Kumbaya, Space Hippie Page 20

  I held up the ornate key, so he could see it over my shoulder.

  The allfather quickened his pace so we were walking next to each other. “that looks like the key to the Tartarus gate. How’d you get it? I had Hephaestus destroy it.”

  “This is a copy. Medea made it from the magic of Orpheus and Eurydice fucking.”

  “Those two crazy kids finally did it?”

  “Yeah, and it released a huge mystic whammy. Like I say, Medea used it to make a new key to the Tartarus gate.”

  “And you’re headed toward the Tartarus gate right now…”

  “Right.”

  “Because you’re planning to open it…”

  “Correct.”

  He stopped, grabbing me by my shoulder and spinning me to face him. “Why? Why the fuck would you do that? Have you met the Titans? They’re terrible.”

  “I know, but we need an army, and we need an army fast. Can you think of any other force—on earth or below it—capable of storming Olympus?”

  “We’re storming Olympus?”

  “Of course. What’d you think this was about?”

  “Who’s gonna lead this army? Who’s gonna make sure they stay on-task?”

  I sighed, disappointed he hadn’t made the logical leap himself. “That’d be where you come in.”

  “Me? Oh, no, no, no, no. I’m not doing that.”

  “Don’t you wanna fuck off again?”

  “I dunno. Now that I’ve gotten a taste of the real world again, I’m thinking maybe I could make a go of it.”

  I glared at him.

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t think you understand something. I have serious daddy issues. I was able to do what I did back in the day by riding a wave of pure anger. I don’t have that anger anymore. I’ve become the thing I was always destined to be: A middle-aged blowhard with abandonment issues.”

  “Maybe Cronus has mellowed over the years. Maybe the two of you can reach some kind of understanding.”

  “That’s the Afterschool Special version of this. In the real version of this Cronus rips off my head for throwing him in prison.”

  I turned away from him and resumed walking toward the gate. “Alright,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to do it myself.”

  He caught up to me and spun me again. “You’re just adding a step. After Cronus rips your head off then he’ll rip off my head. What’d be the point of two headless Mythniks?”

  I stared at him for a moment, disappointed. Then I turned and headed back toward the Tartarus gate. When I reached it, Zeus surprised me. He took the key out of my hand, gave me a stern look, and opened the gate himself.

  For a long time, nothing happened. Then a low rumble. Then a deafening rumble. then rocks and stalactites falling from the ceiling. Then frightened shades running everywhere.

  Then silence. Deafening in its own eerie way.

  Then the gates themselves collapsed into the earth, creating a huge crater. The mouth leading into Tartarus tripled in size and Zeus and I were forced to step back. The first of the Titans through the hole was, of course, Cronus himself. And he was terrifying. Twenty-feet high, feral, covered with hair, glowing yellow eyes.

  I gotta hand it to Zeus. At least for that brief moment, he was able to summon what it was about himself that led to his becoming king of the gods. Wind swirled around him. Lightning flashed inside of the Underworld’s main room. Rains fell even though there were no clouds. With a deep, booming voice, he said, “Father! By right of my ancient victory, I command you to stand down! I command you and your kin to form ranks behind me and march forth as my army!”

  Cronus seemed to consider this for a moment, then he picked up his son in a gnarled hand and swallowed him whole.

  With that job done, the king of the Titans looked around to get his bearings and then walked toward the main gate. Behind him, a mob of similarly grotesque giants followed him out.

  None of them so much as looked at me.

  8

  Purpose

  As the last of the Titans passed me on my left, Stephanie and Hades appeared on my right. The cave was completely free of shades. Hades was, of course, enraged. “What did you do?!” he screamed. “What did you do?!”

  I spoke so softly I could barely hear myself. “It looks like I let the Titans out,” I said.

  “What?!” Hades got right up in my face like the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. “What did you say?”

  I didn’t withdraw from him. I turned my head to look him in the eye. “I said it looks like I let the Titans out.”

