by Carmen Kern
“You’ll have your world just as you asked,” Hades hissed. “You can do what you want with it.”
“But we can’t die. We can’t do anything that wasn’t already part of our storyline. Even if Thanatos isn’t in this world, this place will still belong to him.”
Jethro held the speaker up to his mouth. “Hades,” he said, his voice filled with fury, “you can save those people. Surrender. That’s all it’ll take.” A brief pause. “I get you might need a few minutes to mull this over. I’ll give you that. But in ten minutes, we will take you and kill everyone inside the building. Ten minutes.” The voice enhancer howled and snapped off just seconds before their headlights. The tundra was dark once again.
Jethro leaped out of the back of the armored van to confer with one of his officers.
“Beta Squad is minutes away. When they get here, I want you and your team to take over one of the vehicles they’re bringing…a customized van, a caged prisoner transport forged from the metals of the Underworld. Keep the cage open and ready. And warn your team to wear gloves. The metal will burn through your skin. Stay behind my truck. And stay in one piece.”
“The god of the Underworld caged by the Underworld,” the man replied.
“So Thanatos says.”
“Do we know how many are inside, sir?”
“We spotted maybe eighteen walking the perimeter. We’re sitting in no-man’s land, kilometers from the nearest village. I’d guess there’s no more than fifty people in there…that’s being generous.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem, then.”
“Hades is the problem; the others are an inconvenience.” Jethro pulled his night goggles down and scanned the land behind them. “No sign of Beta Squad yet. But be ready to switch vehicles.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll inform the others.” The officer jogged back to his four-wheel drive. Within minutes, three other officers had grabbed their ammo and were waiting beside the truck.
“Take your time, Hades. I don’t mind coming in for you, not in the slightest.” Jethro smiled a predatory grin and walked back to his own vehicle. He leaned in the driver’s window, and said, “We attack soon as Beta Squad arrives. Tell the others.”
“Yes, sir,” his driver said and radioed the rest of their team. Jethro stood under the moonless sky, waiting.
Hades pressed the horse’s snout on the hilt of his bident, shrinking it down to the size of a baton and sliding it through a loop in his belt. He searched the landscape with his god eyes. Now that the dust storm had settled, he could see what and who was out there. “Flames. Thanatos isn’t here. He just put on a helluva show for his minions…a cover.” He had felt so sure that the god of death was out there. The Fates are fooling with me again, he thought.
“There’s no need for you to go out there,” Arle said to Hades.
Don stepped up beside the tall men. “What he said.”
Hades growled, shaking his head. “If they attack us here, you think we can fight them off? The injured—”
“Arle,” a character resembling the Egyptian god Anubis cried out, sprinting toward them from across the lobby. Its sleek black body skidded to a stop in front of them. “The townies are here. They came from Theopolis.”
Arle pushed past Hades. “Why? They didn’t want any part of this.”
“They must have changed their minds. They came up from the river. The reverend spotted them, let them in the loading doors of the Great Outdoors store. They killed a few of Thanatos’s soldiers getting in here.”
Several beings adorned in animal skins, tusks, and bones moved silently into the lobby, some with guns but most with spears and bows.
Arle looked at the waiting faces of the warrior tribe that stood behind Anubis. “Thank you for coming.” He touched his fist to his hollow chest in salute before slowly sliding the rifle sling off his shoulder, gripping his gun in his wooden hands. He glanced over his shoulder at Hades, and said, “We can’t let the city dwellers in here. And there’s too many injured to move, even if we had time. So, we go out and meet them. All of us, together. We beat their Necromourn asses and then storm their city. What do ya think?” He stared at Hades.
A slow spread of bronze light shone from behind Hades’s teeth. “I think we’re finally on the same page.”
Arle turned to the others who had crowded around them. “Those of you from Theopolis, once you hear the explosion, circle around the mall from the back and meet the other vehicles in the front. You know the way to the city. We’ll regroup a mile south of the city borders.” Arle was on a roll now. “I need a dozen of you with me. We go on foot out the side doors, six of us on each side. We flank them and set off the explosives as they cross the line.”
Hades tilted his head. “You’ve been holding out on me?”
“We’ve had this place booby-trapped for more than a year while we stockpiled weapons.” Arle continued, “The rest of you have your assigned vehicles. When the explosives detonate, you go out the front doors and you don’t stop for anything. The rest of us will double back here and take the remaining trucks.” He regarded everyone around him. “Let’s give ’em hell.”
Everyone hurried away to grab their bags and find their transport.
Hades spotted Reshawna and pulled her aside. “Don’t get dead.”
“Are you flirting with me?” She reached up to tap his chest. “I’ll see you at the gates of the city. Okay?”
“It’s a date.” He flashed a grin.
“Just don’t tell your wife,” Reshawna said over her shoulder. “I don’t need a jealous goddess hunting me down.”
Hades chuckled and made his way back to Arle and the others who were staying behind.
They gathered their weapons, only what they could carry. Hades took the semiautomatic rifle Arle offered him and checked the magazine.
