We’re probably it. You know that.”

  “No one else needs to die here,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “I made a deal with the Marshall, Trevino. He's the guy that's been tailing us forever.”

  “Lilith. Since when did we start negotiating with feds?”

  “It’s at least worth thinking about,” Dionysus said.

  Loki locked eyes with Lilith. “No, it’s martyrdom. I get it. This was all you, wasn’t it...I planned your war, drove your chariot, guarded your damn doorways, but this does it. Count me out.”

  “Don't do this,” Lilith said.

  Loki unsheathed his knife. He began to move it into a defensive posture.

  Faster than he could have predicted, Lilith shot past him. Now she was behind him, dagger to his throat, other hand on the elbow of his primary arm.

  “Wow,” Loki said.

  “What are you doing? This is nuts,” Dionysus said.

  “She’s gonna feed us to the Feds, don’t you get it? We’re a goddamn sacrifice. All this, the band, the movement...”

  Lilith looked at Dionysus. “You were always a stubborn fool.” Then she turned to whisper in Loki’s ear, “and you always were a bit too smart for your own good. Till next time, friend.”

  “You better hope not,” Loki said.

  Dionysus shook as he watched blood pour from his friend’s neck into the thirsty sand. Their conversations had been a constant part of his life for more than a decade. It had shaped their ideas about both themselves and the world more than either cared to admit.

  There was nothing he could do. He knew a mortal wound when he saw one. So far from medical assistance, there wasn’t even a point in trying to help.

  “Why?” was all Dionysus could force between his teeth.

  She looked at him blankly. “You’re like a kid asking why the sky is blue.”

  “You built us up just to have us publicly disassembled? Is that it?”

  “I’m a force of nature. If you full realized what you are, you would be too. Look at you, your animal body quivering. Your mind spinning. See Loki dying on the ground there? Look, he's clawing towards you, desperately fighting. Fighting. There's nothing to fight! Let go.” There she was again, hands on her hips, so certain.

  “Slough off this mortal coil, is that it? Embrace divinity?”

  “Something like that,” she said.

  “Then you should thank me.”

  “Thank you for what?” she asked, the subtlest trace of confusion tainting her placid demeanor.

  “Setting you free,” he said, with crushing finality.

  She was gazing into the dark barrel of a gun. Her eyes widened in horror. “You wouldn’t–”

  The darkness of the cave went white, then womb red.

  Dionysus stood frozen in place. Her words rang in his head long after the sharp crack of the gunshot echoed back at him from the impassive walls of the cave.

  The gun in his hand did not shake. He felt no remorse, no rage. He was merely a channel for what had to be done. How it was that a brutal act of revenge elevated him to some kind of Demigod-hood, he wasn’t sure. But the certainty was there, sitting comfortably in the part of his stomach that usually housed fear and doubt.

  My God, he thought, looking down at her shattered body, still twitching and spurting black blood. Whatever made Lilith Lilith was still as it always had been. Everywhere and nowhere. She howled between the rocks as the first proto-humans emerged from an ice age. In a strip club, between the grinding of flesh and slacks, the passing of coke-speckled cash from sweaty hand to hand – she was there. In the flash of new lust that tears apart commitment and restraint to birth new life in feverish passion – she was there, too. Forever.

  But she wasn’t here.

  Here were two blood soaked corpses, fit to be carrion come the dawn.

  Maybe, in a way, Lilith was right. Demigods are monsters, terrible and beautiful as a tornado. Our eternity is not the procession of disparate lives so much as an ever-shifting singularity. The distinction is subtle, a mere hairs-breadth that distinguishes man from God. The surface of a pond may ripple in the wind, but the pond is the same. Demigods appear without remorse because they know nothing has changed. A baby born, an entire civilization torn down by a twist of fate – no change.

  Smoke still slithered out of the barrel of the gun. Demigods are monsters, and now so am I.

  Trevino watched Dionysus through his binoculars. He was walking alone, fearless of gunfire.

  Normally at this point in a mission he would feel professional satisfaction, even elation, but this time he just felt sick. He had been following orders, sure, but he knew many of the people that died today were just misguided kids. That was true on both sides. What if those rigid lines – the good guys over here, the bad over there – weren’t real at all?

  “Confirmation,” a voice crackled on the radio. “He appears to be unarmed.”

  Trevino shook his head. “He wants us to take him. Cover me.”

  “We have the shot.”

  “He’s mine. Do you hear me? Don’t fire without my command.”

  Trevino stepped out from cover, his arms open. Two mercs followed.

  “Dionysus,” Trevino said.

  Dionysus stopped, but didn’t turn.

  “It’s over.”

