Holy Rollers - Immortals

2009-11-29T21:49:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1 - Introducing Death.
Chapter 2 - Introducing James
Chapter 3 - In which a deal is struck between Hephaistos and Ares.
Chapter 4 - In which James makes a discovery
Chapter 5 - In which Death has a near dinner experience
Chapter 6 - In which James gets a second chance
Chapter 7 - In which Death gets a small surprise
Chapter 8 - In which James has a very good day indeed
Chapter 9 - In which Death has a rough day
Chapter 10 - In which Scroat is depressed
Chapter 11 - In which a suicide irritates Death
Chapter 12 - In which James screws everything up and doesn't die on time.
Chapter 13 - In which we meet an attempted suicide. Or a superhero.
Chapter 14 - In which no one, for no apparent reason, dies.
Chapter 15 - In which Scroat starts to get out of his funk.
Chapter 16 - In which shadowy men plot shadowy doings
Chapter 17 - In which things start going downhill.
Chapter 18 - In which we find out where Death has been lately
Chapter 19 - In which Ares is frustrated, Hep is unimpressed, and Father Adamson is surprised
Chapter 20 - In which Jill gets fed up with the new James and goes home
Chapter 21 - In which Hep delivers a motorcycle to a whole new Ares.
Chapter 22 - In which Hep tries to straighten out Death
Chapter 23 - In which James has one hell of a morning.
Chapter 24 - In which Hep assumes his new temporary duties
Chapter 25 - In which Hep starts getting the hang of things, with some help from a friend
Chapter 26 - In which an unlikely group plots dark deeds
Chapter 27 - In which Hep and Scroat conscript Ares
Chapter 28 - In which some morticians are disgruntled
Chapter 29 - In which Hep and Scroat force Ares to help them out

Chapter 30 - In which James's debauchery leads him to enlightenment

Chapter 31 - In which a lot of crazy stuff goes down.
Chapter 32 - In which Ares causes a lot of inconvenience for Hep and Scroat
Chapter 33 - In which James tries to win back Jill
Chapter 34 - In which Ares comes around
Chapter 35 - In which we reach the thrilling conclusion!

Official Nanowrimo word count: 50,002.
I Conquer.

Check back tomorrow for the bonus discussion questions! For now, I've got to do some laundry.

Chapter Thirty Five

2009-11-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds. - J. Robert Oppenheimer recalling the Bhagavad Gita while watching the Trinity nuclear test.

Chapter Thirty Five

For the last couple of days, since the visit by Nubbins, Death had been feeling increasingly concerned that, perhaps, her depression was less about her frustration with work, and more about her own selfish desires. She fought the idea, insisting to herself that her job actually was pointless. And it was true that she would never complete her work. At least, not until all of humanity was wiped out and that, in itself, was probably going to be something of a drag.

As she was digging into a fresh tube of cookie dough, however, she had a thought. More of a realization, really. A revelation.

Her work, she realized, was what kept the world moving. Those who achieved largely did so because they realized they had little time and wished to make the most of it. Without her, there was no balance to birth. There was no reason to fear anything.

It was possible, she thought, that her work was ultimately the greatest force for good. She did have a purpose. Her work was what gave life value.

She dropped the spoon and tube of cookie dough, and got out of bed. She had to get cleaned up, and get back to work at once.

“Oh, fuck. Poor Hep!” she exclaimed. She hurried to the shower.

Ares had gone home the night before. Hep and Scroat were currently in the foothills of a mountain range just outside Phoenix, where James Robert Quiggley, Jim-Bob to his friends, was about to blow hisownself the fuck up with a homemade bomb in a fifty gallon drum.

Hep and Scroat waited and watched as James wired up the detonator box. He was very careful to make sure everything was wired correctly, and that all the fail safes were in place. His safety plan would have been immaculate if he’d correctly figured the dangerous blast radius of the bomb. He was about two hundred feet too close.

Hep checked his watch. Two minutes to showtime.

Death toweled herself off quickly and threw on the first clothes she could find that looked presentable, then pulled her cloak on over them. She grabbed her spare stopwatch and clipboard, turned off the TV and checked her appearance once last time in the mirror before disappearing.

Jim Bob had satisfied himself that all the necessary safety steps had been taken. He attached the last two wires to the detonator, and put on his hearing and eye protection. He looked around his immediate area through a pair of binoculars, to make sure there weren’t any bystanders he hadn’t noticed. He didn’t see Hep and Scroat, waiting patiently well outside the blast radius.

“One minute to detonation!” Jim Bob hollered through an electronic bullhorn. He flipped the power switch on the detonator, and watched the seconds tick by on his Timex.

“Thirty seconds to detonation!” he hollered, then “twenty seconds!”

He flipped up the safety cover keeping the trigger button from accidentally being pushed.

“Ten seconds and counting to detonation! Ten.... Nine... Eight...”

Hep and Scroat were surprised by the appearance of a strikingly beautiful woman in a black cloak. She was just in front of them, smiling and holding a stopwatch and a clipboard.

“Seven... Six...”

“I’ll handle this one, guys. Thanks for all your help,” Death said.

“Three... Two... One...” then there was a terrific explosion. The fifty gallon drum was ripped to shreds, sending shrapnel flying one thousand yards in any direction. Jim Bob was torn to pieces by the flying debris and sheer force of the explosion. His hearing protection and safety glasses were thrown from his head. There was a mini mushroom cloud at ground zero.

When the dust and debris had settled, Jim Bob’s soul stood where his body had been two seconds earlier.

“Well that ain’t right,” Jim Bob said, and scratched his head.

Then he saw a very pale, very beautiful woman in a black cloak smiling at him.

“Hello, Jim Bob. Would you walk with me?” she asked him.

“Well, yes ma’am. It would be my honor,” he said and took her hand.

On battlefields, remote and urban, all over the world, the gunfire and explosions suddenly stopped. A great many soldiers who had been terribly wounded during the course of the fighting looked at one another, confused, and fell down properly dead.

Car crash victims, people consumed by diseases, drug users, old people, babies, professionals, construction workers, doctors, patients... everyone who should have been dead, suddenly was.

Clean up of all the bodies was going to be quite the logistical nightmare.

Death found James King in his old house. The one he’d lived in before he became a rich and powerful businessman. He was playing in the basement with a chemistry set, amusing himself by changing the color of a clear solution green by adding another clear liquid, and then back to clear again with the addition of a different chemical.

“Hello, James,” Death said.

James put down the beakers he’d been holding and said, “Hello. I’ve been wondering when you were going to show up again.”

“I was delayed by a personal crisis,” Death said.

“That’s OK.”

“From what I’d heard, you’ve become quite the business success story. You have a mansion in L.A. and a collection of expensive cars. What are you doing back here?”

“I realized that stuff didn’t really matter. It was a lot of fun, but it didn’t make me as happy as my chemistry set in my basement.”

“I see,” Death said. “And what happened with your lady friend?”

“I let her get away,” James said. He looked at his hands.

“You have regrets,” Death said.

“Oh yes.”

“Good. A life without regrets is one that was not truly lived,” Death said.

James smiled.

“Are you ready to go now, James?” Death asked him.

James stood up, and said, “Yes, I suppose I am. I’ve gotten more life than I deserved, and I achieved almost everything I wanted to. With a couple screw-ups.”

Death smiled all the wider. “You know, it really seems to be a shame to kill a man who’s already invented a cure for cancer, and has finally figured out what he wants from life.”

James looked extremely puzzled, but excited. “Really?”

“Yes. I’d suggest you make the most of what time you have left, James. You might try to, oh, rekindle an old flame, perhaps? Maybe invent something new. I’ll be seeing you around,” Death said, and winked at him.

Then she disappeared.

James’s jaw worked up and down a couple of times. He looked at his chemistry set and his watch, as though they might provide him with some vital clue. Then he ran upstairs and picked up the phone.

Hep and Scroat were sitting in Ares’s living room. He had replaced the cushions and pillows with proper furniture, albeit it was mostly made of black leather.

Ares was making a huge racket in another room, looking for something. “Ah ha! Here it is!”

Ares came back into the room, beaming, and carrying an ornate and perfectly wrought shield and armor. Achilles’s armor.

Hep stood up, and Ares handed the shield and armor to him.

“As promised, sir.”

“It’s just like I remembered it. How did you find it again.”

Ares looked away, and touched the side of his nose. “It fell off a truck.”

Hep was about to say something more, when he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a pale woman wearing a black cloak.

“Uh, hi,” is what he said.

“Hello, Hephaistos. I didn’t really properly thank you for all of your help. You really did more than should have been expected of you, and I wish I had a way I could repay you.”

Scroat mumbled, “I could think of a way...”

Ares clouted him on the back of the head.

“It’s OK,” Hep said. “I’m always happy to help a friend in need.”

“You’re far too kind,” Death said. She leaned over and kissed Hep on the cheek.

He blushed deeply, and mumbled a lot of nonsense before saying “thank you.”

“Well, gentlemen, I have a lot to do, so I’ll be on my way. Ares,” she looked at him and smiled, “try to stay out of trouble.”

“Sure thing. I hardly ever get into any trouble,” Ares said.

“See you around, Scroat,” Death said.

“Yep, later,” Scroat said, and put his hands in his pockets.

“Oh, hey, wait!” Ares said. “I wanted to give you something. It’s not really much use to me any way.”

He lead Death, Hep and Scroat out to his garage and opened the door. There, gleaming and perfect, was the motorcycle Hep had built for him. Thankfully, Ares had not ruined it when he was a confused hippie. Its paint was black as the darkest cave, and its chrome shone like the stars at night. It sat, long and low, begging for someone to master it.

“I want you to have this. I hear riding helps when you’re feeling down, and I’m a terrible fucking rider to be honest. You need some proper transportation, anyways,” Ares said and handed Death the keys.

She looked at Hep “Your handiwork, I presume?”

“Yeah, all me,” Hep said, proudly.

“Very nicely done,” Death said. She swung a leg over the seat, and lifted the bike off its kickstand. The key slipped into the ignition switch as though it had been longing to go home. Death thumbed the starter button, and the motor roared to life.

“Death’s mighty steed,” Death said, almost to herself, as the bike rumbled underneath her. “See you around, then, guys.”

With that, she and the motorcycle were gone, as though she’d never been there.

THE END.

Chapter Thirty Four

2009-11-29T19:29:00.001-08:00

To himself, every one is an immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. - Samuel Butler

Chapter Thirty Four

Hep was tired from trying to keep Ares under control. He’d thought keeping a hippie under lock and key would be easy, but he’d forgotten that hippies still talk. A lot. Especially if they’re locked up.

So, he told Ares that he wasn’t going to keep him locked up any more, and he wouldn’t have to go to anymore deaths if he didn’t want to, but that he would be very grateful if Ares stuck around for a bit.

“Will you apologize for locking me up?”

Hep rolled his eyes, and said, “Yes, Ares, I’m sorry I locked you up.”

“OK. I’ll hang out for a while,” Ares said.

Hep unlocked him and then asked him if he wanted something to drink.

Ares rubbed his wrists where the handcuffs had been and said, “Have you got any mint tea?”

“Um. No. I have beer. I have liqour. And, I guess, I have coffee.”

“Can I just have a glass of water?”

“Sure, come on,” Hep said, and led Ares out into the living room where Scroat was watching porn.

“Dude, do we have to watch this?”

Scroat looked at him.

“I thought you fucking hippies were all about, you know, fucking. Free love, right?”

“Yeah, but porn is just degrading to everyone.”

“Fuck. OK. Since you are our guest, I will watch something else. You want to see if the Care Bears movie is on cable?”

Ares didn’t answer. He sat down on the couch. Hep came in with a glass of water for Ares and a beer for himself.

Hep had just sat down when the phone buzzed in his pocket. He had set it to vibrate to keep Ares from freaking out and vanishing when it went off.

Hep excused himself and went in to the bathroom, where he checked to see who was due to die. It looked like he had to collect a guy named Floyd White from a nightclub. He was supposed to overdose on cocaine in the V.I.P. room. Hep put the phone back in his pocket and went out to the living room.

“Hey, anyone want to go to a nightclub?” Hep asked.

Scroat immediately said, “Fuck yeah!”

Ares, being too trusting for his own good, also agreed that going to a nightclub sounded like a fun idea.

Five minutes later they were on their way.

There was already a line down the block when they arrived outside the club.

“I didn’t know there were any decent clubs in Arizona,” Ares said.

“There aren’t,” Hep said. “No one here knows the difference, though.”

They waited for half an hour before the line moved at all.

“Man, I don’t want to hang out in line all night,” Ares said. “Maybe we should go find a different club.”

“No, we definitely want to get in to this club,” Hep said.

“Why, I thought there weren’t any decent ones here anyway.”

Hep thought quickly and said, “Yeah, but the other ones are even worse than this one.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Scroat said. “Come with me.”

He walked towards the bouncer standing at the velvet ropes. Before they had even stopped, the bouncer said, “Wait in line, gentlemen, there’s no room inside.”

“Aw, come on, don’t you remember us? We went to school together,” Scroat said, and flashed a one hundred dollar bill at the bouncer.

“Oh, hey, yeah. It’s been a while fellas,” he reached to shake Scroat’s hand, and Scroat deftly handed him the cash. “Come on in, no cover charge for old friends.”

“Thanks man,” Scroat said.

“Yeah, thanks,” Ares said. Hep said nothing, but went inside with the other two.

As soon as the door was shut behind them, he asked Scroat, “Where did you get that?”

Scroat laughed and said, “out of the pocket of the douchebag in the blue suit back there.”

“Oh,” Hep said, and considered this for a moment. Then he said, “Nicely done.”

“Thank you.”

The three of them went in to the club. Hep was immediately overwhelmed with disgust by the level of douchebaggery in the club. Every which way he looked was another asshole with goofy, gelled hair and a tacky t-shirt with metallic art on it or a silk jacket. Or both, in many cases.

“Wow,” he said.

Ares was equally disgusted by the macho posturing of the clubs patrons, as well as the equal slutty posing of many of the women present.

“Do these people act like this all week?” he shouted to Hep over the BOOMBOOMBOOM of whatever crappy dance track the DJ was spinning.

“No,” Hep said, “the rest of the week they pretend they aren’t assholes.”

Some guy with bleached tips and pumped arms (with no chest muscles to speak of) ran into Ares.

“Watch it, fuckhead!” he said to Ares.

Ares stared at him, incredulous. “You ran in to me!”

The asshole grabbed Ares shirt, “You got a problem? I’ll wipe the floor with you, asshole!”

Several of the bouncers were now paying attention to the douchebag picking a fight with a gigantic hippie.

“No problem here,” Ares said. The asshole smirked and let go of Ares.

“I didn’t think so, pussy,” he said, and wandered off.

Scroat was staring at Ares with his mouth hanging open.

“Dude, who the fuck are you?”

Ares said nothing. Scroat wasn’t sure, but he could swear that Ares had been wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt when they came in. But now it was black.

They continued through the club, Hep leading the way, trying to reach the V.I.P. room.

They passed a couple more douchebags who looked just like the first douchebag. One of them shoved the other and shouted “Stay the hell away from my woman.”

The other one was coming back, when Ares stepped between them and said “Fellas, you can handle this reasonably.”

The one who had been shoved punched him in the jaw, to his own dismay. He clutched his hand in pain and tried to keep looking tough.

“That wasn’t cool,” Ares said, and stuck a finger in the douchebag’s face.

The other douchebag, the one who had started the fight, shoved Ares then. Ares turned around and grabbed the guy who had shoved him. He picked him up by his shirt, and pulled him close to his face.

“Dude, did you really wax your eyebrows? Shameful.”

He then tossed the guy back to the floor, and walked away. The jerk tried to keep looking tough as he got up off the floor, having been overpowered by a hippie. His friends were looking away and trying not to laugh at him.

Ares caught up with Scroat and Hep. Scroat had turned to ask Ares something when he noticed Ares was wearing a couple of leather cuffs around each wrist. He was certain Ares had not been wearing those earlier.

“Man, a lot of assholes here tonight,” Scroat said.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Ares said and cracked his knuckles.

