Thanatos

by Carmen Kern

  The radio crackled, and then came a response. “Beta Squad twelve, here. The van is intact. Not sure about the other units. From what we see, everyone behind us got sucked into the earth.”

  “Copy.” Jethro paused, and then said, “We’re busting through the front doors of the mall. Follow behind us. Once inside, shoot anything that lives, even Hades. If we put enough bullets in him, we can drag his ass to the cage. That’s the mission. No one deviates from it.”

  “Understood. Over.”

  Jethro tossed the handset on the floor and fumbled to bring up the stock of his crossbow. “Better get some speed if we’re going to make it through those doors.” The four-wheel drive skipped over the lip of the paved parking lot, gaining traction and speed. The ride leveled out.

  “Shit. My kidneys are up in my throat,” the driver said, shoving the accelerator to the floor.

  “Here we go,” Jethro said calmly, almost oblivious to the fact that they were going to ram through steel and glass. In the last second before they busted through, he noticed a small sign above the door handle that said push, and then glass exploded. The truck veered to the right, and Jethro flew against his door, the truck smashing into a stone-tile wall. The hood crumpled in. Smoke poured from the grille, the engine roared in frustration, and then sputtered into silence.

  Breathe. Hades lungs ached against his rib cage, and there was something else. A crushing, excruciating pain across his chest and shoulders. Hades turned to the side and moaned.

  Did I shoot myself? he wondered.

  Shouting and the occasional bursts from guns rat-tatted out in the distance, but the ringing in his ears had dulled.

  “Hades,” a voice called to him.

  The ground was spinning, or maybe he was. It wasn’t until he moved his hands that he felt his rifle laying on his chest. And then, something sticky under his fingers. Something warm and wet.

  “Don’t move,” Kirkus growled. “You were shot in the shoulder.” Cool hands unzipped the god’s jacket and gently peeled it open. He sucked in a breath, crouching lower over the god. “I’m no medic, but your clavicle doesn’t look…normal. The bullet is out, but it might have shattered your bone. It’s going to hurt like a son of a gun.”

  “Already does,” Hades croaked.

  “Sorry, but I couldn’t pick you up. I had to drag you to cover. Probably made it worse. But I thought it was better than being shot again. The others are still out there.”

  “I know this is your home, but so far, I’m having a shit time in this world.” Hades slid his rifle off his chest. “Where are the palm trees and the poolside drinks I was promised?”

  “I don’t know about any of that, but if I could heal myself, I’d damn well do it. You’re not going anywhere unless you do.”

  “Is that your professional opinion?” Hades grinned up at the jackal-faced man crouched beside him.

  Kirkus shrugged. His snout curled back into a smile. “Just a humble observation.”

  Hades lay still for a moment, slowing his thoughts, isolating his muscles with his mind, until he felt what was broken. “Hand me my bident,” he said quietly.

  Kirkus pressed the baton-sized weapon into the god’s hand.

  Hades heard the groan of bending metal and shattering glass. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “Nothing we can help with right now.”

  Hades nodded at Kirkus and closed his eyes. His fingers curled around the familiar steel. He felt the horse-head button on the shaft and ran his thumb over the smooth mane. The steel began to glow. Fusion. Atoms and tissues pulled together, heating and then burning into plasma that spilled over bone, sealing the break with flame and energy while blood once again flowed through marrow and reconnected veins. Hades broke out in a cold sweat while his insides burned with healing energy.

  Bones cracked and moved under his skin. Kirkus followed the light under Hades’s skin that traveled up from the god’s hands and spread out over his chest and up until bones cracked and moved back into place. The god’s mouth opened as if to scream, but no sound escaped.

  It took less than a minute until Hades’s body cooled. He lay still and spent. “I know you don’t know Apollo…and don’t tell him I said this, but that would have felt so much better if he had done it.”

  “It looked pretty damn cool.”

  Hades opened his eyes. “That took a lot out of me. Thanatos has a knack for draining me dry, I’ll give him that.”

