Zeus is Dead

by Michael G. Munz

  “No!” the redhead cried. “You don’t understand! You cannot stand against the Erinyes!”

  Jason rushed to reset the crossbow. “First birds, now flying redheads. What’s an Erinyes? Leif! Quarrel!”

  “Oh, hell,” Tracy whispered in what seemed to be recognition. “Jason, she’s right, we have to run!”

  “The way out is clear!” yelled the redhead. “You can get out! Go! Go! Go! Nobody listens! Why aren’t you going? Are you an executive?”

  Tracy tugged at Jason. The doctor was already scrambling up the rock pile. Unable to recall what the Erinyes were, exactly, Leif merely stood gripping a quarrel that Jason swiftly grabbed from him.

  “Fine!” the redhead yelled at Jason, “you can stay here, be all heroic, cover their escape! The rest of you, run!”

  “Jason! Tactics! You’re a sitting duck in here, like Pittsburgh!”

  Whatever happened in Pittsburgh, that seemed to do the trick. The big reality-TV hero turned and ran, ushering the others in front of him. Leif handed him the rest of the quarrels regardless.

  “Yes!” the redhead cried. “Yes, go! Oh, you’re all such bright little mortals! Hurry!”

  They scrambled up the pile of stones and into the passage beyond as the Erinyes, shrieking in wordless rage, regrouped in the air behind them. The redhead turned, putting herself in the Erinyes’ path and by all indications preparing to hold them at bay by sticking her tongue out, but mightily. Leif couldn’t watch. Plus, there was the fleeing in manly terror to take care of. He leaped from the top of the rock pile and ran after Tracy.

  “We just had to let Dave take the shotgun, didn’t we?”

  They dashed through the narrow passage. Leif’s eyes frantically shifted from the ground in front of him to the air behind him to Tracy’s spectacular backside and back to the ground (though not always in that order). The brief journey took far too long for his liking. The Erinyes’ screams and the sound of talons scrambling on rock pursued them up the passage. Whatever the redhead had done, it hadn’t slowed them down much.

  They reached the end of the passage and passed out of the mouth of the canyon to see below them the hill they had hiked up hours ago. “Keep running!” Jason ordered.

  Leif saw no reason to stop. He followed the doctor out of the canyon mouth and grabbed Tracy’s hand a moment before she tugged herself free—probably just to keep her footing while running down the steep, graveled slope. (Hadn’t Leif been heroically fast with those quarrels, after all?) They were halfway down the slope before they noticed Jason wasn’t coming with them.

  The redhead, however, was. “Keep going!” She was also missing most of her outfit for some reason that Leif regretted he didn’t have more time to ponder.

  “Where’s Jason?” Tracy cast about.

  “Being a hero! There’s really no time to argue!”

  Tracy stopped. “Jason!”

  “Is this National Ignore Good Advice Day?!” The redhead grabbed Tracy’s arm. “You cannot stay! They’re Erinyes, vengeance on bat wings without mercy or fashion sense! I’m just a Muse, I can’t protect you! Your only choice is to run, Zeus’s daughter!”

  “Tracy . . .” Leif began, thinking this Muse had probably the best idea.

  The Muse misunderstood, but quickly. “Yes, yes, ‘Tracy,’ whatever! I’ll call her ‘Tracy,’ I’ll call her ‘Zeus’s daughter,’ just let me call her ‘running her destined little butt off’!”

  Above, the Erinyes emerged from the canyon, two of them haplessly trying to untangle the Muse’s robes from their heads. Jason sprang from ambush, blade out and swinging. Savage slashes cut across each of the tangled ones in two flashing strokes. Both fled back into the canyon, leaving the robe behind, howls of pain ripping the air. Leif’s eyes went wide as the third Erinys sprang down the slope directly toward them.

  “Okay, run!” Tracy yelled.

  She didn’t have to tell Leif once. He caught a glimpse of Jason following before he fled down the slope again, expecting to feel talons in his back or see Tracy snatched up.

  He was vaguely concerned about the doctor. Jason, the hero, would obviously be fine.

  A vindictive cry cut the air behind him, and he stumbled, staggered, and regained his balance just as a dark shape flew over him. One of the Erinyes slammed into the doctor and lifted him off his feet just as a quarrel pierced her shoulder. She dropped him immediately and tumbled away down the slope. As they stopped to help the doctor up, Leif gave Jason a thumbs-up where he stood above at the canyon mouth.

