by Eirik Gumeny
“Crap,” said Jack.
“Guess it’s a good thing we’re leaving then,” said Jill.
“We’re leaving?” asked Hil, toppling a conveniently placed armoire in front of the door.
“Yep,” replied Jill. “We’re going to Vegas.”
“Why are we going to Vegas?”
“Quetzalcoatl said so.”
“Oh,” said Hil, shrugging slightly, “OK. Well, there’s another exit in the other room.”
“Good,” said Jack, handing the tripod to Jill. “Let’s get the hell out of here before those robots break through.”
The Mormons started shouting. Or moaning. Or something. It was best described as “making a loud, muffled sound.”
“Don’t worry, guys, we’ll finish this up when we get back,” said Jack, putting his hand on the shoulder of one of the converts. The man responded by pointing his head fervently in the direction of the death machines assaulting the front door.
“Oh, them?” asked Jack. “You should be fine. I mean, they’re not after you yet.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Hosed If You Do, Hosed If You Don’t
“Man,” said Thor, pacing furiously back and forth across the lobby, his sneakers scuffing the tile, “what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“You fight him,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, shrugging, “and you kill him.”
“And then the world ends,” added Queen Victoria XXX, standing beside the president, her arms crossed over her chest. Catrina Dalisay and William H. Taft XLII sat on the nearby couch, watching the pacing blonde man.
“The world’s ended, like, twenty times over, Vicky,” said the overweight politician. “I don’t think this one’s going to be any different.”
“But Thor thinks it will,” said Catrina defiantly, “and I believe him.”
“I think ... I do too,” added Queen Victoria XXX, somewhat uncertainly. “This is the first thing he’s taken seriously since we met him.”
“This is the first thing he’s taken seriously since I met him.”
“That may be, but I’m with Billy. I don’t think one more apocalypse is going to kill us,” countered Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Besides, even if Thor is somehow right about this and not simply deluded by his past and more than a little full of himself, Quetzalcoatl is causing some serious damage and threatening what little semblance of order and civilization is left in this country. If we don’t stop him, he might just end the world himself.”
“We?” asked William H. Taft XLII.
“Yes, ‘we.’ I’m not about to leave the fate of my lunch up to Thor, much less the continued existence of society.”
“Really?” said Thor, his eyebrow raised.
“Is that a ‘do you not trust me with your lunch’ question, or a ‘are you seriously coming with me’ question?”
“The second one.”
“Then, yes. I’m coming with you,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“I’m going too,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “I haven’t punched anything in days.”
“Me, too, I guess,” added Catrina.
“You guys are all fucking crazy,” said William H. Taft XLII. “I’m staying here.”
“You’re coming with us, Billy,” replied the cloned queen. “Or you’re the thing I start punching.”
“How is that helpful, Vicky?”
“Shut up and get your rocket launcher out of the car.”
“But the car’s still in the pothole,” whined William H. Taft XLII.
“You sure you’re good with this, Thor?” asked Catrina, her eyes following the metronomic blonde man.
Thor shrugged. “The world’s apparently pretty hosed no matter what happens. I might as well at least try to do the right thing, right?”
“It’s about fucking time you grew a pair,” said Judy Lin, sitting atop the front counter. She hopped to the floor. “The helicopter’s just been wasting fuel out there.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Sin City
Quetzalcoatl, the reborn Aztec snake god, sat atop the facsimile Eiffel Tower, overlooking the burning casinos and sex parlors of Las Vegas, his massive tail coiled around the latticework of the tower’s uppermost spire. Phil and Bill sat precariously on either side of him, without tails and huddled against the spire, whimpering slightly.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Quetzalcoatl, staring down at the flaming ruins, a faraway look in his eyes.
“The neon ... contrasted against the ... inky darkness of night?” replied Phil. “I suppose it does have a certain ... aesthetic quality that some might –”
“I meant all the burning prostitutes.”
“Oh.”
The city of Las Vegas had not been crumbling or on fire until shortly after Quetzalcoatl arrived. Las Vegas had, in fact, been the most prosperous city in the world from the third apocalypse onward. If there was one thing people loved to do during the end of the world, it was panic. If there was another, it was fuck. And if there was a third, it was gamble away their children’s college funds while doing the first two.
“Do we have to sit up here, Quetzalcoatl?” asked Bill, searching for something to hold on to. “It’s quite ... high.”
“No,” replied the snake god, “of course not.” Quetzalcoatl pushed Bill off the edge of the Eiffel Tower.
“What – Why would –”stammered Phil, leaning slightly to look after his falling comrade and then regretting it immensely.
“Quiet,” replied the maniacal half-man, squinting as he peered downward, “he hasn’t hit the ground yet.”
Phil’s grip on the tower doubled in intensity. So did his heartbeat, the fear in his eyes, the certainty he was going to die, and his regret at never buying a parachute or learning how to fly.
“Oh, there we go. Landed on a Japanese tourist. They are never going to get that out of the sidewalk.”
The latticework dug deeply enough into Phil’s hand to draw blood.
