Necessary Evil and the Greater Good

by Adam Ingle

  “Don’t like priests,” he said as he picked himself up off the ground, shaking gravel, glass, and dirt off himself.

  He walked over and gave Stephanie a hand getting off the ground. When he turned to look at Sir Regi, he seemed genuinely surprised.

  “Freyja’s tits! You’re a vicious little bastard,” he said.

  Sir Regi finally spit out the mouthful of flesh and then ran over to the back of the flipped SUV and began retching violently. Everyone stood around the body of Father Mike for several minutes, waiting to see if he was going to go undead again. He didn’t. They all shrugged, looked at each other, and seemed to breathe easy for the first time since they had left the gas station. Sir Regi came back as Fenrir and Mestoph began pulling the body off to the side of the road. Leviticus kicked around the dirt and rocks that made up the rural highland road to cover up most of the blood. It wasn’t that they were trying to hide their crime, if killing in self-defense could really be seen as a crime; it was just that no one wanted to keep seeing the body and the blood lying there. Besides, it was going to be pretty hard to hide a crater and a twisted pile of truck and SUV.

  “So now what?” asked Marcus. He held Stephanie tightly against his side. She looked ragged from being held hostage for hours and was clinging on to Marcus.

  “We’ve all been through quite a bit, and it’s getting late,” said Mestoph as he and Fenrir came back from dragging Father Mike’s body away. “I say we try one of these trucks and see if we can’t get a little distance before we try to get some rest. We’re beat, and Magnus is still unconscious.”

  “You mean he’s really in a coma? I figured after Fenrir had a noticeable lack of being shot in the head that Magnus was just hiding somewhere,” said Marcus.

  “Yeah, he’s not doing so good. Can’t believe the padre didn’t at least check to see if you two were telling the truth, though,” said Fenrir.

  Marcus and Fenrir, being the two conscious humans with the most mechanical acumen, tried getting the two trucks on the outsides of the roadblock in working order. Neither would start immediately, and one of them had been damaged enough in the collision that the hood wouldn’t open. After some prying and banging, they finally got the hood up on the other truck and found it missing far more than could be cannibalized and fitted from the other vehicles. Both vehicles had been intentionally scuttled prior to the wreck.

  Everyone else scoured the wreckage and the sides of the road and only found two bodies. Fenrir identified them as two of the mercenaries they had joined up with to “salvage” the airplane wreckage. These two had been in the truck that had left as soon as fighting broke out, the truck that St. Peter and his demon lackey had presumably been driving.

  The haunting light of the storm still shone darkly in the distance and the rains hadn’t let up, so the Prophecy and Omen were still active. That meant that even if St. Peter had found Persephone, he hadn’t done anything with her yet. The truth was that they didn’t know what to do when they found her; the only ones who would were God and Satan. That wasn’t a confrontation Mestoph or Leviticus was looking forward to. If the others had known it was looming, they wouldn’t either.

  There was nothing they could do about any of it now and without a vehicle they were stuck at least for the night. Come morning they would weigh their options as far as what to do with Magnus, how to close the last 50 or so miles to Persephone, and anything else that came up. For now they all piled into the various vehicles for the night. Fenrir crawled into the overturned SUV, not wanting to move Magnus or leave him alone, while Marcus and Stephanie slept in the cab of one of the scuttled trucks and Mestoph and Leviticus climbed into the other. The brush with death and the welling up of emotions between Marcus and Stephanie resulted in the shedding of some of Marcus’ innocence that night. No one but Fenrir actually slept easily, but they all eventually gave in to exhaustion.

  Hades had created a small bubble of light and shelter near the edge of the chasm. He had also conjured a plush wingback chair and a narrow Victorian end table in the center, and had been sitting smoking a cigar and drinking a glass of Greek wine. The light was the orange color of a fireplace and looked out of place and a bit ominous in the foggy darkness. It wasn’t anything near as sinister as the thick beam of cold, dark light that seemed to ooze from the clouds. It shined—which was the only word that seemed to apply despite its oddity—directly onto what he assumed would be Valaskjalf, one of Odin’s halls that was supposedly made of pure silver. In that hall was his throne, Hlidskjalf. Hades had no doubt that Odin was sitting on it now, looking over him and trying to figure out what to do with his new bargaining chip.