  “He did it!”

  The Muse shook her head. “Unless by ‘it’ you mean made them angrier, then no, he didn’t.”

  Before anyone could argue, the first two Erinyes sprang at Jason from behind, hoisting him up by the arms and cackling. They lifted him high above the slope and summarily let go. He dropped, but only briefly, saved by a desperate grab at one of their ankles that left him hanging in the sky from a flapping nightmare that couldn’t quite support his weight and maintain altitude.

  For a moment it looked as if Jason would make it safely to the ground on that hideous flapping parachute. Perhaps he even would have, had the previous sentence not begun with for a moment it looked as if. Sadly it did, prophesying the moment that followed as the third Erinys, a quarrel still deep in her shoulder, rammed into Jason, knocking his grip free and sending him plummeting a good eighty feet. He crashed onto a prickled bush that was completely inadequate for breaking his fall onto the boulder around which it grew. His sword careened off the boulder and tumbled farther down the slope. His crossbow shattered instantly.

  “Oh, gods,” Thalia whispered. “No one survives a plummet.”

  Leif didn’t have the heart to argue. Jason wasn’t moving anyway.

  Above, the Erinyes circled like caffeinated vultures.

  “I love when the stupid ones try to fight back!”

  “Ha! Megaera loves a mortal!”

  Megaera immediately reacted to this with a snarl and flung herself toward the other two. There was an aerial tangle of blood and shrieks as the Erinyes tore at each other. They tumbled away toward the canyon and disappeared from sight.

  Tracy half leaped, half clambered toward Jason. Leif followed suit.

  “You’re running the wrong way!” yelled the Muse. “Come back! This isn’t funny!”

  Her warnings went unheeded. In the end they had to climb down two short cliffs and jump a ravine to get to him. Leif nearly took a spill on an unsteady rock as he tried to watch for the Erinyes’ impending return. So long as he kept watching for them, he figured, irony wouldn’t let them show up.

  Right?

  When he finally caught up, Tracy was holding Jason’s hand in a struggle to find a pulse. The hero’s eyes stared up at the sky in vacant, unblinking surprise. “He’s not breathing!” The doctor was there a moment later, pulling her aside and doing his own examination. Leif kept watching the skies. The Muse continued her litany.

  “You cannot tarry! They won’t be playing for long! If they come—”

  “Just shut up!” Tracy yelled. “Shut up right now! You told him to stay behind! This is your fault!”

  The Muse pointed back at her, eyes tearing up. “Do not make me play the don’t-make-his-sacrifice-be-for-nothing card! Don’t you dare! I can’t handle the cliché right now, I’m having a very stressful evening!”

  The look on the doctor’s face was plain: Jason’s sacrifice was officially ultimate.

  Leif wasn’t having such a swell time, himself. “Tracy,” he started, “please, if they’re coming back, we need to—”

  Tracy’s glare all but slapped him across the face. “Need to what?”

  “We need to run! Find shelter, something!”

  The doctor nodded rapidly. “He’s right. We can come back, get his body once we’re safer.”

  The Muse blinked. “What? He’s right? I’m not just some knockout redhead! What have I been saying here?”

  The screaming returned before Tracy
could give an answer, and Leif cursed himself for taking his eyes off the sky. The screams came from somewhere beyond the canyon wall. Maybe they still had time, if they hurried. He fervently hoped that whatever force controlled irony couldn’t hear his thoughts.

  “Tracy, please.”

  Tracy tugged the camera headband from her forehead, stuffed it in a pocket, and then led them down the slope with a sweep of her arm. Somewhere behind them the Erinyes screamed again.

  “‘Please take my shift, Thalia?’” the Muse seemed to be quoting as she followed. “‘I’ll owe you a favor! What trouble could he possibly get into in two days?’ Zut! Calliope’s going to owe me a whole freaking saga before this is over! Run!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Some cite Ares’s love of dogs as proof that the god of war is not without his positive sides. While this text has no official opinion on the matter, anyone wishing to decide for themselves would do well to also note Ares’s love of dog fights.”

