Part 9 (1/2)
”I think she has a point,” said Henry.
”And if she's wrong? Or lying?” said Alice.
A man in a striped s.h.i.+rt raised his hand. A strip of b.l.o.o.d.y cloth covered his left eye and most of his nose. ”I move we let the both of 'em in. And if it turns sour, then we put 'em out and Garm and his kin can chew on their carca.s.ses.”
”Seconded,” said Alice.
”All in favor?” said Henry.
He counted raised hands. The motion pa.s.sed by two votes.
”Okay, then,” Henry said. ”Let's move on.”
The group began filing through a fissure in the rock that opened into another pa.s.sage.
”Hey, who are you people?” Lilly asked again, tugging on Henry's s.h.i.+rtsleeve.
Smiling apologetically, he said, ”We're citizens of the town of Ellhead, Appanoose County, Iowa.” He wiped his hand on his pants and offered it to her. ”We're the resistance.”
Lilly shook her head and laughed. Then she grinned broadly and clasped his hand in both of hers.
HERMOD DROVE ACROSS the endless city, down surface streets, past train yards and warehouses and mile after mile of liquor stores and nail salons and storefront loan services. The buildings were in ruins, burned and boarded up, dead-eyed streetlamps curving over the broken road. There were no road signs to mark the way.
”I'm lost,” Mist said from the backseat. ”I've lived in LA all my life, but I have no idea where we are.”
Grimnir started rummaging in the glove compartment for a map, but Hermod told him not to bother. ”We're not in LA anymore,” he said. ”We're not even in Midgard. We crossed into a crack in the World Tree about an hour ago.”
”What does that mean, exactly?” Mist asked.
”It means we're between worlds, where everything gets mixed up.”
The terrain had changed since the last time Hermod journeyed to Helheim, when he'd come to ransom Baldr. Instead of stone canyons, now there were blighted apartment blocks, soot-stained hospitals, prisons, and stucco house after stucco house on dead-end curving streets. The lines between Helheim and Midgard had rubbed away.
”I'm starving,” Grimnir said after a time. They didn't have much food-some broken Fritos, a pack of jerky, a box of graham crackers.
”I wouldn't eat any of that if I were you,” Hermod told him.
Grimnir ignored him, tearing open the jerky wrapper and filling the Jeep with the sweet, chewy perfume of rotting meat. Grimnir gagged and tossed it out the window while Hermod patiently explained to Mist that all the food from Midgard became inedible the closer one came to Helheim. Nothing from the living world was quite right here.
The first dead they encountered was an old man with slicked shoe-polish-black hair and a tuxedo. Hermod rolled down the window and said, ”Hey.”
The man turned his head. He had a steak knife jutting from his neck. ”Are you lost?”
”I don't think so,” Hermod said.
”I only ask because you don't seem dead. I thought this road was only for the dead.”
”Where are you headed?”
”The corpse gate. I have to go through the corpse gate and then I'll be in Hel's embrace. Say, could I get a ride?”
”Sorry,” Hermod said, rolling up his window.
More dead walkers soon appeared on the road, and the farther Hermod drove, the more certain he felt that he was on the right course. Behind the wheel, guiding his companions into a place from where no living being other than himself had ever returned, he felt a strength and a certainty he hadn't known since the first time he'd come to Helheim. If Thor was for protecting earth from giants, and if Odin was for storming across the sky and goading men into battle, then this was what Hermod was for: going into forbidden places.
Then he looked at his companions. Grimnir and Mist both looked gray, their eyes haunted. Even Winston, in the backseat with Mist, was quiet, his head resting on folded paws.
”I really shouldn't have brought you here,” Hermod said.
Mist breathed a weary laugh. ”You're the G.o.d of self-recrimination, aren't you?”
”I'm old,” Hermod said. ”Being old means making the same mistakes over and over. Sometimes I just get tired of it.”
”What's the biggest mistake you've ever made?”
”We're supposed to have these conversations late at night. And we should be drunk.”
Mist rubbed her face with her hands. ”It seems plenty late, and we're not lucky enough to be drunk. Come on, entertain me.” When she pulled her hands away, Hermod caught sight of her face in the rear-view mirror. Those sad, dark eyes of hers were distractingly lovely.
He wondered if Mist and Grimnir were lovers, and with alarm he saw the trajectory these thoughts were taking him on. Stop it, he told himself. Falling for the Valkyrie was the very last thing he needed.
”Everyone knows my big mistake,” Hermod said, expecting to hear some kind of disparaging noise from Grimnir, but he'd nodded off, slumped in his seat and snoring. ”I promised the Aesir I'd get on bended knee before Hel and bargain for Baldr's life. I made a really convincing case too. She was ready to give in. But then I went and demanded Hod as part of the deal.”
In the mirror, Mist's expression revealed nothing. ”Actually, I didn't know the part about Hod.”
”That's the part n.o.body likes to talk about. My family made him the scapegoat for Baldr's death. Then Odin had him killed. And then we promptly forgot about him.”
”You haven't forgotten him.”
”Hod got screwed. There was no way I was going to beg for Baldr's life and abandon Hod to this place.”
Mist gently petted Winston's head. ”So that's your big screwup? Acting out of fairness and mercy?”
”Well,” Hermod said after a long silence, ”I didn't say it was my only screwup.”
A body crashed through the winds.h.i.+eld. Hermod found himself staring in shock at a leering face draped over the steering wheel. Then he began pounding it with his fist. He could figure out what was going on later. Now was a time for punching, and he did not stop punching until the face opened its mouth wide, caught Hermod's fist in it, and bit down. Hermod hit the brakes and shoved the thumb of his other hand in the draugr's eye-it was a draugr, of course, one of Hel's mindless dead, what else could it be?-but the dead monster bit down yet harder.
Mist kicked the back of his seat as she struggled to get her sword free, while Winston tried to squeeze in front, his jaws snapping at the draugr. Between Mist's kidney punches and the malamute's bites, Hermod feared his friends would do him as much harm as the draugr.
”Everybody calm down,” Grimnir said over the screaming and barking and the draugr's dead-moaning. ”I'll handle this.”
He lifted his sword from the floorboard, struggling in the tight quarters to turn the blade toward the draugr, and accidentally nicked Hermod's earlobe.
”Could you be careful with that thing?” Hermod yelled.
”Maybe hold still a little?” Grimnir shot back.
With his shoulder jammed against the door and one leg braced against the cup holders, Grimnir sliced into the draugr's neck. The draugr thrashed but didn't release its biting grip on Hermod's hand. Hermod was now certain that the draugr intended to eat his fingers. He repeatedly slammed his free fist into the draugr's face. There was a satisfying collapse of skull bones, but the draugr's bite didn't loosen until Grimnir methodically sawed through the creature's neck and separated it from its body, which hung through the shattered gla.s.s of the winds.h.i.+eld. Even then, the decapitated head clamped down on Hermod's fist, but, with Grimnir's help, Hermod was able to pry it loose.