Chapter 15

Hep managed to get in touch with Sarah, and told her about Dan’s untimely demise. Sarah, in turn, got in touch with every pagan should could find, and talked most of them into traveling to Washington D.C. and enacting justice, vendetta-style.

Hep, Scroat and Pan, meanwhile, hopped on the earliest Greyhound headed towards Washington D.C.

They boarded their bus around six o’clock p.m. along with a colorful bunch of drug addicts, ex-convicts, students, retirees and others who had decided not to try flying the friendly skies. There wasn’t a track suit to be seen among the bus passengers, which calmed Hep, Scroat and Pan considerably. The bus left the station.

Seconds after merging on to the freeway, the driver announced that there was a mechanical problem with the bus, and they would have to return to the station to change busses. There were several groans and curses from the passengers. Hep, meanwhile, was wary. Were there going to be a bunch of True Believers waiting for them when they got back to the station?

His anxiety increased the closer they got to the station. He was certain they were being delivered straight to Tim. On the one hand, it would be nice to just get the inevitable confrontation over with, but on the other hand, Hep wished they’d have had some more time to prepare.

The bus reached the station, and stopped. The passengers filed off the bus. Hep looked around when he got off the bus. There were no officials to be seen, apart from the guy who sold them their tickets. He was fast asleep behind his counter.

Apparently it wasn’t a trap; Greyhound just sucks.

A few minutes later, they boarded the new bus. The stink coming from the toilet was already nauseating, and it was obvious the bus had not been cleaned since it delivered its previous load of travelers.

This is going to be a fun trip, Hep thought.

The bus departed again, and they were on their way a mere forty five minutes after they were scheduled to leave. A couple a few seats ahead of them argued, loudly and at great length, over topics of such little importance that Scroat was tempted to slap both of them silly. In the interest of keeping a low-profile, however, he stayed in his seat and tried to think happy thoughts.

The ride was bumpy, and the combination of uncomfortable seats, constant bouncing, stale air and mingling odors of common humanity were making Hep rather ill. He focused on breathing calmly and slowly, and tried not to vomit all over the passengers seated in front of him. It was a struggle, but he managed.

Pan, for his part, fell asleep the second the bus started moving and hadn’t stirred since.

For a while, Hep looked out the window, but his neck started to ache from twisting to one side for so long so he stopped. There hadn’t been a darn thing to see anyways, except for boring nothing as far as the eye could see. Every now and then he’d see some boring buildings, or maybe they’d cross a boring bridge. Once they passed a farm packed full of stinky, boring cows. The new odor was interesting in its way, but generally didn’t improve the quality of the trip.

They stopped at a truck stop, and Hep, Scroat and Pan got off the bus to get some breathable air. Thick with exhaust and other mechanical smells, the air outside the bus was still preferable to that inside the bus.

Pan went into the convenience store at the truck stop and came back out a few minutes later with various snacks and beverages.

“Do you guys want anything yet?” Pan asked.

Hep and Scroat both shook their heads no. Scroat just wasn’t hungry, and Hep was worried about the dangers of combining food in his stomach and the chunder-inducing atmosphere of the bus.

Too soon, it was time to get back on the bus and roll on. Somehow, the smell seemed to have worsened. Mercifully, the couple who had been arguing fell asleep, so everyone was spared their cantankerous discussion regarding who took the bigger half of the bag of M&Ms.

Three hours down the road, the bus driver pulled in and stopped at a gas station. He announced that the bus was having mechanical difficulty, and they’d have to wait for a new bus to be delivered. In the mean time, everyone was free to get off the bus.

Hep, Scroat and Pan made for the exit immediately, along with the other passengers. Once off the bus, they walked around the parking lot and stretched their legs. Hep noticed a few people who were trying, and failing, to look like they weren’t watching them.

One of the people watching them, a tall guy with a beard wearing a plaid shirt, started to walk towards them. Hep was ready to punch him and run, if he had to, so he was surprised when the guy asked “Are you Hephaestus?”

Hep took a moment to decide how to answer, then said, “Yes.” He expected the goons in track suits to pop out any second.

“Do you guys need a ride to D.C.?” the guy asked.

“Who are you?” Hep asked in return.

“Adam. I’m a friend of Dan’s,” he said. “We’re in the van over there, if you need a lift. There will be plenty of room.” He pointed to a brown full size van on the other side of the parking lot.

“How did you know we’d be here?” Pan asked.