  Dionysus turned a piercing gaze on him. He was different somehow. “It is. There's nothing you can do to me that hasn't already been done. Nothing you can take.”

  “I believe you.” Trevino turned to his men. “Stand down.”

  They appeared unsure.

  “Stand down,” he repeated.

  Trevino approached Dionysus, who put out his hands in expectation of handcuffs. Trevino shook his head. “Five guys with guns pointed at your head. I’m not worried.”

  “You’ve spent years tracking us. The first case, this one. Here I
am. But you’re not smiling. Why is that?”

  Trevino had nothing.

  Dionysus looked thoughtful. “For some reason this reminds me of a story I heard about a samurai. He was sent by his Daimyo to kill an official of some kind. And before he could land the blow, the official spit on him. The samurai...he just sheathes his sword and walks away. Do you know why?”

  He got no reply. “If he had killed him at that moment, it would have been personal. You see...I've lost everything, I've gone beyond it...beyond anything being personal. Tell me. Is this personal for you?”

  Trevino continued to ignore his questions. “Loki?”

  Dionysus shook his head.

  “Look. I called off the slaughter. I have no stomach for it. I just want you and Jesus.”

  Dionysus shook his head again. “Called it off? Trevino, haven’t you killed nearly everyone already? This is like the end of fucking Hamlet. Let me ask you something. Why do you think you were sent after us?”

  “You're an escaped convict. You–”

  “–You're not stupid. I can see that now, looking in your eyes. You aren’t the one who has been hounding us. You’ve been someone’s errand boy. Why did they pick you to do the job?”

  Trevino nodded grimly, despite himself.

  “I’m guessing...You are disposable and desperate. They want you to take down rival Demigods. Keep us from shifting the status quo.”

  “Gods? You're insane.”

  “Let's find out. If you're right, I'll spend the rest of my life in a mental asylum. If I am...you'd better run. And fast.”

  “You’re going to threaten me, now?”

  Dionysus spread his hands wide. “I'm not the one you should fear. You’ll be the remaining lose end. They will have you expunged from the record.”

  Trevino had considered this as well. Hundreds of miles away, would the three Suits sigh together like wearily triumphant surgeons when he called it in? If the lunatic was right, would they kill him?

  He pictured himself laid out with the lumpy quiet of a cadaver on the conference table, with the Suits surrounding him. Their hands adjusted his tie, pinned his credentials to his lapel, fussed with his hair. Martyred, a Saint Stephen full of hollow point slugs like bloody mushrooms.

  Is this what their predicted outcome was?

  Dionysus continued. “We don't change anything by drawing lines on a map. Two or three sides can be at war and serve the same master. Aid this uprising, topple that one. For as far back as recorded history goes, this has been the game. The men you work for live on blood, dictating the course of history from behind a desk. You can shoot the messenger if you like, but it changes nothing.”

  Trevino shook his head, half following, half ready to lock him up in the asylum himself. “Lilith said something about that.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yeah. I still don't know what either of you are getting at. Were getting at. Look, you know what happens now.”

  “You kill me,” Dionysus said nonchalantly. He turned around. Trevino shook his head again, and then slapped on the cuffs. As they started walking off, the mercs moved to follow.

  “I can handle this,” Trevino said.

  They eyed each other suspiciously. “Yes, sir.”

  They made their way through a maze of brambles, Dionysus in front and Trevino behind, gun in hand. The sun was beginning to peak the top of the bluffs.

  “A lot of good it does, being a Demigod. We age. You can kill us. We are mortal in every way. Except our consciousness.”

  “You're looking death in the face, and talking about...I don't even know.”

  “Humor a dead man. We die and forget, are reborn. Sometimes we begin to remember. So what? It’s a cruel joke that time plays on eternity. The memories drive us mad, half the time.”

  “I'm beginning to wonder how you could possibly be behind a terrorist uprising.”

  “Fate is written in stone because the choices we make, given the circumstances, are always the same. If you kill me now, you would always do so. Choice is not fixed, but identity is. So let me ask you...what kind of man are you, agent Trevino? Are you the kind that kills an unarmed, innocent fool?”

  “I'm just following orders.”

  “The greatest crimes were perpetrated by people that were just following orders.”

  “So they say. Stop here. Kneel,” Trevino said, his voice less steady than he would have liked.

  Without any argument, Dionysus knelt on the pebbles and cracked earth beneath him. “I don’t think that’s who you are.”

  “You know I have a gun to your head?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  The gun dangled limply in Trevino’s hand, pointed nowhere in particular. It trembled slightly.

  Dionysus breathed with the cadence of the desert crickets. A moment of peace and stillness. The gun discharged loudly into the chill air.

