by Eirik Gumeny
“I don’t know,” replied Steve Careers with a shrug. “Depends on how often they check their email, if it’s on their phones. Plus we don’t even know if they can all read English or if they’re going to have to run it through a translation app or their wives or something.”
“Who doesn’t have email on their phone?” asked Persephone.
“Some of these guys are pretty old.”
“Well, yeah, but –”
“I don’t think you understand how old I’m talking about.”
“I don’t think I do,” replied the goddess of Ancient Greece.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
A Better Mousetrap
Loki Laufeyjarson walked through the doorway and into the very white office of Walt Sidney, the door sliding shut behind him.
“I know, sir, they’re still alive,” said the trickster god with not a small amount of exasperation. “I’m working on it, Mr. Sidney.”
“What?” said the frozen head. “You’re not done with that yet?”
The slender Norseman cocked a slender eyebrow. “Isn’t that why you called me in here, sir?”
“No. I wanted your opinion on coffee mugs for the annual town hall meetings coming up next month.”
“Oh. Huh.”
“How are you not done with them yet?” boomed the cryogenic CEO, veins popping across his expansive forehead.
“They killed the first team I sent to kill them, sir,” explained Loki. “And the second team has failed to check in, so they’re either dead too or took off with our money. You know how it is with professional liars, Mr. Sidney.”
“You’re trying my patience, Loki, on a level I wasn’t sure even existed.” The jarred head of Walt Sidney shook himself. “You were the one who kept pushing to kill them. Now I give you the go-ahead and you’re just screwing around?”
“Sir, I am not screwing around, I swear. I’m doing my best.”
“Then your best is terrible. If you don’t get this done – get that vigilante cyborg and his marmot sidekick and all of their friends killed and get the information they’ve got on us out of the world – in the next forty-eight hours –”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Sidney, I’ve got a plan.”
“And I’ve got a better one,” rumbled Walt Sidney. He wiggled his tongue around inside his jar, pressing a few buttons. Loki’s phone beeped in reply and he pulled it from the pocket of his jacket.
“Call those people,” explained the frozen CEO, “and have them murder the ever-loving shit out of all of them. Bring Bamapana, too; he’s being wasted behind that desk. And he’s got so many complaints filed against him ...”
“Most of these ‘people’ aren’t even fallen deities,” replied the trickster god, looking at his phone and scrunching up his face. “That’s a little inelegant, isn’t it, sir?”
“This isn’t some fancy dinner party, Loki,” barked the jarred head, turning back to his computer screen. “Now get the fuck out of my office. I’ll figure out these coffee mugs on my own.”
“But, sir,” stammered the man in the green suit, “I love picking out coffee mugs.”
“I know,” snarled Walt Sidney.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Ménage a Knock It Off
In the backseat of the rented SUV, Artemis, the former Greek Goddess of Hunting, and Catherine the Great LXIX, the last-surviving clone of the longest-reigning Russian empress, were absolutely going to town on one another. Hands were on things, tongues were in places. There were noises.
Amen-Ra, former Egyptian God-King, fists clenched around the steering wheel, looked into the rearview mirror.
“Girls,” he rumbled, “come on.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
You Raised My Hopes and Dashed Them Quite Expertly, Sir
Having once more been miraculously snatched away from Death’s cutting board while the Grim Reaper was turned around and waiting for something to defrost, Chester A. Arthur XVII – his face heavily bandaged, his nervous system heavily drugged, and still wearing an orange paper hospital bracelet heavily around his wrist – was lounging precariously in an ill-fitting bathrobe on the couch in one of William H. Taft XLII’s collectible-adorned living rooms, surrounded by expensive toys and obscure movie posters, as well as the aforementioned mayor-king himself, Queen Victoria XXX, Thor Odinson, and Catrina Dalisay, all of them sharing what they knew and trying to figure out just what in the bacon-wrapped hell was going on.
“Someone’s trying to kill us,” Chester A. Arthur XVII gravely explained.