They had nearly reached the V.I.P. room, and Hep was trying to formulate a more elegant plan for getting in that just braining the bouncer with the nearest convenient object and rushing in, when the first douchebag who had bumped into Ares, unbelievably, ran into him again.

“Hey, fuckhead, I told you to watch yourself,” he said.

This time Ares grabbed the douchebag by the hair and said “You had better check yourself, friend, before I wreck you.”

He then pulled the guy by his hair and sent him stumbling into a crowd of look-alikes with spiky hair and big biceps.

Hep had turned to ask if Scroat or Ares had any ideas for getting into the V.I.P room, when he saw Ares wearing a black t-shirt, black leather cuffs, black pants and black boots. He was about to comment on Ares’s new attire when the jerk he’d just tossed came running back at him. Ares wasn’t looking, and the douchebag punched Ares in the back of the head.

Hep saw fire blaze in Ares’s eyes, and then Ares turned around to confront the guy who had punched him.

“You’re gonna be in a world of...” the douchebag began saying, when Ares seized him by the head with both hands. The guy grabbed, uselessly, at Ares’s hands.

“Pain?” Ares asked. The douchebags eyes went wide, and Ares pulled his head down and lifted his knee, driving his knee into the douchebag’s face. He then pulled a bloodied douchebag up and twisted his neck around until he felt something snap and the douchebag went limp.

The guys friends watched all this with horror, and decided that there was no time like the present to get the hell out of there.

The V.I.P. bouncer hustled over, being the closest, to try and get Ares under control. He tried to put Ares in a choke hold, with disastrous results. Ares pulled the bouncer off of him and flipped him up over his back. The bouncer landed flat on his back, knocking the wind out of him.

“Where the hell were you when that asshole was trying to bully me earlier?” he asked the gasping bouncer, and walked away.

Scroat was impressed Ares hadn’t killed the bouncer, until a keg came flying from behind the bar amid various screams and landed on the bouncer’s head. So much for not killing the bouncer.

Hep felt it would be an excellent time to get in to the V.I.P. room and find Floyd. He was easy enough to spot - he was the one sprawled backwards on the couch, dead. Floyd’s soul stood next to his body looking very embarrassed. Hep could now also see the souls of the douchebag and the bouncer, and it looked like he was going to have one hell of a collection to bring to the other side, at the rate Ares was going.

Scroat came over to where Hep was, partly to see if he could help, but mostly to get out of the way.

“Is that what a murder pumpkin looks like?” he asked Hep.

“Yes.”

“Man, you were right, then.”

Ares was twirling a guy in a silk jacket and a t-shirt over his head. Scroat was pretty sure it was one of the guys who had been fighting over a girl earlier.

“What? Don’t you like playing airplane?” Ares asked him. The guy responded by throwing up.

“Oh, fuck. That’s nasty, dude,” Ares said. He threw the guy across the dance floor, where he knocked over a large number of people and came to rest when he slid headfirst into the bar.

The club’s patrons then learned that, strictly speaking, the club shouldn’t have passed the fire inspection, as there weren’t nearly enough doors for everyone to safely exit. Several people were trampled as glammed up women and men pushed and shoved to try and get out of the club before Ares’s wrath turned upon them.

After about fifteen minutes, the club was empty except for Hep, Scroat, Ares, and about twenty bodies (and their souls). The music had stopped, and they could hear sirens approaching.

“You guys might want to split,” Hep said to Scroat and Ares. “I’ll catch up with you at home later.”

“Right,” Scroat said, and he and Ares slipped behind the bar in search of a side or back door they could use unobserved.

“Now, you guys,” Hep said to the twenty souls, “come with me.”

One by one, the souls slowly walked away from their bodies and over to Hep. They were in a large group around him when the police and firefighters burst in to the club.

“Hold it right there!” one of the officers shouted at Hep.

Hep smiled, and said “See ya later.” He and the souls then stepped out of this world.

Chapter Thirty Three

2009-11-29T16:26:00.000-08:00

When you think you are going to die, say to yourself, “So much the better! I am about to behold the Adorable!” - Abbe de Tourville

Chapter Thirty Three

After his epiphany while in bed with Tiffani with an i and what’s her name with the perfect 26 Cs, James had gotten out of bed as soon as he could politely do so (after two more tumbles) and threw everyone out of his house.

“Party’s over! You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!” he repeated as he walked through his house.

Tiffani with an i was the last to leave. He saw her to the door.

“Good luck getting your life back on track,” she said.

“Thank you for pointing out I was going the wrong way,” James said.

Tiffani kissed him on the cheek, and was gone.

James shut the door, locked it, and hustled over to the phone. He quickly dialed it, and waited for someone to answer.

“I need a ticket to Oregon, as soon as possible.”

He was able to get a ticket for a flight leaving in three hours, which gave him exactly enough time to stuff his toothbrush, a couple of t-shirts and a spare pair of jeans into his backback and head for the airport.

Parking was something of a hassle, but James made it inside and on to the plane with relatively little difficulty. The flight was quick, but cramped. James was stuck sitting in a middle seat in coach, in between a college football fan and a cranky older woman who was wearing enough perfume to disguise the odor of a goat.

He did his best to avoid breathing and discussing football. As such, he arrived in Portland at five in the afternoon with an incredible headache.

At the airport, he rented a car. All that was available to rent was a Chevrolet Aveo, so that’s what he rented. There was barely enough room inside for him and his backpack, but it would have to do. He needed to get to Gold Beach.

The Aveo proved to be a horrible car, at least compared to what he was used to. It was maneuverable, of course, but had no power to speak of and passing tractor trailers made James fear for his life.

He arrived in Gold Beach just after midnight. He was happy to find a motel which had a room to rent. After checking in, he went straight to his room and tried to call Jill.

“We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is not available,” is what the automated operator told him.

“Shit!” James said. The phone lines must be down. Honestly, the lines were down more often than they were up at Jill’s compound along the Rogue river. It was difficult for the linemen to get out there, for one thing, and the other problem was that the linemen just weren’t in that much of a hurry to get out there even if the line was broken in an easily accessible spot.

He was going to have to try and catch a lift with a fisherman in the morning, or rent a boat.

At six o’clock the next morning, James was already down at the docks, hoping to find a boater who was planning to head up the Rogue. He had no luck, so at eight o’clock he was waiting outside the boat rental office when the old man who ran the place showed up.

“Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll be with you,” the old man said as he unlocked the door, slipped inside, and locked the door again. James saw him turn on the lights, set out the day’s newspaper, and then wander in to the back room. He came out again, fifteen minutes later. The old man went to the front door, unlocked and opened it, and said, “Well, come on in,” to James. He walked back behind his counter and waited for James there.

“Are you looking to hire a guide, or do you just want a boat?”

“Just the boat, please,” James said.

“Good thing. My guide up and moved to Newport yesterday. Said something about making more money as a guide on the ocean taking executives out for three hours to catch marlins or whatever it is they want to catch. I asked him where the fun in that was. He said fun didn’t make his truck payments.”

“That’s too bad,” James said, not sure what else to add.

“Well, it’s no big deal. There are ten more guys here in town that need a job to do during the day before their shift at one of the restaurants. Hell, between you and me, I expect you could be a guide, and I’ve never seen you in my life. If you can drive a boat and spin some stories about the river while you putter from spot to spot to try fishing, well, you’ll be a fine guide.”

James laughed and said, “I’m afraid I’m not much for spinning stories.”

The old man looked up at him, “yeah, and you don’t look to me like you’ve fished a day in your life. So you need a boat, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, I rent to fisherman and fishermen, mostly. If you aren’t going to fish,” here he paused and eyed James’s khaki slacks and white oxford shirt, “what are you going to do with my boat?”

“Oh. Well, I just want to explore the river a bit,” James said.

“Well, nothing wrong with that, I suppose.” The old man paused again, then said, “I got a boat for you. $120 gets you the boat, motor, gas, life vests, seat cushions and oars for the day. Fill this out, and then let’s head down to the dock.”

He handed James a clipboard with a form on it. The form said James would agreed to pay for any damage to the boat or motor, and was liable for any damage he caused on the river. He paid for the rental with his mastercard, and the proprietor led James out the back door of the office and down to the docks. They stopped at the first boat, a spartan, twelve foot aluminum boat with a nine horsepower motor and a fiberglass seat for the pilot.

“It’s got an electric starter, and there’s a pull-starter backup. You can float in two feet of water, but I’d keep to the deeper areas as much as possible if I were you. Keep an eye out for kayaks, canoes and jet boats, and stay out of their way. Don’t make a wake when you’re passing other boaters, by the way. We close at five in the afternoon, so plan on being back by then. Other than that, have fun and stay out of trouble.”

“Great, thanks!” James said. He tossed his backpack into the boat, and climbed in. He started the motor, untied and pushed away from the dock. Five minutes later, the dock was out of sight and he was on his way up the river.

As he powered up the river, he was amazed at the sheer beauty of the wilderness around him. He regretted not paying closer attention on the previous trips to Jill’s place. Of course, most of those trips had been by helicopter, so the view was significantly different.

He passed a number of canoeists heading downstream, whom he waved to as he passed. He also waved to a number of fishermen, who looked at him somewhat quizzically as he passed by in his boat with no baseball cap and no fishing gear.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he called to them.

“Sure is!” they’d call back, and resume what they were doing.

After about three hours, he reached Jill’s dock. He recognized her boat, and pulled his boat up to the dock just in front of hers. He tied up as quickly as he could and shut down the motor.

James grabbed his backpack and climbed out of the boat. He hoped Jill would be happy to see him, and also that she would be willing to feed him, since he was quite hungry. After a few seconds, he reached the stairs that led up to her home, and started climbing.

A couple minutes later, he reached the top, sweaty, out of breath. He was also, to his great surprise, surrounded by ninjas.

“Oh, hi guys,” James said. “Is Jill home?”

The ninjas moved in closer, without saying anything. James noticed they had blue eyes. Two ninjas he hadn’t noticed came up behind him and grabbed him.

“You,” one of them said in a low whisper, “are not invited or expected.”

James would have replied, but one of them hit him over the head with a club then, and he fell unconscious. One of the ninjas spoke into a radio, and moments later Jill appeared to see who her ninjas had caught.

She looked at James briefly, then said, “You know what to do,” to the ninja who had radioed her. Four of the ninjas took James to the hangar where Jill’s helicopter was waiting. Thirty minutes later two ninjas and James were in the air, heading east.

James came to in the air over eastern Oregon, just as they were coming in to land for fuel.

“What the hell? Hey! Where am I? Where are you taking me?”

One of the ninjas held up a taser before James, and put his finger over his lips.

“OK, then,” James said.

They landed and fueled the helicopter. In another fifteen minutes they were flying east once more.

“Look, would you please tell me where you’re taking me?” James said. The ninjas ignored him.

After a couple of hours, they landed next to a crossroads just outside of Nampa, Idaho. James, of course, had absolutely no idea where he was. One of the ninjas threw his door open, and pulled James out of the helicopter. He marched James into the middle of the crossroads, and handed him a twenty dollar bill and a slip of paper.

James looked at the slip of paper and saw it was a coupon. For the Sizzler.

“Do they even have the Sizzler around here?” James asked the ninja, who turned away without answering and walked back to the helicopter. “Hey, wait!” James shouted.

The ninja paused, and turned to face James.

“Will you just tell her I’m sorry?”

The ninja waited a moment, then nodded. He walked the rest of the way to the helicopter, got back in, and they flew away, leaving James in the middle of nowhere.

“Well, that didn’t go as planned,” James said to himself. Then, as he walked to the side of the road, he thought of something.

“I hope they’ll return the boat, too.”

Chapter Thirty Two

2009-11-29T13:42:00.001-08:00

The company you keep at death is, of all things, most dependent on chance. - Keri Hulme

Chapter Thirty Two

Ares was a much bigger pain in the ass than Hep had ever expected him to be. He was starting to get a little rough around the edges and fighting back when they tried to move him around, which was good, but also bad because he could never be sure how much fight Ares had in him at a given time.

Hep had learned pretty quickly that hanging around for a long time waiting for someone to die was a drag. Unfortunately, that was the only way they could be sure they’d get there in time, since Ares kept finding new and interesting ways to slow them down.

Hep, Scroat and of course Ares were running late for a death. This one was a construction accident of some kind at a site where a skyscraper was being built. According to his notes, Scott Shermer was going to be hit by falling debris in thirty seconds. The three of them were easily thirty minutes away from the construction site, and that’s without factoring in the extra road time the construction itself was causing.

Hep was hoping that Scott would be nicely impaled on something and waiting for them to collect him. It would be a relief, and a nice change of pace if they didn’t have to chase somebody down.

“Hep, I still don’t want to do this. Could you just stop and let me out?” Ares asked.

“I know you still don’t want to do this. No. You’re still coming with us. We’re trying to get Ares back.”

“That was the old me. The new me doesn’t go in for death and suffering, just peace and love!”

“Yeah. We all liked the old you better,” Hep said.

He couldn’t believe how much the construction of the new building had screwed up traffic. They could see the structure about a mile away, but the impact of closing two lanes on the road was huge. They rolled along at under five miles per hour.

Ares started fighting against the handcuffs again.

“Will you cut that out? It’s just making you tired.”

Between grunts, Ares said, “Well, it’s annoying you as well, so it isn’t a completely wasted effort. Jerk.”

“I thought you hippies were all about passive resistance,” Hep said.

Just then was a loud CLANG as one of the welds holding the grab bar Ares was handcuffed to broke loose.

“Ha ha!” Ares said, and leapt out of the sidecar. He ran through the slow traffic to the sidewalk and fled in the opposite direction. His hands were still cuffed together.

“Shit!” Hep said. He was almost as irritated with himself for the bad weld as he was with Ares getting away.

“Fuck!” Scroat said.

Hep did a hard u-turn and hopped his motorcycle up on to the sidewalk Ares was running on. Scroat followed Hep, and the two of them sped down the sidewalk. Pedestrians leapt out of the way as Hep called “Sorry!” as he roared past them. They quickly caught up to Ares, who jumped back into traffic and started running down the centerline between two lanes of oncoming traffic.

Scroat followed him, flinging his motorcycle from side to side to dodge traffic and get in behind Ares again. Hep kept pace with them on the sidewalk, doing his best to keep an eye on Ares and avoid running over other sidewalk users.

They were approaching an intersection, and Hep sped up in order to get ahead of Ares. He turned hard to the right, bounding off the sidewalk onto the road and coming to a stop in front of Ares. Ares wasn’t quite able to stop in time, and stumbled over Hep’s sidecar.

Scroat hopped off of his bike and was on Ares in a matter of seconds.

Traffic around them was now thoroughly messed up.

“Well, Ares, I’d tried to make sure you were comfortable in the sidecar, but you messed that up. Now I’ve got to handcuff you to the spare,” Hep said.

In order for Ares to be handcuffed to the spare wheel, he had to face backwards and kneel on the seat in the sidecar. This meant that oncoming traffic saw the ugliest biker they would ever see and his passenger - Ares’s ass in tan cargo shorts.

When Ares was secured and thoroughly uncomfortable, Hep decided that they might as well not waste any more time, and rode right back up on to the sidewalk.

The three of them reached the construction site in a matter of minutes, leaving behind them a wake of frustrated motorists and terrified pedestrians.

Hep and Scroat did a quick tour around the construction site, looking for some kind of clue as to where the dead guy might be. There were a couple of workers around, but not many, and they all looked very alive. They also looked somewhat freaked out.

The reason they looked freaked out was not, as you might suspect, because two motorcycles had ridden up the sidewalk into their construction site and one of the riders was handcuffed backwards in a sidecar. They hardly seemed to notice that.

What they were freaked out about appeared to be the not inconsiderable amount of wreckage caused by a collapsed crane. Bent and broken chunks of metal lay scattered about the site. The operators cockpit was absolutely destroyed. Hep had a sneaking suspicion that Scott had been the crane’s operator.

While Ares was carrying on, yelling things like “Hey, some one help me,” to the construction workers, who ignored him, Hep walked over to the guy who looked the most like the foreman.

“Hey, is there a Scott Shermer here?”

“Naw, they sent him home when the crane collapsed,” the foreman said. “He was pretty shaken up. That was a two-hundred foot fall in a steel and glass box, and he walked away without a scratch on him.”

