Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End (20 page)

His eyes meet mine with
indifference. I peer over his clipboard, and notice that it is just
a series of check boxes. The details of our lives reduced to
multiple choice questions.

“
Why do they think I can save them?” I ask.

“
Who are ‘they’?”

“
The other patients. They think I can save them.”

“
Do you?”

Before I can answer, I’m
wheeled out of the room again, as the doctor nonchalantly makes a
couple tick marks on his psychological tic-tac-toe
board.

“
We’re all just being processed,” I say to the orderly, as he
leaves me in the cell with my invisible, dead friend. “Ground to
cement.”

The orderly doesn’t make
any sign he’s heard me. Now that I think of it, I’ve never seen
their faces.

We’re all alone here. Truly
and utterly alone.

Without an identity or a
past to hide behind, all I have is words. As this asylum sands me
down, even they begin to falter, clicking and whirring like rusted,
purposeless machines. Empty shells, the Qlippoth. Still, my mind
manufactures an endless supply of words that – barely – blots out
the annihilation of everything unique or meaningful. Empty shells,
maybe, but they are keeping me alive.

These monsters may have
broken the other inmates, but I feel something inside me that can’t
be chewed up and homogenized. I focus on that part of me, feel it
grow stronger. I feed it everything else in me, cannibalize myself.
Focus on that center, the center of the labyrinth. Find
it.

–

Again, I face the doctor.
“I'm on to you,” I say.

“
What?” he says. His face, usually devoid of human emotion,
shows the slightest sliver of concern.

“
I had a dream the other night that I woke up, dizzy and
nauseous. You see, in the
dream
I woke up. So I was confused. I thought that the
dream was my waking life, and my waking life was the
dream.”

“
Have you been taking your medication?”

“
No, listen. You’ll like this. I felt something inside of me
that was indigestible. Indestructible. Timeless. But it was inside
me, I mean literally inside of me. I had swallowed it. My
stomach...it ballooned out like a condom bloated with
cocaine.”

My stomach began to bulge
and contort. I took my hand and raised it over my head
dramatically. The doctor writhed in fear.

“
I shoved my hand down my throat...my whole hand...and vomited
up an iridescent rainbow. It shredded my insides as it lurched out
of me, a hailstorm of diamonds and esophagus. And so–”

With a sound like a cat
hacking up a hairball, thousands of diamonds poured from my mouth,
clattering wetly to the ground all around me. The doctor ducked
behind his desk.

“
I woke up laughing. You can’t digest me. You have no idea who
you’re dealing with. Coming for
me
? I’m coming for you. Do you hear
me? I’M COMING FOR YOU.”

I grabbed the doctor and
began cramming diamonds down his throat.

Dionysus woke up in his
bunk, laughing hysterically. “I am coming for you!”

He rolled over, his hand
naturally finding the spot where Ariadne normally slept. All he
found was her favorite T-shirt. He blinked, and then frowned before
he balled it up and held it close to his face.

Loki pushed back the
curtains. “What are you going on about?”

Dionysus shook his head.
“Dream. But listen. In the hotel...the night we met Ariadne. She
told me...She said Lilith told her something about all of us being
forgetful Demigods.”

“
All of us? Like, everyone?”

“
Well, no. But you, me, Ariadne, Lilith...She brushed it off,
but I could tell something happened in that bathroom that really
got into her.”

“
Just Lilith’s magical mystery pillow talk. And possibly her
tongue,” Loki tried to smile, but it broke. “Look, she’s gone. They
both are.”

“
No. Listen. I remember. The men that put us in the asylum in
the first place, the men that are hunting us now: they are agents
of the same...entity. I think I just called it out.” Dionysus lay
down and stared at the ceiling. “And what rough beast, its hour
come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be
born?”

Loki thought. On the one
hand, it was possible his best friend was losing his mind. On the
other...No, he was probably losing his mind. “This is where I’m
supposed to call you crazy and get back to work,
but...
look
. Is
this revelation going to help you fight a war against the flesh and
blood agents that are likely hunting for us right now?”

“
Probably not,” Dionysus said.

“
Then it changes nothing, so...Shut up. Win today. Play
demigod tomorrow.”

Dionysus nodded. “I miss
her already.”

“
I know.”

They headed for the desert.
The most desolate, empty badlands they could find. And there, in
the shadows cast from the Martian plateau landscape, they buried
her. Everything around them was silent, implacable. Hungry and
patient. Nothing would be spared the thirst of the howling wind.
The lizards sat and waited for carrion. They had time.

Dionysus cleared his
throat, and spoke after they had interred her body.

“
I remember something Ariadne said to me once. She had been
looking into the myths around the name that she took, and
discovered that in Greek myth Ariadne and Dionysus were married.
That she died...” He looked off for a long moment before he could
bring himself to continue. “...and that, later, Dionysus went all
the way to the underworld to recover her and his dead mother.
Ariadne took it seriously, she told me I had to promise her that I
would always come after her, always find her. I thought it was...I
thought it was both sweet and kind of foolish. But it was how she
was, and I loved her for it. I made the promise, for what it’s
worth. I said ‘always will I search for you, always will I find
you.’ Cheesy. I thought it was silly, but I meant what I said.
Right before she died, she said she’d see me again. This is what
she was talking about. She died believing it. I guess I’m going to
have to, as well.”

Dionysus tried to say
something more, but his voice broke, and they could only stand in
awkward silence, eyes downcast.