“We’ve already established that, Charlie,” said William H. Taft XLII, rolling up his freshly laundered shirtsleeves as he paced back and forth behind the couch.
“You’ve said it, like, three times,” added Thor.
“Plus, y’know, someone’s been trying to kill us,” clarified Queen Victoria XXX, before inching down the absurdly short leather miniskirt she borrowed from the closet of the late Boudica IX. “How in the fiery fjords of Finland did she walk around in this?” she mumbled.
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” replied the Frankensteined president – to the first part, not the dress thing.
“For the love of Kung Lao, will you just pass out already?”
“Yeah, sure,” answered the swaying president, before tumbling off the couch and onto the carpet.
“Should we –” began Catrina.
“Just leave him,” ordered the queen.
“He’s lying on the part of his face they just fixed.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“To his credit,” began William H. Taft XLII, looking at his friend drooling onto his carpet, “he is kind of right. Someone is trying to kill us, the people here, in this room. There don’t seem to be any other reports of this kind of thing going down anywhere else.”
“That’s assuming it’s all related,” said the cloned monarch.
“It has to be, doesn’t it?” said Catrina. “They killed the scientists knowing we were going to go out there. They were waiting for us.”
“But the lady with the guns and the magic went after Timmy and Mark specifically,” added Thor, “because of what they did to WANG.”
“And we don’t know why Las Vegas was targeted,” explained the cloned president. “None of you were here until well after it started.”
“Maybe it is WANG then,” postulated Queen Victoria XXX. “Or, given the enormously expensive scope of things, Walt Sidney. Maybe all that crazy paranoid nonsense Mark and Timmy were spouting back after we fixed Montana was right.”
“That was the last – and really only – thing we were all involved in,” said William H. Taft XLII. “Other than the Quetzalcoatl incident a couple years back[xl].”
“And he’s pretty categorically dead,” explained Catrina. “Thor and I hung around a while to make sure. He even kicked up the corpse a little.”
“I kicked up the corpse a lot,” clarified Thor. “But, yeah, that settles it then, right? Walt Sidney and his infinite piles of money and resources are out to murder us all?”
“I don’t know,” muttered Queen Victoria XXX. “Something about that doesn’t feel right. I’m pretty sure we’d already be dead if that really was the case.”
“I wish we were,” mumbled Catrina. “At least then maybe I’d get to see Ali again.”
“That is incredibly morbid,” replied the hefty president.
“You’ve got tons of pictures of him on your phone,” added Thor.
“I don’t know why you’re taking his death so hard,” said Queen Victoria XXX, shaking her head. “Billy lost two people, at least, and he’s not complaining. And Bo and Marty didn’t have souls so they can’t even come back as ghosts.”
“But Ali was an atheist ...” said Catrina, sniffling.
“Really?” said the thunder god incredulously. “He kept doing that? Even after he met me?”
“That doesn’t actually matter,” slurred Chester A. Arthur XVII from the floor, raising a pointed finger into the
air. “Souls have been scientifically proven by sciencetists. Religion’s got nothing to do with it.”
“We had lunch together, like, all the time,” mumbled the former Norse god.
“So we can still find him?” asked Catrina, sitting up straighter in the armchair, something like hope once again in her chest. “We can track down Ali’s ghost?”
“Uh, no, actually. Something’s fucking with the phantasmagraphic spectrum,” explained William H. Taft XLII. “IGDB is down, and all other online communications are sketchy at best. No one’s sure what it is yet.”
And with that, Catrina’s heart collapsed in on itself again.
After Santa’s workshop self-destructed at the conclusion of the Torrent War, ending the world for the fifth time and burning down what little was left of the internet – the network already having burned down once before, during the bidding war between Starbucks and Walmart for the metaphorical soul of America – Japanese scientists immediately got to work trying to rebuild the World Wide Web from scratch. In the process, they discovered ghosts and, rather than ponder the philosophical implications or try to solve the existential crises that have plagued mankind for generations, the scientists harnessed the electromagnetic properties of these disembodied souls and used them to power their new internet.