“Son of a bitch!” Hep said. The foreman misunderstood Hep’s frustration as amazement.

“Yeah, pretty incredible, I know. Look, Scott will be back tomorrow, but you’d better get out of here. This isn’t a safe place at the best of times, and you don’t have a hard hat on.”

“Yeah, all right. You have a good day,” Hep said.

“Not likely,” the foreman said, and walked away.

Ares and Scroat were waiting back by the entrance to the site, where Hep had left his bike.

“Well, thanks Ares, now the guy isn’t even here,” Hep said as he climbed on his bike.

“Good. I told you I didn’t want a part of this,” Ares said.

“Yeah, well, you’re still going to have to be a part of it, we’re just stuck going to Scott’s house now.”

“Where does he live?” Scroat asked.

Hep pulled out the phone and pushed a few buttons. “Well, according to this, about an hour away,”

“Fuck. Ares, you shithead,” Scroat said.

“I thought you liked to ride as much as you can,” Ares said.

“Yeah, for fun. Not chasing after some guy who is supposed to be dead already.”

“Let’s just get moving,” Hep said.

Ares was fairly subdued for the trip to Scott’s house. His relative calmness was probably because kneeling for a couple of hours straight gets uncomfortable quickly, and thrashing around doesn’t do much to help that.

They arrived at Scott’s house. Hep was disappointed to see that Scott’s house was a single floor rambler, with no pool. It was going to be tough to fabricate an accident. There were, however, tall hedges on either side of his property, which meant his neighbors would be unable to see what was going on in his yard.

Scott lived alone, which made it fairly easy for Hep and Scroat to sneak around and keep tabs on Scott without being seen.

After watching Scott watch TV for three hours, they saw him go into the bathroom, and could hear water running. He was filling the bathtub.

“Maybe he’ll slip?” Hep said.

“I fucking hope so,” Scroat said.

“Mrfle mrfle mrf” Ares said. Hep had apologized profusely, and gagged Ares before letting him out of the sidecar. Ares calling for help would probably ruin their attempts at stealth.

They waited, and listened for a nasty thump from Scott falling in the tub. No such luck.

“Aw, fuck this,” Scroat said and marched off.

“Where the hell are you going?” Hep stage whispered to Scroat. Scroat did not answer.

A few minutes later, Hep peeked through window and saw Scroat wander into Scott’s kitchen carrying an orange extension cord. Shortly after that, Scroat came back out of the kitchen carrying the extension cord which was now attached to a toaster. He walked towards the bathroom.

Scroat stopped in the hallway and plugged in the extension cord. He pushed down the lever to turn the toaster on, and kicked open the door to the bathroom.

Scott shouted, “Who the fuck are you?”

Scroat didn’t answer, just casually tossed the toaster into the bathtub. It sparked and hissed, and a few minutes later the circuit breaker went off somewhere in the house leaving him in the dark with a toasty, dead Scott.

Hep came into the bathroom a few seconds later.

“You know, we’re really not supposed to be doing the actual killing,” Hep said.

“Well, how long did you want to wait? I want a fucking beer already, and it’s getting late.”

“What the hell is going on?” Scott’s soul asked.

“You’re dead. Let’s go,” Hep said.

“Aw, man. That totally sucks!”

“Yep. Get used to it,” Hep said, and grabbed the soul’s arm. “Let’s go, now.”

Hep and the soul stepped out of this world, while Scroat wandered back outside. He saw Ares was now chained to Scott’s gas meter.

“Mrfle mrf!” Ares said. His tone was quiet irritated.

“Yeah, it was a pain in the ass,” Scroat said. “But, now we can go get some beer. I’ve got a powerful thirst tonight.”

Hep appeared again next to the two of them. “All right, that’s over with. Let’s go get a drink and relax.”

“Fuck yeah!”

“Mrfle!”

“Yeah, give me a second Ares, Hep said. He unlocked Ares, then removed the gag.

“If you ever gag me again, I’ll rip out your spleen and feed it to your mom,” Ares said.

“Hey, that sounds a little more like the Ares I know,” Hep said.

“Whatever, Hep. Let me go back to California,” Ares said.

“Nope. You’ve got far too much hippiness lingering. You can go when I’m sure that you’re going to resume hunting down the family and friends of everyone who wrongs you in order to play volleyball with their heads.”

“I told you, that’s the old me!”

“Yep. Good old Ares. Come on, new sucky Ares, let’s get a beer.”

“I don’t like beer,” Ares said, petulant.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Scroat said. “Everyone likes beer.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Hep, we gotta get him cured quick. Or else mercy-kill him.”

Chapter Thirty One

2009-11-27T21:10:00.001-08:00

It is astonishing how important a man becomes when he dies. - Yiddish saying

Chapter Thirty One

There was an unearthly chill in the recreation room of the Church of Peace of Christ. Somewhere, too low to be audible, but too present to be ignored was a pulsing, thrumming, vibration or energy of some sort none of the priests present had ever felt before. On the floor, carefully laid in chalk powder, were occult symbols and words.

The priest shut his book and said, “It is done.”

One of the other holy men present said, meekly, “Are you sure you did it right?”

“Well, Reverend Bart, this particular material was a little outside my course of study at seminary school. But then, I have been carefully studying it for the last several weeks in preparation. So, yes, I’m sure I did it right.”

Another one of those present said, “How are we going to know when he’s here?”

The chill in the room grew ever colder. The holy men and women present could see their breaths.

As could their guest. Those sweet breaths. So fleeting. So soon to be his to torment, eternally.

“I am here,” a deep and malicious voice said.

“Satan?”

“No, great Satan would not waste his time on the likes of you pitiful fools.”

“Well, who are you then? And where are you?”

“You are looking too high, mortal,” the voice said. The priests looked at each other in confusion. The voice then told them its name, unspeakable in the mortal world. “You, puny humans, may call me Nubbins.”

The demon stepped out of the shadows then, and into the candlelight. He was approximately knee-high, grey, and irritable looking.

“Who are you? We summoned Satan. I’ve never even heard of a Nubbins the demon, little one,” one of the priests foolishly said aloud.

“Little one?” Nubbins said, sounding vaguely amused. He shouted something harsh and painful sounding in the language of Hell, and made a complicated twisting gesture with his hands.

The priest who had questioned Nubbins made a small, pained gasp, clutched at his gut, and fell to the floor, rocking back and forth in utter agony.

“Would anyone else care to comment on my size or qualifications?” Nubbins asked the other priests present.

They all rapidly shook their heads and looked at the floor.

“So, fools, what do you want?”

Nubbins pulled a box of Kools from his cloak and lit one as he waited for an answer.

“Well? I have other business to attend to, and I think you know you don’t want to piss me off.”

“We want you, that is, Satan, well, that is, you, to make people start dying again?”

Nubbins took a deep drag of his Kool, and savored the minty tingle as he exhaled.

“What, you think we did this?”

The priests were gobsmacked.

“Well, uh, yes.”

“Fuck no. Our business model depends on an influx of new souls. Production is at an all time low. If we could get people to start dying again, we’d have done it already.”

“Well, is there someone else you can perhaps influence?”

Nubbins thought for a moment. He took another drag from his smoke, and slowly exhaled.

“Well, maybe one of us could go talk to Death. She’s usually pretty hard to catch, to be honest. Busy schedule, you know. Maybe there’s an arrangement we could work out.”

Nubbins paused and took another drag. “Of course, it’ll cost you.”

“What do you want from us?”

“Oh, you know already. Your souls. Hell, you offered them up just by calling me. You know Jehovah’s not going to be very pleased with you guys at all, don’t you? Ah, but that’s not my concern. Yes, we’ll go visit Death and try to negotiate something in exchange for your souls. See ya!”

And with that, Nubbins vanished before any of the priests could object.

“That sneaky little bastard!” one of the priests said.

“Well, what did you idiots expect? He’s from Hell.”

“I can’t believe they sent a secretary.”

The other priests looked at the one who was still on the floor, now foaming from the mouth.

“Yeah, I’m sure Satan would have been much more cordial.”

Outside the Church of Peace of Christ, a group of thirty men, of all ages, wearing soothing dark suits and ties and holding lead pipe, rubber hoses and other improvised weapons, waited.

After they had cleaned up the chalk mess, as well as the mess the priest afflicted by Nubbins made, the remaining holy men and women left the church to find themselves surrounded by a group of angry morticians.

The two female priests screamed, while the others circled around them in a protective huddle.

“What do you want?”

A man in a grey suit that was getting a bit shiny said, “We want our livelihoods back, you bastards!”

“What are you talking about?”

“We don’t know how you did it, but somehow you guys stopped death. Now we’re all out of business. Some of us are living on the streets! And we’re gonna take it out of your asses.”

“But we don’t want people to live forever either. Our business has dried up too!”

A different man, this one wearing a black double-breasted suit with gold-toe socks and no shoes spoke up.

“Whatever. You guys wanted to bring the Kingdom of God to Earth more than you wanted money. We all know it.”

“You think this is the Kingdom of God?”

“Well, it’s not like you haven’t been wrong about him before. Now, we’re decent enough guys, and we don’t like to hurt women, so I’d suggest you let them run like hell, because in thirty seconds you guys are going down!”

The two women tapped one of the priests on the shoulder and said, “Um, yes, excuse me, just need to sneak through here, thanks.”

Then they ran down the street and didn’t look back.

“Look, we’re trying to make people start dying again too!”

“Bullshit.”

“We are, man! We just called up a demon for fuck’s sake,” here several of the priests gasped despite themselves, “to try and get Hell to start killing people.”

Several of the morticians looked at each other, and then they busted out laughing.

“Yeah, right. I knew you guys were used to lying, but that was... that was.. wow. I can’t believe you think we’d believe that.”

“Thirty,” one of the morticians near the rear of the group called.

“And now we’re going to have to kick your asses,” the mortician with no shoes said.

Death was in bed under the covers reading a book of extremely gloomy poetry with a flashlight when she heard a lighter click open, and shortly after, could smell a menthol cigarette.

“Who’s there now?”

“Me,” said a cold, deep voice.

Death poked her head out from under her blanket and turned on the light next to her bed.

“Who’s me?”

“Nubbins the demon. At your service.”

“OK. Do I know you?”

“Nope, we’ve never needed to talk before.”

“OK. So why are you here? I didn’t invite you.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got this problem. You see, people aren’t dying. And this is bad for Hell, because we kind of depend on people dying and coming to Hell. Otherwise, we really don’t have any reason for existing and, frankly, torturing one another wore thin several millenia ago. So, you need to get your ass out of bed and start killing these shitheads again so I have something to do and everyone is happy. More or less.”

“I don’t want to. I’m too depressed.”

Nubbins took a drag and looked at her. “You’re too depressed? You’re Death for fuck’s sake. You ought to be the happiest creature in all of creation.”

“Whatever. All I do is a bunch of busywork. I’ll never be done. I’ll never have accomplished anything. I’m a glorified receptionist.”

“Are you complaining to me about having a shitty job? You want to trade? Because I would love to do your job. I get to deal with all the shitheads too stupid to keep themselves out of Hell, plus office politics, plus I live in Hell! So what are you complaining about? Fuck, you are Death. Death is your purpose. Death is your reason for being. Get out there and kill some fuckers!”

“Whatever. Pretty shitty reason to exist.”

“Aw, fuck this. I tried talking to you, now I get those priests souls if you ever get around to killing them.”

“Hephaistos is supposed to be filling in for me.”

“Oh yeah? Huh. Well, he’s doing a pretty shitty job. We haven’t had any new souls in Hell since you’ve stopped killing people, and we usually get a whole lot of them.”

“Bummer.”

“All right, I’m out of here. Have fun moping.”

“Hey, wait!” Death said before Nubbins could disappear.

“What?”

“Could you grab me a pint of ice cream from the freezer?”

“What? Fuck you,” Nubbins said, and vanished.

“No need to be a prick about it,” Death said.

She turned off the light next to her bed again, and pulled the covers back over her head. As she was trying to find her place once more in the poem she’d been reading, she thought a little bit about what Nubbins had said.

Maybe being Death was a great purpose. Maybe having an endless stream of work was, in fact, a good thing. Perhaps what she really needed to do was just get out there and keep doing the best job she could.

Or, maybe she was crazy and should stay in bed eating ice cream. She thought about the many, many meals she’d missed because of her work, not to mention the lack of a social life or a home that felt like someone actually lived there once in a while. She thought about the stupid, idiot suicides that made all of her careful planning and consideration useless.

Yeah, staying in bed with ice cream seemed pretty good. Hep probably had it all under control well enough anyhow.

Chapter Thirty

2009-11-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

The nearer she came to death, the more, by some perversity of nature, did she enjoy living. – Ellen Glasgow

Chapter Thirty

In any given room of James’s house in L.A., there could be found one or more people snorting cocaine off various parts of the body of yet another person. It was the third day of the party, and James was having a hard time remembering which, if any, of these people he’d invited to his house.

A blond woman wearing a halter top sat down on the couch next to him.

“Hey, you’re the guy that invented that cancer pill right?”

“Well, I invented the male birth control pill, but yeah, it cures cancer.”

“Wow. You must be really smart. Is this your house?”

“Yep.”

“It’s nice. What are you thinking letting all these people come over and tear it up?”

“I like the share what I have?”

“Oooh, you’re nice too! Well, I’ve got something nice for you!”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah!” She wiggled a little paper packet out of the hip pocket of her jeans and opened it up. There was a crystalline white powder inside. She leaned back on the couch and poured the powder in her cleavage. “Come and get some!”

It took less than half a second for James to decide that, yes, this was in fact a very good idea. He buried his face in the nameless blonde’s chest and snorted a nosefull of cocaine.

POW. The fireworks went off in his head within seconds. It had definitely been a good choice. The blond giggled.

“You like?”

“Oh yeah, I like a lot,” James said.

“Good. You want to get into some more trouble?”

And so it was that James ended up driving the Corvette he’d gotten to replace the Lotus along the coast of California shortly before dawn at one hundred miles per hour, his brain thrumming from the coke, and his dick thrumming from the unbelievable blowjob the blond girl was giving him. The radio blared the Ramones as they drove. When he came, the blond sat up again and said, “Yum.”

Can life possibly get better than this? James wondered.

They arrived back at James’s house about thirty minutes later. No one seemed to have noticed they’d been gone for two hours. The cocaine had worn off, and James was started to feel a little tired.

“OK, stud, take me to your bedroom,” the blond said.

“Say, what’s your name?” James said.

“Tiffani with an i. Why?”

“I’m kind of tired, Tiffani,” James said. “I’m not sure I can handle much more of you without some rest.”

“Well, lucky for you I’ve got some more marching powder right here.” She patted her hip pocket. “It’s in there pretty deep, though. You might have to help me work it out.”

James marveled again at his incredible luck.

Tiffani took his hand. “Lead the way, tiger.”

Three hours later, James woke up from a blissful sleep with some very pleasant memories of the immediate past, which was nice, and two sleeping, naked women with him in his bed, which was better. Although his lust was not far behind, for the moment he simply felt warm, comfortable and very happy in between a blond and another blond.

Next to him, Tiffani with an i stirred and looked at him.

“Hey, you’re supposed to be sleeping,” she said, quietly.

“I’m suddenly feeling very refreshed and invigorated.”

“I bet you are, you devil,” Tiffani said.

She then asked him a question which caught him completely off-guard.

“So is this where you thought you’d end up after accidentally inventing a cure for cancer? Throwing parties and having sex with people whose names you don’t know?”

“What?” James asked. He tried to wrap his head around the question, but the shift from yummy skin bliss to life goals was a little too abrupt.

“Well, not that there’s anything wrong with big parties and lots of sex. I’m all for both of those. I’m just surprised that a guy who came up with a cure for cancer would be interested in such things. I’d expect something a little more cerebral.”

“Accidentally found a cure for cancer. I was looking for male birth control, for what it’s worth.”

“Did you ever notice the guys with condoms in their wallets usually aren’t getting any? I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with searching for male birth control but, well, inventing a new medicine is inventing a new medicine. Medicines usually don’t get discovered by guys hosting cocaine orgies.”

“Did this turn into an orgy?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. See, I thought it was just a big party gone entirely right for a change.”