  —A Mortal’s Guidebook to the Olympians’ Return

  THALIA’S CALL TO APOLLO had come while he was in the middle of a hurried in-flight reprogram of one of the sun chariots. Getting lax in the maintenance schedule was never a good idea, especially when replacement parts had to be special ordered from Hephaestus (whose position as senior editor of the European Journal of Engineering absorbed much of his free time). Apollo jury-rigged a fix he hoped would hold―at least until he could send the other chariot up to take its place. Only then did he notice Thalia’s message. A few seconds after he heard her voice mail, he’d shot off to where he sensed she was.

  It was just after sunset by the time he arrived. The sky was lousy with Erinyes, Thalia was shepherding Leif and two other mortals down the hillside, and Death was silently leading away the spirit of a confused and burly mortal whom Apollo didn’t recognize. (He’d brought the scythe. Why did he always bring the scythe? He never actually used it anymore. He was like a college sophomore who still wore his high school letterman’s jacket.) Questions in need of immediate answers numbered three in Apollo’s mind: Why were the Erinyes here? Who died? And just what was the “major breakthrough” Thalia spoke of?

  He was also vaguely curious why exactly Thalia was running around half naked, but that could wait. What was clear was that the Erinyes’ venomous shrieks and rock-hurling put a stop to any ideas of discreet godly observation. Apollo thrust himself between the two parties and appeared with a blast of sunlight right in front of the shrieking bat-hags. They pulled up sharply and looped back around to hover, begrudging him the attention that was his due as a god.

  He smiled at all three, arms crossed. “Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone. Would you care to explain just what you’re doing?”

  They hissed and shrieked, spitting palpable vitriol that floated in the air before dissipating. They teleported a few yards to reappear directly in front of him and then floated back a few feet again with their eyes gushing blood, posturing. Apollo wouldn’t normally put up with that kind of crap, but with the Erinyes, you had to pick your battles, especially if you were trying to speak to them mid-vengeance. Demanding manners may as well be asking for a nice vivisection-free foot rub, for all the good it would do.

  “Do not interfere, Apollo!” Tisiphone yelled. “This is just vengeance you’re . . . interfering with! Interferer!”

  “Paperwork!” Megaera declared. “Right here!” She yanked it out to wave it in his face before stuffing it away again. Fortunately thousands of years of wading through bad poetry had made Apollo quite the speed reader. He got a pretty good look.

  “Ares sent you just to avenge the death of one of his creatures? Rather extreme, that. He usually rewards bloodshed.”

  “Who cares?” Tisiphone shot.

  “He helped create the creature! It’s his right!” Megaera added.

  Alecto kept quiet save for a frustrated mewling as she quaked with barely contained bloodlust. Her eyes tracked the mortals’ retreat. Her talons twitched.

  It was Ares’s right, Apollo thought, but it was a right seldom exercised these days, when there were more surplus monsters stored up than anyone really knew what to do with. “Who killed the creature, exactly?”

  Tisiphone pointed up the slope to the dead mortal’s body. “Jason Powers!”

  “Monster Slayer!” Megaera declared.

  Alecto remained silent, her glare fixed. She bounced in the air like a toddler after too much Kool-Aid, provided that toddler held a wicked dagger.

  “Then he’s dead now. Your job is over.”

  “Now, see, that’s what we thought just now, but then Ares came and said—”

  “The job,” Apollo interrupted pointedly, “is over. Now you will take your lovely faces elsewhere.”

  “Helped! They all helped!” Tisiphone screamed.

  “No one tells us how to do our jobs, Apollo,” Megaera hissed. “Not even a god.”

  “Yet in the past you’ve only gone after the party directly responsible for a slain favored creature, no? Did you change your rules, or did Ares change them for you?”

  Megaera scowled. It was a moment before she admitted anything. “Ares . . . But he had a point!”

  “They deserve it!” Tisiphone cried. “They saw it happen! They must suffer!”

  “Yes!” Alecto burst. “Suffer! Suffer-suffer!” She quaked with giggles punctuated by stabs of her dagger.

  Apollo smiled. “I thought you didn’t let gods tell you what to do.”

  Tisiphone nodded vehemently. “We don’t! Now stand aside! For the vengeance!”

  “Because Ares told you so,” he said.

  “That’s different!” Tisiphone scowled, ruminating a moment. “That is vengeance! V-E-N-J . . . and the rest! We heed not your orders!”

  “You won’t listen to a word I say?”

  “Not a word!” Tisiphone yelled.

  “And whatever I say about doing your job is wrong?”