“Hades, you take these five. Kirkus here”—Arle pointed at one of the Egyptian Anubis— “will show you where the side door is. You’ll flank from the left.” He tossed a walkie-talkie at the god, who snatched it out of the air. “I’ll signal you when we’re ready. Don and Clinker, you two make your way behind their trucks. If anything goes wrong with the detonator, be ready to trigger the bombs manually.”
Arle released the magazine on his pistol to check the load, then pushed it back into the grip. “Let’s go.”
The two groups split off from each other, jogging and then breaking into a sprint once they cleared the mall lobby. Kirkus ran smoothly, his legs reaching out in front of him as if he were flying. “This way.” He sprinted on ahead past boarded-up stores and the trashed lobby of a movie theater. The rest of the group followed.
Kirkus slowed to take a corner down a long hallway that led to public washrooms. At the end of the hall, he stopped, one hand on the emergency exit door. He waited while the others caught up. He nodded at Hades and said, “Go straight out to the edge of the parking lot and head for the cover of the berm. I’ll cover the back.”
Hades moved to the front of the group. “Ready?” He looked over his shoulder at the others as they nodded or voiced “aye.”
Kirkus opened the door slowly. Hades inched the barrel of his rifle outside.
Sweeping the area, he moved away from the mall. He signaled the others to follow. The side parking lot was mercifully empty and dark. They raced for the berm in a crouched run. Kirkus brought up the rear, running backward, checking behind them while they crossed the uneven tundra. All was quiet as they ran.
Until…
The headlights from the armored vehicles lit up the ground from the front of the mall. “You’re cutting it mighty close to my deadline,” Jethro said. “I’ll give you another minute to send him out to us. Then we’re coming in.”
The group reached the remains of the mall’s sign, now fallen on its side, the metal bent in on itself. Hades knelt behind it, waiting for the others. “There’s another line of vehicles coming,” he said once they were all there. “Maybe twen
ty more.”
“I see them,” Kirkus said, his animal eyes shining white, reflecting the headlights.
“There’re two officers less than a kilometer away, hunkered down behind some rocks, between us and their vehicles.”
The others strained to see them in the dark.
Don tugged on Hades’s jacket. “Once those other transports get here, I’ll circle out behind them. Being low to the ground comes in handy sometimes. We’ll have your back.”
Jethro had ordered radio silence over an hour ago when he sent out a few squads to take up positions around the mall. He broke that silence as he radioed a heads-up for the incoming vehicles. He waited for a response, but all he got was static. He tried again. This time less than half of them responded.
“Where the hell are they?” he yelled. Jethro dropped the handset and stormed over to the nearest truck, slamming his palms down on their hoods. “Go around back and see what happened to the rest of our men. He spun around on his heels and marched the other way to repeat the same command four more times. Five trucks growled to life. Spitting up dust, they sped away from the cluster of military vehicles.
Hades and the others ducked lower as three trucks pulled away from the center pack, two of them headed in their direction. One stopped for the two officers in the foxhole and then followed the other around the side of the mall.
If Hades and his men had moved out even a minute earlier, they could have been spotted. He held up his walkie-talkie, willing it to say something. “What’s taking so long?” he whispered to Don.
There was shouting from the side of the mall. “They found their dead buddies, the ones the townies killed,” Kirkus hissed. “We got to go.”
Arle’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie. “Move.”
Hades ran across the open space, hit the dirt, and slid into the shallow pit Jethro’s soldiers had dug out. He crawled on his belly and peered over the edge at the reinforcement vehicles pulling up in line with the other military vehicles. To his right, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Don and his buddy ran out into the dark tundra. They were faster than he would have expected from the short men.
The other three beings crowded around Hades, two of them lying on their bellies in the grass, Kirkus in the pit with Hades. “Hold on,” he whispered.
A large van pulled up behind all the other vehicles. The doors flew open, and five officers spilled out. Another four took their place. One of them rounded the van to open the back doors and release them from the hinges. The doors dropped to the ground. Another inside door swung open, one made of iron bars. The officer secured it open with ties. He yelled into the back of the van, and they pulled away.
Kirkus tested the air with his snout, and said, “When they advance on the mall, we light them up. Don’t stay in one place too long. Keep moving in behind them.”
The two lying on the ground pushed up on their elbows, guns pressed against their shoulders. “We’ll cover you,” one said.
Beta Squad rolled up behind the rest of them, radioing in as they sped up.
Jethro responded to them. “Make the switch, and then we move. Be ready on my go.” He watched his men change out vehicles in his rearview mirror. His most lethal officers were assigned to the prisoner’s truck. They were the best of his men, experienced, and not easily surprised. They moved quickly. “Engines on,” he said over the radio. And then to his driver, “Take us in.”
Behind him, the other two officers clutched their guns with one hand and the handgrip above their seat with the other. The vehicle bounced across the rough terrain. The vehicles formed a V pattern as they sped away. The armored van drove behind the lead vehicle, tucked safely into the middle of their formation.
“You’re mine, Hades.” Jethro pushed his seat back and loaded his crossbow with an arrow made of the same metal as the cage. He’d have one shot, and he was cocky enough to think one was all he’d need.