“You’re dodging my question. Did you think you’d end up here?”

Back when James had started working on finding a male birth control pill, he’d thought he would make some money from it, sure. But mainly, he thought he’d be saving the world a lot of pain and trouble. After all, if the man and the woman were both using birth control methods, then the probability of an unexpected kid was pretty much zero. He figured it would give men some more responsible control of their own reproductive status - no more stories of holes poked in condoms or “oops, I forgot to take the pill.” And, hell, if the condom broke, a kid would be the least of the couples worries.

So he’d certainly expected to make a bit of cash. He didn’t however, expect to end up having parties where he didn’t know the names of half the guests. He didn’t expect to crash his car into some guy’s dining room. And he really didn’t ever expect, you know, two women at the same time.

And that is all overlooking the fact that every single day he didn’t end dead absolutely amazed him.

“No, I guess this isn’t really where I thought I’d be,” James said. “How about you?”

“Oh. Yeah. I figured I’d end up sleeping with rich guys,” Tiffani said. “My parents pretty much guaranteed that when they named me Tiffani. Especially with an i at the end.”

James laughed.

“So where did you think you would end up, then?”

“I dunno. I thought I’d make a little money, invest most of it in reasonable funds and bonds, maybe get a Cadillac, fall in love with my soulmate and live happily ever after.”

“Wow. You sure fucked that one up,” Tiffani said.

“Yeah, I guess,” James said. He fell silent then. He really had fucked things up. Jill was awesome, and he’d blown her off for flashing lights and sluts. She’d been nice to him when practically no one was nice to him. Now she was somewhere up on the Oregon coast in her secret compound guarded by ninjas, and he was in L.A. with a bunch of people he couldn’t pick out of a line up.

And he hadn’t worked in months. Sure, he’d show up at the office once or twice a week, and tell everyone they were doing a great job, but he didn’t even really know what the hell they were working on, or what the next big goal was.

James suddenly felt very, very low. Tiffani saw his face fall.

“Oh. Oh, hey, I didn’t mean to bum you out. I was just asking was all,” she said.

“Nah, it’s OK,” James said.

“Well, I know we haven’t known each other very long, but then, we have had a lot of crazy monkey sex over the last few hours, so why not share a little intimacy before what’s her name with the perfect 36 Cs over there wakes up?”

James smiled slightly, “OK.”

Tiffany lifted her self up off the bed a little bit and perched herself on her elbows. The covers fell back revealing perfect skin leading down to the small of her back. She looked deeply into James’s eyes, and asked him a question.

“So what are you going to do now that you know you’re not where you want to be, but that you have the means to match your will?”

Chapter Twenty Nine

2009-11-27T19:13:00.000-08:00

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. – Leonardo Da Vinci

Chapter Twenty Nine

Hep checked his schedule and saw that one Lawrence Hubbins was due to drown in his pool in an hour and a half. It was a forty five minute ride to Lawrence Hubbins’s home.

We’d better get moving if we’re going to get there in time, Hep thought. He set down the new pair of tongs he’d been putting some finishing touches on and closed up his workshop.

Barely in the house, he could hear Ares freaking out in the spare bedroom. The hippie bug seemed to have really bitten Ares hard. Hep had hoped he would settle down a bit by the time they got home, but he’d been struggling constantly and explaining, in a mildly assertive way, how this experience made him feel.

In a way, Hep was glad Ares was overwhelmed by hippie-madness. It would have been harder to avoid feeling sympathy for him if he were his usual, over the top self.

Hep had been forced to handcuff Ares to the bed. Unlike himself, Ares could, and did, travel by thought with no ill effects. And Ares did not want to partake in the business of death.

“Hey! Come on Hep, let me out of here. Imprisonment isn’t the answer!”

Hep went in to the spare bedroom, where Ares was struggling, sort of, against the handcuffs Hep had made.

“Well, Ares, I’m trying to rehabilitate you, but I can’t have you running back to the love-in before I’m done with you.”

“Man, I’ve got a bunch of letters to write to my congressman. And there’s gonna be a protest tomorrow! I can’t miss that! Everyone’s expecting me,” Ares said. He rattled his cuffs against the bed a little bit.

“Sorry. You’re going to miss the protest. But, hey, we’ve got some fun deaths scheduled for the next couple of days!”

“I don’t want anything to do with death anymore, man. I told you that.”

“Will you shut the fuck up for a change? I thought Ares the god of war was a prick, but Ares the smelly hippie is worse. ‘Whine Whine Whine. I don’t want to kill anyone.’ Shut up,” Scroat said. He had been hanging out in his room listening to Ares complain for most of the day.

“Why are you going along with this kidnapping, anyway, Scroat? Get Hep to let me out of these cuffs.”

“Oh, hell no. Hep has a plan to fix you, and I am going to help him. Fucking hippie.”

Hep dug the key to the handcuffs out of his pocket and unlocked one of them. He kept a firm grasp on the chain between the cuffs. As expected, Ares tried to vanish. It didn’t work.

“Man, you see?” Hep said, “I’d let you out of these cuffs, but you keep trying to run off. Look, you’ve just got to come along to a few deaths, and if after that you still want nothing to do with death, then we’ll send you back home with a cookie and a gold star for being a good sport. But for now, you’re going to hang out here with us, OK?”

“Yeah, whatever. Fascist.”

“I hate to say this, but, this is for your own good,” Hep said. “Come on.”

Hep led Ares down the hall, past Scroat’s room. “Come on,” he said to Scroat. Scroat grumbled a bit and followed along.

The three of them went outside. Hep’s bike was parked close to the back door.

“Get in the side car, please,” Hep said to Ares.

“I don’t want to. I don’t want anything to do with this.”

Hep sighed then said, weary, “Scroat, will you help me get him in the sidecar?”

“Sure thing,” Scroat said. He pulled a crescent wrench out of one of his saddlebags and waved it in Ares face. “You get in the fucking sidecar, or I’m going to introduce Mr. Wrench to your noggin, hippie!”

“OK! Jeez,” Ares said. “Lose the violence, man.”

He got into the sidecar, and Hep locked him up again.

“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, Scroat.”

“Well, it fucking worked, didn’t it? He’s in the sidecar!”

Hep rolled his eyes. “Whatever, let’s get going. Lawrence Hubbins is due to die in an hour and twenty minutes.”

“I don’t want anything to do with this,” Ares said. He struggled, a bit, against the handcuffs. It was a futile effort. Neither the handcuffs, nor the grab-rail Hep had made were going to let go.

Hep and Scroat started their bikes, and roared out of the driveway and towards Lawrence Hubbins’s home.

Ares began struggling in earnest a few minutes into the ride, throwing his weight from side to side. It was enough to make Hep fear losing control of the bike, and so he had to ride much slower than he would have otherwise.

Hep had planned on travelling at his usual rate, very fast, in his calculations for travel time. As it was, they were going to be late.

“Would you sit still?” Hep asked Ares, exasperated.

“Nope,” Ares said, and continued to throw himself around, and bounce in the sidecar. Hep’s motorcycle wandered back and forth in his lane.

“You’re being a pain in the ass,” Hep said.

“I’d say that you are being a pain in my ass, Hep.”

Lawrence Hubbins had called in sick that morning in order to have a mental health day. After lunch, he made himself a very strong rum and coke, and took the cocktail out to his pool. He tossed his floating lounge chair into the pool, then put his drink, book and cell phone in a floating beverage caddy. He was expecting a call from a girl he’d recently met, and he thought he might invite her over for a swim if she called soon enough.

The water was the perfect temperature when he jumped in. He swam around a little bit before climbing into the lounge chair and settling in with his drink.

Half an hour later, between the drink and the sun, Lawrence had a pretty good buzz going as he floated in the pool. His book rested on his leg as he nodded off to sleep.

Hep checked his watch.

“We’re going to be ten minutes late, at least,” he said.

“You could always just call the whole thing off,” Ares said.

“I’m not calling it off. I’d suggest you get used to the idea.”

“Nope,” Ares said.

Five miles down the road, Hep and Scroat turned off the highway, and started navigating the surface roads to Lawrence’s home.

Lawrence was dreaming about getting fired from his job. His phone rang, waking him with a start. He turned and rolled a bit to grab the phone, and wound up splashing in to the pool. He swam up to the surface, but was obstructed by the lounge chair floating over him. Groggy and half drunk, he fought against the lounge chair instead of swimming away from it. He could hear the phone ringing. As he fought the floating lounge, panicking, he accidentally breathed in a big lungful of water.

If Hep had arrived in time, this is when Lawrence would have died.

Instead, Lawrence thrashed around in the water a bit more before finally sneaking past the troublesome floating chair and breaking through the surface. He coughed up a copious amount of water while hanging on to the edge of the pool.

Lawrence decided it would be an excellent time to get out of the pool then.

Hep, Scroat and Ares came to an abrupt halt in Lawrence’s driveway. Hep unlocked Ares from the sidecar and said “Come on.”

“Nope.”

“Come on,” Hep said, and yanked on Ares’s right arm. Ares stumbled out of the sidecar.

“You’re a fascist!”

“OK,” Hep said. He pulled Ares along behind him on the way to Lawrence’s pool. Scroat walked on Hep’s other side.

The three of them reached the back yard and peered over the fence. There was a drinking glass, and a book floating in the pool along with a lounge chair and a drink caddy. There was not, however, a body to be seen.

“Where is he?” Hep said.

“Probably walking around, ya think?” Scroat said.

“Would you guys let me go please? I don’t think this is ethical and I don’t want anything to do with it,” Ares said, very loudly.

“Shut up,” Scroat said to Ares.

“Maybe he’s inside,” Hep said. “Let’s go check.”

The three of them walked back to the front of the house. Hep tried the front door, and found it was unlocked.

“Well, that was easy,” he muttered. They went inside.

“I’m really not comfortable with this you guys,” Ares said, quite loudly.

“Well, get comfortable with it. We’re maintaining the natural order. You hippies like the natural order, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but… wait, you’re turning this all around on me. We’re breaking in to some guy’s house to kill him!”

“We’re not going to kill him, we’re just here to collect his soul.”

“Yeah, after we make sure he’s dead,” Ares said.

Lawrence stood at the foot of the stairs behind them, staring with his mouth open at a scrawny, dirty biker, a bigger, really ugly guy with bad legs, and a hippie with a professional wrestler’s physique. Scroat was the first to notice Lawrence.

“Oh, hey buddy. Nice fuckin’ day to die, isn’t it?”

Lawrence uttered a little scream, and ran wildly up the stairs. Hep, Scroat and Ares watched him go. He had nearly reached the top step when he lost his footing. In his efforts to regain his balance, Lawrence fell over backwards and tumbled down the stairs. There were several horrible cracks and crunching noises as he fell. He reached the bottom step, and lay sprawled out on the floor. His neck was bent at an unusual angle.

“See? We didn’t kill him. He did it himself!” Hep said to Ares.

“Yeah, well, he wouldn’t have freaked out like that if we weren’t here.”

“He was supposed to drown, for fuck’s sake!” Scroat said. “By rights, he should have been dead ten minutes ago.”

Hep looked down at Lawrence, then up at the soul standing next to his body.

“So, you ready to go?” Hep asked him.

“I guess so,” Lawrence said. “I’ve had the craziest day.”

“Tell me about it,” Hep said.

Chapter Twenty Eight

2009-11-27T19:08:00.000-08:00

There is a remedy for everything but death, which will be sure to lay us out flat sometime or other. - Cervantes

Chapter Twenty Eight

“I’m telling you, it’s all the fault of those fucking priests,” the man in the soothing grey suit said. His hair was tidy, and his suit was sober and starting to get a little frayed around the cuffs. His eyes, however, were full of fire. “They got their fucking wish, and now we’re all out of business.”

“I sincerely doubt the priests actually wanted everyone to stop dying. They’re businessmen too, you know,” said a blond man with wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a charcoal suit with pinstripes, and a silver tie.

“Yeah, businessmen, maybe, but crazy ones. The money is all well and good, but you know they’d all give it up to meet Santa Claus. Meanwhile, those of us who are more pragmatic about these things are starving.”

“You’re hardly starving, Vincent.”

“Yeah, because I’m out on the streets hustling. What kind of a life is this? I used to do five or six funerals a week, and I didn’t even have to try to find new clients. People would just show up!”

“Well, what do you suggest we do about it?” the blond man asked. “It’s not like we can just insist that people start dying again. I’m pretty sure there are no government bail-outs for morticians when people just stop dying.”

“I don’t know, man, but I say we should go beat up some priests on general principle.”

Chapter Twenty Seven

2009-11-22T18:54:00.000-08:00

You need a religion if you are terrified of death. - Gore Vidal

Chapter Twenty Seven

Hep and Scroat sat on pillows in Ares’s living room, across from Ares. Ares had been overjoyed to give them a bunch of flyers and pamphlets and zines when they’d arrived with titles like “Save the Sea Cows” and “Screw the Economy” and “Think Global, Act Local.”

“This war we’re in? Man, this war is nothing but a scam. We’re not fighting for anything except more money for the fascists that run this country.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s just another way to keep us busy so we don’t know what they’re up to. While we’re all freaking out about how to end this war, they’re out there making power grabs so we all end up living in a totalitarian permanent war machine.”

“That’s just fucked up,” Scroat said.

“I know, man. It’s all bullshit, man. How can someone be so full of hate? The Earth needs love. The people need love. But all they’ve got is greed and atavism and rage.”

“It’s a real shame,” Hep said.

Hep’s legs were starting to ache badly. These cushions were fine for flexible hippie kids, but not so much for crippled deities.

“And then there’s all this Frankenfood they’re trying to feed us. What’s that shit about?”

Scroat perked up a bit. “Uh, what is that shit about? I’ve never heard of Frankenfood. Franken-berry, maybe.”

Ares rolled his eyes and sat back a bit. “Man, you’re not going to believe this. These big agricultural companies are genetically engineering food. It looks like a tomato. It tastes like a tomato, sorta. But it ain’t a tomato. There’s no nutrition in there, man. It’s just a plastic food product that looks pretty on a shelf and survives being transported from Mallorca or wherever the hell they’re growing it.”

“Really,” Hep said.

“It’s the truth man. They’re taking the food from the mouths of children in the name of corporate greed.”

“That’s just fucked up!” Scroat said.

Ares got up from his bean bag chair. “I got some more zines for you guys. You’re going to love this shit. It totally opened my eyes. Hang out a second.”

He left the room. Scroat looked over at Hep. His expression indicated his belief that Ares had gone completely off his rocker.

“Man, something is not right with him, Hep,” Scroat said.

“I know,” Hep said. “Much more of this and a clock is going to strike midnight somehwere and he’s going to turn into some kind of murder-pumpkin.”

“I know, what you... wait, a murder-pumpkin?”

“Yeah. Like in that fairy tale.”

“What the fuck does a murder pumpkin do, exactly?”

“Murders people.”

Scroat was very amused, suddenly. “And what do these murder pumpkins look like, anyway?”

“Like a homicidal jack-o-lantern, I expect. Look, he’s going to wig out at some point. We all have a specific purpose, and bad shit happens when we stray from that.”

Ares came back in to the living room then with an armful of zines. “OK, guys, get a brain-full of this...”

“Uh, Ares, I gotta admit, we didn’t come here to read your new hippie literature,” Hep said.

Ares looked crestfallen. He sat down, still holding the zines. “Well, I know you just came to visit, but I thought you’d be interested...”

“No, I mean we visited for a reason,” Hep said.

“Uh huh?”

“Look, I went and visited Death the other day. It turns out she’s been too depressed to get out of bed.”

“Well, that’s terrible. Here,” Ares started to get up. “We can make her a care package and go visit her.”

“Well, I don’t think she wants visitors right now,” Hep said. “I’m pretty sure she really wants to just be left alone with her chinese food and collection of sad songs.”

“Oh. Well, if you think it would help, I could send her a bag full of some sticky green buds. It’s good stuff. Red hairs galore!”

Scroat perked up once more. “I’ll take some of that!”

“Not now,” Hep said. “Look, I’m kind of standing in for her until she’s feeling better, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to come along and help me out.”

Ares was shocked. “What? You mean go kill people? Oh hell no.”

