Zeus is Dead

by Michael G. Munz

  Thalia wondered if the goddess herself would show up to see one of her creations tested. Immortals sometimes did, if they were aware it was being hunted, and they were either particularly proud or had a bet riding. She saw no invisible gods lurking about, but then that wasn’t her area of expertise, either. The Muse backed off and settled atop the canyon entrance to await the others.

  Leif’s babbling heralded their arrival. “If you do manage to kill it,” he was saying, “make sure you remember to take the head off. These things are never dead until you take the head off. And maybe set it on fire.”

  “Quiet! . . . And I have done this before, you know.”

  “Just saying.” Leif didn’t lower his voice one bit. “And it’s when things are completely quiet that it’s staring down at you from above, so just remember that too.”

  Jason held up his hand to silence him again. Leif actually complied and then looked expectantly toward the top of the canyon. He was looking straight through Thalia, though she doubted he realized it. She toyed with springing down to startle them all but deemed it not funny enough to blow her cover and risk a slashing.

  Jason took a tiny, headband-mounted camera from Dave. “Stay here.”

  Leif gave what Thalia suspected was the cheesiest thumbs-up he could manage. After waiting for Dave to set up for a shot of the entrance, Jason drew his sword, crept into the canyon, and disappeared behind the first bend.

  “So this is where he takes the gun out, huh?” Leif whispered. Apart from him, Thalia was the only one who smiled. As it was one of her smiles, she counted it a shame that no one could see it.

  Well, screw that! Enough invisibility. She was a glorious kestrel falcon a few moments later, and a few moments after that she had winged her way after Jason.

  The creature, she noticed, was gone.

  Jason took a few minutes to explore the full length of the canyon. Caution guided him, albeit figuratively. (Thalia had never met an actual incarnation of Caution and was disinclined to believe one existed, but she was on a first-name basis with Death—Doug—and occasionally had breakfast with Sleep, and so she felt she oughtn’t rule anything out.) Nevertheless, Jason found nothing alive save for a few wildflowers.

  “Creature!” he called in admirable abandonment of the advantage of surprise. “Show yourself!”

  The creature, if it was still around to hear him, was unwilling to shed the same advantage so easily. Nothing answered.

  He cast a suspicious glance upward at Thalia, who took a moment to show off her current plumage and give a falcon’s call of encouragement. The hero studied her. His hand shifted toward a dagger at his belt and he appeared ready to throw it. If he mistook her for a hideous monster, support from her quarter was going right out the window.

  Again, figuratively speaking.

  Jason appeared to abandon the idea. He turned around and, with one last look at the end of the canyon, made his way back to the others. Thalia followed and landed on a rock behind the camera.

  “No contact so far,” he said. His eyes remained alert, his body tensed. “But there’s a nest of some sort, plenty of bones. Just no creature. Might be out hunting.”

  “Maybe it’s out filming a cable show of its own,” Leif suggested.

  Jason scanned the top of the canyon. “Could be hiding. Maybe I startled it. Could be . . . stalking us.”

  “You want to set up here?” Tracy asked. “We could get some wide shots of you waiting. Might be a good spot to do a voice-over later talking about . . . oh, I dunno, something. We can figure that out later.”

  Jason nodded. “It’s bound to return sometime.”

  “No, no, no.” Leif said. “I thought you’ve done this before?”

  Jason’s only response was a grin for the camera’s benefit.

  Leif continued. “You’re supposed to relax your guard! Tempt fate! Say something like, ‘Well, guess it’s not home! Break out the sandwiches!’ Something like that.”

  Perhaps humoring him, Jason waited a few seconds. Nothing came of it, though the wind did tousle Jason’s hair in what might have been a heroic fashion.

  “Could check up top there,” Dave suggested. “Turns out to be clear, be a great place to set up a shot for when it does show.”

  “Clever as always, Dave,” said Jason, apparently looking for the best place to climb. “I was just thinking that myself.”

  Leif was undeterred. “Well you can’t just—You have to say it’s safe or something; that’s always when the monster attacks. It’s like Murphy’s Law or irony or whatever! How can you be on TV and know so little about it?”