“That was just luck,” Adam said. “We’re heading to D.C. because Sarah called us and mentioned something about bloody retribution. Sounded like a good time, so we figured we’d better get our asses out there.”

“We have to introduce this guy to Ares,” Pan said under his breath to Hep.

The interior of the van was pretty nice. It had dark carpet, mood lighting, blinds and cushy captain’s chairs. It also smelled significantly better than the bus had. Adam drove and two other pagans were traveling with him. One of them was a portly gentleman who could best be described as hairy. The other was a slight, bespectacled woman with mousy hair. Neither of them said much, though occasionally they’d look back at Hep, Scroat and Pan as though they thought the gods might just disappear any second.

The stress of the last day finally overwhelmed the three gods, and they fell asleep in the back of the van. They woke up again somewhere in Pennsylvania

“Hey, man, are we going to stop soon? I gotta piss like a racehorse,” Scroat called up to Adam.

Adam looked back at him in the rear view mirror. “Yeah, we’ve got to stop for gas pretty soon.”

They reached the gas station and pulled up to the pumps. Hep peeked out through the blinds in the back of the van, and saw several people wearing track suits. They all looked a little too blissful to just be normal folks with bad taste in clothing.

“Hey, there’s a bunch of Tim’s goons out there,” he said.

“Oh, fuck, I really gotta go,” Scroat said. He leaned forward and clenched his knees together for emphasis.

“Here, use this,” Adam said, and handed an empty plastic soda bottle back to him. Scroat regarded Adam with loathing for a moment, then his eyes twinkled.

“Thanks, buddy,” Scroat said. Adam and the pagans got out of the van. Adam started fueling the van, while the other two went into the gas station. Scroat voided into the bottle, and sighed with relief.

Once the pagans were back in the car, Scroat asked Adam, “Hey, can you drive past those idiots in track suits?”

“Um, sure,” Adam said. He started the van and rolled past the True Believers. Scroat flung the side door of the van open and threw the bottle he was holding at them. It hit one of them, a tall blond guy who was looking at the van with pure surprise, square in the forehead. Scroat pulled the door shut again, cackling wildly.

“Did you really just huck a bottle of piss at that guy’s head?” Pan asked.

“I did, and hit him too,” Scroat answered, then started laughing again. Hep looked out the back window as they left the parking lot and saw the True Believers wiping the unfortunate recipient of Scroat’s gift with paper towels.

Before long they were back in the District of Columbia and they arrived at the bar Sarah had suggested as a meeting place. The bar was dark, run down and, most importantly, empty. Sarah and Chris were waiting in the darkest booth in the back of the bar nursing a couple of beers.

They greeted each other, and Sarah filled Hep in on her plan to gather the pagans for an uprising against the New Paradigm.

Hep excused himself to use the phone. He tried to reach Ares, but there was no answer. He was able to reach Sekhmet and Thor, however. They both promised to be there as soon as possible. He went back to the booth and had a beer with the rest of the group. As the evening progressed more and more pagans arrived, and soon the bar was packed. The bartender was surprised at the crowd, since it was a Tuesday, but they kept buying drinks, so he was happy to serve them.

***
Two True Believers waited at the Washington D.C. Greyhound terminal. They expected the bus carrying the three gods to arrive any time. A couple of other New Paradigm operatives had nearly caught the gods in Illinois, but had been just a little too slow.

Tim had promised them the key to divinity if they succeeded, so they were determined to not let Hephaestus, Scroat and Pan slip past them.

The bus terminal was filthy, and full of sketchy looking people. The pair of track suit wearing True Believers stood out like rubber duckies floating in a cesspool.

“I thought I’d find you guys here,” a menacing voice said behind them. They turned and saw a muscular god dressed in black leather only inches behind them.

“Waiting for Hep and the gang, are we? Well, to pass the time, why don’t we play a game? This one is called I Love The Laws of Physics,” Ares said.

The True Believers blinked at him, startled and confused. Ares grabbed each of their heads in one of his hands and slammed their skulls together, resulting in an incredibly oogy mess. Anywhere else in the world, the other patrons of Greyhound might have noticed, but in D.C. everyone just kept walking like nothing had happened.

“That law is one of my favorites: two objects can not occupy the same space at the same time,” Ares said. He let go of the sinewy bits he was hanging on to and the bodies of two former True Believers fell on the floor of the terminal.

Ares walked away shaking his head.

“No one ever expects a god to know the laws of science,” he muttered.