“Look, we’re not murdering them, just collecting people whose time has come.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“Come on, all we have to do is be there. We’re not even going to touch any of them.”

“No way, dude.”

Hep sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He looked at Scroat. “Grab him.”

Scroat hustled over to Ares before Ares could even stand and put him in a full nelson hold. Ares should have been able to shake Scroat off like he wasn’t even there, but didn’t.

“Hey, let go of me, man. Violence doesn’t solve anything.”

“Bring him outside and put him in the sidecar,” Hep said, and struggled to his feet. He grabbed one of the zines, “Practical Tips for Living Off The Grid,” and followed Scroat outside. He took a pair of handcuffs out of his jacket pocket, and when Ares was in the sidecar, Hep handcuffed him to the grab rail.

Hep had made the handcuffs himself. They were, to the best of his knowledge, impossible to escape. For anyone, including gods.

“How come it always seems like I’m tying you up?” Hep asked Ares.

“Come on you guys, I don’t want anything to do with this,” Ares said.

“Scroat, would you lock up his house? Don’t want anyone messing with his stuff while we’re gone.”

“Hey! Come on! I’ve got a game of ultimate frisbee tomorrow!”

Hep got on to his motorcycle, and looked over at Ares. “This is for your own good, pal.”

Scroat came back and got on his own motorcycle.

“I left a note taped to the door saying Ares was going to be out of town dealing with a family emergency for a while,” Scroat said.

“Good thinking. Let’s go.”

With that, the three of them rode off towards Hep and Scroat’s house in Arizona.

“You guys really suck!” Ares said.

Chapter Twenty Six

2009-11-22T16:00:00.001-08:00

If there wasn’t death I think you couldn’t go on. - Stevie Smith

Chapter Twenty Six

A group of twenty men, and six women, sat in a circle of metal folding chairs in the recreation room at the Church of Peace of Christ. Only half the flourescent lights were on. The pastor couldn’t afford the electricity to keep the lights on. In the far corner of the room, ignored and dusty, was a foosball table, and a freestanding basketball hoop. Next to the wall was a table with a coffee maker and a plate with cookies. The table was a few steps away from the circle of chairs.

Some of the people present wore their ceremonial garb, while others were dressed in conservative street clothing. There were monks, priests, pastors, preachers, rabbis, nuns, clerics, and others.

The one thing every member of this group had in common was that no one had been in their churches since the news that death had ceased.

Many religious leaders had indeed formed thuggish street gangs, going out and “converting” individuals foolish enough to walk through those parts of town at night.

This group, however, considered themselves above such religious hooliganism. They were looking at the big picture. They wanted the big prize, not a momentary rush and small amount of cash.

One of the men spoke, “I think we’ve exhausted our peaceful options.”

A woman, with silver hair and a rough voice, asked, “What do you have in mind?”

“I think we need to restore the order of death.”

Another man spoke then, “And how, exactly, do you propose we do so? You may have noticed that the militaries have been doing a terrible job of killing one another recently. Why would we have any more success than them? They’re trained to kill people and they can’t pull it off.”

“I think we will succeed because we have God on our side.”

“I think if God was on our side, people would still be coming to church and we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Well, perhaps we could get a different god on our side.”

“You don’t mean?”

“Yes. I expect Satan would be most pleased if he had a fresh flow of souls coming in to Hell again.”

“That’s heresy! It’s traitorous! It’s...”

“It’s business.”

One of the women stood. “I want nothing to do with this.”

She walked out of the room. Two more members of the group, a monk in his robes and a woman in her priestly garb, also stood and left. The rest of the group watched them go in silence. The sound of the door shutting behind them seemed quite loud.

Father Adamson cleared his throat then.

“Can I assume the rest of you believe this is the best course of action, then?”

There were murmurs of assent.

“Excellent.”

Father Adamson stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I believe I have some research to do. Summoning Satan is not one of the topics I studied in seminary. Until next week?”

The rest of the group stood, and made small talk on their way out of the recreation room. Father Adamson and Pastor Brown, the head pastor of The Church of Peace of Christ, who stayed behind to lock up, were alone then.

“Well, that was easy,” Pastor Brown said.

“Quite,” Father Adamson said. “Have a good day, Pastor.”

Father Adamson left the church then and walked out to his car, an old, black Ford Crown Victoria. He was friends with a university librarian. He hoped she might be able to help him find the information they needed. Satan could be a powerful ally, but also a tricky business partner. There was much to learn.

As he drove away, he waved to Pastor Brown, who had just locked up the main doors of the church and was walking to his own car.

Father Adamson drove directly from the Church of Peace of Christ to his home. The most direct path was along surface streets through downtown. As he drove, he saw a group of men in black suits harassing a pair of young women.

“Morticians” he muttered, disgusted. “Good for nothing bums.”

Chapter Twenty Five

2009-11-21T19:44:00.001-08:00

God’s fingers touch’d him, and he slept. - Tennyson

Chapter Twenty Five

Hep and Scroat arrived in Gallup, New Mexico with thirty minutes to spare. Since they had some time, they stopped at a gas station to grab a snack, then set out to find the exact location of their appointment.

They were across the street from a motel, with no real spot to hide and watch. So, they shut down their bikes and waited, watching along the railroad tracks for their mark.

“So do you know what the hell you’re doing?” Scroat asked Hep.

“Nope, but I figure I can play it by ear. The last couple attempts have been learning experiences,” Hep said.

“I sure hope this ends up as more than a fucking learning experience,” Scroat said.

“What are you worried about? You’re just along for the ride.”

“Yeah, well, watching you fail at something isn’t especially fun. You get all pouty.”

“I do not.”

Scroat was about to argue some more, but Hep whispered, “There he is!”

They could see the silhouette of a man stumbling along the railroad tracks. He was either drunk, or had some serious inner-ear issues. A train’s horn sounded. It wasn’t terribly far away, but they couldn’t see it yet.

The man had stopped and appeared to be pissing on the railroad tracks.

“Brilliant,” Hep muttered.

Apparently finished, the man hitched up his pants and continued stumbling along the tracks. He swayed from side to side, and the fact that he hadn’t tripped yet amazed Hep. The man had some kind of good reflexes, even drunk.

The train’s horn blew again, louder this time. They could hear the engine thrumming, and soon the sounds of creaking and crashing freight cars drifted to them.

“Any time now,” Hep said.

The silhouette had produced something from his jacket. A flask. He took a long drink from it, and put it back in his jacket, then walked on. The sounds of the train were now very clear, and in a matter of seconds, Hep was able to see the train’s headlight.

The train came closer, and it’s headlight illuminated the man walking along the tracks. He was wearing a jean jacket and grey work pants, with a green trucker’s cap. He was only about twenty feet away from Hep and Scroat at this point. The train’s headlight blinded him, and he held up a hand to protect his eyes.

In doing so, he lost his footing, tripped and fell right on to the tracks.

“There he goes,” Hep muttered to Scroat. The train passed them then, and they weren’t able to see the moment of impact and the man’s demise, but the two of them dismounted and walked over to where his remains should be.

Eventually the last of the train’s cars rolled by, and they were able to look at the spot where the man would have been hit. There was nothing there, not so much as a blood puddle.

“What the fuck?” Scroat asked, and looked up and down the tracks to see if the body had been thrown. Hep spotted him first.

“There he goes,” Hep said.

“What do you mean, there he goes?” Scroat said.

Hep pointed at the road, where a man in a jean jacket, grey pants and a green hat was walking and said, enunciating each word, “I mean, there he goes.”

“I thought he was supposed to get hit by the train,” Scroat said.

“He was! That’s what’s on the checklist here. It says Darryl Mueller, seven forty three, hit by a train.”

“Well what in the fuck is he doing walking up the street then?”

“Probably looking for a liquor store. Let’s follow him.”

The terrain between the railroad tracks and the road was steep and rough, and Hep had a hard time keeping his balance. Darryl was now nearly a block ahead of them, so they hustled to keep up.

Darryl stopped, and it looked like he was trying to work a cramp out of his leg. He had not yet noticed the strange pair that was tailing him. Hep and Scroat had nearly caught up with him when he started walking again.

The roar of tires on pavement let Hep know a car was approaching behind them. Soon enough, the car rocketed past them, swerved and almost hit Darryl. If he hadn’t stumbled to the right, he would have been creamed by a gray nineteen ninety one Buick Century.

“He’s got the devil’s luck,” Scroat said.

Hep grunted his agreement.

Darryl took a sudden left into the road, then. He swayed back and forth, somehow avoiding being struck by two passing tractor-trailers, a Corvette and the New Mexico chapter of the Devil’s Butlers MC. He wandered into a convenience store.

On his way out, Hep and Scroat were waiting for him on either side of the door. Hep had planned to just keep following him, but Scroat had another idea.

When Darryl had exited the store, Scroat drew a SIG P226 from a holster on his back and shot Darryl in the back of the head. Darryl did not manage to step out of the way this time.

“Where did you get that?,” Hep asked. He was stunned.

“I thought we might need it,” Scroat said. “Dirty deeds, and all.”

Darryl’s soul stood next to his body, and looked at Hep and Scroat.

“But I thought nobody could die anymore,” he said.

“Times are changing. Come on, pal,” Hep said. He grabbed Darryl’s arm and stepped out of this world.

When he reappeared, Scroat was already back by the motorcycles. Hep walked back to the bikes, and smiled at Scroat.

“So it went OK then?” Scroat said.

“Yep, worked out just fine. Let’s go find some beer,” Hep said.

They fired up their bikes, and rode on towards Albuquerque to find some trouble.

Chapter Twenty Four

2009-11-21T15:35:00.001-08:00

Each man’s death is fated from the beginning of time. - Frank Yerby

Chapter Twenty Four

Hephaistos woke to an incredibly annoying beeping sound. It was not a sound he recognized. His alarm clock, which he never set to wake him, had an actual bell in it. He didn’t own any devices, that he could recall, which beeped. Well, the microwave beeped. The microwave, however, was not nearly this annoying.

The sound seemed to be coming from the chest of drawers, where he’d left a mechanical stopwatch and a cheap ballpoint pen before going to sleep. Hep got out of bed and went to investigate.

Sitting next to the pen and stopwatch were a clipboard with a stack of checklists, and a cellphone. The cellphone’s screen was flashing frantically, and the phone continued beeping at him. Hep picked the phone up and pushed one of the buttons to see if it would make the beeping stop.

It did. The screen displayed a name (Marcus Jangleplatz), an address (22 Mozartstrasse, Berlin) and a time (three minutes from now).

“Oh, shit,” Hep said. He grabbed the stopwatch, pen and clipboard, and stuffed the phone into the pocket of his pajama pants. He vanished from his room.

Marcus Jangleplatz’s death was supposed to occur as he napped, when he would be overcome by carbon monoxide from a fault with the pilot light in his stove. This, however, was not to work out as planned.

Hep’s had figured that with the duties of Death, he would be able to travel by thought without the world-ending headaches. He was entirely incorrect.

There was a loud crash as Hep stumbled over Marcus’s coffee table and fell to the floor. “Son of a bitch, that hurts!”

Marcus awoke to find a stranger in what looked like pajama pants and an Iron Maiden t-shirt laying on his floor groaning. He decided that sometimes the better part of valor is running like Hell when a strangely dressed man you don’t know is stumbling around your apartment.

“Oh my head,” Hep moaned, then “Aw, shit, where did he go?”

Hep looked at the checklist, and saw that Marcus was supposed to die in one minute and thirty seconds, while napping on the couch. He heard a door slam on the street below, and went to the window in time to see Marcus running away from the apartment.

“I guess he’s not going to die while sleeping, then,” Hep said. He thought for a moment, and tried to decide what to do. He couldn’t chase Marcus; running and Hephaistos had never been compatible. He couldn’t really wait around for him to come back. Chances were he’d be back with friends, or a police officer, and it might be difficult to explain how he was there to collect Marcus’s soul, and that if Marcus would just come along with him, everything would be great.

And now he was stuck in Berlin.

The phone in his pocket beeped again. He took it out and saw that he was due in Oklahoma in a minute and a half.

“Well, shit,” Hep said, and vanished again. He reappeared on a farm in Oklahoma where one Jay Pearson was to have a tragic accident involving a John Deere combine harvester and a drunken cousin. Hep’s headache was, if anything, worse than the previous one.

Hep’s appearance in the field was enough to distract Jay from what he’d been doing. This turned out to be a good thing for Jay, because with his attention no longer on the job at hand, he was able to easily avoid the combine which his cousin had driven just a little too close to him.

“Hey, fucknut! Watch where you’re driving that thing!” Jay shouted at his cousin. His cousin shrugged and gave him a thumbs up.

“I’ll shove that thumb up your ass once you’re out of that tractor,” Jay said under his breath, then turned to look at Hep. “Hey, buddy, where the hell did you come from? I should have seen you coming ten minutes ago.”

He gestured at the wide open acres of land around them.

“Are you dead already?” Hep asked Jay.

“What are you talking about? Nobody’s died for, what, a year now? Are you lost and crazy?”

Hep looked around. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly deadly in the vicinity, and he was reasonably sure that he was not supposed to directly cause someone’s death. He was just supposed to be there to make sure they met their fate and then he would bring their souls to The Gate.

Jay was looking at him, expecting an answer of some sort. Hep looked back at him, and took a breath to speak.

“Aw, fuck it. Have a nice day,” he said, and vanished again.

Jay decided that maybe he needed to get out of the sun for a while. He waved down his cousin and hitched a ride back to the house on the combine.

Hep arrived back in his bed room with what must have been the single worst headache he’d ever experienced. He gasped for air and felt as though his eyes were trying to burst free from their confinement. There was a tiny ringing sound somewhere deep inside his head, getting louder and pulsing with his heartbeat. The invisible clamp squeezing his temples tightened and Hep took several lurching steps and fell on to his bed, where he stayed for the next hour.

During that time, the phone beeped at him constantly. At one point, he grabbed it and threw it at the wall with all of his might, hoping to destroy it. Instead, the phone punched a hole in the drywall, then came flying back and landed on the nightstand next to him.

“Oh, man,” Hep said.

Once his headache had subsided, he picked up the phone and began to fiddle with it. He found a menu option which said “notification settings.” He selected it, and discovered he could set the phone to alert him far in advance of the next death. He set it to warn him 6 hours beforehand.

After that, Hep decided that he was going to have to just make a difference locally to start with. Global change was going to be out of his reach, since it seemed he only took over Death’s responsibilities, with none of her gifts. Death was able to arrive silently at the scene and wait unnoticed in the shadows until the moment of death arrived. Hep, unfortunately, was not able to arrive silently, or unobtrusively. He stood out. Everywhere.

The phone beeped at him. In six hours, some lady in Prague was supposed to die.

“Well, I guess it’s going to be her lucky day today,” Hep said, and went to see about making some breakfast.

He got the last of the bacon out of the fridge and turned on the stove. The skillet he used for making bacon was in the drying rack next to the sink, so he grabbed that and put it on the stove. Then while the skillet was heating up, he set about making coffee.

The phone beeped at him. Some guy in Denmark was fated to be crushed by a falling pallet of bricks. Looks like he’s going to miraculously survive, Hep thought.

He put the bacon on and listened to it sizzle. The phone beeped again. Good grief, how does Death ever get anything done? Hep wondered. According to the phone a man in Canada was going to be attacked by a moose and killed.

Hep put the phone back in his pocket and got the english muffins out of the fridge. He put them in the toaster and turned the bacon as he waited for them to pop up.

The phone beeped again. Hep looked at it. Alaska. He put the phone back in his pocket.

The bacon was done, and he took it off the skillet and set it on a paper towel to soak up the extra grease. His english muffins popped up in the toaster, so he took them out, buttered them, then put them on a plate with the bacon. He poured himself a cup of coffee and took his coffee and plate to the table.

The phone beeped again. This one was in London, England.

The bacon was done perfectly, even if Hep was judging his own work. In his distraction, however, he’d made the coffee disgustingly weak. He took a bite of the english muffin, and chewed.

The phone started beeping at him. This time, however, the death was in Gallup, New Mexico. Hep did a little mental math and realized that he could get there in time, fairly easily, by motorcycle if he left as soon as possible.

He crunched the rest of his bacon, and then went to see if Scroat was interested in riding out to Gallup with him.