  The two pantheons, the Norse and the Greeks, had never had much to do with each other. They occupied drastically different time periods and were geographically separated even at the height of their respective popularity. That said, they were both waning. Only small groups of people still believed in the old gods, and even fewer actually paid them homage. Hades had long ago lost dominion over the afterlife. God had been rather diplomatic about it, giving all those souls under Hades’ watch the option to make a new home in Heaven. Understandably, most of them took the offer. Heaven was the new, cool place to go, and if Hades had been honest with himself, he wouldn’t have minded going as well. That, God did not offer. Satan, on the other hand was his typical boisterous self and claimed he had magnanimously let Hades run his “little shop” while he had been busy, but now he was collecting his debts. Now Hades pretty much ran a small retirement home of faithful Greeks who probably wish they had taken God’s offer.

  The Norse were no different. They had kept all the fallen warriors who had made it to Valhalla, but their market share was pretty much non-existent these days. So when a fabulous turn of events brought the bride of a god from another pantheon, you had to make the most of it. Despite the fact that Persephone had little love for Hades, he couldn’t deny or change the fact that he would never stop feeling the way he did for her. What the Norse didn’t understand though, was that he would do anything to get her back.

  “Hades?” asked a deep, gravelly voice from the darkness beyond Hades’ bubble.

  The god turned, startled. He had been deep in thought and hadn’t heard anything or anyone come up the path.

  “Who…is that?” Hades peered at a large, broad-shouldered figure cast in just enough light that he thought he recognized the gorilla shape. “St. Peter? What the Hades are you doing here?”

  The figure stepped to the edge of the bubble of light, and St. Peter stood there, limned in the soft glow. It gave menacing shadows to the sharp and angular features of the man’s face.

  “Mind if I come in?”

  A rectangular line began to cut into the bubble protecting Hades, and then it flipped outwards to make a doorway for St. Peter to enter. Then the door closed and sealed shut. Hades conjured up another chair, St. Peter obligingly took a seat. He sat silently for a moment, taking in the ambience of the glowing darkness.

  “Is that one of your tricks?” asked St. Peter.

  Hades looked at him impassively for a few seconds.

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “I assumed it was always that way. You know how macabre and depressing those Norse can be,” said Hades. He drew out the S’s in “those Norse” with a sneer.

  “True, but that has more of the flair of someone accustomed to the darker side of things,” said St. Peter.

  That was something that had annoyed Hades since God and Satan took over. Back in his day Hades had been a revered, respected, and even well-liked god. He was an equal with Zeus and Poseidon. Zeus had reveled in the love of the living, and Hades thrived on the respect and service of those who had crossed the mortal barrier. Meanwhile, a thousand years with nothing but fish and the occasional sailor had made Poseidon a bit bitter. Now? Now everyone assumed that Hades was just the old Greek counterpart of Satan and lumped him in with all that fire and brimstone nonsense. Even those who should
know better, like St. Peter, had cast him aside as a proto-Satan.

  “Well if that’s not yours, then that must mean it’s our good friend Satan. And if that’s the case, that means there’s something up there I want,” said St. Peter.

  “Well, join the club. My wife is up there, too,” said Hades.

  “Persephone? Wait a minute…” St. Peter rolled the name over in his head, trying to recall something at the edge of his memory.

  “What was that girl’s name? Stephanie? Yes, that’s it,” mused St. Peter. “Persephone. Stephanie. No, it couldn’t be that simple. Oh, but it is, isn’t it?” He howled with laughter and Hades leaned away, looking at St. Peter as if he had gone feral and would bite him at any moment.

