by Eirik Gumeny
“Who are you?” demanded Artemis, her hand moving toward her quiver.
“I get the feeling you’re not with AAA,” added the cloned empress.
“Nope.” Elizabeth Báthory threw an axe at the clone. Deftly, the Russian woman lifted up the hub cap, the blade lodging itself in the center of the metal disc.
“What the crazy, shitsnack?” asked the empress, titling the hub cap and looking at the axe.
“Set,” replied the Hungarian woman.
The Egyptian god howled and sprinted toward the women, fangs bared, claws out, gaining ground fast. Artemis threw down her bow, grabbed the tire iron from beside the clone, and charged headlong at Set.
“Set!” barked a deep, bass voice from behind the car.
The dog-man stopped abruptly and looked around, trying to find the speaker, his countenance suddenly changing from murderous fury to that of a masturbating teenager walked in on by his father.
Artemis, meanwhile, dropped her shoulder and collided hard with Set, knocking him backward, before clobbering him across the face with the tire iron. Shaking his head, the chaos god threw out a hand and grabbed the moon goddess by the throat.
“Set ...” repeated Amen-Ra, Egyptian god-king, walking back to the rental car from a nearby convenience stand, his arms full of snacks and maps and tampons.
“Oh, uh, hey, great-gramps,” replied Set, his speaking voice remarkably less terrifying than his appearance would suggest. In fact, the Egyptian God of Violence suddenly became altogether goofy and harmless, like Zach Braff dressed up as a wolfman.
“Down, boy,” demanded Ra.
“But, great-gramps –”
“I am not going to ask again, young man.”
“But –”
Before he could finish, Artemis rammed her knee into the dog-man’s solar plexus. Set dropped immediately. The Greek goddess, still gasping for breath, lifted the tire iron again.
“There will be no need for that, young lady,” said the older Egyptian man, his voice changing slightly. Then, changing back again, he said, “Set, come here, boy. Now.”
The ferocious dog-man sighed. “Yes, sir.” He began skulking toward Amen-Ra, his fangs back in his face where they belonged.
“What in the sweaty farts of Jabba the Hutt?” shouted Elizabeth Báthory, her hands in the air. She hurled another axe half-assedly at Catherine the Great LXIX, who, also half-assedly, swatted it away with the hubcap. “Come on, man! We have a job to do!”
“He’s my great-grandfather, Beth! And the creator of the universe! What am I supposed to do?”
The fallen demon shrugged and said: “Die, apparently.”
She pulled open her trench coat, flashing them with an extraordinarily expansive exhibit of explosives. She slid a detonator into her hand from inside her sleeve. Setting her eyes, the erstwhile countess glared at them, the hint of a smile climbing the sides of her mouth like a ninja.
Then Elizabeth Báthory pulled off the explosive-laden coat, threw it at the gods and Catherine the Great LXIX, and ran the everloving hell away.
Bolting full-speed down the highway toward her Hummer, the Hungarian countess pressed the button. A tremendous explosion erupted in the distance behind her.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
The Walking Dead
“We can’t get anywhere near him,” grumbled William H. Taft XLII, staring as Satan, laughing, spread his wings.
“Right ...” replied Queen Victoria XXX, her battle axe pressed against her chest, holding back a trio of diabolically zombified satyrs trying to eat her face off, “but you do see the horde of undead orcs, twenty-foot tall homicidal wood nymphs, ancient rock demons, and all the other crazy shit between him and us, right? All the other crazy shit that we already killed coming back to try and kill us again?”
“Yes, I see them.”
“OK, just checking.” Queen Victoria XXX managed to free the axe and beheaded all three satyrs in a single swing. “You’re also aware, then, that things don’t get less murder-y after they’ve died, right?”
“If anything,” added Thor, tumbling backwards into the conversation, a half dozen resurrected chupacabra clambering all over him, “they get a lot more murder-y.” One of the zombie goatsuckers scrambled up his chest and gnashed at his chin. “And bitey.”