  “Dead wrong!” Tisiphone’s use of the word “dead” set Alecto twitching longingly.

  “Then I command you: obey Ares! Chase down the mortals! Tear them limb from limb even though they didn’t kill the creature! Obey both gods!”

  “No!” Tisiphone screamed. “You cannot command us! We’re—we’re leaving! Now! Right?”

  Alecto bit her lip on a desperate mewling as if she might explode.

  Megaera looked troubled. “I . . . there’s something amiss about this, Sister.”

  Tisiphone hesitated. “Yes. Yes, there is something, isn’t there?” She pointed a talon at Apollo, eyes narrowing. “And when we figure out what it is, we’ll be coming back for you! Or for those mortals, anyway! Our choice!”

  Megaera downshifted from hideous and checked a ledger. “Er, no we likely won’t; there’s that Cthulhu thing to deal with. We’re late as it is.”

  Alecto spun around, eyes wide with what Apollo took to be a fearsome hope at the possibility of action.

  “Cthulhu thing?” asked Tisiphone.

  “Don't you remember that pack of mortals who believe some god Lovecraft made up is real, just because Olympians are? Worshipping false gods shall earn them a demonstration of true eldritch horror!” She cackled dramatically before pointing to the ledger. “See? I made a note. True eldritch horror.”

  “Ah!” Tisiphone agreed. She swooped up into Apollo’s face as Alecto looked back and forth among all of them. “So maybe we won’t be back. But maybe we will! You just tell those mortals that! Tortured, tortured they’ll be in their not knowing!” She glanced back at Megaera. “What’ve we got after that? Can we fit them in after that?”

  “It’s a choice between—”

  Alecto exploded into a shriek that sent animals five miles away diving for cover. “Stop it! Just stop talking! If we’re to go, then let us be gone and be done with it! This isn’t some bloody panel discussion show!” She seized Tisiphone by the neck and shook her, eyes crazed. “If I’m not torturing someone in the next thirty seconds I swear I’ll rip your filthy lips
off!”

  Tisiphone hissed, pushing her off, and then vanished. Megaera grudgingly followed suit. Alecto laughed in triumph and stabbed at the air with giddy cries of “Eldritch! Eldritch! Eldritch!” before she vanished after her sisters in a shower of blood.

  Apollo allowed himself half a moment to savor his own amusement before he dropped to the ground to dash after Thalia and the others. Thalia, at least, stopped when he asked.

  “Hi, Apollo, nice timing! Hey, mortals! Stop!” If they heard her, they didn’t care. “They keep doing that! I mean I suppose one can hardly blame them with the Erinyes on their tail, but they weren’t listening to me when I was telling them to run either, and it’s just, I mean, come on, do I project so little authority? Maybe it’s because I’m hardly wearing half a stitch, but even before I lost the robe they were all, ‘let’s not pay attention to the Muse!’ and so forth. You’d tell me if I was, wouldn’t you? Lacking authority? I mean, not now, I guess, but hi, how’d you get rid of the Erinyes?” She beamed.

  “You know that thing you came up with half a century ago with the cartoon rabbit and idiot hunter?”

  “You’re kidding! That worked?”

  “Erinyes: not known for brains.”

  “Well, yeah, but—Hey, do I get royalties for that?”

  “Thalia, what exactly is going on? You mentioned a breakthrough. Was that before or after that fellow died back there?”

  “Oh! Golly, yes! Before. Definitely before. All right, so Leif? Not related to Zeus! At least I don’t think so. Maybe he is. Could he be? I mean you so seldom know with these things, and he’s got a crush on Tracy that if she gave half a whit about reciprocating would mean—eww! I mean eww for mortals, anyway.”

  “Thalia! In ten words or less if you can manage!”

  “Ooh, word games! Um, let’s see . . . Leif’s in love with Tracy who’s Zeus’s daughter with an amulet.” She paused. “Oh bother it all, that’s one word too many, but the amulet’s important! Now you respond in, um . . . seventeen words or less! Apollo? Hey, come back!”

  Apollo had already shot ahead and landed straight in front of the three fleeing mortals. Leif and the woman he took for Tracy stopped up short. The third screamed and changed direction, dashed through a stand of cacti, and vaulted a rock before Apollo managed to grab him and plop him back down with the other two. The mortal continued to scream nonetheless.