  Jason laughed.

  “Say it, Jason,” Tracy suggested with a mocking smirk at Leif. “I just got an idea for that voice-over. Something about this hunt being especially challenging because you have to put up with our guest.”

  Jason rolled his eyes with a grin. “I guess it is not home,” he intoned. “Whatever shall we do?” They all waited, but still nothing came of it. The wind ceased tousling Jason’s hair to instead flutter about them with a mocking pleasantness.

  “You’re not doing it right.” Leif took a few steps toward the camera. “Looks like he scared it off. It’s gotta be miles away by now.”

  Everyone waited, if only to think of a suitable smart-assed remark. The wind finally gave up, blowing off elsewhere to harass some tumbleweeds.

  Tracy broke the silence. “Did we bring sandwiches?”

  Jason sheathed his sword and patted Leif’s shoulder. “Thanks for trying, kid, but things don’t work that way.”

  The creature barreled into Jason without further nonsense. Man and monster tumbled into a clump of sagebrush. Teeth snapped on armor, metal unsheathed, and the fight was on.

  “The sword!” Leif smacked his forehead. “He had to put away the sword! I knew I forgot something!”

  Tracy pulled at Leif’s shoulders. “Get back!” The four retreated behind Thalia’s rock, watching and filming as Jason took firm hold of the monster and kicked it off him with a yell. It tumbled away, regained its squat footing with its shelled back to the camera, and shrieked.

  “C’mon, Jason. C’mon, get up,” Tracy whispered. “We need a shot of the thing’s face . . .”

  “Not very big, is it?” Leif asked.

  Jason hurled himself from his back to standing with a single kick of both legs, sword brandished impressively. The creature shrieked louder, and Thalia regretted choosing an animal form that lacked arms she could use to cover her ears. The monster continued, backing off a few steps, its low, flat body swaying from side to side as if daring the hero to attack or to flee.

  Jason did neither. Sword held out protectively before him, he circled around and positioned himself to one side of the shot. The creature turned with him, growling low, its face coming into view.

  “Huh,” Tracy observed. “Well, that’s . . . kind of man-sized, right?”

  “Maybe you can give it bigger arms in post-production,” Leif suggested.

  The thing’s stubby forearms were, indeed, terribly unimpressive. The creature itself appeared to be the monstrous offspring of a frog and a turtle: its back broad and armored, its hind legs long and bent under it. They were thicker than would be found on a frog of similar size, except that a frog of similar size would be roughly the size of a large washing machine. Each hind leg ended in terrible claws that squeezed into the dirt as the creature waited for Jason to make a move. Its turtle-esque head growled through teeth that, while certainly large, looked more suited to grinding flour than rending flesh.

  Such distinctions make little difference to anyone who has ever had their head crushed in a flour mill, of course, and neither did they make a difference to Jason. He dodged and feinted, sword still held defensively as he tested the creature’s reactions and, very likely, drew out the moment just a bit for future viewers’ benefit. After about thirty seconds of this, the creature ceased growling and drew back its thick, round head to blink in what was likely either curiosity or
amusement.

  “Aww,” Leif cooed.

  “Almost rather cute, isn’t it?” observed the doctor.

  “Uh-huh,” Tracy said. “We’ll need to edit that bit out, or we’ll be getting e-mails.” She stood, hands cupped to her mouth. “Kill it, Jason!”

  Leif turned a surprised look in her direction.

  “What?” she asked. “We got the snarl shot. He’ll take enough time to make it interesting.”

  “You’re gorgeous when you’re ruthless, you know.”

  “Didn’t know, don’t care.”

  Jason charged in, sword swinging. The creature snarled again and jumped back—but not fast enough. The blade glanced harmlessly off the side of the shell as it turned. Jason guided the rebound around into an upward slash along its underbelly.

  It was Jason’s turn to be too slow; before he could make contact, powerful legs launched the beast up along the outer wall of the canyon. It found purchase on the rock, scrambled madly, and then disappeared up over the top, its entire body shifting colors to match the rock, like a chameleon on speed.

