Episode 43: Pompeii and Circumstance

When last we left the renegade archaeologists (Harry T., Willa R., Terra M., Melshell A., and Amanda P.) and their Sicilian tour guide (Giacinto B.) they had been trapped beneath a lava dome encasing the ancient city of Pompeii, and found themselves spontaneously surrounded by twelve speaking dogs. A strange cat mocked them (it spoke too) and then vanished. They also, though they will never admit it, believe that they have seen a statue shaped like a human walking about. Although it is common knowledge that all you out there in reader land hate these characters, because they are essential to an understanding of the events surrounding the rising of the dead.

As I was saying, the renegade archaeologists and their Sicilian tour guide were surrounded by twelve angry talking dogs beneath a rock dome enclosing Pompeii. They were intensely confused by these developments. The dogs, while not confused, were intensely pissed off.

“Fucking humans, fucking idiot humans!” The lead dog-who was very, very large, and very, very imposing, and very, very frightening-screamed simultaneously in English and Sicilian. “Do you have any goddamned idea what you have done you fuck ups?”

The six humans in the circle stood in paralyzed silence.

“N… No, we do not know.” Harry T. finally stuttered.

“Fucking human idiot fucks!” The large lead dog barked-no, spoke. “Fucking ruined it fuck again fucking!” All six of the humans held their breath.

A smaller dog, but not by much, with silkier, longer fur stepped forward and spoke in a gentle, feminine voice.

“Now, Jupes,” She said with a seductive lilt. “Don’t be so harsh on the poor little humans.” The six humans exhaled in relief. They had an ally amongst these scary dogs. “You’ll just make it harder for us to deal with this problem.” She seemed to snicker, which was even worse than the lead dog’s unrelenting fury. The six held their breath again, as the lead dog’s fury seemed to relent a little bit.

“You’re right, my dear Juno,” he said gruffly but sweetly. “Mars, how quickly do you think you can take care of them?” A Doberman, with ears sharper than any of the six humans had seen before began to growl.

“Mars doesn’t think, boss,” a small dog yapped rapidly.

“That’s right,” the lead dog chuckled, which is not a sound that is pleasant to the human ear. He seemed to be beginning to enjoy this. “He just kills.” The Doberman barked sharply several times, but did not advance more than a few inches. He barked again, and then seemed to venture a glance at the lead dog. He whined.

“You should really run,” a feminine voice purred, as Amanda felt a soft figure slink between her ankles. “I recommend jumping over those little ones, and running very, very fast. They won’t move, and Mars will run right into them. You might get lucky.” None of the dogs reacted to this, and none of the humans were willing to acknowledge it themselves. All of them, individually, decided that it was right. Each of them swallowed as one, and spun and ran and jumped over the two little dogs.

Harry and Giacinto were the first over, the space being just about large enough for two people. Willa and Melshell were next, and then Amanda. Terra mistimed her jump, and found herself tripping over the little dogs. One of them squealed out in pain, the other stumbled to the side. Terra screamed a guttural sound of terror, startlement, and pain. Melshell spun and called out to her, but Willa grabbed him by the arm and dragged him along with them.

Mars the Doberman had launched himself at about the same time as Willa and Melshell had jumped, but he hadn’t taken into account the possibility of someone falling. He ran into Terra’s prone body and stumbled backwards. Beneath Terra, one of the small dogs still squealed in pain. She rolled over, letting the little dog free. It dragged itself away.

Terra found herself looking directly into the eyes of a confused and angry Dog of War. Foamy spots of spittle dropped onto her face.

“This fucks everything up even more!” she half-heard a barking voice say. The other half of her senses were dedicated to intently focusing on the Doberman above her face and not provoking it.

“Saturn, relax. We can deal with this.” That dog sounded almost motherly, the detached part of Terra thought

“If they damage even one of the Pompeiians before it gets out, the second wave will be diminished by at least two hundred deaths. So, Ceres, don’t tell me to relax, because we really, really need the second wave at full capacity.”

“We can just send Diana after them.”

“Mars would have been more efficient,” another feminine voice said. “But I don’t mind having to hunt them down.”

“Alright,” Terra recognized the voice of the lead dog now. “Diana, go after them. Do not damage any of the Pompeiians.”