“I am aware,” replied William H. Taft XLII, gritting his teeth as he wrenched the head clean off a reanimated asakku.
“OK,” replied the cloned monarch, bringing her axe blade up through the crotch of an orc. “Because, the way you were talking, you seem to be concerned with the only person here who isn’t currently trying to eat us.”
“If we can take out Satan, we can stop the undead hordes.”
“Are you sure?” asked Thor, slamming two of the chupacabra into one another in a meaty explosion. “I mean, it’s a solid theory, but do you actually know that that’s how the devil’s magic works?”
“Well, look at Persephone and Catrina,” said the cloned president, shrugging, and then punching another asakku in the face. He nodded toward the Filipina woman scrumming with a pack of boraro. “She seems fine now. I mean, that’s usually how these things work.”
“Usually, sure. But, take a look, Billy.” Thor pointed a finger toward Satan. “It’s not like he’s standing over there strategizing and actively moving these reanimated husks around, like some kind of puppeteer who only had rotting meat products to work with. He’s throwing fireballs at Loki and laughing his ass off.”
“Yeah,” added the queen, the axe blade getting caught in the lumpy body of the shuffling, brainless Asag. “I’m pretty sure bringing these buttholes back to life was a one-time party trick. Then he just stands around and watches them chew people.”
“That seems like a gross misuse of superpowers,” said the president. “I don’t buy it.”
“Yeah? Twenty bucks says you’re wrong.”
“You’re on,” replied William H. Taft XLII. “But, uh, how do we figure that out?”
“Give me a second,” grunted Thor, the undead shishiga clawing at him. A dozen reanimated biker fairies came to back her up.
“OK, maybe a couple seconds,” he added, the fairies pulling him down by his hair. Behind him, the reanimated giant centipede burst from beneath the lawn, rocketing dirt and grass and zombified clurichauns into the air.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said the president.
“Don’t sweat it, guys,” said Catrina, shattering a rock demon with the magic hammer. She set her sights on Satan. Above her the sky turned black as obsidian. “I got this.” Mjolnir glowed in her grasp.
“Seriously,” said Thor through the wood goblin pummeling him, “how are you doing that?”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Goodnight, Sweet Prince
“It’s done,” said Elizabeth Báthory into her cell phone, casually starting up her Hummer. In the rearview mirror, plumes upon plumes of black smoke billowed into the air.
“You’re sure?” replied Walt Sidney.
“Totally,” replied the cocksure countess. “You would not believe how many explosives I packed into that coat.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
No, Wait, Nevermind
“I cannot believe how many explosives she packed into that coat,” said Catherine the Great LXIX, hunched together with the Egyptian gods and the Greek hunter, all of them simultaneously poking their heads out from behind the SUV and looking with awe at the substantial fire burning away slightly more than a hundred feet in front of them.
Everything in front of them was in flames – the grass, the asphalt, a couple of birds, a turtle – and everything else was shrouded in a wall of thick, black smoke. Everything except the SUV.
“That is why I bought the premium package,” said Amen-Ra.
“Oh, you, uh, you heard that?”
“You were not that far away. Two, maybe three parking spaces?”
“Yeah, but the trash matrix was running ...”
Set, putting a
paw on the shoulder of Artemis, said: “It sure was lucky you were able to shoot an arrow into her coat and get it away from us before it exploded.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it, Fido,” replied the huntress, standing up and slinging her bow across her chest. The sun slid sideways, sluicing through the smoke and illuminating the Greek goddess majestically, as a suspiciously specific wind picked up and blew through her long, dark brown hair.
“Now let’s get out of here,” she said, pulling open the driver’s door of the rented SUV and climbing inside.
A moment later, she leaned her head back out.