Scroat was extremely annoyed to have been woken before dawn. However, when Hep explained they would be riding out to Gallup, his mood changed considerably.

“Hell yeah, I’m ready to go. Give me a minute to piss and we can leave right now,” Scroat said.

Five minutes later the bikes were running and Hep and Scroat were on their way to Gallup, New Mexico to stand aside and watch a man die.

Chapter Twenty Three

2009-11-21T12:20:00.000-08:00

Death is fortunate for the child, bitter to the youth, too late to the old. - Publilius Syrus

Chapter 23

At three thirty in the morning on a Tuesday, James was unexpectedly sober in an unexpected location. His sobriety was unexpected because thirty seconds prior, he’d been drunk like depressed sailor in a rum warehouse. He was in his Lotus Elise, which was not unexpected. His Elise, however, was in the dining room of a house, forty feet lower than the road he’d been driving on.

This was most unusual.

He had enough time to admire the tasteful photo of a sailboat on the wall, and to feel relieved he hadn’t hit the china hutch when it occurred to him that right now would probably be the best possible time to get the hell out of there. He could hear someone, possibly several someones, elsewhere in the house stirring and crashing around. He pulled off his seatbealt, opened the door, and ran out the gaping hole in the back of the house he’d just crashed in to.

There was a fence around the yard, incredibly intact. I must have jumped over it in the car, James thought. Why can’t I remember that?

On the far side of the fence was a steep hill. On the top of the hill was the road he’d been driving on. He could see the barrier he’d driven through, some torn up foliage coming down the hill, and then tire tracks leading through the grass into the hole in the back of the house.

The gate for the fence was next to the house, so he ran that way, fumbled with the latch and finally pulled the gate wide open. He took off running, leapt the short hedge in an incredible feat of adrenaline-fueled strength, and heard the gate shut behind him as he reached the street that went past the house.

As he ran away, he faintly heard a man’s voice yelling, “What the fuck is this?”

A few minutes later, he heard sirens getting closer. He dove into the ditch on the side of the road and waited until the police cars were past, then clambered to his feet and started running again.

About a block away, a bus approached and pulled to the side of the road to let off a passenger. James broke into a sprint and reached the bus before the driver closed the doors. He fumbled in his pockets for the fare while the driver looked him up and down. The bus driver was used to seeing crazy people during the early morning hours, but this guy was something else.

James was quite a sight. His Armani suit was covered with dirt, gravel and bits of grass from when he’d jumped into the ditch. Sweat was pouring down his face and there were some wet patches under the arms of his jacket. There was a strong smell of liquor about him, and he was gasping for air.

“Rough night?” the driver asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” James answered. He told the driver where he was going.

“Well, you’re going to want to get off at the Rose Street stop. That’s still a couple miles from where you want to end up, but there aren’t any connections this time of day.”

“Fine,” James said, and took a seat. There was one other passenger on the bus. He looked to be about eighteen years old, and was listening to his headphones while rocking back and forth in his seat. He looked very troubled.

James closed his eyes and fell asleep.

It seemed only seconds later that the bus driver was calling back, “Hey, buddy! We’re at Rose street. This is your stop!”

James blinked a couple of times and stumbled out of his seat. “Thanks!” he called to the bus driver as he left the bus and stepped into the night again.

He walked the last two miles home, and was very glad he didn’t see anyone he recognized along the way.

The driveway to his home seemed a lot longer than it usually did as he walked up it. Soon enough, his front door welcomed him home. James went straight to the bathroom, where he took a shower and vigorously scrubbed the evenings accumulated grime from himself. He stuffed his suit in a garbage bag and resolved to dispose of it after he’d slept.

James went straight to bed after all that, and fell asleep before he’d managed to get the blankets pulled up over himself.

Around noon, the repeated ringing of his doorbell woke James up. He pulled on his robe and went to the front door to see who was making all the racket.

Outside stood two police officers. They did not look like they were selling tickets to a fundraising ball.

“Good afternoon, Mr. King,” one of the officers said. His nametag read “Kibble,” and James had to bite his tongue to keep from giggling. The officer had brown hair, brown eyes and what James and his friends in college had called a “Cop ‘stache.”

“Good morning, sir,” James said. “What can I do for you?”

“We were wondering if you know where your car is, Mr. King,” the other officer said. He was taller than Officer Kibble, and had blond hair cut so close to his scalp that it was barely noticeable. His nametag read “Stone.”

“Well, in my garage, I’d expect,” James said.

The officers looked at each other, then back at James.

“Would you care to check?” Officer Kibble asked James.

“Uh, sure,” James said. “Meet me over there, I’ll go open the garage.”

James hustled through the house to the door to his garage. He knew damn well the car wasn’t out there - it was in somebody’s dining room. He stepped into the garage and swiftly reached over and unlocked the door that went from the garage into his backyard. Then he yelled.

“What the hell?”

James hit the button that started the garage door opener, and went and stood where he usually parked the Lotus.

“Where the hell is my Lotus?” James said. He looked at the officers then.

Officer Stone said, “Parked in the dining room of 6721 Acacia Avenue.”

“What?” James exclaimed.

“Yes, it seems late last night someone crashed your Lotus through the back of the house, and came to a stop in the dining room,” Officer Kibble said.

“Oh my God! Was everyone OK?” James said.

“Well, the occupants of the house were all fine. Whoever was driving, however, ran away from the scene.”

“That’s crazy!”

“You wouldn’t know anything about this would you?”

“No, not at all,” James said.

“Because, you see, there were no signs the car had been stolen. In fact, the keys were in it. Any ideas on how that could be?”

“Well, I always leave the keys in my cars at home,” James said. This was true. His Porsche and Land Rover both had keys dangling from their ignition switches at this very moment.

“Any signs that your garage has been broken in to?” Officer Stone asked.

“No, not really. The only way they could have gotten in was through... Oh shit,” James said.

“What?” Officer Stone asked.

“The back door. I leave it open for the gardener,” James said. This was not strictly a lie. He did leave the back door open for the gardener. Of course, the gardener hadn’t been by for several days, and he was very good about locking up after himself. “Maybe he forgot to lock up when he was done.”

The three of them walked over to the back door of the garage, and sure enough, it was unlocked. James opened the door and stepped through.
“It doesn’t look to me like anyone tried to force their way in,” he said. “I guess it was just really bad luck for me.”

“So it would seem,” Officer Kibble said. “OK, well, we’ve got everything we need for now. Your car is going to be removed from the house shortly, you’ll be able to pick it up from the impound lot tomorrow.”

“Impound?” James asked. “Is there any way you guys can deliver it here?”

“We’re not a towing service, Mr. King. It looked to me like you’re going to need to take it straight to a body shop to get it repaired anyhow, if it’s not completely totalled. If I were you, I’d call your insurance company right away. Have a good day.”

“You too, officers,” James said. He watched them get into their car and driveaway.

“Man, that was close,” James said. He went back into his garage and shut the main door again, then into his house to get dressed and face the day.

The call to the insurance company was pretty straight ahead. Yes, his car had been stolen. Yes, the keys had been in it. Yes, the garage had been left open. No, he didn’t have any idea who could have taken it. They told him to get two quotes from different body shops.

Now he just had to hope that no one would look any deeper into the cause of the accident. He was pretty sure his insurance could cover the damage to the house, if it was somehow decided it was his fault. He could handle that, he just hoped to avoid any criminal charges.

He also decided that, maybe, he’d stop driving home drunk at three in the morning.

Later that afternoon, he lit his grill in the backyard, and stuffed the suit he’d been wearing into it. The flames licked around the edges of the cloth until suddenly, so it seemed, the suit was rapidly burning. It gave off a surprising amount of heat as it burned. After a few minutes, there was nothing left of the suit except for ashes, which would be easy to mix in with the ashes of the charcoal.

It was best to be careful about such things, James felt.

Chapter Twenty Two

2009-11-20T20:07:00.001-08:00

Death is a debt we all must pay - Euripides

Chapter 22

Death was laying in bed listening to The Cure with the covers over her head. The box of chicken fried rice after all the sweet and sour pork had probably been a bad idea. Especially since she had a pint of ice cream afterwards She groaned and rolled on to her side, which was slightly more comfortable in that she could breathe without excessive effort than laying on her back. Laying on her stomach just didn’t work.

For the last six months, Death had stayed in her room eating, pitying herself, listening to sad songs, and writing horrendous poetry and posting it on the internet. That’s what she did on the days when she was somewhat motivated, anyhow. On days like today, she just stayed in bed and ordered takeout.

She had actually planned quite a day of laying in bed. alternating between having the covers over her head and staring hopelessly at the ceiling. Her existence was just so completely without meaning, it took all the energy she could muster to simply keep her eyes open.

As she laid on her side, she’d started mentally composing a new poem, but had only gotten as far as “I can decide your ultimate fate/but have no control over my own” when she heard a thump that shook the floor and an agonized groan in her room. It sounded like it had come from the foot of her bed.

“Who’s there?” Death moaned as though the very effort of speaking might cause lasting damage to her psyche.

Another horrendous groan came from the floor.

“Go away,” Death said.

“Oh, my head,” someone in her room said. She heard small thumping noises. Her depression could not overcome her curiousity, and she poked her head out from under the covers and sat up in bed to see who was there. She kept the covers wrapped around her shoulders.

On the floor at the foot of her bed was a large, incredibly ugly man with misshapen legs. He was clutching his head and had a look of utter agony on his face.

“Are you OK?” she asked this mysteriously appearing, ugly man.

“Uh uh,” Hep groaned. He continued thumping his head against the floor.

“Is that actually helping, or are you just doing it to annoy me?” Death asked.

Hep opened one eye and glared at her. “Man that hurts,” he said. After a few minutes he composed himself and sat up.

“So, who are you?” Death asked.

“Hephaistos. Hep to my friends,” Hep said. He climbed up off of the floor and sat down in the chair at Death’s desk.

“And, how come you appeared here, of all places, in agonizing pain?”

“I needed to get here quickly, and I wasn’t sure of your street address. I get the worst hangover when I travel by thought.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just not meant for it,” Hep said.

“I see,” Death said. They sat quietly for a moment, until Death asked, “So why did you come to see me?”

“Because nobody is dying. Which, by the way, is completely OK with me. If you want to take a break, I’m not going to stop you. Except my buddy Ares is getting all mixed up in the head. The other day, he was wearing a shirt with,” Hep paused and shuddered, “dancing teddy bears on it.”

“And this was caused by me... how?” Death asked.

“Well, you know who Ares is, right? God of War? Well, since people stopped dying, every government in the world decided that right now would be a great time to invade whatever country they wanted to invade. That would work out just great for Ares, except no one actually died. There’s just a lot of explosions and rubble and soldiers with big holes in them walking around. I think the frustration caused him to have a nervous breakdown,” Hep said.

“A nervous breakdown?” Death said.

“Yeah, or something. Ares has become a filthy hippie.”

“And so what do you want me to do about it?”

“Well, if you could go back to work, that’d be great,” Hep said.

“There’s no point. I don’t want to,” Death said, and flopped back onto her bed.

“Why not?” Hep asked. He was accustomed to petty behavior from other gods, but was still mildly surprised every time he witnessed it.

“Because. I’ll never be done. I have no great work. Just a lot of stupid little tasks to be done. It’s all busywork, and it will never end.”

“Well,” Hep started. He tried to think of something motivating, something inspiring to get her out of her rut and back into the swing of things. “It sounds to me like you’re just having a little pity party in here when you ought to be out doing your damn job.”

Death sat straight up in her bed then, furious, and the covers fell away from her. She was wearing a black cotton tank top and little else. Since she’d had time to eat over the last six months, her previously skeletal figure was now wonderfully woman-shaped. Hep swallowed and tried not to ogle her, with little success.

“Look buddy, last I heard, you haven’t done your job for a couple thousand years, so you’re not one to talk. You don’t know what my existence is like, so fuck you. You got it?”

“OK, you’re too depressed to do your job. No need to lash out at me,” Hep said.

“Fine,” Death said. She noticed she was slightly more exposed than she would like to be, and pulled the blanket around her waist.

“Of course, we still need to come up with a solution to the problem of all these newly immortal mortals. We’re going to have to restore the natural order some how,” Hep said.

“Well, figure something out,” Death said. “I’m staying here.”

“Right,” Hep said. “Of course, the problem there is that you are Death, and no one else is.”

“Bug Thanatos,” Death said.

“No one even knows where he is, and he’s been out of work longer than I have,” Hep said.

“Well, how about Osiris or Anubis?”

“They do a totally different job than you,” Hep said.

“The Morrigan, then,” Death said, getting frustrated.

“Oh, come on. Even you know that’s just a bad idea,” Hep said. He was rapidly becoming exasperated.

“Fine. You do it then,” Death said.

Hep laughed out loud.

“Me? Now you’re being ridiculous,” Hep said.

“No. I give unto you my powers and responsibilities, at least until I’m feeling better,” Death said.

“Wait, no, I can’t do your job. I’m a blacksmith. I can’t even teleport without an agonizing migraine crippling me. How am I supposed to keep up with your job?”

“I don’t really care,” Death said. “Have fun. I recommend the cheap stopwatches you can get at dollar stores and good liquid ink ball point pens from an office store. Now get out of here.”

Death waved her hand dismissively and Hep found himself back in his own living room. He was amazed he didn’t have another headache.

“Maybe I can do this job,” Hep said to himself.

Scroat came in to the room then.

“So how did it go?” Scroat asked him.

“Unexpectedly. But I think I’ve got a plan for how to cure Ares,” Hep said.

Chapter Twenty One

2009-11-19T19:45:00.000-08:00

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing. - Maurice Maeterlinck

Chapter 21

Hephaistos had completed work on Ares’s motorcycle the night before. It was a thing of great beauty, at least, to a certain kind of eyes. It was long and low, with blank paint on the parts that weren’t brilliantly chromed. There were a large number of Ben Hur style spikes and ornaments to let other road users know that the pilot of this motorcycle was not to be trifled with. It had a bracket mounted just behind the seat on the right side, in case Ares wanted to carry a shotgun while he rode.

Hep, for one, wouldn’t be caught dead on it. Neither would Scroat. They were in agreement, however, that Ares, God of War, would love it.

Hep had heard from a friend that Ares was feeling a little funky because people weren’t dying. He’d planned to just have Ares come and pick up the bike on his own, but decided that maybe, this once, he’d deliver it. It might perk Ares up a bit.

He’d rented that lowest of transportation options, a moving truck, to haul the motorcycle out to Ares’s home in California.

The truck had a ramp built into it under the loading door, so Hep put that into place. Scroat had the honor of riding the bike up the ramp and into the truck, since Hep’s legs made it hard for him to ride a two-wheeler. A few minutes more and they had the bike strapped down and ready to go. Hep put the ramp back in place, and shut and locked the door with a padlock.

Hep locked up the house while Scroat got the truck started, and in a matter of minutes they were on their way to California.

Seven hours later, Scroat pulled the truck in and parked it in front of Ares’s house, just outside L.A. They could see his Ford Falcon station wagon, nicknamed the Battle Wagon, parked in the driveway.

Hep and Scroat got out of the truck and walked up the driveway towards Ares’s sidewalk and front door. Hep noticed a new bumper sticker on Ares’s car. It said “Evolve,” and the O was a peace sign.

“Man, he’s going to be pissed when he notices that on his car,” he said to Scroat. Scroat looked at the bumper sticker and laughed.

“Yeah. Evolve right into a bloody fucking mess.”

They walked up to Ares’s front door, and saw there was a note taped on to it. It read: Hey Guys, I’m already down at the park. Come on down. Love, Ares.

“Did you tell him we were coming?” Hep asked Scroat.

“Nope,” Scroat said.

A pair of tye-die wearing hippies came up the driveway. They saw Hep and Scroat, and looked at them warily. Hep could barely see their eyes. They were bloodshot and maybe half-open.

“Who are you guys?” the taller Hippie asked.

“Friends of Ares. Did you guys stick that bumper sticker on his car? He’s going to flip out when he sees that. You might not want to be around.”

The shorter hippie laughed a very stoned laugh, and said “Naw, man, he’s gonna love it. Loooooove it.”