“I guess I won’t be using Mars, then.” The Doberman slobbering angrily on Terra’s face whimpered gently.

“Is Janus okay?” the quick-looking dog had a distinctive voice too; somehow like Paul Schafer, the detached section of Terra’s mind mused.

“Not really,” yet another feminine dog said. “He’s dead.”

Several of the dogs made a scoffing noise. “That’s going to make it harder to get the Pompeiians out on time,” the voice that belonged to, the whole of Terra began to reunite and reluctantly admit it, the god Saturn, said angrily.

“The surviving humans will get through; we had that as a backup plan, remember?” the god who announced Janus’ death said.

“Why didn’t Janus see any of this coming?” a sultry voice asked.

“That’s easy… He was with the Aliens.” The purring voice said for all to hear.

“Discordia!” the lead dog burst. “You should not be here. Leave now, or I will have to ignore the wizard’s commands!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” the cat purred. “But I know that won’t stop you from trying. Catch me if you can, ‘Jupes!’” the cat cackled. Terra heard the lead dog pounding its paws off into the distance.

“What do we do about this one?” the sultry voice asked once again. “She is… Not as appealing as the taller one.”

“Kill her,” Saturn said.

“Wait!” the second small dog said quickly, before the Doberman ripped out her neck. She exhaled slightly in slight relief. “One of them cares for her. I felt it. We can use her to kill him without lifting a finger.” There was a pause.

“Here’s what we do. Cupid knows his shit here. Mars, kill her. But leave her… intact.” The Doberman growled in response, and dove its head into Terra’s chest, through the skin, through the bone, and bit her heart. She screamed in incomprehensible agony, and everything went dark.

* * *

The five surviving humans ran from the dog circle faster than any of them knew they were capable of. That tends to happen to people when their lives are threatened by incomprehensible things, including zombies or…

“Gods,” Harry said as soon as they had deposited themselves behind a less crumbled wall than the others. “Gods disguised as dogs.”

“The palindromes are amazing,” Willa said sardonically. “But I think right now we need to worry more about getting out of here.”

“We have to…” Melshell began shouting, but Amanda and Willa shushed him, and he continued more quietly. “We have to go back for Terra.”

“They’ll have killed her by now,” Amanda tried to inject some sympathy into her voice, but the words came out sounding very matter-of-fact. Melshell glared at her.

“They might not have,” Melshell growled.

“If they didn’t, they’ll be using her as bait to catch the rest of us.” Willa peeked around the corner. “We just have to get out of Pompeii, and get to safety.”

“They said something about a plan,” Giacinto said suddenly. The renegade archaeologists turned to him in mild surprise; they had almost forgotten about his presence. He looked across all of them. “I think that it’s a bad plan.”

“That…” Willa shuddered at the thought of saying it. “That cat said something about ancient residents of Pompeii?”

“Made of stone,” Harry conceded. “Long dead.”

“We saw one of them,” Amanda recalled urgently. “Walking around! Just before the doggods surrounded us!”

“Where’d it go?” Melshell asked nervously. There was a pause, and everyone else began to look around.

“You humans are not very fun to hunt sometimes,” a feminine voice said from above them. All five heads craned to look at the top of the wall they had stashed themselves behind. On top of it sat a majestic bitch, a female golden retriever with a strangely feline glint in her eye. “I’m Diana, Doggess of the hunt. I like to hunt.” She pulled back her lips, revealing a mouth full of teeth that were almost fangs. “If you do not let me hunt you, I will not kill you immediately. I will take you to Mars. Mars will kill you so painfully that you will wish that the instant that he does it in were shorter. So please,” she finished sweetly, lowering her voice to almost a whisper. “Run?”

Harry stared into her eyes with the fierceness of a traditional leader. They all stood there for a moment that stretched for nearly an eternity. Then Harry opened his mouth just a little.

“Scatter,” he hissed.