  Shaking his head at what he was doing, Trevino unlocked his cuffs. “Disappear. Do you understand? Fucking disappear.”

  Eventually, Dionysus heard footsteps padding away.

  Trevino picked his way back across the brambles to the mercs, who waited in the idling SUV.

  He holstered his sidearm and tossed a pair of bloody handcuffs to the merc riding in the rear before climbing into the shotgun position. “Got any water?”

  Accepting a canteen, he drank deeply. “I’ve never executed a man before. Get us out of here.”

  After another swig, he flipped open his phone.

  The Suits sat expectantly with a speakerphone and a manilla file folder on their table. One of them activated the phone.

  “Go ahead, Adam.”

  “We’re finished, here.”

  One of them pulled the folder to himself and opened it.

  “This is confirmed?”

  “Sir. It’s finished.”

  “Well done, Special Deputy US Marshall Adam Trevino.”

  One of them brought a heavy, old-fashioned stamp down on the first page of the file. Trevino’s world-weary personnel profile photo was marred with a “KIA” in red ink.

  “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

  An impossibly loud gunshot played over the speaker. They deactivated it, closed the file, and pushed it across the table.

  “Notify human resources.”

  Dionysus walked alone under the canopy of the stars, marveling at them as he walked. Seemingly still, always in motion. He was alive, he was free. But without friends to share either of it things with, he wondered if it much mattered.

  Epilogue

  2020

  A line of young intellectuals ran the full length of the campus book store like a giant snake. (That is, if snakes could pay thirty grand a year for college and wear Birkenstocks.) The ivory tower, a last, beleaguered bastion of security against the coming storm.

  All of them are eager, pushing, shoving. Shoving to see me. If I’d known people could still get so excited about literature I may have gotten out of the Antichrist Superstar gig before the feds got involved. Back then I didn’t really have the rock star ego; now I have the appearance of it ten times over. Maybe jadedness comes off a lot like egotism.

  The novelty of groupies had mostly worn off. The doddering professor does Debby schtick has to get old eventually, right? Maybe I hoped I’d finally connect with someone like I had with Ariadne, or that I would find her again, in a new form. No luck, but you can’t blame a guy for trying.

  I wanted someone, anyone to be able to sit across from me over coffee and talk about the weather, or Duchamp, or even nothing at all without the Valley Girl in the back of their minds shrilly proclaiming my ineffable genius. Well, as St. Augustine said, “give me chastity and continence Lord, but not yet.” I suppose.

  I came out of hiding from of a feeling of obligation – if people are going to survive what’s coming, they’re going to need to know about the importance of their dreams. About Demigods. The world is about to change in a fundamental way. Shamanism is going to be as
important as horticulture in the new world. It no longer need be an ethnological anachronism kept alive by the academies and tourist trade. I’m just doing my job here. But spit in the face of lady fortune when she offers herself to me? Please. I won’t be a hypocrite either – I’ll tell this to Amy or Sharon or Chelsea, as I unhook her bra.

  Usually, they just want to talk to me about how I almost overthrew ‘the man,’ and so on. I try to be clear. I didn’t almost overthrow anything. I just played drums, had a lot of sex, and participated in a game of capture the flag with heavily armed mercenaries. Truth is, Babylon set off the first charge. Maybe it went down just as Lilith planned it.

  New cells popped up seemingly overnight. The harder the government fought against its own citizens, the more the board buckled. When I reappeared, no one was looking for me. Which is sensible. I’m no actual threat, I never was.

  They say that you can remain conscious for four minutes after your head is severed from your body. This entire nation is just like that head, desperately trying to tell itself that it was all a bad dream.

  History is sometimes kind to those that stand in the right place and time. As it turned out, I still had a fanbase. The more I denied involvement, the more they seem to take it as a feint at humility. So I was stuck with the myth I had created. Not the worst of fates, as that Historic luck can translate into a lot of book sales.

  Well, I’m thinking all this as I sign the umpteenth book, give my pleasant nod to the umpteenth expectant, ubiquitous face, when my pen freezes mid-stroke. Halfway across the room, near the Romantic Fiction section, stands a blue-black skinned aboriginal figure wearing a mask ringed with horns and teeth. Spikes rise from behind the mask, curved like bull horns. A vulture shifts uncomfortably on one of his shoulders.

  Like everyone else in line, he is holding one of my books under his arm, patiently waiting his turn to get a signature from the Author. Unlike the rest, he clutches an obsidian-tipped spear in his other claw-like hand. Monkey or shrunken heads bob from matted tufts of hair. He breathes menace in deep, rasping bellows.