“Who has the keys?”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Don’t Whiz on the Electric Fence
Catrina charged at Satan, Mjolnir glowing, lightning exploding all around the monstrous demon. She swung the hammer at him with all of her strength, plus some. The devil caught the hammerhead with one hand, then put the other straight through Catrina’s chest. She didn’t even have time to scream.
Watching in slow motion as the archfiend’s fist erupted through Catrina’s back, something inside of Thor Odinson snapped. Whatever miniscule shred of logic was keeping him tethered to the mortal realm, handcuffing his powers, vanished in a ‘roided-out fit of ancient, unrestrained, archaically awful wrath.
Thor threw off the shishiga that was attacking him, hurling her literal miles away.
The thunder god got to his feet, growing six inches in the process. His sandy blonde hair became golden, radiant. His scruffy, mountain man beard turned into something that someone might grow on purpose. His pajama top exploded off his chest, his rippling muscles oiling themselves in the process.
The devil saw this. He shook Catrina off his fist and tossed her body to the side.
“Let’s dance, motherfucker,” he roared, flashing his razor teeth.
Thunder rumbled so loudly it cracked open the earth at the devil’s feet, swallowing him up to his waist. A light so bright and hot that it blinded the politicians burned through the night for a sustained sixty seconds.
When it stopped, Satan, charred and smoking, spat: “Is that all you’ve got?”
“You have no idea,” answered Thor, his voice rumbling across the sky, the very thunder itself.
The sky exploded like the invasion of Normandy. Hundreds of thunderbolts burning like supernovas blazed downward, into and through the archfiend, lighting him up like an x-ray, over and over and over, melting away his skin and boiling the ground around him.
Eventually Thor stopped. His body stooped. He looked spent. Slowly, though, he walked toward the smoking villain, his gaze never wavering. He walked, and then he stopped, the thunder god standing over the demon, exhausted, his chest heaving.
And then the devil began laughing.
“Don’t you know who I am?” Satan barked. “You can’t kill –”
In a fraction of a second, Thor’s hammer ripped itself clean from the fallen angel’s grasp and into the Norse god’s hand. Thor swung Mjolnir upward, catching Satan by the chin and sending his head – and the first few vertebrae of his spine – spiraling several hundred feet into the black night. Lightning like cartoon sword slashes once more sliced through the darkness, exploding both the devil’s head and body before branching like spider veins and burning away the satanic chunks into a rain of glowing cinder.
“Sweet Christmas,” said Queen Victoria XXX, blinking through her blindness and marveling at the blurry yet spectacular sight. She was hit across the face by the reanimated corpse of a walking tree.
“Oh, right,” she said, shaking her head. The man-made monarch flipped backward, bicycle-kicking the leshy in what passed for a face. “You owe me twenty bucks, Billy.”
“OK, fine,” replied the cloned president curtly, stuck in a headlock from the undead cave troll that had made its way over to the mansion from downtown.
The leshy tripled in size, grabbing the queen by the waist and hefting her into the air. Its knobby hands squeezed, cracking Queen Victoria XXX’s ribs like a Styrofoam cup. The reanimated skeleton of Chester A. Arthur XVII began scaling the tree, a large knife between his teeth.
“You know I won’t hesitate to kill you, right?” shouted the replica royal, struggling in the tree spirit’s wooden grasp. “We’ve gone over this exact situation, in detail, many times.”
“Hey, Thor,” called the mayor-king, kicking at a trio of orcs that had joined the troll, “we could use some of that divine wrath over here.”
“One second,” was the reply.
Peering out from the troll’s armpit, the president could see Thor standing over the pile of infernal ashes and undoing his fly.
“For real, man?”
“I had a lot to drink.” Thor unleashed a mighty stream onto the powdered remains of Old Scratch. “Plus, you know, he was a dick.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
Kabong!
Thor Odinson tucked away his wiener and zipped up his jeans. He turned to his surviving friends, currently beset by all manner of monstrosities.
“So ... you guys want me to take care of this for you?”