“Um. OK. Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you,“ Hep said. He looked over at Scroat.

Scroat’s expression was halfway between disbelief and utter joy and excitement. “Oh, these guys are fucked,” he said to Hep, under his breath.

“Hey is Ares here?” the taller hippie asked.

“I’d say not, seeing as you’re currently not in many little pieces,” Hep answered. The short hippie started giggling uncontrollably.

“What’s his deal?” Hep asked the taller hippie.

“He’s just happy to be alive, man,” the taller hippie said. “Hey, do you know where Ares is at?”

“Uh, this note says he’s at the park already,” Hep said.

“Far out,” the taller hippie said. The two of them turned to leave.

“Hey, where is this park?” Hep asked before they had walked too far.

“It’s just down the road, man,” the taller hippie said. “Come one down, if you want.”

The two hippies wandered off down the road.

Why would two hippies actively seek out Ares? That’s like snow seeking out a blast furnace. It’s like a bucket of chum calling up a great white shark and inviting it over for dinner. It’s like... well, it’s fucked up is what it is, Hep thought.

“Hep, why would hippies want to hang out with Ares? I mean, I expect there are certain doors that even Jehovah’s Witnesses will just walk past,” Scroat said.

“I don’t know. But I’m kind of interested to see. What do you say we follow those two to the park?”

“Well, I do always like watching Ares do his thing on a bunch of hippies.”

The two of them wandered down the street keeping a fair distance between themselves and the patchouli-stinking hippies. The neighborhood was a little run-down, but not bad. You wouldn’t expect to find a god of war living there.

The park was only a couple of blocks down the road. In the park were hippies... frolicking. Some were playing frisbee, others were playing with a hacky-sack in a circle, and another bunch appeared to be listening to music and twirling. There was a strong smell of burned leaves hanging in the air.

“OK! Any second we’re going to see something fucked up,” Scroat exclaimed.

There was no sign of a god of war clad in black leather anywhere in the park. Strange. Ares didn’t really go for subterfuge, he preferred to simply arrive and start the chaos.

Hep and Scroat walked in to the park, looking around for a clue to tell them that this was all an elaborate ruse of some sort. These weren’t real hippies. They were anti-hippies. The kind that would believe in a peace-keeping military force. The kind that believed in “police actions.”

Unfortunately, it appeared they were not. They were, for no logical reason, peace-loving hippies.

“Fuck,” Scroat said. “I don’t see Ares anywhere, and these hippies keep invading my personal bubble.”

“They’re trying to share the love, Scoat,” Hep said.

“They’re gonna give me the crabs if they get any closer, Hep,” Scroat said.

On they walked through small groups of hippies, keeping their eyes open in case a leather-clad, homicidal deity decided to spring out from behind a tree.

A hippie woman came up and hugged Scroat. “Welcome!” She said to him.

“Uh. Hi,” Scroat said, and walked away in a hurry.

“Don’t mind him. He’s afraid of girls,” Hep said to the woman, in order to explain. He followed Scroat. They passed a drum circle. A woman in a sarong was attempting to belly-dance in the middle of the circle.

“Man, I don’t think he’s here,” Scroat said. “And I don’t think we should be. These people give me the creeps.”

“Mellow out, Scroat. They’re just hippies. They can’t hurt you,” Hep said.

He turned to walk in another direction, and was blocked by a large, muscular hippie wearing a t-shirt with dancing bears on it and cargo shorts. He had dark, curly hair.

“Hep!” Ares exclaimed. “I’m so happy to see you!”

He embraced Hep, who nearly stumbled over backwards in surprise.

Scroat took a good look at Ares and said, “What the fuck, Ares?”

“And Scroat!“ Ares said. He moved to embrace Scroat, but Scroat took several giant steps backwards, nearly tripping over a blissed-out hippie laying on the ground and staring at the clouds.

“Look out, man,” the hippie said in a slightly reproachful tone, then went back to smiling up at the sky.

Ares looked at Scroat, disappointed, “I’m just happy to see you, Scroat.”

“Uh huh,” Scroat said. “Well, be happy to see me from over there. I don’t like people in my personal bubble.”

“OK, OK,” Ares said. He turned back to Hep. “What brings you to California, Hep?”

“We’re here to drop off your motorcycle. I’d heard you’d been down, and thought this might cheer you up.”

Ares looked surprised, then laughed. “Heard I was down? I’ve never been better Hep! Finally, everything in my life is love and light. It’s wonderful!”

Hep took a step backwards as discretely as he could. “Um. Yeah. So, would you like to see your new bike?”

“Yeah, but don’t you want me to introduce you to everyone first?”

All around him were dancing, stoned, diabolo-spinning freaks in ponchos and tie-dye.

“Um, no, that’s OK,” Hep said. “Let’s go check out your new bike.”

“Well, OK,” Ares said, doubtfully. He turned and bellowed to the park, “See ya later guys!”

Most of the people in the park turned and waved, or yelled back.

“Man, these guys are the best,” Ares said.

“Uh huh,” Scroat said slowly. “The very best. Let’s go.”

As they walked back, Ares leading the way, Scroat leaned over to Hep and whispered, “Something is very fucking wrong here. I think he might have gone off the deep end.”

“Excellent observation, Scroat,” Hep said.

They reached Ares’s home pretty quickly.

“Hey, is that your truck?” Ares said. “Far out, guys.”

“Uh, yeah. The bike is in there.” Hep said. He went around to the back of the truck and unlocked the padlock. Seconds later they had the back door open and the ramp down. Scroat climbed up into the truck and eased the bike backwards down the ramp, to where Hep and Ares were waiting.

Ares looked at it and said, “Aw, man, this is all wrong. It should be, like, purple or green. And where’s the fringe, man?”

Hep’s jaw nearly hit his chest. “What. Did. You. Say?”

“It’s not right, man. This is so not me anymore,” Ares said.

Hep’s left eye twitched a couple of times. He acted without thinking, and punched Ares just under the left eye. To Scroat’s supreme surprise, Ares staggered backwards, but didn’t not retaliate.

“What the hell did you do that for, you jerk?” Ares said. He sounded close to tears.

“I’m... sorry?” Hep said. He was just as surprised as Scroat that Ares had reacted in this way.

“That’s not me anymore, Hep. OK? So don’t treat me like that anymore,” Ares said. He poked gently at his left cheek, and said “Ow!”

“Uh, OK, Ares. No more of that. I’m, uh, sorry I hit you,” Hep said. If he previously had any doubt that Ares had lost his mind, he was now certain.

Ares looked at the bike again. “I guess it’s pretty cool. I can always spray paint it a better color and take the spikes off.”

Hep fought down an urge to punch Ares again. “That’s the spirit!” he said instead.

“Hey, do you guys want to come inside for some lemonade?” Ares said.

“You got any beer?” Scroat said.

“Nope.”

“Lemonade will do,” Hep said. He and Scroat followed Ares into his house.

There was a huge, tie-dyed tapestry with the OM symbol in the middle of it dominating the back wall in Ares’s living room. There were incense burners on every available horizontal surface. Instead of couches and chairs, there were bean bags and large pillows to sit on.

“I see you’ve done some redecorating,” Hep said.

“Yeah, do you like it? I think it really makes that room feel a lot more open and communal,” Ares called from the kitchen. A few minutes later he came into the living room with three glasses of lemonade.

“Thanks, Ares” Hep said, and took a glass. Scroat also took a glass from Ares.

“Yeah, thanks,” Scroat said.

The three of them sat down, as best as they could. Hep nearly fell over trying to sit on a thick round pillow covered with red velour and gold trim.

“So, Ares, uh, what brought on the change of heart?” Hep asked.

Ares took a drink of his lemonade and wiped his lips, “Well, the war thing just wasn’t working out for me anymore. I realized there had to be more to life that just killing everything and everyone that got in my way.”

“Heavy,” Hep said.

“Yeah, I’d been in a bad place, and these guys took me in and showed me the power of love, man. And it’s been great. We help out the less fortunate, and protest injustices and lately we’ve been raising funds for Tibet.”

“Tibet?” Hep asked.

“Yeah, man, we gotta free Tibet. They know all about peace and love, but the oppressive Chinese government won’t let them be independent. Oh, hey, I’ve got this great book you should read! I’ll be right back.” Ares got up from his bean bag chair and walked out of the room.

“Is this the same Tibet I’m thinking of?” Scroat whispered to Hep.

“I think so,” Hep said.

“Wow. He’s gone bugshit crazy.”

“Yes, yes he has,” Hep said.

“We don’t have to sleep here tonight, do we?” Scroat asked.

“Nope. We’re leaving as soon as I can get off this damn pillow,” Hep said.

Chapter Twenty

2009-11-17T19:05:00.001-08:00

The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life. - Lucan

Chapter 20

James and Jill had become fantastically rich. James had built a huge house in Los Angeles, and lived there about half of the time. Jill had taken her money and built her secret hideaway deep in the forest in Oregon, as she had said she would do. James was usually there the other half of his time.

The two of them were currently in Miami, in a swanky suite in a swanky hotel. They were standing on the balcony.

“What the hell happened to you, James? You used to be a decent guy, but now your just this rich,” Jill paused for a second, thinking of an appropriate word, “douchebag. Perfect clothes, perfect house, perfect car and no soul.”

“What are you talking about? I’m still me! This stuff is all just... stuff! It’s marketing. I can’t ride the wave of the male birth control pill forever. I’ve still got to schmooze investors.”

“Schmooze fine, but you don’t have to get them whores for fuck’s sake!”

“I never got anyone a whore! Where did that come from?”

“You might as well have! You take these other rich douchebags out to clubs, get them liquored up, I guess they can find their own whores but you’re pretty much pointing them out!” Jill was getting flushed, and her eyes were tearing up.

“You don’t want me to go to the clubs? Fine, I won’t.” James said.

“Yeah, you can just have them all over to your house in L.A. These people aren’t going to invest in anything you offer. They’re just getting all of the free party out of you that they can. The second you need something from them, they’re all going to vanish into the night, never to be seen again,” Jill said.

“That’s not true!” James said.

“It is true, and you know it,” Jill said. “Have you even been doing any research lately? Or has it all been partying all night and taking so-called meetings all day.”

“What do you want from me?” James exclaimed. “Can’t I enjoy the fruits of my labor?”

“Enjoy the fruit all you want, just be the James I used to know, not this playboy asshole you’ve become,” Jill said.

“OK, you know what? If you think I’m an asshole, then maybe you ought to just leave. I’ve never been anything but me, and the guy you see now is the guy I am,” James said.

“Fine,” Jill said. She went inside and gathered her things and hurriedly stuffed them into her suitcase. James stayed on the balcony. “See you around, asshole,” Jill said on her way out the door.

“Whatever,” James said. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and called someone.

“Hey man, my night just freed up. You want to go out and cause some trouble?”

Jill took the elevator down to the lobby and asked the concierge to call a cab to take her to the airport. She could feel tears trying to well up, and fought them back as much as she could. She didn’t want to be seen crying and sloppy in a lobby full of perfectly dressed and coiffed rich people.

The taxi arrived shortly. She put her luggage in the back seat, and then sat next to it.

“How ya doin’ tonight?” the cabbie asked her. He had pasty skin and bags under his eyes.

“I’ve been better,” Jill said. “And I don’t want to talk right now. Please take me to the airport.”

“Sure thing,” the cabbie said.

As they drove through downtown Miami, Jill looked out the window and tried not to think about James. The city looked entirely too glamorous. It seemed fake, like they’d paid Hollywood to design the place in return for being able to film there.

She noticed a group of thirteen or fourteen men, of varying ages, standing on a street corner. They all wore sober black and grey suits, and seemed vaguely menacing. She wouldn’t want to have to walk past them. Some of them were roughhousing, while the others looked on, or had conversations of their own.

“I wonder what that’s all about,” Jill said.

The cabbie looked over at the group of men, then at Jill in the rear view mirror. “What? You mean you haven’t them back in L.A. or where ever you’re from?”

It had been a long time since she’d been in a major urban area. She’d go and visit James in Los Angeles now and then, but mostly she just stayed at her house in Oregon and ignored the outside world.

“Well, I’ve never seen them. I live in the sticks, though.”

“Oh. Well, they’re morticians. They’ve all been out of work, you know. No one would hire them to do anything else, so they hang out and cause trouble. No better than a bunch of teenage thugs.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Honest to God. You see those guys when you’re out walking, you stay away.”

“OK, good to know,” Jill said.

A few blocks later she saw another group of men hanging out on the steps of a courthouse. This group was dressed all in black, and had... priest’s collars?

“So what’s their deal then? Street preachers?”

The cabbie looked at her again in the mirror. “You really do live in the sticks. All the priests are out of work too. They might be worse than the morticians. And they’re rivals.”

“How’s that?” Jill asked.

“Well, the morticians blame the priests for stopping death. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but I guess some people gotta have someone to blame for their lot.”

“I’m surprised the priests are out of work,” Jill said.

“Well, have you been to a church lately?” the cabbie asked her.

“I guess not,” Jill answered. She hadn’t been to church for ages.

“Yeah, well, neither has anyone else. Seems that with no promise of heaven, or threat of hell, there’s not much use for church.”

Jill thought about it for a minute. “I’d think someone would start warning people of the apocalypse and get them packed in.”

“Yeah, they tried that. It didn’t work. There were other people saying the apocalypse came and went already, and here we are. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were pissed.”

“Wow. I guess maybe I should pay more attention to the news,” Jill said.

“Why bother? It’s not like you’ve got to worry about it. There’s nothing out there that can kill us. I’d say, stay happy and secluded in the sticks. Sounds pretty damn good to me.”

They arrived at the Miami airport a few minutes later. Jill paid the cab driver and pulled her suitcase out of the car after her.

“Hey, you take care of yourself out there,” the cabbie said.

“You too. Bye,” Jill said. She shut the door, and the cab pulled away. What a totally fucked up night, she thought. She walked into the airport and set about getting a flight home.

After she’d made her way through the concourse and was waiting at her gate for boarding to start, and older woman came over and sat down next to her.

“Hello,” the old woman said.

“Hello,” Jill said, somewhat cautiously. She was worried someone had lost his or her old person, or that the old lady was just crazy.

“Man troubles?” the old lady asked her.

“I beg your pardon?” Jill answered.

“You look like you’ve been crying, or like you’re going to start crying any second. I thought I’d just ask the obvious question.”

Jill laughed, a bit. “Yes, I’m having man troubles.”

“Hmm. What’s the problem?”

“This guy I was with used to be a really decent person, but since then he’s made a whole lot of money and become a real bastard,” Jill said.

“I see. Not much advice I can offer you there,” the old lady said. “You know, it’s funny. In the old days, we’d probably wish the bastards were dead, but now we can’t even wish that.”

Jill smiled and said, “Well, I guess we can always hope for serious injuries and comas.”

“Oh! Ha ha! Yes, I suppose so,” the old lady said.

Just then there was an announcement over the P.A. telling the passengers on Jill’s flight that boarding would begin, and that anyone who needed extra time to board could get on now.

“Well, that would be me,” the old lady said. “Don’t worry, time heals all wounds.”

“Thanks. Bye,” Jill said as the old lady made her way to the gate.

The flight home to Oregon was uneventful. She arrived at the Portland airport where a friend met her and gave her a lift. Jill stayed the night at her friend’s house, and the next morning the two of them drove down to Gold Beach, Oregon where she had her boat moored while she was in Florida.

Jill insisted that her friend come up to her house for the night, hidden away far up the Rogue River. They untied her boat, an aluminum jet boat that could float in two feet of water, and set off.

It was hard to be depressed in such beautiful surroundings, and Jill relished the feel of the wind in her face as they powered up the river to her cabin. After about an hour, they arrived and tied up to Jill’s dock. They walked down to the shore, and Jill pushed the button that would lower her freight elevator - a contraption she’d rigged up so she wouldn’t have to haul two weeks worth of supplies up the hill at a time. She put her suitcase on the platform, and sent it on it’s way up the hill. Then the two of them started the long climb up the stairs to her cabin.

Chapter Nineteen

2009-11-17T06:28:00.000-08:00

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment. - Dag Hammarskjöld

Chapter 19

Ares was extremely frustrated. He’d been wandering new battlefields and old familiar haunts and had not seen a single fatality. Sure, there was shooting and explosions and general mayhem, which was great, but it didn’t add up to much when everyone just kept staying alive.