  Stephanie came forward, pulling Hades back slightly. “Where is Zeus?”

  Hades turned on his wife and only slightly lowered his volume. “Where is Zeus? Zeus is here?!”

  I answered for her. “Not anymore. Cronus ate him.”

  The king of the Underworld turned toward me again. What little color he had to start with had drained from his face. “How did you get the fucking key?!” he said, sparing a glance to the huge crater from which the Titans had emerged.

  Stephanie started to speak up, but I cut her off. “Never mind how I got it. I take full responsibility.”

  “Well, what’re you gonna do about it?!”

  I looked back in the direction of the main gate. The doors had been ripped off their hinges, and more sunlight than normal flowed in. I could see the mighty Cerberus cowering in a corner.

  “I… Haven’t figured that part out yet.”

  As I walked through the cave toward the broken gates, Thanatos came down from his usual post and said, “What’d you do?”

  “I let the Titans out.”

  The Reaper sighed and walked back toward the hub. “I’ll get my shit,” he said. I felt bad because I realized then that I’d just given him a helluva lot of work.

  When I exited the Underworld, I had to shield my eyes with my hand. The sun was high in the sky and illuminated the scene of devastation perfectly. Broken trees were strewn everywhere, and the river was disrupted by enormous footprints. Footprints so large they turned the river into a series of puddles. It wasn’t hard at all to follow the course the Titans had taken. The elder gods weren’t exactly subtle.

  A voice beside me said, “That didn’t go especially well.”

  I turned, and my eyes had to readjust. Standing next to me was a shade. It was the shade of Hermes, the fallen messenger god. “Hermes! What the fuck?!”

  Hermes didn’t look at me. He was busy looking at the debris field in front of us. “I was in Elysium. Talking to Odysseus. And then, all of a sudden, things got very, very noisy. He said, ‘Oh, I guess Medea’s at it again’. But Medea was standing nearby, and she flipped us both off. I was curious; I wanted to see what was going on, so I made my way up and out, and here we are.”

  “Here we are.”

  “You let the Titans out…”

  “I did, yeah.”

  “Can I ask you why you did that?”

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “I sprang Zeus. He was gonna lead them in battle against Prometheus.”

  “You know Zeus isn’t well, right?”

  “Yeah, I know. Funny thing is, that didn’t enter into it. When the time came for him to step up, he stepped up. Then Cronus ate him.”

  “Deja vu.”

  “I know, right?”

  He didn’t reply right away. He was thinking. At last he said, “What’re you gonna do now?”

  “People keep asking me that. I don’t have a good answer. I mean, when I first came out here, I figured, ‘Oh, I’ll follow the Titans’, but then I was like, ‘Why should I follow the Titans? What will I even do if I catch them?’”

  “Like dogs chasing cars.”

  “Exactly. Right.”

  He nodded and scratched his spectral beard. “Hang out. I’ll be right back.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “To get my shit.” I knew what Thanatos meant when he said that. I had no idea what Hermes meant. He turned and went back into
Hades while I continued to look at the jagged path left behind by the elder gods. After a while, I got to thinking Hermes wasn’t coming back. He finally did, and he was wearing hiking boots and a backpack. He also had a walking stick and a ram’s horn hung at his right hip.

  “What’s with the horn?” I said.

  “Here,” he replied. He took off the horn and handed it to me. As it passed between us, it went from being a spectral ram’s horn to a real ram’s horn. Which, even though I should’ve been thinking about other things, I noticed enough to think it was rad. Hermes then tromped off along the Titans’ path. I followed.

  As we walked through broken sticks and ankle-deep water, I said to Hermes, “Hey, I have a question…”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know I had a little Underworld-based adventure recently, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  I adjusted the ram’s horn on my hip. It was rough and chafe-y. “When all the dead got out, they turned living again as soon as they crossed the threshold between worlds. Why didn’t that happen to you? You’re still see-through.”