  “They fucked up the paper work!” shouted St. Peter through his guttural guffaws. He reached his immense arm over the end table and clasped Hades firmly on the shoulder, despite the other’s attempt the squirm away. “My good man, it would seem we’re after the same thing. And I think I have a proposition that may interest you.”

  Chapter 16

  Let’s Start a Holy War

  Although short enough to be ponies, Icelandic horses are broad and stout enough to be any horse’s equal in everything but height. They could easily bear the weight of even the massive Magnus. A small herd of them was grazing near the wreckage, outlined in the gold light of sunrise. If they could be ridden, they could quickly close the distance to the mountains by the end of the day since they could cut straight across the highland instead of following the winding volcanic gravel and mud road—more accurately described as the ruts of previous travelers—they had been driving on the night before.

  Fenrir was the first to climb out of the Land Rover. The sudden appearance of humans didn’t seem to bother the horses in the least. One of them glanced up from a tuft of grass and then went back to munching. Fenrir looked over to the rest of the group with a huge smile on his face. He turned and faced the herd of horses and went into a crouch and calmly, quietly, and slowly stalked up to the horse that had taken notice of him. Fenrir moved with a fluidity that was at once frightening and fascinating. It was no wonder that Father Mike hadn’t heard him approach. He was like a wolf stalking prey.

  Fenrir, still a good distance away from the horse, suddenly stood upright and lost the predatory edge about him. He looked back at the group, still huddled in the trucks where they’d made camp, with a confused or possibly disappointed look on his face. He looked back to the horses and jumped in place and yelled in a distinctly Icelandic way at the same time. All the horses briefly looked up at him and then calmly went back to what they had been doing.

  The horse that Fenrir had been stalking stopped eating and stood facing him and then slowly began walking calmly over, stopping just in front of him. Fenrir, dumbfounded, petted the horse, whose muscles quivered. It whickered contently. Then Fenrir found the rope amidst the slightly tangled mane at the horse’s head. They weren’t wild after all; at least not completely.

  Fenrir returned to the vehicles, leading the horse he had made friends with. It obediently followed him as if this were something he and Fenrir did often. By the time he reached the Land Rover, the others had pulled themselves out of their truck hotels and were trying to warm up. The light had turned from gold to grey as it rose behind the storm, which seemed to be gathering in on itself, becoming more compact though no less fierce.

  “They’ve got crude reigns on them, all of them. They’re as docile as a palfrey, and if we can get something to use as padding I don’t see why we can’t ride them. We can even toss Magnus over one of them, as long as we don’t go too fast, which we can’t really do if we want to make it all the way to Hofsjökull,” said Fenrir.

  “Hoffwhat?” asked Stephanie.

  Fenrir pointed to the ice-covered mounds of earth where the storm hovered, the dark-light of its center a column of shadow in the gloomy daylight.

  “It’s a glacier that sits on top of a volcano of the same name,” said Magnus with some difficulty as he tried to pull himself out of the side window of the Range Rover. He was sluggish and pale and struggled to get to his feet, but with some help from Marcus he stayed upright. “And I’ll not be tossed over the back of a horse like a sack of potatoes,” he said.

  Fenrir checked him over as much as Magnus would let him. It looked like the hulking man had tried to change his own dressing and hadn’t done too badly, but Fenrir tightened the binding, which made Magnus wince.

  “Plus, with my luck you’d pick the shortest horse to toss me over, and I’d hit my head on every rock we passed,” said Magnus, trying to force a smile.

  Magnus and Fenrir, though not exactly equestrians, were the most familiar with horses, and Stephanie had ridden some as a child; therefore, it was left to them to approach the horses, test their temperament as much as they knew how, and round them up. Meanwhile Marcus, Mestoph, and Leviticus would search the vehicles for anything useful like food and weapons, as well as blankets or anything else that could be used to make impromptu saddles.

  The horses were surprisingly easy to handle and seemed as if they actually wanted to be taken control of. Although it probably wasn’t necessary, six of the eight horses were corralled near the wreck, with Sir Regi barking behind them like he was a sheep dog, then they were tied off to the tie-down points on one of the truck beds. The other two horses, not wanting to be left out, followed the rest of the herd. Each of them would have a horse of their own, with Sir Regi riding shotgun with Marcus.