  “There are more of us now, and others in the city who are true to our cause. They believe you were sent here to help us. They believe.”

  “You give a damn good pep talk, Kirkus.” Hades eased himself to his side and then sat up. He felt along his fused collarbone. “I’ll take all your people can give. Hopefully, it’s enough.”

  “It will be.” Kirkus held out his hand. Hades grabbed on. “You ready?” Kirkus asked.

  “Always.” With a gentle heave, Hades stood, a little dizzy from the loss of blood and power, but pain free.

  Kirkus retrieved their weapons and handed Hades his rifle. “Let’s go see what all the noise is about.”

  Jethro kicked open his door and pulled his crossbow out with him. His driver was dead, the steering wheel lodged in his chest. Two of his men had already exited the van behind him and were down on one knee with their weapons up. The man who sat behind him pounded the window of his door. Jethro propped his crossbow against the front tire and yanked on the door handle, flinging it open with a final heave. The two men spilled out the back door and scrambled to grab weapons.

  There was chaos inside the mall. Through the settling dust, Jethro made out cots and medical equipment set up to the one side with characters lying down and some trying to get up while others screamed with fear. There were more people than he would have thought. Dazed, he scanned the lobby, but nearby gunfire jerked him into action, popping his bubble of calm. He ran for cover behind the base of a store directory. The large interactive screen above the entrance had already been shattered by stray bullets.

  Shots fired from all sides until someone yelled to cease fire. Jethro couldn’t place the voice, but he knew it wasn’t one of his.

  He shouted out into the brief silence, “We want Hades. The rest of you don’t have to get hurt. Just send him out to us.” Even as Jethro said the words, he heard how foolish they sounded. They were vastly outnumbered, and most of his men were already dead. There would be no help coming from the other side of the mall or from above. The outliers had stopped firing, not because they were going to surrender the god of the Underworld, but because they were going to fall on him and his remaining men like the fliers that hunted from the skies. They wanted to take them alive. It was damn smart, something he would have done if their roles were reversed. But they weren’t.

  A flurry of motion caught his eye at the balcony of the second level. He brought up his crossbow and pulled the trigger, piercing one man through his throat. The arrow had only just left the riser when he stood to load another.

  His men made their way deeper into the mall, ducking behind parked trucks and benches. Jethro had released three arrows when he looked up to see a woman step out from around a column and sneak up behind his man, and in a single motion she raised a pistol from her hip and shot him twice, once in the back of each knee. He howled in pain and folded to the floor. His gun sent out a burst of bullets before his finger slid off the trigger.

  Jethro dropped his crossbow, pulled both his pistols, and stormed out from behind the sign, shooting at anything that moved. He ran for a cement garbage can, ducked behind it, and holstered his guns. Yanking a grenade free of his vest, he pulled the pin and brought his arm back when something powerful snagged his wrist. A hand strong as a vise closed over his, forcing his arm down. His other arm was seized and twisted behind his back, and his fingers forcibly peeled back from the live grenade. Before he could turn around to face his captor, there was a violent jab to his neck and the stinging pr
ick of a needle. He struggled even as his vision blurred.

  He sank into the same arms he wanted to break, and then slipped into the strangest of nightmares, one where he lay gagged and bound, unable to move his feet. His head was swollen and large, like a beach ball floating away in a cold breeze, only to be entangled in gnarled tree branches that ripped open his skin, deflating him as he sped for the ground. Falling. Falling.

  Hades and Kirkus raced for the mall. The distance between seemed less now that they could run without dodging bullets. There were paths of solid earth between the blasted sink holes. Inside the craters, windows and ammo boxes and bumpers, whole and barely scratched, stuck out among the tiny bits of flesh and metal that hadn’t been so lucky.

  Hades slowed to get a better look. It stunned him every time he experienced war. How a body could change from one thing to another, whole and substantial one moment, and then with one shot, one detonation, it became bits and pieces of organic matter spread around like confetti. They didn’t show up at his gates this way. They came as they were before violent death or disease took them.