“So, anyway,” said Quetzalcoatl, “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve asked you up here this evening.”
Phil responded by staring at him blankly in abject terror.
“Well, at least tell me you understand the gravity of the situation ...”
Nothing.
“C’mon, quit being such a dick, Phil. I’m trying to have a conversation here.”
***
It took a few minutes, but Phil Thompson finally remembered how to breathe regularly again. Then he remembered he was sitting atop a half-scaled Eiffel Tower with a psychopathic Aztec god in the middle of a city collapsing into chaos and had to go through the whole gamut of physiological responses to panic all over again.
The cycle repeated itself a few times, actually.
“You done?” Quetzalcoatl eventually asked.
“... buhhh ...”
“That’s still more syllables than you’ve given me in the last hour. I’m willing to call it a win. Let’s get down to business.”
“Guh ...”
“Look, Phil, I love you, but I’m not in love with you. I carried your ass up here to talk strategy. If it wasn’t for you and your ... people? I might not be here right now. I figure I at least owe it to you to hear your opinion before I go ahead and do whatever I damn well please anyway,” the snake god said. “Of course, if you’re not actually going to contribute, you can just as easily join Bill down on the street.”
“No, no. Strategy good,” elocuted Phil. “What’s ... the plan?”
“Well, for starters, I’m thinking we should probably burn down the world.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It really doesn’t get any simpler than that, Phil.”
“Why would we ... burn down the world? I thought we were trying to ... save it from itself ... free it from the greed and the ... bureaucracy. I thought we were giving society hope ... an open-ended future ...”
“Yeah, about that ...”
“Even – even if you don’t – If your goals �
��” continued Phil, his synapses not firing quite as quickly as they probably should have been. “Murdering everyone just doesn’t seem productive.”
Quetzalcoatl pushed Phil off the Eiffel Tower.
“I don’t know,” said the Aztec god, staring after him, “I seem to be producing corpses with surprising efficiency.”
Quetzalcoatl looked from side to side and pouted. “Of course, now I’m sitting up here talking to myself,” he continued. “I must look crazy.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Elegy
Well, thought Phil Thompson, plummeting toward his imminent, sidewalk-splattered doom, beard fluttering in the wind, this is it.
Thrown off a faux French monument in the middle of a city in the middle of a desert in the middle of the night, he continued thinking, by a newly re-deified deity intent on scorching the Earth for as mercurial and ill-defined a reason as revenge.
Honestly, I did not see it coming.
Phil continued plummeting.
It really is beautiful, though. The night, the city. Even the burning prostitutes. He was right about that. Their panic and continued flailing seem almost choreographed. It’s majestic, in its own way. If only I had noticed earlier. Well, not the hookers, per se, but the ... beauty inherent in everything. I know I wanted to, but I was trying so hard to get others to think of me the way I wanted to be thought of, trying so hard to make them believe that I could see ... the angels in everyone, that I completely failed to actually see them. I suppose wanting to be something isn’t the same as actually being something. It’s remarkably simple, really, astoundingly ... apt, then, that by simply not trying, by not overanalyzing the approach, that by, quite literally and unfortunately, falling into it, I’m now able to accomplish the task.
Phil sighed deeply and continued his fall. He began ruminating on, and, for once, truly appreciating, the pulchritude of everything he could see from his peculiar vantage point: the neon-lit sky, the latticework rushing past him, the ever-approaching sidewalk.
Really, the sidewalk was quite lovely. Laid out in perfect lines, each square clean and unbroken. A kind of whitish-grey, with a stucco-like facing. A stucco-like facing Phil’s face was rapidly nearing.
“Oh, sweet fucking fuckity ... fuck,” he mumbled.
Phil tried to turn his body in mid-air, only getting as far as changing his jackknife into a belly-flop. He continued the swimming metaphor by hooking his arms and attempting to paddle himself out of danger.
It didn’t help.
“I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die”
That didn’t really help either.
“sweet fucking fuuuck”
Phil found himself suddenly wishing that he believed in a god. Or that there were even gods to believe in to begin with.
Other than the one who just murdered him, obviously.
“shit shit shit shit sidewalk!”
Phil curled up as best he could, shielding his face from the oncoming ground and trying to roll himself through the air, this way and that, onto his side, maybe? So his feet didn’t end up stabbing through his face. That seemed an especially terrible way to go. The wool-coated philosopher waited for the impact. His body was tensed, his eyes were closed. Mentally, he had devolved from pleading for mercy into an endless string of expletives. The only thing close to a thought he had left was the vague hope that he didn’t soil himself prior to becoming one with the pavement.
Phil continued to wait. His body was still tensed, although his feet were starting to feel pretty comfortable. Likewise, his brain eased up for the briefest of moments, squeezing out a These last few seconds certainly are taking a good long while to pass. in between all the frenzied cussing.
Phil waited a little while longer. Hesitantly, he opened his eyes and peered through the fingers still clenched around his face. He was expecting to see Heaven, or Hell, or maybe Quetzalcoatl holding his ankle and laughing, or about eight hundred equally as unlikely scenarios.
