Zeus is Dead

by Michael G. Munz

  “Bad ugly-womans!” he shouted. “You kill Jerry and be makings Jerry mad! You not be being nice!”

  “We don’t do nice! We do vengeance!”

  “We were only following orders!”

  “Vengeance! Orders-vengeance-orders!”

  “Zeus is tellings me you is supposed to be being avenging king- killings and father-killings! Zeus is king and father! Why you not avenging hims? Why!” He shook them violently and constricted further. “You will be answerings Jerry!”

  “Because we—”

  As one, the Erinyes stopped to consider this. That they couldn’t move an inch in Jerry’s grip possibly had something to do with that.

  “Rather right, isn’t he?”

  “Right, wrong, I care not!” Tisiphone screamed. “We get to fight either way! Make him release us!”

  “Splinters!” Alecto wailed, to little point.

  “Very well!” Megaera yelled. “We fight to avenge Zeus! Let us go!”

  “Yes, truce!”

  “You being saying you be sorry! And fight beside Jerry!” He squeezed tighter while the Erinyes screamed in pain.

  “Yes! We’re sorry!”

  “We swear!”

  “Splinters! Splinters-splinters-splinters!”

  Jerry released the Erinyes. Together they sprang into the fray.

  Ares swiftly proved lactose intolerant. He fell to Baskin’s superior might, temporarily frozen and out of commission. Yet when the sundae- god stood to catch his breath, Hades avenged his blustering nephew, drawing molten metal up from the earth and showering it over Baskin in a desperate use of his remaining strength. Tracy watched in horror as it reduced Baskin to a useless, melted mess.

  Even with Baskin sidelined, so weakened were Poseidon’s forces that the fighting ended soon after. Tracy herself whipped Hades’s legs out from under him and hauled him to the growing pile of defeated Olympians while Zeus fought on, apparently unmoved by Baskin’s fate. In his eyes shone gleeful vengeance that surpassed even that of the Erinyes as he gathered up his enemies. Apollo, Leif, and Jerry fought by his side, yet none so well as Zeus. Soon every offending Olympian was wrapped in a double-lasso of golden rope just as he once promised, bound together in a hapless, weakened cluster, and held fast in his grip.

  Once Tracy shoved Hades into the center of the group, Zeus passed the twin lasso tails to Apollo and Jerry. Each gave a wrenching tug in opposing directions to lash the captives to the ground.

  “We surrender!” Hera spit.

  “No we do not!”

  “Stuff it, Ares!”

  “Isn’t it fun to get together as a family?” Demeter spouted. “Does anyone have a deck of cards?”

  Not surprisingly, no one answered her.

  “The time for surrender is past!” Zeus declared, grinning wickedly. “You had your chance! I make no empty threats, and now you shall have your punishment! I tolerate your presence no longer!”

  With that, he blasted lightning into the ground beneath them and then poured energy into the crater until light burst forth like a fountain, streaming up beneath the captured Olympians. It launched them into the air and would have blasted them into orbit and beyond, had it not been for the efforts of Apollo and Jerry. The two strained and pulled, struggling to hold on to the ropes as Zeus had ordered.

  “I declare you all banished!” Zeus boomed, clearly relishing the moment. “Into the vast emptiness of the stars you shall go, to rot in darkness away from mortal worship and the joys of this world!”

  The entirety of the captured Olympians might have been banished right then were it not for the Muse Terpsichore. Having grown increasingly obsessed with the lack of a decent twist, she finally took matters into her own hands. The Idiot Ball had fallen from Cronus’s grip not long before his final struggle, and she’d snapped it up into its protective case before anyone else had seen it. When Zeus lassoed the others and began his speech, she slipped in behind Leif, whom Thalia had mentioned often during her retelling of their journeys. With nothing more than a wicked giggle, Terpsichore spilled the Idiot Ball from the case and shoved it—quickly—down the back of his pants.

  “We need a twist,” she whispered in his ear.

  He nodded vacantly. “Everything needs a twist.”

  “Good boy. Zeus gave you power; now use it! The fight and creation of that exile-fountain has made him weak. He’s kind of a jerk, isn’t he? Now’s your chance to overthrow him and win!”

