God Country Read online

  Like always, we needed a plan and fast.

  “Okay, guys.” I scanned the circle of faces. Sandwiched between Veronica and Jules was another relative newcomer, a soldier from the reinforcements who had joined us at Lincoln Tunnel. He and a small group of elite infantrymen had fought their way out of New York alongside us, earning him a place on our team. I looked at him first. “Reports, please. How are we doing?”

  Dan spoke with the easy confidence of a natural leader. Before it all went to hell, he’d been nowhere near top brass but now was the best they had. He had risen to the occasion with commendable dignity. “My men are in pretty fine spirits, all things considered,” he said. “That’s not to say it isn’t all absolute shit—it is. We’re up to our eyes in it, but no one’s complaining. This is what we’ve trained for.”

  “Ha,” Brax scoffed. “Humans of this age know nothing of war.”

  The soldier scratched the stubble on his jaw and said, “I think you guys know a little too much about it.” Without missing a beat, he continued. “I’ve taken the liberty of sending them out to patrol the perimeter, though I don’t recommend staying here for too much longer. I think one more night, max.”

  The demon scowled. He brushed off the slight but one hand tightened briefly into a fist.

  This newcomer is a man of action. I approve wholeheartedly.

  “That’s an incredibly optimistic estimate, Dan,” Veronica replied. “We’re ‘staying put’ because we have to. You and I aren’t representative of the whole group.” She turned to me. “People are scared to death, Vic. They’re also tired, hungry, sick, and wounded. We literally cannot move any faster than we have been, and even that is pushing it. The medical needs will only increase from here as the weather gets worse.”

  Maya nodded vigorously. “That’s what I’ve been saying, too. We’re putting a hell of a lot of folks at risk like this.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Dan spoke with urgent concern. “This isn’t a good spot to take our time. If we are attacked in the clearing, we’ll be overexposed and run the risk of massive casualties. If it happens on the move, people will scatter into the trees. The group might split, but they’d have a fighting chance for survival in the forest.”

  “For how long?” Jules entered the verbal fray. “That might be true for someone healthy, but we’re talking about children and the elderly as well as the sick and injured. We can’t be responsible for leaving them to fend for themselves.”

  The soldier frowned. “Of course we wouldn’t leave without them. As soon as it was safe, we’d round everyone up and continue.”

  “Why bother?” asked Brax. “It would be an opportunity to cull the herd, so to speak, and improve the odds for the rest.”

  Maya glared at him. “Don’t say that. No one gets left behind.”

  He folded his arms disapprovingly but didn’t argue.

  “The question we should address,” Steph chimed in, “is how to maximize the chances of survival for everyone most efficiently. I personally believe our defense force, however small it may be, is currently more than capable of repelling attacks. I suggest we focus on searching for somewhere we can hunker down, fortify our position, and tend to those who need it.”

  Deacon agreed. “The thing is, everyone’s right. We’re too vulnerable here, but we can’t march these poor refugees all across the country. It’d defeat the purpose of saving them in the first place. I say we scout ahead and see if we can find somewhere that might work. There has to be a suitable place around here.”

  “Vic?” Jules touched my arm. “You’ve been quiet. What do you think?”

  I drew in a deep breath of dense, cold forest air. The river continued to rush in the background of my thoughts, filling my head with more white noise. “I’m…not sure.”

  What I really wanted to do was simple: I wanted to station Dan’s men on guard at the camp, take my team, and search for the source of the continuing problems. Even if there were no official gods in charge at the moment, I knew they had to be out there, and they were probably watching. I wanted to find them, and when we found them, I wanted to open multiple cans of whoop-ass in their otherworldly faces.

  Not the most elegant plan, but it sure would’ve made me feel a whole lot better. As it stood, I understood that my heart’s brute force desire was all but impossible. I was at the head of the pack, meaning I had a responsibility to do the right thing. Unfortunately, it was also up to me to decide exactly what the “right thing” was. The pressure felt like an elephant doing cartwheels on my shoulders. It would be so easy to do something very, very wrong.

