The Gods' Day to Die

by David Welch

“Let’s go get ’em.”

  “Where are they?” asked one man.

  “I don’t know,” Arkady growled.

  Arkady figured the two missing members probably were dead. Most likely they’d lost track of him in the pursuit. These damn tunnels twisted and turned, and there seemed to be a new one intersecting every twenty yards. The whole fucking place was a maze, and he was stuck in it like some damned rat.

  “I think we should reconnect with Lenka,” the man continued.

  “Feel free to try, if you know the way,” Arkady spat.

  They came upon an intersecting tunnel, and approached it carefully. He didn’t have enough ammo left to shoot into every tunnel he passed. So he turned to the second-best option: running really fast.

  He dashed past the narrow mouth of the tunnel, the other man following him. No shots came after them. Feeling relieved and irritated at the same time, he pressed on. The tunnel wound on, angling slightly downward, for another fifty yards or so. It swerved, forming S-turns where harder rock protruded out. He rounded several, then paused, the faintest of sounds coming to his ears. It was a dim vibration, from just around the next S-turn.

  His companion did not hear it, and stepped around the curve. A shot rang out, catching the man in the forehead. A spray of blood exploded out the back of the man’s head, hitting Arkady in the face.

  Instinct took over. He charged forward, found another tunnel emptying into the one he was in, just on the other side of the S. A woman stood in it with a gun in her hands. He recognized her as Aphrodite before he slammed into her like a freight train. She smacked hard into the wall. Her head snapped back, her helmet smashing against the stone. She slumped forward, alive but dazed.

  Before he could bring his gun up to finish her off, the weapon was batted out of his hands by another gun. Ares had struck his weapon away. Arkady reacted quickly, though, grabbing at the immortal’s gun to keep the barrel away from him. For the briefest of seconds the two men wrestled for the rifle. Then, abruptly, Ares released his grip on the weapon. Arkady felt himself fall backward, but only a short distance before his back struck the rock of the S.

  Ares was on him instantly. The man’s speed was blinding. With his right hand he grabbed the gun to keep it pointed away, and with his left hand he jabbed straight into Arkady’s face. Arkady loosed his right hand from the weapon and swung at the man, but Ares was inside the sweep of his punch and threw a hard elbow into his face.

  Arkady felt his head snap back, blood welling up in his mouth. A tooth fell onto his tongue, but he ignored it. He bulled blindly forward, trying to muscle the man across the narrow tunnel and into the far wall. But the shorter Ares somehow held firm. His knee flashed upward, slamming into Arkady’s groin.

  Arkady doubled over in pain, the gun falling from his hands. Despite the agony, he instinctively lashed out, trying to get his attacker away. He felt his left connect with the man’s stomach, which to his chagrin was covered in body armor. He felt the bones in his hand snap as the blow struck.

  Then came a two-fisted hammer blow to the back of his head. He smashed hard into the ground, another pair of teeth shattering in his mouth. His vision jolted, and his eyes struggled to focus. Ahead of him, maybe a foot away, lay Ares’ gun. He jerked his hand forward, groping, half-blind, for the weapon.

  A boot slammed down on his back. A cold piece of metal pressed against the back of his skull. He instantly knew it was a pistol, probably his own. He didn’t know this for very long, though, as a heartbeat later Ares jerked back hard on the trigger.

  31

  Olympus, Inside Carev Vrv, Macedonia

  Athena flinched as the bullets flew, the roar echoing through the vast space of the main cavern. Whatever drug they’d given her was losing its potency. Her thoughts had regained their sharpness, even if her body stubbornly refused to respond to commands.

  Around her, eight survivors, Lenka and seven men, waited. They had retreated under a protrusion of rock that formed a solid ceiling above them. It blocked any fire from the ramp above this section of the cavern. In front of them stalagmites rose, dozens forming a thicket of stone on the floor of the cavern. Boxes had been piled up to make a small redoubt. The supplies they had stored here, cases of grave goods and various treasures, boxes of gold and silver they’d stowed away should they ever need the money, were all arrayed in a chest-high wall that surrounded the surviving mercs.