  Hermes shrugged his shoulders indicating he didn’t think the question was important, but he would answer it anyway. “I dunno. I suspect it’s because there’s someone inside the Underworld minding the store. There wasn’t last time, was there?”

  “No, there wasn’t.”

  “Since Hades is in there, and he’s the O.G. lord of the dead, he still exerts his influence—even out here. He doesn’t want me—or any other dead person—to be able to pass for living.”

  “Mmm. That makes sense. What’s this horn for?”

  “You asked me that already,” the messenger god, said, furrowing his brow.

  “I know, but you didn’t answer me.”

  “It’s a horn. You blow into it.”

  “As a party favor? To summon someone or something?”

  “More the second one than the first. Although I do find the sound of a ram’s horn festive.”

  “Have you run into Adrestia? You know… Since you’ve been dead?”

  His furrows became even deeper. “No, she’s not allowed into Elysium.”

  “Where’d they put her?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t wanna know.”

  “Am I asking too many questions?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Can I ask one more question?”

  “‘What’re we gonna do when we catch up with the Titans?’”

  “No, but that’s probably a better question than the one I was gonna ask…”

  Hermes sighed. “What question were you gonna ask?”

  I thought for a moment, not sure how to phrase the thing I was wondering. “You… always stood up for me. You always took care of me. Like when you got me out of jail in Long Beach.”

  He raised a finger. “That wasn’t me, remember? That was Medea pretending to be me. Because she wanted you to go after the pithos and funnel you into Hades and set you off like a bomb.”

  He was right. Even I was at the point where I couldn’t keep the players straight without a scorecard. “Okay, sure. But I get the feeling that, if Medea hadn’t trapped you in a fake Nevada whorehouse, you probably would’ve gotten me out of jail in Long Beach.”

  “Probably,” he said, without much enthusiasm.

  “I was just wondering why.”

  He sighed. “I thought we went over this. Adrestia was the only daughter I ever had,” he said.

  “That you know of…”

  “That I know of. Adrestia was the only daughter I ever had, and she was a bad seed. A real nut-burger. But… Sometimes, daughters aren’t where you make them but rather where you find them.”

  I nodded. “So, I was the daughter you found?”

  “Yes, for Pete’s sake, what is wrong with you? You’re talking a mile a minute. You’re barely coherent…”

  “I think I’m in shock. I may be responsible for the forthcoming death and subjugation of the entire human race.”

  “That does seem like a possibility…”

  We walked for a really long time. My ankles were sore, and the ram’s horn was rubbing me raw. Finally, we came to a drop-off overlooking the town of Parga, the modern replacement for Toryne. At some point in the not-too-distant future—provided Mankind survived—there’d need to be a replacement for Parga. The Titans had stopped at the coastal city—partly because they couldn’t go any further marching in that direction, and partly because it was ripe for razing. When we arrived at the overlook, their work was mostly done. “Fuck,” I said. “That’s on my head.”

  Hermes grimaced. I could tell he was annoyed by what I’d said. “Why don’t have time for self-recriminations. Blow the horn.”

  I looked briefly into his eyes and then lifted the horn to my lips. I took a deep breath and blew. The sound was, despite what the messenger god had said, not at all festive. In fact, I wouldn’t hesitate to use the word, “majestic”. The way war horns sound in movies as opposed to the way they sound in real life which, if memory serves, is more like a sustained fart. The response was immediate. A luminescent wave of ectoplasm flowed around Hermes and I from behind. Not like a wisp of fog; more like a torrent of incorporeal water that broke around us at waist-height. It went over the promontory upon which we stood. It moved inexorably toward Parga and broke apart as it neared the ruined town. Its constituent elements were, I could see, men and women on horseback and on foot. Most of them carried dory, Greek spears. They wore Corinthian helmets and hoplite armor.

  They were an army of the dead.

  “Gods…” I muttered, awestruck.

  “No,” Hermes said next to me. “Heroes. The Heroes of Elysium. Achilles, Hercules, Jason, Odysseus, Perseus, and a thousand, thousand more.”