  “Vic?” Jules said my name again, her periwinkle eyes darkening with a hint of worry. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure.” The roots of a headache threatened to wind themselves around my temples. I’d begun to warm up to the idea of leadership in a selective sense. I could deal with my little band of badasses. Having to steer this whole massive ship was never something I had wanted.

  Fighting evil monsters was so much easier than being a leader. Send a herd of centaurs at me, and I barely had to think. Swarm me with vampires, and I’d turn them all to dust. Ask me to make decisions regarding a hundred helpless people, and I stumbled around in the dark, unable to find any answers.

  Then again, I knew I had no choice. Ultimately, I had made the decision to save as many as I could. There was no one to take my place if I abandoned them.

  It felt shitty, like I was copping out of something I should’ve been able to handle on the spot, but the gravity of it all made my brain spin.

  “We only want what’s best for everyone involved,” Veronica said.

  “There is no blanket solution,” Brax interrupted brusquely. “You humans are too soft and accommodating. Allow sacrifices to be made for the greater good. That is what it means to succeed.”

  “Careful,” Dan warned. “Not everyone’s definition of success includes a body count.”

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” said Brax, “but ours already does.”

  “And I would change that in a heartbeat if I could,” Veronica replied. Her eyes grew bright and piercing. “Don’t talk to me like I’m an ignorant know-nothing, even if you think I am. You’re lucky we—”

  “Veronica.” Jules stepped in and placed a hand on Big Red’s arm. A stony silence settled among us.

  Veronica bit her lip. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Mean what?” Brax responded. “You never got to finish. I’d love to hear what you have to say.” His tone was dry, barbed, and amused but also dangerous.

  “Guys,” Maya interjected. “This isn’t what we need right now. Can we—”

  “What about her?” he asked, nodding in Maya’s direction. “If you come after me, you’re coming for her, too.”

  “Hey, pal.” Dan put a hand on Brax’s shoulder, but the demon shrugged him off.

  “Well?” The sunglasses focused on Veronica’s face.

  She glared. “Listen, Morpheus. I fucking apologized. I’d ask you to do the same, but I have the feeling no one ever taught you common courtesy.”

  “It’s a human convention,” he said. “Like a lot of other idiotic things.”

  I found myself taking a step back, away from the time bomb my team meeting had become. Maybe it would have been better to speak to everyone individually.

  May I ask for a moment of your time? Marcus cut in. Not long. A conference between friends instead of colleagues.

  Once again, the old Roman had saved my ass.

  Chapter Three

  “I’ll be right back.” Turning quickly, I picked a direction and walked toward the edge of the clearing, determined not to look back. The voice of the river beckoned me toward the bank where the silvery-blue glint of the current caught my eye. I moved closer until the sound filled my ears entirely and sat there to mull things over.

  I curled my fingers around a twig in the leaves. Soon, it had been thrown downstream. Two rock
s and a pinecone followed in rapid succession. There was something cathartic about watching the river swallow my offerings, spiriting them away in a tidy whirl.

  Little by little, my overactive mind settled as a vibrant dawn splashed across the early morning clouds. I could still see my breath puffing out in front of me, but fingers of sun warmed my back and shoulders.

  Victoria. Let us converse. Tell me what burdens you.

  “It’s not much. Just stupid shit.”

  To the best of my knowledge, this has never stopped you before.

  I chuckled. “Touché.” Leave it to Marcus to be real when I needed it the most. Despite his gentle prodding, I hemmed and hawed for a while longer before I hit on anything of substance. When I got the words out at last, they sounded weak and unconvincing, even to my own ears. “I just…I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m terrified of losing the coin-toss here. When it was you and me and everyone else who could actually fight, the stakes were high, but not this high. I knew that no matter how badly we screwed up, we’d be able to take care of ourselves. That’s not the case anymore.” I hadn’t expected things to go south on an interpersonal level. The real possibility of an insurmountable rift now gnawed at me. If our group fell apart, our entire little colony would be caught in the crossfire.

