Chapter 14

Nations fell. Tim had expected no less. Regardless of the superiority to American’s the citizens of other nations felt, the fact remained that the Earth is chock full of the stupidest, most easily led shit heads to occupy the highest point on the food chain for a given planet. Sure, sure, the New Paradigm had to kill a fair number of people, but not as many as one might expect.

The resistance of a few pagans barely concerned Tim. He knew that he didn’t need to round them up and kill them all. A few examples were all it would take to keep the rest of them in line. Soon enough the urge to force conformity would overtake the citizens of his new world and the pagan issue would be neatly handled without a thought on his part.

Tim’s thoughts were presently better served by plotting his next moves. His rise to power was moving along faster than he’d expected. He already had the whole of Europe under his control. China was a significant challenge, but not insurmountable. After all, little could oppose the will of Tim, and positive thinking was Tim’s trademark.

So for the most part, Tim was pleased. His operation ran almost without any input from him, which freed him to worry about other things.

Like getting Hephaestus, Scroat and Pan. Tim was more than a little annoyed at the trio’s ability to slip away from him. At first they were just another part of his plan, but now seeing them all killed was a personal mission of his.

He couldn’t believe that, even though they’d been close enough for him to catch them himself several times, the various agencies he controlled couldn’t find a trace of them.

***

Hep, Scroat and Pan were walking back to the hotel from a bar. A short distance ahead of them, the crossing arms at an intersection of a railroad and the street they were on dropped, and the red lights flashed. They heard the train’s horn blowing as it approached.

Something behind them shone an intensely bright light on the trio, casting their shadows in front of them in sharp detail. Hep turned to look, and saw a white van and True Believers jumping out of it.

“Run for it,” Hep said to Pan and Scroat. They hustled towards the train crossing. The train was already slowly crossing the street, blocking their escape.
Scroat pointed to a rusty yellow grain car on the far side of the street.

“That one!” he said. They ran and grabbed on to the grain car as it passed them. They pulled themselves up onto the rear platform of the car, and turned back to look and see if the True Believers were following them.

For the time being it looked like the True Believers were only shaking their fists at them and watching them roll away.

“That was close!” Pan yelled over the din the empty grain car made. Hep and Scroat nodded, and tried to settle in a bit on the platform they were riding on. After a few minutes, the train began to accelerate again. The train was headed west, for now. Soon they were traveling quickly enough that conversation was impossible over the noise of the cars and the wind.

I wonder where we’re going to end up, Hep thought. Soon the constant noise seemed soothing, and Hep fell asleep.

Pan and Scroat, meanwhile, both stayed away and watched the urban scenery give way to open land and heavy woods. Scroat crossed his arms and legs and huddled against the chill of the night. Pan appeared content, and sang to himself, even though his singing was inaudible.

They felt the train slow occasionally, as it crossed roads and passed through dark railyards, but didn’t the train didn’t stop all night.

Hep woke up as the sky began to lighten. Pan and Scroat, on the other hand, had just fallen asleep. Hep wasn’t able to see the sun rise, but from the shadows outside the train, he figured they were still heading west. He was sore, and wished there was room to stretch.

Hep watched the scenery, as well as he could, and wondered how much longer the train was going to keep traveling before they stopped to change crews. Scroat was stirring when a ferret popped into existence. Due to the confined space, it wound up at Scroat’s feet. Scroat, being only half awake, gave a hysterical little scream and kicked it off the platform they were riding on. The ferret fell off the back of the train onto the tracks.

“Oh, real nice, Scroat,” Hep said.

“What?” Scroat yelled, holding one ear.

Hep just shook his head and went back to watching the scenery. Soon, the train slowed. When it was moving slow enough for them to safely jump off, they did. They had to hike a short ways, and they found a road. They walked west until they saw a sign informing them they were in Decatur, Illinois. First Illinois Home of Abraham Lincoln, read a sign. Soybean Capital of the World, read another.