  We both fell silent as the army, unbound by the laws of physics, swarmed around the Titans and, both on foot and from the air, stung them again and again. The Titans reacted as humans might. They covered their heads ineffectually and swatted at the air. But their hands found nothing solid to connect with. They were faced with an enemy they could not counterattack, and their only choice was to flee. They began to run down the coast. Half of the Heroes pursued them while the other half out-paced and presented a bulwark against further progress.

  The elder gods were, for a time at least, contained.

  “That’s incredible,” I whispered.

  “It’s more than incredible,” Hermes said beside me. “It’s useful.” He put his backpack down on the ground and, from it, he withdrew two objects. One was his winged helmet, a badge of office he’d long ago stopped wearing. He placed it on his head. The other object was a short tube which he held in his right hand. He gave it a firm shake. The tube extended itself in both directions to become a dory. Once it was at full length, the god rose from the ground and turned to face me. “I’m going to join them,” he said. “Shall I relay an order?”

  “I’m in charge?”

  He smiled. “You’re in charge.”

  “Meet me at the Parthenon restaurant between L.A. and Vegas.”

  “I had a feeling you’d say that. Partway up the Eastern face of Olympus, there’s a huge door. Go to that door and sound the horn again. We’ll come to you.” Without further comment, my surrogate father flew over the land separating us from the Titans. Under his direction, the Heroes of Elysium drove the Titans into the sea.

  I turned and headed inland.

  When I got back to Malibu, it was the dead of night and I was pleased none of my friends were around. They were probably all in Westwood, waiting anxiously for me to return. Unfortunately, I was going to have to let them down. What I had to do next would be bloody and brutal and there was no way I was going to involve them.

  I went into the trailer and made a bee-line for the bedroom. In my closet, buried under a bunch of junk, was an old set of hoplite armor. I’d worn it back in the day when Hope and I were in full Evil hunter mode. I pulled it out, dropped it on the bed and got undressed. Leaving on only my pan
ties, I slipped into the armor and took one last look around the place. The only thing that captured my attention as having any kind of sentimental value was the set of Walking Dead commemorative plates. I picked up the one with Michonne and looked at it briefly before setting it down again. I picked up Pan’s copy of The Great Gatsby and exited.

  When I got outside, I set the trailer on fire, and got into my Pontiac.

  9

  Reckoning

  Since it was the middle of the night, driving out to the Parthenon was easy. Only a few other cars shared the road. Of course, I could see Olympus long before I reached it. It was a dark blot against the sky. Silhouetted as it was, it reminded me of Devil’s Tower from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But of course, the difference was I wasn’t going there to meet a bunch of happy-go-lucky aliens. I was, more likely, going there to fight and die. But I didn’t focus on that morbid factoid. In fact, I didn’t focus on much of anything. My mind was surprisingly clear. Zen even. For a while, I’d wanted to die. Then I’d wanted to be “Power Dora”; in charge of my own destiny. It looked like I might just achieve a happy medium. I’d die, but it’d be more or less on my terms.

  When I reached the Parthenon Restaurant it was deserted, just as it had been when I’d seen it from Pan’s pup tent. I pulled in and parked next to the fake Olympus—which was considerably less impressive now that the real Olympus was nearby. Since I was in the lot, I noticed a detail I hadn’t seen before, a dark shape hanging from one of the drive-in roofs. I got out of the car and went over to it. It was a badly decayed body. Pinned to it was a wanted posted depicting Theora Livas, the owner of the restaurant. I looked back and forth between the black and white representation on the paper and the ruined face of the murder victim. She’d been offed by Prometheus’ goons. Good times.

  As I walked back to the Firebird, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. The field between the diner and Olympus appeared to be alive. Dark shapes huddled close together. A sea of bobbing heads. I knew what it was right away—it was a welcoming committee for yours truly. A mass of soldiers (or cannon fodder) meant to keep me from reaching the base of the mountain. I nodded when I saw them. I already knew how I was going to deal with the problem.