  I was afraid to say it out loud, but on some level, I resented the extra moral burden, too. Hacking and slashing my way through a whole damn pantheon I could do, no problem. Our world needed a hero, and I’d stepped up. Did I really need to be a leader, too?

  You have commandeered the ship, Victoria. Now, you must plot its course. There is no way around the duties of a captain.

  “Isn’t that what first mates are for?” I grumbled.

  In a perfect world, perhaps. But alas, I am not there for you in body, Maya has other, equally pressing duties, and Abraxzael? You know my feelings on that one. The helm is yours, my friend, as it must be.

  “I feel like this thing’s about to go Titanic on my ass.” I closed my eyes for a moment, seeing myself clinging onto a plank of wood adrift on the ocean.

  There may well be other Titans, yes, Marcus mused. We will have to keep our eyes and ears open.

  “No, I was talking about—never mind. It doesn’t matter. You’re right.” I dropped my hands behind me and leaned back on my arms, squinting up at the pale sky. “What the hell do you know about boating, anyway? You’ve never mentioned naval experience.”

  A centurion prides himself in well-roundedness and adaptability. Marcus puffed his chest audibly.

  I smirked. “Got it. You’ve never been on a boat in your life.”

  What? This is slander—

  “There you are.” Jules’ voice cut Marcus’ protest, much to my amusement and relief. She settled beside me, looking out over the expanse of water. “I think things are starting to cool down back there. I thought they would start brawling for a second.”

  “My money’s on Veronica,” I said. “At least, it is when she’s that mad.” I palmed another rock and tossed it into the choppy current. “You holding up okay? We haven’t really had a chance to check in.”

  “I mean, it’s been a little busy.” Jules shrugged. “I think I’m fine, as crazy as that sounds. There’s so much else I need to do that I don’t have time to be traumatized. Maybe that will be different once things aren’t constantly in crisis mode, but right now, I feel pretty good.”

  “Damn. I don’t know if I’d be handling my shit half as well as you in that situation.” Jules might have been sweet, soft-spoken, and not very practiced in the violence department, but she was as tough as nails in a different way. A pang of shame for underestimating her cut through my stomach. I should’ve known better.

  “No, you’d be doing even better. I know it.” She picked a big yellow leaf up and shredded it slowly in her fingers as she talked. “Besides, none of this is half as bad as public defense court. Talk about a hot mess.”

  I grinned “Or, you know…college.”

  She grinned. “No kidding. If I made it through three dates and a year of awkward stalking from Vince Espinoza, I can make it through anything.”

  That cracked me up. “Holy shit, I forgot about Vinny. Remember when he kept leaving you presents outside your apartment?”

  “Like a stray cat.” Jules shook her head. “You’d think after five dead bouquets, he would’ve learned not to leave fresh flowers on a doorstep without water, but nope. I can’t even tell you how many roses must have given up the ghost on that stoop.”

  “That’s why he moved on to poetry.” I could still see the envelopes taped to the outside of her letterbox, usually containing a page of lined paper torn from the back of one of Vinny’s notebooks. His efforts at verse always read like a high schooler's plaintive love songs, even though we were all in our twenties by then.

  “Then there was the mixtape.” Jules sighed deeply. “I mostly felt sorry for him by the end. Thank goodness he eventually had the sense to move or transfer or whatever.”

  “Yeah. He, uh, definitely did that on his own, with no help from outside forces. Absolutely. What a smart guy.”

  She turned to me, aghast. “Vic, don’t tell me you—”

  “I’m not telling you,” I said. “I’m letting you infer that I cornered him outside Into Psych and told him that if I ever caught him holding a boombox up outside your window, I’d come down and shove it up his ass.”