They went back into the
Behemoth. Plan was to get a good night’s sleep and then fuck off to
whatever hole they could hide in.

The survivors mourned in
their own ways. Dionysus sorted through Ariadne’s few belongings.
Cody played his guitar obsessively. Jesus was meditating,
occasionally taking hits off of a glass pipe. Loki lay on the
floor, stiff as a board and snoring, softly.

“
Uh oh. You want to see this,” Artemis said, looking out the
window.

Loki abruptly sprung to his
feet and ran to the door. Jesus almost choked on her hit and glared
at him.

He opened the door, and
froze. “YOU FUCKING STUPID BASTARDS!” he screamed.

As though approaching a
dangerous animal, Dionysus reached out to touch him on the
shoulder.

“
We’re dead,” Loki said. “Look. They’re all fucking
dead.”

All of them were at the
window now. Throughout the nearby canyons, they could see vehicles
arriving as the sun set. Tents going up. Rifle racks coming out of
SUVs. People doing yoga. The flicker of campfires. Pleasant
conversation and laughter.

Somehow their fans had
found them, again. Downside of driving a bumble-bee striped
monstrosity. Loki found nothing funny about it anymore. His
shoulders shook with rage.

“
That’s fucking murder. That’s...hundreds. Thousands of people
who are going to turn this into some stupid gesture. Man the
barricades, hippies! Let’s transcend humanity, man! Let’s all die
for liberty! The Grand-Fucking-Gesture. We’re dead. We’re
surrounded. We’re buried.”

“
Hey,” Dionysus said.

“
The one thing a State can kill, the one thing it can handle,
is an army. It’s what they do. It’s their damn job. You and your
god-damned cult, peasant crusade bullshit...”

“
Hey,” Dionysus said, more emphatically. Loki stopped and
collected himself.

“
Yeah. Sorry. It’s just...I tried.”

“
I know.”

“
I did my best. I did. I...”

“
Rode a tidal wave into an iceberg.”

Loki grinned. “Something
like that.” He flicked his cigarette. “See that? They’ll say a
falling star marked the hour of your passing. You poor, martyred
bastard.”

“
A little respect for the dead, if you please.”

“
Loki. If we disappear,” Dionysus said. “Then maybe they’ll be
left alone.”

“
Delaying the inevitable at best.” Loki shook his head. “The
Grand Gesture. Fine. This ain’t Megiddo, but it’ll do.”

“
Ready to die like a God?” Dionysus asked.

Loki shrugged. “I was born
ready. Artemis, get me a topographical map of the surrounding
area.”

Silence fell on the cabin
for several minutes. Jesus eyed Dionysus. “I heard what you said
from your bunk.”

“
Yeah?” Dionysus asked.

“
Every time,” Jesus said cryptically.

“
Huh?”

“
It ends in blood. Every god damned time.”

Loki inspected the map. He
and Artemis started circling areas. “Ain't ended yet,” he said over
his shoulder.

“
Nailed up, torn up, hacked up, shot up...” Jesus
continued.

“
Slow down,” Dionysus said.

“
I've been poisoned. Beaten. Do you know how many times
Christians have killed their own savior? I've been staked out for
lions.”

“
Tigers. The stakes were your own spears, which you raised
against our father,” Loki muttered, not paying attention to his own
words.

“
Wait. What did you just say?” Dionysus asked.

“
Huh?” Loki asked, genuinely confused. “I didn't say
anything.”

Jesus and Dionysus eyed
each other. Dionysus put his hand on Jesus' shoulder. “Hey, walk
with me.”

The two of them made their
way out the door of the Behemoth, eventually sitting on a
rock.

“
Why do they kill us every time?” Jesus asked. “I know it's
crazy, but I'm willing to admit it now. It'd be stranger for us to
be simultaneously making this up. You know what I'm talking about.
I know you do. And you know how this ends.”

“
That's my point,” Dionysus said, “we know how this goes,
whether we know it or not.” He glanced back towards the Behemoth,
where they could see Loki and Artemis still deep in planning, and a
flock of girls gathering around them, taking orders.

“
But we know how it goes because we come back. We don't die.
Not really, not for long.”

“
I die every time,” Jesus said, looking up at fresh moon
above.

“
And you get up, every time. 'From thence to rule the quick
and the dead.' You bear their sins and die in the desert. I
synthesize a new order and have to go to the underworld to reclaim
what I've lost. Loki invests a net and they bind him with it.
Every. Time. And we keep coming back.”

“
Cycles. Circles. Over and over and I'm sick to fucking death
of it,” Jesus said.

“
Spirals. Not circles.”

“
Same difference, from the cross.”

“
No,” Dionysus said. “We're born into the world we made, don't
you see? We can’t help changing the world, we can’t not leave it
redeemed, redirected, empowered. No matter how many ways they dream
up to slaughter us, no matter how addled and useless we feel...
It’s like how a forest fire renews the Earth.”

“
The moral arc of the universe...”

“
Is way, way bigger than any of us.”

Jesus lit a smoke, and lay
on her back. “I think this time I want to explode, to burn, burn,
burn like a fabulous yellow roman candle exploding like a spider
across the stars...”

“
Huh?” Dionysus asked.

“
You'll see,” Jesus said, puffing away placidly.

From inside an armored SUV,
Trevino scanned the horizon with binoculars. He muttered a stream
of orders into his headset.