  Gunfire erupted to her right. She tried to wrench her head around, but all she got for the effort was a slight nudge. She couldn’t see where it was coming from, but her captors could. They returned fire, driving the attacker back into whatever tunnel they had emerged from.

  She knew it was Zeus or Hera. She’d heard the mercs squabbling among themselves, and knew that Lenka’s party was currently facing off against only two of her family members. But having already lost half his force, Lenka was taking no chances. He intended to stay in his makeshift fortress until her family went on the attack, then kill them from a defensive position.

  She didn’t think the plan would work. Ares wasn’t stupid enough to charge a fortress, even one made of piled-up boxes. And the others were smart enough to know that if Ares wouldn’t do it, then nobody should.

  Which meant they’d either snipe Lenka’s team into oblivion, or wait them out. While the various tunnels and chambers of Olympus had plenty of supplies and stores, they didn’t have much food. Athena knew Hera had stored that in a specific cavern off the living tunnel, locked away behind doors that no bullet or grenade could penetrate.

  She found it ironic. For so long they had tried to outlast Lenka, waiting for him to die. Perhaps in the end they’d outlast him anyway. It would just take days instead of years.

  Panicky shouts in Russian echoed across the cavern. Gunshots rang out, plenty of them. Athena tried to wrench herself up to see. Surprisingly, she managed to inch herself slightly to the right. Encouraged, she put all her focus into trying again. What little strength she had went into the act.

  Her body responded, her muted nerves abruptly and crudely wrenching her body upward. She found herself sitting upright, and tried to stop her movement. But finer skills like balance had yet to return in full. Instead she slammed into a protrusion of rock, the stone scraping her temple.

  The roar of gunfire drowned out any sound her escapade had caused. Upright, she could see two figures through hazy eyes. They were mercenaries. They sprinted off the spiral ramp, seeing their compatriots on the far side of the cavern. They ran, looking back with panicked desperation every few seconds.

  Behind the figures, she saw a blur appear from a tunnel on the ramp, then another. Two new figures, at least one of them a woman. The new figures opened fire.

  One of the mercs jerked violently and pitched forward, slamming against the stone floor. He lay still, dead. The other began zigzagging, darting between stalagmites to break up the line of fire. The two figures kept shooting, but the merc’s efforts worked. Their shots went wide, bouncing harmlessly off the stone pillars and the floor of the cavern.

  The merc leapt over the box barricade, crashing down amid Lenka’s team. His breath came in ragged gasps. Sweat streamed down his forehead.

  Lenka shot the man a dark look.

  “Where’s Nicholai?” he asked.

  “Dead,” the man replied in Ukrainian-accented Russian.

  “What about Artemis?” Lenka said gravely.

  The man shook his head. It was clear that any fear he felt for the infamous Lenka Sidorov couldn’t hold a candle to the terror that Artemis inspired. Lenka glowered angrily. The sight made hope swell in Athena’s chest.

  She tried to squint, hoping to focus on the distant figures, one of which had to be her sister. It didn’t work. Her eyes weren’t with it yet. She managed a crude, uneven smile.

  Her motion drew Lenka’s attention. Realizing she was no longer lying on the floor, he smas
hed his rifle into her shoulder. She fell back to the hard stone floor, settling uncomfortably on her chest. A new burst of gunfire drew Lenka’s attention back to the fight, so he didn’t have time to notice that Athena, facedown as she was, still smiled triumphantly.

  Desmond fired one round at a time. He could see nine survivors dug in across the cavern. The elevation of the ramp at his position gave him some clearance over the two dozen towering stalagmites that dotted the cavern floor, but the lip of rock extending over Lenka blocked his shots. He couldn’t get an angle on them.

  “No fucking use,” he grumbled.

  “Not from here,” Artemis replied.

  Below, Zeus and Hera appeared in a tunnel, spattering fire toward the enemy. Their shots ripped into the wooden barricade the mercenaries had thrown up, sending a shower of splinters into the air but doing little else.