As a result, all ghosts everywhere were automatically catalogued in what came to be called the Internet Ghost Database. If someone wanted to know what Great Aunt Esther was up to, all they had to do was go online and type in her name. The website would immediately give up her current location, the best times to contact her, and her relationship status. This, invariably, was some version of “it’s complicated.”
“What do you mean, ‘no one?’” asked Queen Victoria XXX. “Someone always knows something.”
“I’ve got my best people on it,” explained the mayor-king, “but the Japanese scientists who invented ghosts took their secrets with them when they sank.”[xli]
“Then let’s go dig up their graves!” shouted Thor.
“That really wouldn’t solve, like, any of our problems. The whole ‘taking their secrets with them’ thing was a metaphor. It’s not like they put everything they knew into a box and held it tight while they drowned,” said William H. Taft XLII. “And, anyway, there’s nothing there now but irradiated super monsters.”
“Now I want to go more,” whined the Norseman.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Enemy Mine
Mark Hughes sat in his wheelchair at the bedside of Timmy the super-squirrel. Though freshly mended, Mark couldn’t walk just yet as his new, neptunium-powered leg was still calibrating. Timmy, meanwhile, was hooked up to an intravenous drip of rejuvenating liquid from the Fountain of Youth.
Discovered shortly after a megacryometeor shower rained icy balls of death on the planet and destroyed the world for the fourteenth time, the Fountain of Youth turned out not to be a mystical pool of otherworldly magic water, but a busted fire hydrant in Mumbai mixing with the septic runoff of trailers for Bollywood movie stars and collecting in a large sinkhole where the National Stock Exchange of India used to be. The combination of high-priced organic dookie and all the cocaine and dead stockbrokers in the sinkhole somehow managed to imbue the water collecting there with regenerative powers.
Why anyone saw a hole full of drowning assholes and shit and decided to first drink that water is lost to time. Why that individual chose to let the stock exchange guys drown is not.
“Hang in there, buddy,” said Mark, putting a hand on Timmy’s tiny paw.
***
The buildings of Sergeant Major General Hospital stood towering and radiant in the crispy brown sunshine. Beyond the hospital’s elegantly manicured campus, the city-state of Las Vegas could be seen, jagged and crumbling and smoking, looking for all the world like the teeth of an old man who spent the last hundred years living off of nothing but coffee and cigarettes and bourbon. As a result, the hospital looked even shinier, even more inviting – a bright, antiseptic symbol of hope and rebirth for the shattered city.
Which is precisely why it was so worrying that two groups of heavily-armed thugs were ascending the hospital’s hilltop from two different sides.
From the east came the hulking Sumerian demon Asag, deformed and angry, leading a small army of stony asakku, the lesser rock demon offspring from all the mountains Asag had humped back in the day. He walked side-by-side with Arawn, a hooded Welsh god, six hell hounds leashed to his waist. Behind them, mixed in with the demons, were clurichauns – surly, drunken cousins of the leprechaun – and wayward satyrs[xlii], all of them carrying clubs and chains and a genuine contempt for pretty much everything.
From the west, Bamapana – the twitchy, bug-eyed Aboriginal god of foul language – and Ogoun – a heavily-armored Haitian Voodoo deity – followed an inhumanly tall shishiga, a pale, naked, Russian wood goblin, with long, brambled hair falling to her knees. Beyond them were wooden, white-barked leshy – shapeshifting tree spirits – and cloudy shaytan jinn – smoke genies – pushing and shoving one another as they neared. A gang of very angry fairies, wearing leather jackets, and with bandanas tied around their tiny heads, flitted back and forth between them.
As the two opposing groups cleared the rise of the hill, they locked eyes almost immediately, Asag and the shishiga stomping toward one another with determination and fury. Their followers followed, as followers are wont to do. Eventually the two sides met, sneering and snarling and flipping each other off – Bamapana showering everyone individually with filthy insults about their mothers – standing in the crowded parking lot in front of the entrance to the hospital lobby.