  Jules would’ve admonished me if she hadn’t laughed. “I guess I’m not surprised,” she admitted. “You’ve always had a way with words.”

  It was my turn to sigh and with more than a little frustration. “I wish these problems would resolve that easily. Seems like my old methods don’t work so well anymore.”

  “Brute force can only get you so far. I really don’t envy your position,” Jules responded, her face full of sympathy. “It’s like having a client whom I know is guilty. All I can do is find a way to mitigate some of the punishment. And sometimes, I don’t want to do that because I think they deserve what’s coming to them, but it’s my job.”

  “That’s the thing, though.” I frowned. “This isn’t my job, or it wasn’t when I started. I should be out there hunting these pieces of shit. New York City felt like the whole universe for most of my life, but it’s only a fraction of the country, let alone the world. I have no clue what’s going on in Paris or Hong Kong, if those places even still exist. They could be burning to cinders right now, and I’d never know until it was too late.” The tension flooded back into my body. I threw another rock, harder than I had the others. It splashed heavily into the river. “Marcus said I have to captain the ship myself because everyone else has other shit to do. That’s true, but so do I, and I’m here watching over a flock of sitting ducks. Of course, I want to keep them safe, but I think it’s outside my skill set.”

  Jules dismantled a second leaf, this one wide and apple-red. “I understand where you’re coming from, but don’t forget that these people were following you when they left New York. They don’t know what they’re doing any more than you do. I’ve said this already, and it bears repeating. You absolutely cannot leave them out here by themselves.” Her eyes bored into me, bright and intense.

  Jules is correct. Though part of you may regret the path you have chosen, regret does not absolve you from your duty. You are too sound of heart and mind to walk away from the choices you have made.

  “For what it’s worth,” she continued, “I think you might be wrong about the whole job description thing. You’re not simply out here killing gods, Vic. You’re out here saving the world, one little piece at a time. There’s more to that than looking cool while you swing a sword around.”

  “But I’m so good at that part.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We’ve all seen ample evidence.” Jules scrambled to her feet and offered me her hand. “Come on, lady. You said it first—we’ve got work to do.”

  I took her hand. “It’s not that I think you’re wrong. I know you’re right. I ha
d all those thoughts myself before you joined me. I just…” The words slipped out of my grasp.

  “Hey.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “It’s okay to be scared. You’d be insane if you weren’t. This is some gigantic, heavy stuff we’re up against. But we’re better off with you leading the charge than we would be in any other circumstance, and that’s a fact.” She smiled. “You can’t argue with me. I’m a lawyer. I’ll win.” With that, she pulled me toward the clearing. “It’ll be fine, as long as we stay undivided.”

  There is no shame in shared strength, Marcus agreed. Use it to your advantage.

  The group in front of the canvas teepee had broken up a little in our absence. Dan and a few of his soldiers were off to the side, likely discussing the state of the patrols. Maya examined a cut on a young mother’s forearm, while Steph cradled a baby stiffly in her arms. The child had one tiny hand entwined in the agent’s blonde hair, and she stared down at its sleepy face, looking both entranced and confused.

  Deacon sat on a log nearby, his gun on the wood beside him. He had magazines and bullets arranged in his lap as he took a quick inventory of what was left. “Hey, Vic,” he said without glancing up. “You get things sorted out?”

  “I think so. Get a load of Mama Steph over there.”

  He pulled a face. “That’s a new one. New and weird.” He fell silent when he turned toward his partner, studying her with a mix of humor and surprise. “I’ll be damned. She hasn’t eaten it yet.”

  Jules swatted him. “Deacon!”

  “You don’t know Steph,” he countered, still eyeing her. “That woman’s more like a dragon than anything else. I guess this brings out the best and the worst in everyone at the same time.” He finished counting his ammunition and loaded it rapidly back into the mags. “I’m running lower than I’d like. All this fighting is really making a dent.”

  I nodded. “I’ll add ‘supply run’ to our to-do list. I’m sure Maya needs it too.”