  Jason withdrew cautiously back to the camera, his eyes on the cliff. “It’s trying to lure me into the canyon. Clearly it’s a trap.” Clearly he was narrating. “We have a saying on Monster Slayer: ‘The first step in avoiding a trap is knowing of its existence.’”

  Leif balked at the others. “So Frank Herbert stole that from you guys, then,” he whispered. “And ah, shouldn’t the second step be, ya know, not walking into the trap? Anyone tell him that part?”

  No one answered. With a tilt of his head that Dave took as a signal to follow with the camera, Jason crept toward the canyon entrance.

  Thalia took to the sky herself. She really shouldn’t leave Leif completely, but then she was a Muse, not a fighter. If the beast chose to attack him, there wasn’t much she could do aside from trying to blind it with her robes. Besides, she was starting to think it could be Jason who had something to do with Zeus’s resurrection. He was the classic Herculean hero: strong, determined, and not weighed down by too much intelligence. (Clever had its place but didn’t always do what it was told, after all.) She circled the area, watching everyone with falcon’s eyes.

  Jason entered the wide section at the middle of the canyon and paused, trailed by the one-eyed cameraman. Both were looking upward at the top of the canyon walls.

  Unfortunately, Jason was looking upward in the exact wrong direction when the monster peered down over the edge and launched itself straight at him. The hero somehow reacted in time, barely, whirling to one side just before the beast would have tackled him. Sharper than it looked, the edge of the monster’s shell sliced across his outer thigh, and the impact sent them both to the ground in a cloud of dust. The sword flew from its owner’s grip and rang against a rock.

  “I’m all right!” he called to Dave.

  He didn’t look particularly all right, Thalia thought. Though he got to his feet almost as fast as the creature itself, an ugly wound flowed red beneath his now torn and dirty pants. Thalia winced in sympathy; they were very nice pants.

  Pressing its advantage, the monster launched itself at Jason’s head. With no time to recover the sword, Jason could only throw himself to the ground. His attacker sailed over him, latched on to the rock wall, and then turned and sprang back before Jason was even halfway up. Again the hero dodged in a barely controlled rolling fall that took him farther from his weapon, narrowly avoiding the monster’s strike. It landed this time near Dave, who struggled to backpedal without losing the shot.

  The monster, however, in what was likely an unintended bit of professionalism, ignored the cameraman completely and focused entirely on Jason. It sprang at him again, too widely in its haste. Jason needed only to be sure he didn’t collide with it as he rushed with a laugh to regain his weapon, and the fight was even once more.

  For a time the two combatants regarded each other across the bone-strewn canyon floor, each sizing the other up or just waiting for the other to make a mistake. Jason’s face hardened in concentration, studying the creature until he seemed to realize that such a thing looks very dull on camera. He twirled his sword in the sunlight with a flourish as impressive as it was pointless, then grabbed a knife from his belt and hurled it into the creature’s neck.

  The beast gave a violent cry, staggered back just a moment, and then yanked its head down into the shell to snap the blade off against its armored collar. Jason stepped forward, sword raised. Before he could close the distance, the monster reared up on its hind legs and stretched its midsection until it stood a furious eight feet high. From under its shell unfolded powerful arms. Previously hidden, they were thrice the length and thickness of the smaller pair, with serrated chitin on the outer edges. The monster spread them wide and hurled ear-splitting shrieks at Jason as if to say, “Look! I have more arms!” or perhaps simply, “Ouch.” (Monster shrieks, like prophetic visions, are difficult to translate.)

  “Tell me you got that!” Jason called to Dave.

  “No, I had my head up my ass! Camera’s on! Camera’s pointed! Hell, man, why people always gotta ask that?!”

  “Seemed like the thing to ask?”

  “Just kill the damn thing!”

  Jason charged, sword swinging in a two-handed grip that put the monster on the defensive. He struck against the chitin of its arms, knocking them away so he could slash at the thing’s chest. The blade did as much damage to the thick hide as nails to a chalkboard, with twice the spine-jagging sound.

  The beast roared and swung both arms for Jason’s head. Jason ducked the first, whirled away from the second, and swung high and fruitlessly for the beast's head in return.