  The scavenging party was able to pull together a small supply of bottled water, a couple energy and granola bars, and a bag of green flaky leaves that Magnus and Fenrir identified excitedly as roasted sugar kelp. There was also a bottle of some sort of green schnapps called Brennivin.

  “Ahh, good ol’ Black Death,” said Magnuson

  “Too bad we don’t have any hákarl to go with it,” said Fenrir.

  “So what is…how-kar-lik?” asked Stephanie, struggling with the Icelandic word.

  “Fermented shark meat. Stuff’s poisonous fresh, so it’s cured until fermented. It’s strong, and a bit of a delicacy here, but to you it’d probably taste like piss and vomit. Even we tend to like to chase it with some Black Death, like he’s got there, to get rid of the taste,” said Magnuson.

  Sir Regi gave a curious “hmmm” and Mestoph actually looked like he was interested in trying it. The others hoped they wouldn’t have to resort to fermented meats anytime soon. Though with their meager supplies, they would be eating moss and begging for hákarl if it took more than a day to get to the glacier.

  As to saddles, they came up woefully short, with only three small blankets and a thick sweater they were reluctant to remove from the dead body of one of the rebels who had been squished by the flipping Range Rover. Magnus and Fenrir had ridden bareback before, although not for more than a few miles, and they were willing to forgo the cushioning. Fenrir tried to get Magnus to reconsider, given his tattered condition, but he firmly refused to give in. That left the other four, not counting Sir Regi, to draw lots for blankets. In the spirit of impartiality, Fenrir grabbed a handful of scrubby grass, counting out four blades, and then cutting each to roughly the same length with his pocket knife and then cutting one in half. Stephanie drew the short straw. Marcus tried to concede his blanket, but she told him that she was the most accustomed, though just barely, to horseback riding, so he would fare much worse over the long run.

  They didn’t find any weapons other than the two guns they took from Father Mike. There was a mangled rocket launcher, but its safety was suspect, not to mention it was a ridiculously impractical weapon for them to take with them. With the blankets tossed over the backs of the horses, they began the comically awkward process of trying to mount their horses. With no stirrups or pommels to help them, they opted to move each horse alongside the bed of the truck, climb in the back, and then onto the horse.

  It was a slow process full of uneasy movements and t
enuous balance, but eventually they were all mounted and as stable as could be. Fenrir took point, as much by happenstance as by design. He managed to get his horse to move away from the road and take a more direct approach to the glacier; the others followed suit, with the two riderless horses trailing at the rear. Once the horses seemed to understand where they were heading, they took over navigation as if they had been intending to visit the glacier the entire time. Whether or not Fenrir’s horse was the leader of the band of wild horses to begin with, it was the defacto leader now and the others didn’t seem to mind.

  They set a slow walking pace as they got their “horse legs” and learned a few basic points of horsemanship from the Vikings and Stephanie. After about an hour, both riders and mounts were desperate to speed up, and the short horses broke out into a pleasant trot. They slowed down to a walk every so often for a little rest for both rider and horse, but the horses quickly put themselves back at a trotting pace. They all knew they would eventually have to stop to give the horses a proper rest, and none of them seemed to be looking forward to trying to dismount and mount again without the aid of the truck. For the time being, however, they all tried to enjoy the ride.

  It was hard not to be moved by the landscape, despite the circumstances and gloomy weather. The highlands were a harsh and beautiful country, with long stretches of volcanic sand deserts mixed with patches of snow that hadn’t yet melted or washed away by the rain. There was virtually no vegetation until they came across random rivulets of water, which Magnus explained were runoff from the glacier. Even then the vegetation was sparse, so they made sure to stop anytime they came near water to take care of the horses. Being a semi-wild band of horses, they seemed to have some previous experience with this part of the country and managed to find the runoffs with surprising frequency. Around midday the horses led them to the banks of a wide glacial river.