  Moans and cries rose from those who were still alive. Don and his brothers rounded up those who had crawled out, binding their hands and feet, laying them down on their sides to smolder, some with smoking hair or clothes. Others had so little flesh left, one would have thought they were created for a zombie apocalypse comic.

  Don caught Hades’s eye as he ran past.

  “They crashed through the lobby,” Kirkus called out over his black-furred shoulder. He drove his muscular legs faster.

  They drew closer with their guns up. Another crash of breaking glass came from inside. They hurdled over the broken door frames and skidded to a halt. There were only two vehicles—one crashed into the wall and the other, a black oversized van, looked like it had been parked in an exclusive parking space in the front of the most expensive shops. There were four men lying in the back, tied and gagged. Arle stood at the back holding an unconscious man upright, his long forearm pressed against a beefy man with a brush cut, the poster boy for a military ad.

  Arle looked up at Hades. “Glad you’re in one piece.”

  “I almost wasn’t.” Hades reached the back of the van and looked inside. A compact prison cell was butted up against the partition between the front of the van and the cargo space. Thick iron bars soldered into the structure of the van spanned from the roof to the floor. “Someone went to a lot of trouble with this cage. It smells like home.” Hades turned to Arle and asked, “What’re you going to do with them?” He got into the back to take a closer look at one of the soldiers.

  “Take them with us. Use them as a sacrifice, feed them to the sewer rats…haven’t decided yet.” Arle signaled to a character with the head of a raven to grab their prisoner’s feet. They heaved him up, swinging him like a hammock while they waddled up to the back of the van and set him on the ground.

  Hades crouched beside one of the soldiers who had landed up against the cage. He rolled him over. “Seems Thanatos had this custom made for me. I might be impressed if I didn’t want to rip his lungs from his chest.” The flesh on the soldier’s cheek was eaten away, turned to a liquid that oozed down into the collar of his uniform, exposing white bone.

  “This isn’t iron,” Hades said. “This is metal from the Underworld. I’ve used it to imprison my least favorite Titans in Tartarus. They’re a nasty crew, always trying to escape. We built a prison they couldn’t touch without melting their flesh.” Hades dragged the man away from the cage. “It’s bad for mortals, and even worse for immortals.”

  Kirkus poked his muzzle inside. “So you’re saying don’t touch those bars.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Hades nodded and studied the structure. “Look up here.” He pointed to a neatly rolled canvas secured to the roof with cargo hooks. “Looks like they installed a tarp to cover the cage.” He reached up and released the cords. The canvas roll unfurled. He pulled it taut and lined up the tarp clips to anchor points in the floor, a few centimeters away from the cage. He secured them one by one. “Safety first,” he said, hunching over to make his way out of the back. He hopped down beside the unconscious man on the ground.

  Arle toed the officer’s arm. “His name’s Jethro. A big cheese in the city. One of Thanatos’s sergeants. He’s been looking for me for a while now.”

  “Guess he found you,” Hades said.

  “Yes, but it was you he really wanted. He was supposed to bring you back to Thanatos. All of this was for you.” Arle stared at Hades, the grain in his skin hidden by ash and dirt, but a wide grin grew on his stiff face.

  Hades drew a breath. “So we give Thanatos what he wants.”

  Arle patted the side panel of the van. “This is our Trojan horse.”

  Hades scratched at his beard. “How do you know so much of our history?”

  “We came from the minds of Thanatos and Phobetor. We are, in essence, pieces of them. We know much of their world, of your world.”

  “And we get Netflix,” Kirkus said, shrugging.

  “Yes, there’s that,” Arle agreed.

  Hades watched the other beings once again tend to the wounded, sort the remaining weapons that hadn’t been blown up, and move vehicles. “When are we heading out?”

  “As soon as I load this big guy, gas up the van, and lock you up in the back with him.”