  “He is kind of a jerk. Nearly all the gods are, I’ve noticed. And he still hasn’t put in a good word for me with Tracy!”

  “Exactly! Er, except Apollo.”

  “Except Apollo.” Leif nodded. “But—if I exile Zeus, Tracy’ll hate me!”

  Terpsichore giggled. “Oh, no she won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Um, because?”

  “Ah.” Leif grinned. “It all makes sense now!”

  Zeus poured his energies into the fountain, working it into a geyser that would blast the captured Olympians off the planet forever. They struggled in vain to break free of their bonds. Some yelled protests; others hurled insults, but neither seemed to do any good.

  Leif moved up behind Zeus and elbowed him in the back of the head.

  Far too distracted and weakened from creating the exile-fountain, Zeus failed to react fast enough. In a flash Leif spun him around, grabbed his wrists, and kicked the elder god’s feet out from under him toward the fountain. It yanked Zeus’s ankles skyward and pitched him nearly upside down. Only Leif’s grip kept the violent currents from propelling the furious Zeus into an exile of his own.

  Ares let out a weary whoop as everyone else tried to figure out what was going on.

  “Are you mad?” Zeus cried, clearly unsure whether to laugh or rage. “You will put me down at once!”

  “Oh, yeah, ’cause you’re the nice, forgiving type, right?” Leif asked. “Sorry, I’m taking over! Leif, king of the gods! I’m pretty sure that means I win!”

  Tracy entangled a whip around Zeus’s ankle, holding fast should Leif release her father’s hands. “Uh, Leif?” she asked.

  “What? You’ve seen what he’s like! What they’re all like! He let the Titans wreck half the world before he joined the fight, just to make sure he had an advantage! This is our chance to get rid of him and take over for ourselves! Do you know that when you were captured, he cared more about the insult to his authority than he did your own safety?”

  “It’s true!” Hermes chimed in. “You remember what I said! You’re on the wrong side! Let him fly into exile, save the rest of us! Clean slate!”

  “Shut up, Hermes!” Tracy shot.

  “He didn’t need you anymore then,” Leif went on. “I’m surprised you made it out alive! Besides, god-mode’s fun, but I want to call the shots!”

  Unable to free himself from the force of the fountain, Zeus could only blast impotent wrath at his captor, amusement fading fast. “You traitorous, pea-brained little geek! Do you know what happens to the power I gave you when I’m gone?”

  “Um . . . it . . . gets better?”

  “It’s temporary, you ungrateful lout! Kick me out now and you’re powerless! Instantly!”

  “You said I’d be immortal! Immortal isn’t temporary!”

  “I can make it permanent in time. Let me go now and you get nothing, not even Tracy! Or do you think she’ll want you after you betray her father?”

  “Er, well, it made sense at—Okay!” Leif tried. “Here’s the deal! I pull you back down, and . . . you make it permanent and—and then go away!”

  “Must I forever endure shortsighted fools?” Zeus demanded. “I returned from death, Mr. Karlson!”

  “Yeah, but you’re weaker now, aren’t you?” He shook Zeus a bit, grinning. “You fought! You poured your energy into this fountain! Lightning god needs food, badly!”

  Tracy renewed her grip on the whip, a gesture Zeus did not fail to notice.

  “Weaker,” Zeus answered, “but neve
r a fool. I built your divinity with safeguards, mortal. Now that you, too, have betrayed me, it ought to be slipping from your fingers right about . . . now.”

  Zeus yanked his wrists from Leif's grip and let the fountain’s current propel him briefly higher before the anchor of Tracy’s whip jerked him to a stop again. His hands free, he hurled lightning into Leif, blasting him backward. Leif smashed into a boulder that popped the Idiot Ball from his pants like a wet balloon. He rolled off and slumped, stunned, to his knees.

  “Ow.”

  “Once more you make me proud, Daughter,” Zeus said aside to Tracy. He regarded Leif with the same lethal contempt he’d shown Ares. “Perhaps I see now why this liar failed to interest you. Haul me down and we shall finish this.”