  “Where the hell is Ares?” Artemis asked. She paused, looking around. Her eye stopped on a small fin of rock, to the left of Lenka’s position. It was only ten feet or so off the floor of the cavern.

  “Of course,” she said with a grin.

  “What?” Desmond asked.

  “I’d forgotten about that,” she said, pointing.

  “About that little ledge?” Desmond asked.

  “Climbed to it once. A long time ago,” she said. “Might be able to get an angle on them.”

  “It’s thirty feet below the ramp,” he pointed out. “And they’ll see you stringing up ropes if you try to rappel down.”

  “Five feet above the ledge. Look,” she said, pointing.

  He looked. Sure enough, five feet above the ledge was a small aperture, one of the countless tunnels that crisscrossed this place. It was barely wide enough for a person to crawl through.

  “You’re going to go through that?” he asked.

  “If I lose the armor, I can fit,” she said.

  “And get shot to hell,” he replied. “There’s still nine of them. Even if you snipe Lenka, the others will get you.”

  “Beats charging them,” she replied.

  “Nobody’s charging anything,” a familiar voice said from behind them.

  Artemis smiled and turned. Ares and Aphrodite made their way down the ramp to them, looking a little worse for wear. Aphrodite walked stiffly, her right side clearly bothering her. Dried blood clotted around a gash on her forehead. Ares had his right hand resting atop the butt of his gun, clearly using the weapon for support.

  “And you’re not going on that ledge when nine guns can turn on you in a second,” Ares said.

  “Got a better idea?” Artemis asked.

  Ares paused, sizing up the situation. Des could see the wheels turning. They turned pretty damn quickly.

  “Yes,” he said. “Come on, we have to find Mom and Dad. We’ll need them. Dita, stay here and provide cover. Any of them come out of that barricade, blast them.”

  Aphrodite looked toward the mercs’ position across the cavern, an uncertain frown on her face.

  “I can’t make a shot from this distance,” she said.

  “I know,” Ares replied. “But send some bullets at any of them who get a little aggressive, and they’ll get back behind that wall of boxes quick enough.”

  She nodded, still not looking entirely confident. Ares turned back to Desmond and Arty.

  “Let’s go,” he said simply.

  He headed down the ramp. Desmond found himself following, keeping his gun pointed in the general direction of Lenka’s little fort all the while. Lenka’s people made no move to stop them. At seventy yards, with dozens of stalagmites between them, they had no shot. Ares and Desmond dashed around the edge of the cavern until they reached a tunnel. They entered it, retreating toward the back. They stopped where another tunnel intersected the one they were in.

  “One of them should run past here soon enough,” Ares said.

  Sure enough, two minutes later Zeus’ broad form filled the small tunnel. His gun came up instantly, as he momentarily thought that his enemy had left their defenses and gone on the attack. The barrel of his gun lowered when he recognized them.

  “You’re okay?” he said between gasps.

  “Mostly,” Ares said.

  “Are you two all right?” Artemis asked.

  “Ricochet broke some of my ribs,” he replied, his breathing starting to slow. “And I’m not built for all this running.”

  A burst of gunfire echoed through the tunnels. From the sound of it, Des figured it came from Hera’s weapon. Then came footfalls as she moved. They grew louder as she moved in their general direction.

  “So, I’m assuming you’ve got a plan?” Zeus said.

  “Yes,” Ares said, just as Hera sprinted into sight. She skidded to a stop, caught by surprise. Then she leapt forward, embracing Ares in a bear hug.

  “Thank God,” she whispered. Des figured it was okay for her to say that, despite her professed lack of belief. What else did you say in such situations?

  “We’re not done yet, Mom,” he said. “I need you, Dad, and Desmond to make it look like you’re on the attack. Get close, fire on them, draw their attention.”

  “And you and Arty?” asked Zeus.

  “We’ll be sniping from the shadows,” Ares said. “When they pop up to hold you off, we’ll get them.”