  “What about all of this?” Hades nudged his chin toward the ruined mall entrance.

  “Those who were staying will have more to clean up, but nothing’s changed for the rest of us.” Arle walked up to Hades and fingered the hole through his jacket. “If you keep wearing through your clothes, we’re gonna have to start charging you for new ones.”

  “I’ll just keep what I’ve got. But I’m going to need a recharge,” Hades said.

  “We can arrange that.” Arle motioned to Jethro. “Help me get him in. And then I’ll get us some water for the trip.”

  Kirkus materialized next to them. “I can keep the god company in the back.”

  Arle looked at Hades. “Is that okay with you?”

  “Do you know any good jokes?” Hades asked Kirkus.

  “Some. Mostly dog jokes. I like to beat people to the punch.”

  Hades slapped Kirkus’s back. “That’ll do.”

  Arle turned around and yelled, “We’re leaving in five. We’re already late, so move it!”

  Everyone got to work. Reshawna jogged up to Hades on her way to another vehicle. “See you when this is done.” And then she was off.

  It wasn’t until they were bouncing around in the back of the van that Hades wondered why he hadn’t said thank you. To Reshawna, to Arle, to any of them. They weren’t words he said often, at least not in the Underworld, but in this case, it seemed like he should.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Bob glanced down Blood Alley in both directions. The police had kept these few blocks cleared of rotters for the past couple of days, but they didn’t need unwanted attention from passersby. Shoving the manhole lid to the side, Bob uncovered the shaft. A metal ladder led down into the dark, the handholds shiny, almost strangely clean against the slimy skin of the cement cylinder.

  “I was kind of hoping the keyhole would be in the manhole cover, and we wouldn’t have to climb down there.” Persephone peered over the edge into the darkness.

  “I suppose this is where I come in.” Bob looked at the goddess and lit his fingers and then both hands, his skin like burning embers, flowing yellow and orange. “And then there was light,” he mumbled, turning his hands over as if surprised he wasn’t burning up. “I’ll go first.” He didn’t wait for confirmation. He swung his body over the lip of the drain and started down, pausing to hold out his hand, illuminating the wall. “Hope you aren’t claustrophobic,” he called out.

  “You go next,” Persephone said to Hecate. “I’ll replace the cover behind us.”

  Hecate nodded, easing herself down to the first ru
ng. She took a few deep breaths, as if she were going underwater, and went down.

  Persephone followed, struggling to slide the manhole cover in place with one hand until finally it clacked into place. Bob’s light seemed far away and partially hidden by Hecate’s long coat. The hole reeked of dying vegetation and seawater. The kind of seawater that had too many dead fish and plant life stewing in its warmed shallows.

  Clunk.

  “I’m at the bottom. And I hate to tell you this—”

  “Why do people have to start a sentence with that? If you hate to say it, there’s a good chance we’ll hate hearing it.” Hecate continued down, her normally low voice thin and tinny in the precast cylinder.

  “Anyway, there’s only one pipe feeding into the bottom. And it ain’t big enough for any of us to crawl through. It’s more Ferret sized.” Bob held one hand above his head and the other down by the pipe.

  Hecate landed with a small splash beside Bob and dusted off her hands on her coat. She crouched down and peered down the pipe. “This won’t help us.” She stood.

  Persephone joined them on the landing slab. “Give us some light on the wall, Bob.”

  He held his hands up over his head. He was sweating now with the buildup of heat in his body. He slowly scanned the walls.

  There was a muffled banging, like rugs being beat with a broomstick, and then a whirr. Pistons pumped up and down behind the wall. A puff of steam seeped through a crack in the cement wall where two cylinders had been fitted together. They all turned toward the sound. A gust of sewage stink blew in along with the steam.

  They held their arms up to their noses to block the smell.

  “Well, there’s definitely something behind there. And I sure as hell hope it’s not a sewer pipe about to burst.” Bob held his hand closer to the long joint.