“Well, if you’d asked me earlier this week, I wouldn’t have guessed we’d end up here,” Pan said.

“No shit,” Scroat said. “How is it I always end up in the middle of fucking nowhere with you, Hep?”

“Good luck, I guess. No one else would put up with your shit,” Hep said.

“So what should we do now?” Pan asked, looking around at what they could see of the city. It was kind of charming, in a stuck-in-the-middle-of-Illinois sort of way.

“Get breakfast,” Hep said. Pan and Scroat agreed that breakfast was definitely a high priority, and the three were glad to quickly find the Downtown Café. They ate and drank as much coffee as they could hold before paying the tab and leaving.

They wandered further west. Standing on a street corner was a man who appeared homeless, dispensing obscure tax and general financial advice to anything that would listen. At the moment he was explaining to a fire hydrant the finer points underground urban economics. Hep listened for a bit, and was shocked when he realized the man’s ideas were fairly sound. More proof that crazy and stupid are not the same thing, he thought.

The three gods crossed the street and made it about halfway down the block before they stopped and almost in unison asked each other, “Where the fuck are we going now?”

***

Dan spent the night, or what he assumed was the night, listening to the President in the cell next to his digging through the wall on the other side of his cell. Dan expected that the President’s spoon was going to have to wear out soon, and he couldn’t wait. The scratchy scraping noises were going to drive him insane. Well, more insane than he presently could claim.

Almost worse than the noise the President was making were the toys who kept cursing at him and telling him to make the noisy neighbor knock it off.

Every now and then the president would stop digging, and he’d swear he could hear several voices in the room next to him. He hoped madness wasn’t catching this year. He continued digging, and soon enough a small hole opened in the wall. Light streamed into his cell from the room next to his. He put his eye up to the hole, and was surprised to see Tim standing very close to the wall, looking back at him.

“Hello, Mr. President. Late for a party, are we?” Tim asked, before pushing his hand through the hole in the wall, widening it, and grabbing the president by the throat. Tim pulled his arm back through the wall, hard, bouncing the President’s head off the wall and knocking him unconscious.

He went with a couple of guards and unlocked the President’s cell. They turned on the lights, and the guards grabbed the President and dragged him off to another cell. Tim stayed in the cell an extra moment, looking around, and noticed the hole into Dan’s cell. He took a closer look, and noticed what could only be a Hamburglar action figure looking back at him from the wall.

The Hamburglar flipped Tim the bird, then ducked back into dark of the cell.

Tim paused and wondered if he’d actually been given the finger by a Happy Meal toy. He decided that the prisoners would no longer get Happy Meals, then and there. He gathered a couple more guards, then pulled Dan from his cell. Tim had just had a brilliant idea.

***

Hep, Scroat and Pan sat at the Decatur bus terminal, trying to figure out where they should go next. It was only a matter of time until a True Believer spotted them again.

“We should go back to D.C. and make sure those two mopey fuckin’ pagans are ok,” Scroat said.

“That’s oddly charitable of you, Scroat,” Pan said.

“No, I just want to get into Sarah’s pants,” Scroat said quickly.

Hep put his head back, trying to come up with a plan, any plan. For all it mattered, they could go to Disneyworld next. At least it would be a plan.

They heard a pop, and Dan’s dead, disembodied head appeared on the bench next to them.

Gotcha! Love, Tim, was written on Dan’s forehead.

“Dan?” Hep asked. Dan’s head didn’t respond. He was definitely completely dead. He looked around the bus terminal to see if anyone else had noticed the head on the bench next to the three dirty, weird guys. So far, it appeared they were in the clear. The three gods looked around for something suitable to wrap Dan’s head in, but were only able to find a paper grocery bag that had seen better days.

“Sorry about this, Dan,” Hep said, and put the head in the bag.

“Now what?” Pan asked.

“Now we find a place to bury or burn this, and go and find Tim,” Hep said.