“Yes, please,” replied William H. Taft XLII, tossing the cave troll’s intestines to the side and backing up as several rotting gangsters approached him.
“Sure thing,” replied the thunder god, spinning his hammer in his hand. “You may want to close your eyes. And curl up into the fetal position. And maybe pray.”
“To who?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
“Me,” rumbled the sky.
Thor lifted Mjolnir into the air, funneling lightning into it from seemingly everywhere. Then he slammed the hammer into the ground with the force of a hydrogen bomb.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
So Much for Job Security
Steve Careers sat in the darkened coffee shop, looking at his laptops.
“Huh,” he said. He looked up and around the café. “Hey, are you guys hiring?”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Collateral Smiting
“Holy shit,” said Queen Victoria XXX, standing unscathed – from the lightning anyway – on the arid remains of William H. Taft XLII’s lawn and looking out over the smoking wreckage that used to be Las Vegas. Behind her, the golden mansion sparked and crackled with residual electricity.
“How are we not dead?”
“I know what I’m doing,” replied Thor Odinson defensively.
“Are you sure? Because you just murdered soooo many people, dude,” rumbled the mayor-king, clutching his broken arm. “And more or less burned my city from the face of the Earth.”
“They were already dead,” replied Thor.
“Not all of them.”
“Most of them.”
“You do hear the screaming, right?”
“OK, fine. Maybe I misjudged and got a little carried away.” The thunder god shrugged. “I tried, though. That’s got to count for something.” Then, abruptly, he asked, “Where’s Loki?”
“I assume you obliterated him from this plane of reality,” answered William H. Taft XLII flatly, staring at what used to be his city.
“But did you see it happen? I feel like that’s the kind of thing we can’t just assume.”
“Really?” spat the clone. “‘cause ...” In the distance, the skeletal frame of the Palazzo casino collapsed in a heap of destruction. Dust and smoke plumed upward into the night.
“OK, maybe I did,” replied the god.
“So ... you’re OK now?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, putting a hand on the thunder god’s shoulder. “Got that all out of your system?”
“No,” said Thor, the sky rumbling.
“Right, no, obviously,” said the queen, taking her hand away. “But the unbridled psychopathic homicidal rage, though. That’s at least down to ‘bridled?’”
“Yeah. I guess.” The Norseman slumped down to the ground, sitting with his arms around his pajama-ed knees. “I’m too sad to be homicidally unbridled.”
“OK, good. ‘ca
use holy motherfucking fatherbanging shit, dude.” The facsimile of the woman for whom the Victorian era was named once again looked around at the untold miles of vaporized death and electrocuted destruction surrounding them. Fires were everywhere. Entire floors continued to slide off buildings. A thick cloud of smoke and chemicals and particulates hovered over the city like it was a Chinese playground.
“This is a mess.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
Always Look Both Ways
“You gave him his hammer back?!” Walt Sidney shouted over the phone.
“I didn’t give it to him, sir,” replied Loki, limping his way along the boulevard, the collapsed and collapsing remnants of the Las Vegas strip surrounding him. His suit was tattered, his hair was mostly singed off, he was bleeding from places he didn’t know could bleed.
“The girl took it, sir,” he continued. “It wasn’t part of the plan.”
“What in the seven-thousand fucks of Liu Kang, Loki? I thought you said you could handle this.”
The trickster god squinted his way through the drifting dust, his face and his phone huddled in the crook of his arm. Carefully, he picked his way onward.
“I thought so too, sir. But it turns out I was wrong,” he explained. “I knew they had powers, that I thought I could handle, but these guys ... they were next level, Mr. Sidney. They –”
“That doesn’t concern me,” rumbled the frozen head. “You had a single task and –”
“Thor turned Satan into atomized confetti, sir. What was I –”
“You should have been prepared for that eventuality, Loki. You should have done your research and brought more tangible resources instead of relying on your hammer gambit.”