“What the ...?” said Phil.
Nowhere on that list was there a squirrel.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said the squirrel. “My name is Timmy.”
Yet that’s what Phil was looking at. A squirrel. An atypical, extraordinary, preternaturally intelligent, telekinetic, cape-wearing squirrel.
“You can ... talk?”
“Do you see my lips moving?”
“Well, no.”
“Right. Squirrels don’t have vocal chords. I’m communicating with you the same way I’m holding you three inches from the ground: with my brain. Quit being such an idiot.”
There was a time when Timmy was just like any other squirrel. But there was this other time where he got experimented on and gained telekinetic powers. And then there was this third time where Timmy almost got hit by a car but, at the last second, pulled a rock from the side of the road and into harm’s way, thus saving his furry ass and, surely, causing the inhabitants of the car, and anyone else somehow privy to the goings-on of said car, to believe that he had been run over. But he hadn’t.
Instead, Timmy lived, and decided to use his newfound ass-saving abilities for the good of the world. He started small, avenging mistreated animals and the like, before quite literally moving his way up the food-chain, always searching for the bigger picture, the best way to help the most creatures.
Which is why when an unwashed philosopher fell past Timmy as he climbed up a faux French monument in Las Vegas en route to killing an Aztec snake god, Timmy didn’t even blink.
Saving lives was just what Timmy did.
“Thanks,” said Phil, repositioning himself so that his feet were on the ground and his body was once more aligned with the vertical plane.
“Don’t mention it,” replied Timmy telepathically. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got bigger fish to psychokinetically eviscerate.”
“He’s actually a snake. With wings.”
“Yeah, I know, I saw the reports on TV. It was just a play on words.”
“Oh, right,” said Phil, “right. Sorry, it’s been a ... hectic ... disorientating couple of days.”
“Been there, brother.”
A helicopter noisily approached the duo, dropping down between the chasm of casinos. They looked up, neither one entirely sure of what to expect. Quetzalcoatl, meanwhile, also noticed the nearing helicopter and fled from the Eiffel Tower like a startled pigeon.
“Damn it,” said Timmy, turning and watching his prey escape. “What the shit is that?” he asked, returning his attention to the flying machine inching toward the street.
“A helicopter,” answered Phil.
“You have no idea how much I’m regretting saving your life.”
The helicopter landed in the middle of the avenue, less than twenty yards from Phil and Timmy. A number of people in suits and a number of people not in suits poured from the vehicle’s door.
“It’s a philosopher!” shouted one of the ones in a suit, pointing at Phil. “Kill him!”
“Seriously,” said Timmy, shaking his tiny head. “No idea.”
“Hold on,” shouted Phil, stepping forward and putting up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m on your side.”
“Why should we believe you?” said the suit with a bag on her head, walking toward the thinker and the squirrel.
“Because Quetzalcoatl no longer ... cares for my company. He threw me off the top of an Eiffel Tower.”
“An Eiffel Tower?” asked a taller, prettier, bagless woman in a leather jacket.
The even taller, devastatingly attractive man with the sideburns standing next to her pointed up.
“Oh, right,” replied the woman.
“How are you alive then?” asked another shorter, bagless lady, this one in a hooded sweatshirt.
“This squirrel ...” said Phil, motioning to Timmy, “halted my descent ... with his, uh, mind.”
“Somehow,” said the short woman, lowering her head and rubbing her temples, “that’s not the
strangest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Timmy stood up on his hind legs and waved. His tiny cape billowed heroically.
“Good enough for me,” said the tall, blonde man by the girl’s side, shrugging. “I mean, he’s got the cape and everything.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
If the Helicopter’s a-Rockin’ ...
Judy Lin and the other suited scientists hung in the middle of the air, clutching their own throats and gasping out vague apologies.
“OK,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, “I believe that squirrel has psychokinetic powers.”
“OK, Timmy,” said Phil. “You can let them down now.”
“Do I have to?” replied the squirrel, speaking telepathically to everyone. “They are scientists, after all.”
“Yes,” said Catrina patiently, “but they’re not your scientists. This is a whole other group of incompetent scientists. While they are clearly, and very, stupid, they’re not exactly evil. They don’t deserve to be choked to death.”
“Are you sure?” asked Thor.
“How is that helpful?”
“I’m just saying, they did nearly murder us.”
“Thor.”
“That thing? With the giant atomic werewolf? Remember?”
Catrina shot Thor a look that would have killed a lesser man. Seriously. Dude’s organs would’ve just up and failed right there.
“All right, fine,” replied Thor, rolling his eyes. The former thunder god knelt before Timmy and put both of his hands on the squirrel’s tiny shoulders. He took a deep breath and looked Timmy squarely in his rodent eyes.
“Timmy,” he said, “please do not kill these scientists. We apparently need them for some reason, maybe. More importantly, though, they are not very good at being scientists. They will undoubtedly find some way to kill themselves in a hilarious fashion shortly.”
Timmy returned Thor’s gaze, hesitation apparent in his eyes.
“Trust me,” said Thor.