His attempts to assist soldiers in their shuffle off the mortal coil had been disastrous. Of the eighty people he’d personally tried to kill, all of them were still moving around and being generally obnoxious and alive. In fact, it looked like someone he’d tried to help was running up to him.

The someone was carrying his head under one arm like a football. There was most of a neck sticking out the top of a blood-stained, dust-colored shirt. Its clothes were filthy, and its movements were jerky, like every movement required a great deal of force.

“How the hell is your body moving around with no brain connected to direct it?” Ares asked in an annoyed tone of voice.

“Fucked if I know, asshole. I guess I just figured it out while my head was rolling around in the street. Seemed like a good idea to get my body moving and pull my skull out of traffic,” the body said. It’s voice had an odd, buzzing quality to it. Ares realized that there was no actual mouth to shape the sounds coming from its vocal cords. He was confused - there was no way a body with no head should be able to talk - but mainly irritated by this person’s refusal to properly die.

“Hey, no need to get pissy with me. I didn’t mean to leave you alive,” Ares said. “I killed you pretty damn well. It’s never been a problem before.”

“You’re a dick! What the hell good is it to be alive with my head no longer attached to my body?”

“Well, if you’re going to be like that, what the hell good is it to be alive anyway?” Ares asked. He walked towards the troublesome headless man.

“Hey, you stay away from me,” the headless man said, and started to back away. He held his free arm out in front of him, trying to fend off Ares. It, of course, didn’t work.

“No, no, I did the job half-assed, and you deserve better than that,” Ares said. He snatched the bodies head away, and said, “This oughta do the trick though.”

He threw the head overhand in front of a passing tank. The head’s body chased after it, but didn’t arrive in time. The head was crushed under the treads of the tank, leaving behind a gruesome mess. The body hugged itself as the tank passed over the head, and as soon as it had passed set to work picking up what it could.

It turned and gave Ares the finger. Well, it seemed to. It was certainly in the right general direction.

“Huh,” Ares said, then shouted, “Hey! Sorry about that! Come on over here and I’ll take care of you for sure this time!”

The body ran. Of course, with no way of guiding itself, it stumbled into what had been an empty field until its recent conversion to a minefield. The body made it roughly five steps before being blown into several chunks. The remaining bits continued to move around, without direction. One of them managed to find another landmine and set it off, sending bits of finger and arm flying in all directions.

“Damn it,” Ares said. “I’ve got the worst case of blue balls in the history of the world!”

Hephaistos was shaping the fenders for Ares’s motorcycle when Scroat came into the workshop carrying a newspaper.

“Hey, take a look at this crazy shit,” Scroat said, and held a folded-over newspaper out to Hep. “People have apparently stopped dying.”

No Deaths Worldwide in Two Months, read the headline. The article went on and explained that there had been no deaths reported, anywhere. No military casualties. No deaths at retirement homes. No deaths in hospitals. Nothing. The article went on to say that several governments were urging their citizens to consider the decision of whether or not to have children very carefully.

Hep looked up and Scroat and handed the paper back.
“Fucked up, huh?” Scroat said.

“Yeah. It doesn’t really impact us, though,” Hep said, and turned back to the fender he was working on. There was a dimple he’d made while doing the rough shaping, and he was having a hell of a time getting it smoothed out.

“Well, not yet. But you know people. They always find some stupid way to fuck everything up,” Scroat said.

“It’s not really my problem what happens in the world of mortals anymore. It’s not your problem either,” Hep said. He was far more interested in getting the fender smoothly shaped.

“Well, I just thought you might be interested, what with the order of the universe being disrupted and all,” Scroat said.

“Nope. Let me know when it becomes something I need to worry about,” Hep said. He grabbed a small ball-peen hammer and set to work getting the dimple in the fender taken care of.

“OK then,” Scroat said. “Have fun out here.”

“Yep,” Hep said, already engrossed in his work.

Scroat walked back to the house. For his part, Scroat was interested in how he could work this situation to his advantage. He might be able to get Sarah back. After all, she was just as immortal as him now. So there was nothing keeping them apart!

Scroat went inside and tried to figure out the best way to approach Sarah about resuming their relationship.

On Sunday morning at nine o’clock, Father David Adamson was still trying to decide how to start his sermon. He could clearly hear the organist wrapping up a fugue by J.S. Bach, but he didn’t notice how much the sound seemed to reverberate out in the main hall. He gathered up his notes and made his way to the altar entrance. When the organist had finished the piece’s dramatic ending, Father Adamson stepped out of the doorway and began walking to his podium.

It was then he noticed there was only one person, besides himself and the organist in the church. He blinked a few times in surprise, and laughed nervously. He walked down to the one other person, a man who looked to be in his seventies, sitting alone in the middle of a pew in the middle of the church.

“Hello,” Father Adamson said. He did not recognize this man, and was certain he was not a member of the congregation. The old man wore gray slacks, a white shirt with no tie, and a navy blue jacket.

“Hello, Father,” the man said.

“What is your name, my son?” Father Adamson said.

“Bill Tarbox,” the man said. His voice was quiet, but rough from a lifetime of hard liquor and smoking. He held out his hand to Father Adamson. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Father Adamson took his hand and shook it. The old man’s grip was surprisingly strong.

“I’m pleased to meet you as well. I’m Father Adamson.”

Father Adamson looked around at the empty church. It was still just the two of them, and the organist (who was paid by the service, so he knew why the organist had shown up).

“It seems we’re the only ones here today. Anything you want to talk about, Bill?”

“Not as such. I just came in here to have a quiet place to think.”

“Ah. What’s on your mind, then?”

“Well, I was thinking. If there’s no death any more, there’s really no reason to be afraid of Hell. And we certainly won’t be going to Heaven. So apart from my generally held belief that I should not do anything that will harm other people, I can sin away! There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Hmm,” Father Adamson said. “But what if this situation is all just a fluke of some kind? What if people are going to die again. What if you die before you’ve had time to repent? It seems to me a life of virtue and worship is still in order.”

Bill considered this for a moment, then looked squarely at Father Adamson.

“I’ll tell you what, Father. I’ve been here on Earth for close to seventy four years, and if I’ve learned anything in that time, it’s that God doesn’t give a shit what happens down here. Terrible things happen to good people, wonderful things happen to terrible people. He doesn’t get involved, just sits in judgement. If he even does that much. Every day, science explains a little more of our world, and I start to wonder if there’s really anything I can do that is so terrible I’d deserve an eternity of punishment. And you know, I think that there really isn’t anything that bad. And how is it that people who never knew the Word of God are damned, anyway? So, I say, if the scientists and experts say we aren’t dying anymore, then I’m going to side with them, because God sure doesn’t seem to be on my side. ”

Father Adamson was aghast.

“Well, if that’s how you feel, why come to a church? Why not a bar, or a strip club, or an alley?”

“I’ve been to those places. They’re all loud, or smelly, or, uh, distracting. So I thought about it, and I figured that the one place no one else would be on a Sunday morning was church.”

“OK. So why not simply stay home? You must have had a reason to come here.”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I figured if no one was going to church anymore, you’d probably had a good supply of wine on hand that isn’t going to any particular use, and I’m an old man with not much savings. I can’t be blowing my money on booze. So, I came here. Want to get fucked up?”

Chapter Eighteen

2009-11-15T15:44:00.001-08:00

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. - W. Somerset Maugham

Chapter 18

Death had not, in fact, quit her job. She was simply too depressed to get out of bed and do it. She was currently in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to “The Sound of Silence,” by Simon and Garfunkel.

People writing songs that voices never share/And no one dared/Disturb the sound of silence, they sang.

“Fucking right,” Death said, and sighed deeply. She rolled over and buried her head in her pillow.

She had the curtains to her bedroom drawn, but it was a bright day and there was plenty of light in her room to show her that her home wasn’t really her home. Her walls were white and bare. The bed had white sheets and a light brown blanket. The carpet was beige. In the corner was a nondescript desk with two drawers. Her clipboard and stopwatch were on top of the desk.

The night before she was to collect James King, she’d had a bit of time and sat down to plan out the exact manner of his death. She’d thought his previous death, the one he’d talked her out of, had been pretty spectacular. A lot of planning had gone in to the series of events that led to that particular demise. All that work. Wasted.

And she thought about how much care she put into every death, really. She really tried to make sure everyone had a fitting death, one that would cap their life perfectly. Of course, perfect was a judgement call, and more of an art than a science. She felt each death was a task too important to just leave to chance and convenience, however.

But did anyone appreciate it? Rarely. Frequently the souls would just wordlessly, or almost wordlessly, follow her out of the world. Sometimes someone would appreciate her work. Sometimes they were happy to see her. Sometimes they were furious, or exasperating.

But ultimately, few of them really cared at all about the work that went into their passing.

What’s the point? she wondered. This is my great work? This is all busy work, really. I’m not ever going to be done. I have no goal to reach. There’s always going to be another person to kill.

That last thought hit her hard.

I’m never going to be done, she thought. Never. Not until this planet crashes into the sun. And that’s assuming these people haven’t figured out a way to escape that fate by then.

She’d looked around at her barren room. She’d last been in the room two years previously. She hadn’t eaten in ages. And no one cared if she was doing a good job or not. She could just hit randomly hit each client with a shovel over the head, with no precision or planning, and no one would really notice or be able to tell the difference.

What was the point, then?

And so, that night Death had turned off her cell phone, climbed into her bed, and stayed put. The next day, around noon, she had wandered into her kitchen to find out if she had any food in the house. She didn’t.

She’d grabbed a phonebook, and called the closest Chinese restaurant that delivered. She ordered sesame chicken, sweet & sour pork, and two orders of cream cheese wontons, then waited near the door until the delivery man arrived. She took this feast back to her bedroom, and ate.

It was glorious.

After that, she’d put on some music and climbed back under the covers.

Apart from calling out every few hours for more food, she had not left her bedroom since the night she was supposed to collect James.

If she’d checked her phone, she would have noticed there were a lot of calls from a lot of different gods wondering what the hell was going on. But her phone was off, and stayed that way.

Death needed some “me” time.

Chapter Seventeen

2009-11-15T15:08:00.001-08:00

Death is life’s answer to the question “Why?” - Graffito

Chapter 17

In a stunning display of each modern government’s complete inability to act reasonably, total war had broken out world wide. Every country was busily invading every other country, despite the fact that the only casualties suffered in any given place were buildings and military equipment. The soldiers were all just fine, if perhaps a little better ventilated than they had been previously.

As such, it was no longer unusual to encounter a gun battle on one’s way to work. The evening news shows were full of details about the war effort, as well as the amazing cessation of death. No one had died in a hospital, on a battlefield or, really, anywhere for a couple of weeks.

James and Jill arrived at the lab a little late that Tuesday morning. All the tires had been shot on both of their cars, and the buses had stopped running because the city could no longer afford to replace windows and tires.

As they approached the door to the office, they saw it had been kicked in sometime prior to their arrival. The two of them rushed inside, perhaps foolishly, to see what damage had been done, and if anything critical was missing.

Two of the lab techs were sitting in the reception area playing a game of gin rummy.

“Hi,” one of them said. “The lab equipment and chemicals are all gone. They left the computers though, and didn’t touch any of the filing cabinets.”

Well, that answers the important questions, James thought. As long as their lab notes and results were OK, everything else could be recreated with ease.

“Are you the only two here?” Jill asked the lab techs.

“Yep. I hope you don’t mind, but we took the liberty of sending the rest of the crew home. We volunteered to hang out until you showed up, since neither of you could be bothered to turn your cell phones on this morning.”

James took out his phone and discovered that it was, indeed, off. He turned it on and saw they had tried to call several times.

“Sorry about that,” James said. “So is everyone OK? No one got hurt did they?”

“Nope. Tina arrived first this morning and saw the door bashed in. She didn’t go inside until the rest of us arrived. No one was in here when we came in.”

“Good,” James said. He was about to send the lab techs home as well, since there really wasn’t anything for them to do - the lab and office were surprisingly tidy for having been through a break in - when he heard the phone in his office ringing. “Uh, excuse me a minute.”

James walked quickly to his office and answered the phone.

“James, you’re not going to believe this!” said the voice on the other end of the line. It was one of the investors. He had been keeping close tabs on the drug testing process, eager to get the new product into the hands of salespeople as soon as possible.

“It had better be pretty awesome news to cheer me up,” James said. “Our labs have been broken in to, and the thieves made off with all of our chemicals and lab equipment.”

“That sucks! We’ll cut you a check to get some replacements as soon as possible.”

James couldn’t believe he’d heard that; the investors never said “Well, we’ll just cut you a check.” He listened more attentively.

“So, what’s the good news then?” James asked.

“Your drug has already been approved for sale!” the investor practically shouted. “I can’t believe it! We can get to work right away!”

“You have to be joking!” James said. “It takes years to get through the testing process.”

“Apparently they expedited the process for you.”

“How did they manage that?”

“I don’t know! Maybe it’s due to the war. Maybe it’s because they figure you can’t kill anyone. The important thing is that we’re all about to become very, very rich. A bit of market research has shown that people are, in fact, interested in a male birth control pill, as well as a cure for cancer.”

No shit, Sherlock, thought James. What he said, however, was, “That’s fantastic!”

The two of them discussed a couple of minor things, then James hung up the phone and went out to tell everyone the good news. He went into the lobby where Jill was now also playing gin rummy with the lab techs.

“You guys aren’t going to believe this! We’ve already completed testing and been approved to start production!”

Jill and the lab techs looked at him blankly for a minute, then erupted into cheers.

“I can’t believe it,” Jill said. “This is too fast.”

“I guess they figure we can’t really kill anybody, so there’s no problem.”

“Woah,” Jill said.

“Yeah, I know. So, I say we lock this place up as well as we can and call it a day,” James said.

“What about all our lab gear? Aren’t you going to call the police?” one of the techs said.

“Nah. The investors are going to give us the money to replace the missing equipment and supplies. I doubt the police are going to find any of our gear anyway,” James said.

“Don’t you want to cover your ass? What if the people who stole our lab are using the equipment to make crystal meth?”

“Have you noticed the shooting and constant explosions around here lately?” James asked. “I think they’re going to be a little preoccupied with that kind of stuff right now.”

“Still,” the tech said.

“Don’t worry about it. Everything is going to be alright.” James said.

“I very much doubt that,” the tech said.

“I kind of agree,” Jill said. “The right person could use that equipment to make a lot of nasty stuff. Haven’t you noticed the people walking around carrying bits of themselves? It doesn’t look pleasant. Just because you’re not dead doesn’t mean you can’t be severely injured or sickened. I’d hate to feel responsible for that if some wise ass used our gear to make bombs, or something.”

James hadn’t considered that possibility. “Yeah, OK, I’ll call the police.”

He took out his phone and called the local police station. The call lasted all of thirty seconds.

“Police,” said a tired voice on the other end of the line. It sounded as though the person speaking hadn’t slept for more than an hour in three days.

“Uh, yes, this is James King. I’m here at my office and our laboratory equipment and chemicals have all been stolen.”

“That sure does suck, Mr. King. I’ll tell the boys to keep their eyes peeled for lab glass and chemicals while they’re out there trying to maintain some kind of order around here,” the officer said.

“Uh. OK. Thanks,” James said and ended the call. “Well, we let them know,” he said to Jill and the techs.

“That had to be the fastest theft report ever taken,” Jill said.

“Yeah, he seemed really concerned about it. So, what do you say we all go see if the mexican place down the street is open for lunch? My treat!” James said.

James found a length of chain and a padlock in the trunk of his car. He felt it was good to be prepared and his trunk reflected that value; there was a wide array of useful items hiding in there. He and one of the lab techs muscled the door back into place and chained it shut as well as they could. Then the four of them set off in search of a decent plate of nachos.

Holy Rollers - Immortals

Table of Contents

Chapter Thirty Five

Chapter Thirty Four

Chapter Thirty Three

Chapter Thirty Two

Chapter Thirty One

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Twenty Nine

Chapter Twenty Eight

Chapter Twenty Seven

Chapter Twenty Six

Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Seventeen