Chapter Thirty Four

Hephaestus woke up in Greece. Well, actually, he woke up in Olympus, but for all practical geographical purposes, he was back in Greece. He looked around a little bit and tried to get his bearings. When he realized where he was, he leapt up and yelled, “Fuck!”

Ares, who was sitting at a table nearby with Zeus and some of the other gods, looked over at him.

“So, you got killed in a auto accident, huh?” Ares asked. “Probably not the strategy I would have gone for. How did it work out?”

“I gotta go!” Hep said, and promptly vanished.

One of the main reasons Hep preferred travelling by motorcycle was the fact that riding is reasonably painless. Travelling by thought, on the other hand, always resulted in a massive hangover. It didn’t seem to bother Ares, for whatever reason, and a few of the other gods seemed to be fine with popping in and out of physical existence, but it gave Hep the kind of headache that starts wars.

Because of the excruciating pain, Hep only used teleportation in dire circumstances.

Hep popped back into existence in Cyrus’s house. Sarah was playing catch with Killer the parrot, and not her breasts as she’d said she was going to do when he’d left with Scroat, Cyrus and Nubbins. This was a relief. Sarah stopped playing with Killer, and stared at Hep with an expression of incredible surprise.

Hep said, “hey,” and then fell to the floor clutching his head and groaning in pain.

“Hep? What the fuck? Where’s everyone else?” Sarah asked.

Hep continued groaning and thumped his head on the floor a few times.


Everyone else, as it turned out, was dead. Well, that wasn’t completely true. They had all been killed, but Scroat was alive once again, back in Australia. Nubbins was alive and on his way back to Hell.

Cyrus was definitely dead, though, and on his way to Hell with Nubbins.

As they drove away from the strip club, a chunk of ice had come loose from a truck next to Cyrus’s car. The chunk of ice went under the Challenger, and knocked the exhaust system loose, sending it slipping and spinning across the road to rest in the gutter.

Cyrus, who was quite distracted by all the terrible things happening to his car, did not notice the red light, and drove directly in front of an eighteen wheeler carrying a load of bricks. The trucker was shaken, but fine. His truck was mostly undamaged. The Challenger, on the other hand, was thrown across the road and rolled, coming to rest on its roof.

“Whoa,” Scroat had said, and then the car burst into flames. As gods, upon their death Hep and Scroat just went back to their original home. For gods, physical death is kind of like pushing a reset button. Only with a lot more pain, most of the time.

Hep wasn’t sure if Cyrus had been alive or not when the car burst into flames, but Hep hoped he hadn’t been. Of the ways to die, incineration was pretty low on the list of most enjoyable ways to go.

Hep managed to sit up, still holding his head, and muttering under his breath. Sarah couldn’t hear him, but what he was saying was “Owie owie owie owie”

“Are you OK?” she asked him. “Where are Scroat and Cyrus?”

Just then, the phone rang. Sarah was the closest, so she answered it.

“Hey Sarah,” Scroat said.

“Scroat? Where are you?” Sarah asked, urgently.

“On the edge of the Australian outback,” Scroat said.

“Fuck you, I don’t have any patience for games right now,” Sarah said.

“I’m not playing games. I’m on the edge of the fucking bush in Australia. It’ll be a couple of days until I get back,” Scroat said.

“I don’t understand. That’s like a twenty four hour flight!” Sarah said.

“Ask Hep to explain. Look, I had to scrounge change for a pay phone, and international rates are a bit higher than...”

The phone clicked, and Sarah heard only the disconnected tone.

“What the fuck?” Sarah said, then turned to Hep. “Hep? What the fuck?”

The pain in Hep’s head had mellowed out enough for him to be able to speak again. He took a breath and said, “He’s on the edge of the outback, right?”

“Yeah, what the fuck is the deal?” Sarah said. She took a breath to really light into Hep with some intense questions, but he held up a hand before she could start and shook his head.

“OK, you know we’re gods already. We were just killed,” Hep said. Sarah’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to start asking even more questions. “Hang on,” Hep said.

Hep got up off the floor, and moved to the couch.

“OK, so we were just killed. Well, what do you think happens to a god on Earth who gets killed? He goes back to whatever origin he, or she, had. In my case, I go back to Olympus. Scroat is from Australia, so that’s where he ends up. Actually, I’m kind of surprised he called so quickly. Civilization must be moving further into the bush. The last time he got killed, I didn’t hear for him from several days, and he was mighty pissed off about having to hike through the wilderness.” Hep said.

“Well, how’s he going to get back here?” Sarah asked. “He’s in fucking Australia, without any of his stuff.”

“He’s got everything he needs, including the information he needs to withdraw cash from his bank account. He’ll get cash, he’ll catch a plane, and he’ll be back here swearing at us and being his usual crude self in a couple of days,” Hep said.

“How many times have you guys been killed?” Sarah asked.

“Me? Not so much. Scroat is always getting his dumb self killed though,” Hep said.


Scroat woke up in a very bad mood. He realized what had happened when he looked up and saw a couple of kangaroos looking at him with some curiosity.

“Fuck off,” Scroat said to the kangaroos.

“Blow me,” one of the kangaroos said in reply, and the pair hopped away.

“Fucking overgrown fucking jumping fucking bush fucking rats,” Scroat said. He stood up and brushed the dust off. He stood looking around for a minute or two, then turned and started walking east. He was surprised to find a road after only a couple minutes of walking, and even more surprised when a car came along shortly after that and offered him a lift to the next town.

All told, it took him less than an hour to get back to civilization. The last time this had happened, he’d had to hike through the bush for a few days before he’d finally reached a town. Happily, he hadn’t bumped into any of his relatives in a few hundred years. He still owed a bunch of money to a few of them, and it was probably best to simply avoid them.


“So what happened to Cyrus and Nubbins?” Sarah said.

“Well, obviously Cyrus died, and Nubbins escorted him to Hell,” Scroat said.

“So we’ve failed,” Sarah said.

“Not yet,” Hep said.

“What the hell are you talking about? He’s in Hell! I’d say we failed!” Sarah said.

“Well, we’ll just have to go and get him out of Hell, won’t we?” Hep said. “Well, not you. You’ll have to stay here. Sorry.”

Sarah thought about it for a minute, and said, “You know, I’m OK with staying here this time around.”

“It’s really for the best,” Hep said. “Hell is... difficult. I mean, I’d drag you through Hades in a heartbeat, assuming you wanted to go, but Hell is just nasty.”

“So how long did Scroat say it was going to be until he got back here?” Hep asked Sarah.

“A couple of days, he said,” Sarah told Hep.

“Well, until then we’ll just have to hope no one comes around looking for Cyrus,” Hep said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a nap.”