  Yet Tracy was busy with thoughts of her own. Her response was neither immediate nor helpful.

  “You never meant for them to surrender, did you?” she asked after a bit of pondering. “You just wanted an excuse to kick their asses no matter how much it risked the rest of us, huh?”

  “I am sure I don’t know what you mean. Now pull me in.”

  “As a matter of fact,” she continued more pointedly, “you probably knew Baskin would attack Ares like that.”

  It must be said for those who have not experienced it that floating in an exile-fountain is no picnic. Aside from the already uncomfortable upward pressure that was rapidly giving Zeus an enema, the sheer sensation of being poised on the edge of the possible end to one’s power is rather akin to that of being stretched on the rack while surrounded by howling cats.

  “Do it now, Daughter.”

  “I don’t think I want to yet. In fact, I’m starting to think maybe Leif had the right idea.”

  Zeus’s face settled into an eerie calm, much like the air before a tornado. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, I’m not trying to be queen of the gods or anything. It’s just that I’ve been manipulated one way or the other since the start of all this, by you especially, despite what you’ve claimed, and frankly I’d like to do a little manipulating of my own now. The thing is, Leif does have a point, right? He’s just going about it in his usual obtuse way. (Also I think he might’ve had the Idiot Ball, but that’s not really the point right—)”

  “Daughter! You will stop this immediately and—!”

  Tracy let go of the whip and grabbed it again at the last second. The fountain’s current shoved Zeus higher before he jerked to a stop once more above the bound mass of Olympians. It shut him up for the moment.

  “My own power’s fading as we speak, I’m sure, so you’d better let me talk ’cause there’s no one left to catch you, is there?”

  Zeus glanced to Apollo and Jerry. Even if ordered to help, it was all both could do to hold on to the Olympians beneath him. The second either let go, the whole mass would knock Zeus free of Tracy, and they’d all launch into exile together.

  “Here’s what I want: you and all the other Olympians withdraw again. It was fun while it lasted, but I’m thinking things got out of hand. And like Leif said, some of you can be jerks. I found the monsters as interesting as anyone, but that was before I knew you all created them intentionally! So clear those out, especially the damned razorwings.”

  “They were not my—”

  “Quiet! I command it!” She shook the whip again; it set Zeus dancing amid the current. “Sorry, power trip. Also, don’t exile everyone, right? Artemis helped us out; she just got a raw deal, and I don’t think Demeter and some of the others ever meant to do anything bad. And lastly, I want immunity for all of this, for me and Leif. No one comes after us for any of this stuff, not you, not someone you tell to go after us, no one. Agree to all of that, swear by the Styx since that hate-water seems to have some power over you types, and I’ll pull you down.”

  “You cannot expect—”

  “Grip’s getting weak, Dad. Better swear!”

  “Fine! I swear by the Styx to hold to your conditions! Pull me down!”

  She did so. Her divinity failed a moment later. Isn’t it remarkable how often the timing of such things works out like that? In fact, it happened just in time to end the chapter.

  EPILOGUE

  “Please note: the temple is currently experiencing technical difficulties in contacting the gods. We are doing our best to fix the problem. For your convenience, please leave any valuables you wish to sacrifice with the high priest. Sacrifices will be completed in the order received once the problem is resolved, and a receipt will be mailed to you. We (and the gods) appreciate your patience.”

  —sign outside an Olympian temple following the Second Withdrawal

  ZEUS KEPT HIS WORD in the end, rethinking his banishment of the entire pantheon and settling instead for reducing the Olympians to mere vanilla immortals with no powers beyond living indefinitely and having spectacular skin. (Their egos, of course, they could keep as well.) The punishment wasn’t irrevocable, but as he told them, they’d have to kiss his bum profoundly for a while before he’d consider reversing it. After all, Zeus reminded them, even those who didn’t kill him had accepted his death without protest. Anyone swearing to his terms was free to escape banishment.

  Anyone, that is, except the remaining conspirators. Offering them no such deal, he launched them into exile once the others were freed. The world would simply have to do without Aphrodite, Ares, Hades, and Hermes. The fountain flung them into the void between the stars, never to return without Zeus’s explicit permission—or at the very least some other contrivance of plot should it become necessary.