The Sumerian demon and the wood goblin each stepped forward, posturing and stretching to their full, intimidating heights, shoulders pulled back, teeth bared, their noses nearly touching.
Then Asag, a stupendous pile of boils and ugliness, with a club the size of a small tree resting over his shoulder said: “What you here too for? Not was expecting that.”
“Da, I vas not expecting you either,” the shishiga answered, freeing an arm from the tousled hair falling over her body and rubbing the back of her neck. “Ve vere sent here by the Loki. He ... did not mention there being anyone else ...”
“Oh. Huh. We ordered by Satan.”
“Oh, no vay.”
“Yes.”
“Vell, this is awkvard.”
“Yes. Bosses ours super hate each other.”
“Huh.”
The Russian wood goblin put her hands on her hips and bit her lip. The Sumerian absentmindedly scratched at his crotch.
“Hurry the fucking fuck up already!” shouted Bamapana, hopping up and down.
“Hush,” barked the shishiga. She turned back to Asag. “So ... vhat should ve be doing about this?”
“Satan need kill man and prairie dog to get back in Sidney good graces, get his job back.”
“Da. That is vhat Loki needs too, actually.”
“For serious?”
“Da, he pissed off the Valt Sidney something fierce. If he does not get this murder done then he is all but dead himself.”
“Position bad be in.”
“Da ...”
“So ... we fight each other?”
“Yes!” shouted Bamapana, possessed by a manic fury. “Fuck yeah!” The elderly Aboriginal man decked a satyr. Immediately, two other satyrs jumped at the Australian man, swinging thick chains. The fairy gang swarmed into the horde of clurichauns and asakku. Arawn, quietly, deftly, unhooked the hell hounds from his belt.
“Enough!” shouted the naked lady, her voice an otherworldly howl, like wind down a canyon. Everyone stopped mid-fight, fists raised and weapons drawn.
“Vhy in the vorld vould ve fight each other?” asked the shishiga, scrunching up her ashen face. “Even assuming ve all do not just murder one other –”
“Odds do seem good that happen,” said Asag.
“Tell me about it,” added one of the fairies, spiraling to the grou
nd, a particularly large sliver of stone stabbed through her chest.
“– the survivors vould have to deal with the Satan, the Loki, and the Sidney, and that is not a something I vant to do.”
“No,” agreed the Sumerian demon, shaking his head. “Not good outcome.”
“It would be much easier,” suggested Ogoun, his voice an octave below a bass, “to kill the man and the rodent as a group.”
“Point. They have only end up dead for get paid.”
“Exactly,” replied the shishiga. “Let the suits figure the rest of it out.”
“Yes. They no need know who kill what how, long as dead.”
“God, I love the freelancing,” said the shishiga, clenching her fists in front of her chest.
“You go first?” offered the hulking Asag, stepping aside and gallantly pointing his malformed arm toward the hospital entrance.
“Oh, no. I vould not vant to overstep ...”
“Insist me do.”
“I could not ...”
“Why don’t we go in two-by-two?” suggested Arawn.
“Da. That sounds delightful.” The shishiga turned and, cupping her hands around her mouth, called out: “Everyone, find a murder buddy!”
CHAPTER SIXTY
Make a Crack About Not Having a Doctorate, I Fucking Dare You
Mark Hughes threw the wheels forward as hard as he could, speeding his wheelchair down the hallway, Timmy the still-unconscious super-squirrel and his IV bag resting in the man’s lap. The pair flew past the nurses’ station, a handful of dozens of assorted demons and fairies and goblins not far behind them.
“oh shit oh shit oh shit”
“Hey, no running!” shouted the charge nurse, leaning over the station counter to glare at the man in the wheelchair.
“I’m not!” shouted Mark over his shoulder. “Technically!”