  “Skin’s thicker than it looks!” he shouted.

  Thalia thought it looked plenty thick enough already, except for that one thin spot she noticed earlier . . .

  Man and beast clashed anew, striking, slashing, blocking, dodging. Once more the monster sprang up the canyon wall, greater arms folding in before it clambered up over the top.

  Thalia wondered how long it would take for Jason to see the left-side vulnerability she’d spotted on her first inspection. Maybe his eyesight wasn’t as keen. She was a lesser immortal and using a falcon’s vision to boot, after all. Below, Jason waited for the monster to come back down. Thalia could just make out the camouflaged beast stalking around atop the canyon wall, hiding beyond the rim. She took the moment to fly down and alight on a crag beside Jason.

  “Wait! Wait!” she croaked. Ugh, falcons had lousy voices. Ah, well, couldn’t be helped. “Your chance is rising! Look for the hollow of the left breast as he dives and turns above you!”

  Jason blinked at the talking falcon before him and cast a surprised glance at the camera before returning his watch to the cliffs above. To his credit, he appeared otherwise unfazed.

  “Talking birds,” Jason muttered to himself. “New one. Thanks but no thanks, little falcon! No hero ever took advice from a bird!”

  Leif, Tracy, and the doctor crept into the area in time to see a falcon rolling its eyes at Jason and taking off again. Leif opened his mouth immediately.

  “Where is it?”

  The only response was Jason's dismissive wave and three shushes from the others. Jason pointed up to the canyon top, drove his sword point into the ground, and rolled his sleeves up.

  “Ooh, this is going to be a good ep,” Tracy whispered. “But if he dies, I’ll kill him.”

  Jason scooped up a handful of rocks and flung them one by one at various places along the top of the canyon wall. Everyone else took cover as some of the rocks bounced back down with splintering cracks.

  The beast appeared atop the edge of one side and sailed down at Jason. He spotted it, dodged left as it passed, and then hurled half the remaining rocks at its head with a battle cry that was either wordless or poorly enunciated. The rocks bounced off the back of its shell moments before it turned to face him. Jason continued to throw, one at a time now, backpedaling and aiming f
or the head. Each bounced harmlessly off the monster’s armor.

  Even so, few creatures will suffer the indignity of being hit with rocks if they can help it. This one shrieked in rapid succession, unfolded its greater arms again, and knocked the thrown stones away. Jason hurled his last at the monster’s feet and rushed it. Too caught up in trying to block the low throw, the creature didn’t realize Jason was charging until the brave and crazy mortal latched on to the thing’s left arm. Swiftly gaining a firm grip, Jason continued past the beast to wrench its arm back with all his weight and momentum. It toppled backward, taking Jason with it and half trapping him beneath. Thalia gasped as the pants sustained another terrible ripping in the struggle.

  Dave rushed forward, camera pointed. (So shocked were the others that no one thought to ask him if he got that, so there was no way to tell if he had.)

  Ragged squeals tore out of the creature as the two wrestled in a tangle of grasping limbs and dust. The beast thrashed its free arm about in an effort to swing back and hit Jason, who was himself yelling in exertion and pain as the thing’s weight ground what it could of him against the rough earth.

  Then somehow Jason managed to turn himself perpendicular to the creature’s body. The jagged shell edge loomed perilously close to his legs. He did his best to distract the creature from this fact by repeatedly ramming it in the head with a thick-booted heel. Its angry cries were soon muffled by the thing’s own shell as it pulled its head down as far as it could go and threw up the other arm to block.

  The beast’s thrashing slowed while it tried to defend itself and sought to stand again. Jason was faster; he drove the soles of his boots against the side of its body, knees bent. He clutched the thing’s left arm in both of his and shoved with his feet as if trying to uproot a tree. The creature screamed and grabbed for Jason with a right arm that, while thick and strong, just didn’t quite bend at the angle required to reach him. Jason yanked further, straining against muscle and credulity as the beast bucked like a bull trying to throw a rider. It finally succeeded in launching Jason on a brief airborne journey into the canyon wall, where his head cracked against the rock.