* * *

“It always makes me nervous when one of us dies,” Mercury said. He was the small dog, the quick messenger, left alone with the dead human, Mars, and the dead Janus. Mars only continued to growl at the dead human, but Mercury didn’t mind. “I mean, we’re gods. We’re supposed to be immortal. But over the last millennium, we’ve started to die. It was the big wake up call when Sekhmet died. I mean, that chick kicked some serious ass in her time.” Mars barked at the dead human. “Yeah, I know, at least she was killed by those damn aliens. That makes sense, even if it’s not fair. But Janus, he just got crushed by a falling human.” Mars whimpered lightly; Mercury didn’t bother looking. “Us Romans, we’ve got the worst of it. Everyone forgot us. They just think we’re just planets. So we got relegated. They took our power, and they put us in charge of this ridiculous phase 2. Because they knew it wasn’t necessary. They gave us this job to shut us up.” Mercury looked upwards, to the stone dome surrounding the city. “And they did.” Mars began to growl again. Mercury began to turn. “Is the damned human finally stand… Oh, fuck.”

Terra was finally standing, and was looking around curiously. She couldn’t find any food immediately. She looked at the three dogs; they weren’t food. They all smelled wrong, for one thing. Especially that one. She turned away. Something had moved over there. She began to walk off in its direction.

This was not what had startled Mercury. What had startled Mercury was that that Terra was not the only one who had stood up. Janus was standing too. Mars was growling at him, much more violently than the Dog of War had in nearly two millennia. Mercury stepped back cautiously, which is an interesting thing to see a dog do.

“Oh, Janus!” Mercury yapped nervously. “I, uh, didn’t see you standing there. I did see you lying there. It’s, uh, nice to see you standing there?” The tiny Janus growled rabidly and incomprehensibly. “Hey, uh, Janus, you, uh, you’re looking awful… Two-Faced,” Mercury whimpered he still mostly crushed and bleeding dog leapt towards the frightened god.

* * *

Harry T. crouched behind a wall. He hoped that the hunting dog had come after him. He knew she hadn’t. She had probably gone after… Melshell. Melshell was slow. Harry hoped that the others had made it at least as far as him. He looked around, and for a moment, saw nothing. Then he suddenly saw something.

On the other side of the wall from him, a stone statue stood. It had the look of a faceless individual who had experienced the horrors of two thousand years of death, and that was very much what it was. It turned, very slowly, to look at Harry. It reached out to him, and he was paralyzed with fear. It reached his arm, and began to close its soft fingers around his wrist. Harry began to wail, and pulled his arm back. The arm of the figure crumbled, and Harry froze again. The statue turned its head briefly to stare at its arm, which was crumbling towards its shoulder. The whole figure crumbled to dust. Harry stared at the motionless pile ahead of him. Realization flowed into his eyes.

“Oh yeah,” he whispered in astonishment.

* * *

“Discordia!” Jupiter shouted, storming into some ruins after the form of the cat.

“Jupes,” Discordia’s voice purred sarcastically and echoingly despite having nothing to echo off of from an unseen position. “I’m so glad you followed me.”

“Get out of my project, Discordia!” Jupiter barked at the construction in general.

“Oh, Jupiter, my dear, do you understand nothing?” She cackled. “Phase 2 isn’t your project! It does center around you, obviously, or we would have just left you out.”

“It’s my project!” Jupiter’s voice thundered, shaking the ruins, causing some little crumbling of the already crumbled pillars.

“Lord Jupiter,” the cat’s over-pronounced title for him bit at his ego, making him growl. “Did you not realize that this entire thing is impossible?”

“We are gods!” Jupiter said, not allowing the creeping doubt he had to enter into his voice. “We do the impossible every day!”

“But this is especially impossible! The volcano launched its molten rock directly and entirely at Pompeii? It solidified as a dome?”

“That was our doing!” Jupiter cried.

“That’s what you were supposed to think,” Discordia giggled. She stepped out into the room; her figure was no longer that of a cat, but of a spooky, smiling, blonde, human Goddess, wearing nothing more than a single white strap of cloth slung over her right breast, a small golden rope around her waist, and a single sandal on her left foot. Between her breasts, a chilly, jagged, curving dagger was pressed, not causing her to bleed. She licked her teeth at the father of the dogs, who found himself becoming more and more frightened and unsure. “Those ‘stone zombies’ out there are impossible, too; the people they represent died nearly two millennia ago, and rotted beyond resurrection over nine centuries ago. They’re made of plaster!”

“Then… Why?” Jupiter whined.

Discordia, goddess of Chaos, queen of the impossible, grinned wider. “That… Would be telling.” She pulled her golden rope from her waist and it resolved itself without cause into a golden apple. Jupiter screamed in terror as only a god can.