  Apollo retained full godhood, joined by Jerry and Baskin once Zeus, who resumed his place as king, gathered the power to make their elevation permanent. Though the gods withdrew once more, as Zeus had agreed, there were still tasks to be tended to and fewer Olympians to tend to them. Apollo didn’t mind; he no longer needed to respond to e-mail and evaluate the talent of bands such as Twig (or Stick, one of Twig’s many tribute bands that sprang up after their first recording went double-platinum). He still found time to go shooting with Artemis on weekends and did his best to nudge Zeus toward forgiving her enough to return her godhood.

  The Muses were similarly pleased, even if Thalia did have to put up with the occasional severed head left on her doorstep, which she attributed to vindictive Erinyes. The Idiot Ball, swiftly recovered after the whole exiling debacle, was safely returned to the Hall of Creative Abstract Concepts. In time, the pace of sitcom production recovered.

  Roaming monsters, both old and new, began to disappear nearly instantly. Regarding this, too, Zeus kept his word. A cloud of razorwings over Albuquerque vanished without a trace just as the Albuquerquean Civil Defense was loading the world’s largest ball of yarn onto the world’s third-largest catapult. (They fired it anyway because, frankly, who could possibly resist?) Sightings of unnatural creatures within urban areas dropped to nearly zero within the span of a single week.

  Nevertheless there would be numerous reports in the weeks and months that followed of monsters still lurking out on the fringe, deep in the wilderness. None could be verified. (A vigilant hiker in the Canadian Rockies did record a twenty-second video of what appeared to be a giant ice cream sundae screaming at a walking oak tree, but general Internet consensus was that anything so ludicrous had to be faked. Curiously, all copies of the video vanished a week later.)

  Thaddeus Archibald Winslow, who did manage to recover from the blow to the head he received at Zeus’s temple, wasn’t sorry at all to find the Olympians gone. (It was some time before he realized the Second Withdrawal had happened at all, of course. Keeping up with current events was for losers.) Fellow models who’d claimed Olympian heritage fell out of vogue, and his “pure mortal” blood became more popular than ever. In fact, he received absolutely zero comeuppance in the end, which is disappointing, but life is like that sometimes.

  By strange coincidence, “life is like that sometimes” is also how one Brittany Simons (formerly Wynter Nightsorrow, formerly the young woman from C
hapters Four, Seven, Twenty, and briefly alluded to in Chapters Thirty and Thirty-three) explained to her furious parents why they were still paying tuition after she’d flunked out. Her goth urges sated and her goddess gone, Brittany got herself readmitted the following year using a few secrets she’d picked up about the Dean of Admissions.

  She refused to tell anyone her major.

  As for humanity itself, the gods’ sudden disappearance after the Titan debacle was interpreted in as many ways as mankind could imagine (which is to say, four). Some insisted the gods were lying low for the moment, recovering strength, soon to return. Some assumed the Titans and Olympians had destroyed each other, never to be seen again. Others declared the entire nine-month Olympian ordeal to be a mass hallucination perpetrated by the Illuminati, the Liberal Media, and the Li’l Camper-Scouts of America in order to draw attention away from the fact that alien mind control had at last broken the tinfoil-hat barrier. (“Humanity is doomed! Evidence culled from the Mayan calendar supports this! We have a website!”)

  The final theory was that God himself had had enough of the entire lot of Olympians and had booted them from His creation. (He Himself seemed silent on the matter, save for a single postcard of a burning bush received at the Vatican that simply read, No comment.) The NCMA assumed that the group sent to Greece had something to do with the gods’ disappearance, despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that they’d never been heard from again. They erected a statue in Richard Kindgood’s honor, flanked by Ninjas Templar. The statue bore more of a resemblance to Gabriel Stout due to a photo mixup, but the name spelling on the statue’s plaque was more than 90 percent accurate.

  “I just couldn’t take it anymore, you know?” Tracy told Leif over lunch a few weeks after it was all over. “A lot of the things you said when you had him in the fountain made sense, and there were other things too.”