  “They’ll see you,” Hera pointed out.

  “Not after I turn off the lights,” Ares said.

  Knowing nods broke out among the immortals. Des raised an eyebrow.

  “Breaker room is off the living tunnel,” Artemis whispered, then turned back to her family. “We leave the lights on above them, ruin their night vision, eh?”

  “Exactly,” Ares said.

  Hera and Zeus thought it over for a moment.

  Finally Zeus shrugged, and said, “Beats what we’ve been doing.”

  It happened just like that. One minute Lenka was waiting, watching the tunnels, wondering where Zeus or Hera would appear next. Then came darkness. Just silence . . . and darkness.

  Lenka ducked low instinctively. Even an idiot could see something was up. He realized quickly that the lights above him were still on, casting a dim field of illumination right in front of them. Perhaps ten yards beyond the cavern entrance were illuminated. Deeper than that was void.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  “What is going on?” one of the men asked.

  “Everyone be ready,” Lenka ordered.

  He peered into the darkness. Silence fell over the cavern as his men awaited whatever was coming. The quiet unnerved them. For so long they’d heard nothing but gunfire echoing through these vast catacombs. Without it, without the light, it seemed like a different world. Some ancient and unbelievably alien world.

  Then the barest of sounds. Footfalls scuffing on rock.

  “They’re coming,” Lenka said, just loud enough for his men to hear. The eight remaining mercs shifted into kneeling positions, guns ready.

  The silence was shattered as a trio of rifles opened up on their position. From behind the vague shadows of stalagmites, muzzles flashed again and again, rounds streaking straight for them.

  The men ducked, some firing back blindly. For a brief moment all was chaos as the assault hit home. The men shifted and searched, braving a peek above the barricade to try to locate their enemy. They shouted to each other, directing them toward their enemies. Bit by bit they began to focus, returning fire toward shadowy stalagmites and the immortals they concealed. Slowly the muzzle flashes tapered down, shots coming fewer and farther between as the enemy fell back.

  A blur of movement to Lenka’s right caught his eye. Flinching back, he turned, and saw a merc laid out, a single hole in his skull. Then came a hard thud, following by a gurgling scream from behind him. He spun, seeing another man down, with a trio of holes in his neck and jaw. Blood poured from
the wounds, and the man weakly tried to grasp at them.

  “Down! Get down!” Lenka roared.

  The fear in his voice caught the men’s attention, and they ducked below the barricade. For the first time they spotted the two men lying dead.

  “Did anybody see who hit them?!” Lenka screamed.

  The men replied in the negative.

  “Did you hear anything? Any out-of-place shot? Any footsteps?”

  More heads shook. Frantic, Lenka risked exposing himself for a second, scanning the darkness. Three guns—they’d only seen three guns firing on them. But Hera was alive, and Zeus was alive. And he’d been told Artemis was still out there. He had no word on the fate of her lover. And nobody had returned from the team he’d sent after Ares.

  “Not quite how you thought it would end?” came a ragged voice from behind him.

  His mother was sitting up again. Her movements were still lethargic, and she made no effort to struggle against her bonds, but a sharpness had returned to her eyes.

  “Shut up,” he snapped.

  To his surprise, Athena laughed.

  “You killed two of them!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Only seven left to—”

  Lenka’s backhand silenced her, for a moment at least. Her head lolled to one side, but she had enough control of her body to steady herself, and remain upright.

  “You could’ve walked away from this, Lenka,” she said.

  A new assault erupted, three guns opening up on his position from different locations in the darkness. He spun away from his mother, the men already up and firing. He held back, just barely putting his eyes above the barricade, watching. He quickly found the three immortals who were laying down the fire, thick and fast, but their shots weren’t hitting much more than wood.

  Then a single flash came from directly ahead of him. The man to his right jerked backward, a gaping wound in his face. Lenka immediately fired into the darkness, toward the direction of the flash. But no screams arose. The shooter had moved on.

  “Six left!” bellowed Athena.