Hades yanked Kirkus up and over the lip of the pit with him. They burst out of the foxhole and raced together across the field. Hades saw Arle and the others doing the same from the opposite direction. They began firing in quick bursts, their spent shells dropping in the dirt. They fired blindly at the retreating trucks. Two vehicles from each end of the V formation spread out in a wide arch and circled back toward them.
A rocket blasted in a clean line over their heads and lit up one of the trucks, blasting it off its wheels. The front axle rolled for a few meters while the truck body splintered off into separate panels of metal. One officer sat behind a smoking steering wheel, his hair on fire, his eyeballs cooked to ash. The others had blown apart in the blast, their pieces scattered across the ground.
Hades glanced behind him and ran up on what was left of the smoking vehicle. “Where the hell did Don hide a rocket launcher?”
Kirkus moved up beside Hades. “I stopped asking where Don gets anything from. His answer is always, ‘I pulled it outta my ass.’”
Hades grinned, his face coated with grime. They kept their guns up as they came around beside the remaining officer, his bony hands still clutching the steering wheel. His teeth were smoking. “Flames, I need a cigarette.”
“Behind you.” The other two from their group jogged up. They moved together in a line, sweeping the area with bullets.
“They’re just about there,” one of Arle’s men shouted. “Take down any who comes crawling back.”
Zing. The soldiers shot from the truck’s open windows, bullets flashing from the end of their barrels.
Hades zigzagged over the terrain, hitting the dirt to return fire while he moved toward them. His bident hummed at his side.
Hades moved forward on his elbows and knees, with only a twinge of pain in his side where his wound had healed. He glanced to his right, his body tense and yet more at ease than it had felt for some time.
The ground moved about five hundred yards away. An unusual motion. Hades brought his gun scope up and around. There were more soldiers coming from the direction of the river. Pressing the stock against his shoulder, he fired until he realized he’d been squeezing the trigger and nothing was happening.
“Flames!” He released the spent magazine and rolled to his side, fishing in his dump pouch for another.
More men came up behind them from farther up the berm. They opened fire.
“We’ve got company!” Hades yelled to Kirkus a few meters away. “Behind you!”
Hades slammed a full magazine into the well, rolled up and onto one knee and fired at the advancing soldiers.
The remaining truck barreled ahead down the middle of the field. Arle took out the driver. The truck turned sharply, tipping on two wheels then bouncing back down before accelerating. It went flying past their scattered line of beings in a blur, engines revving higher. Three men hurled themselves from the speeding truck. Two rolled to a stop, breathless, but alive. The other split his head open on a rock and didn’t move.
“Where the hell are they all coming from?” Kirkus yelled between bursts.
And that was when the earth shifted beneath them, rolling, rumbling from its core. Those who were running through the tundra threw themselves down. A great high-pitched scream shattered the night, and the ground surrounding the mall opened up, swallowing all but two trucks that had made it past the perimeter explosions. Dust sprayed into the air. Another blast and then heavy black smoke roiled from the giant rift, exploding glass and steel panels. Body bits spewed in a heavy rain of shards and flames.
It seemed like a nightmare from the mind of Phobetor. Hades pressed his face to the ground, his arms thrown over his head. The ring of the blast lingered. He pushed up onto his elbows, belly down, his fingers fumbling for the gun beside him. The earth heaved and rolled back into the pit filled with trucks and men. Some crawled over the lip of the pit, clawing their way out with burned hands, their flesh crispy and tearing off with every motion.
The air was thick and sour. As Hades rose on his elbo
w, a bullet caught him in the back of his shoulder, cutting through muscle and tendon, shattering his collarbone on its way through. Another scream, this one closer. He was thrown on his back, blinking through a mist of red. Beside him was a confusion of bodies tumbling and rolling, fists and gun barrels flashing. A dark shape emerged through smoke and dirt, with a gun aimed at his head.
Hades watched as if through a long lens. The world slowed and then sped up. He twisted around, screaming through a villainous pain while he brought up his rifle and fired. The gun recoiled, slamming into his shoulder. The sound of torturous souls thrown into Tartarus ripped through his throat, and all went silent and black.
Jethro’s truck surged forward with a blast of air pushing them from behind. “Run us through the front doors!” he yelled at his driver. The words were muffled in his ears.
They sped for the mall, the earth tossing them around like a dog toy.
Jethro’s ears rang from the detonation, gunfire, and the earth splitting open its mouth to devour the rest of the armored vehicles and his men. Sweat ran down his face, the air scorching everything around them. He glanced behind them, hoping that some of his men had made it through, but all he saw was dust and flame. He thought he cussed but couldn’t tell if the words made it out of his parched throat.
His driver took one hand off the steering wheel to point out Jethro’s passenger window. “There’s another truck.” He quickly reclaimed his grip on the vibrating wheel. The truck bounced over dips and mounds, jerking its passengers around like a rollercoaster ride.
A man in the backseat shouted, “They made it through!”
Miracle of miracles, the van had made it through the blast. Jethro felt around under his seat for the radio handset, which had bounced out of its cradle. He found it, dragged the cord in front of him, and switched the radio on. “Beta Squad, respond. Anyone out there?” Jethro turned up the volume controls so he could hear through the thick cotton that seemed to be stuffed in his ears.