Accidental God 2.0 -- Section 03

[Longer section tonight, I think. I had to finish up what I'd already written about Tuck and Paul, and we get a bit more of Miss Sweeps after that.

[I'm finally starting to feel in the swing of things with NaNoWriMo. I have no real sense of whether what I'm writing is good or not. That's a bit disturbing, but I'll keep at it and we'll see where it goes. (At the end of it all, I'll poke my head up out of the tunnel I've been digging and say something about how I should have taken that left at Albuquerque.)]

    Thirty minutes later, Tuck walked past the uniformed officer at the door and into the apartment of Forgotten Zed. The lights were on, some shattered glass from the window scattered across the room, and the body of the ancient god slumped on the couch in a gross parody of relaxation. Tuck cringed at the aftermath of violence. He rubbed his hand down his face and looked away, grounding his eyes and his stomach in the reality of the apartment's furnishings. A kitchen attached to the living room in that modern style that had decided walls were irrelevant to a home, making everything open, a grand room without boundaries. Tuck looked at the hanging pots and pans, the black minimalist dining-space chairs, the potted something that sat in its black glossy pot in the middle of nowhere, left with a gap around it as if that region of the world belonged to that plant alone--and Tuck was convinced more than ever that the life of a god could not be a fun one. Very lonely, that plant.
    "Amazing, isn't it," said Paul, Tuck's partner, walking up behind him. "Someone killed Forgotten Zed."
    Tuck nodded. "Yes. Amazing."
    "Don't you think that's strange? Killing a god, I mean. Doesn't seem like it should be possible. It's like smashing Mount Everest. Sure, it's theoretically possible, I guess, but totally nuts. Insane. You don't wake up one morning and decide, 'I'm going to destroy a mountain.'"
    Tuck bobbed his eyebrows in silent agreement. No normal person would even think of killing a god. Men and women like Forgotten Zed were the untouchable, the mythical. The eternal. He looked back at the corpse.
    "Do you think there's any family we should notify?" he asked.
    "Yeah," sighed Paul. "Not likely. You forgotten the Trojan War?"
    "Of course. Sorry. Brain fart."
    "Don't sweat it. Not our job anyway."
    "I know that," said Tuck, rubbing his hands on his slacks. "But still, a person shouldn't die alone. There ought to be someone to at least feel bad. Someone to mourn."
    "Mourn Forgotten Zed?" Paul laughed, not much humor in it. "No one has worshiped the guy for centuries, his wife and kids all killed each other--most of his kids, at least--and the only one who lived on was him. The big Z. And now he's gone. Feels like the end of an era, you know? It's like when Ragnarok happened, but now we're the ones who get to see it. Crazy."
    That was something to agree with. It was crazy. Crazy to kill a god that no one cared about anymore. Crazy to take on all that risk.
    But Tuck's job wasn't to understand crazy. It was to find crazy and contain crazy. Possibly kill crazy. He didn't like that part.
    "What have the crime scene people found?" he asked. "I'm assuming you got here before me, the way you drive."
    "I drive just fine, thank you," said Paul. "It's the people who drive slowly and BADLY that are the real risk around here. Have I ever been in an accident? Ever? Even gotten a ticket?"
    "You've never gotten a ticket because you work for TCD and the locals are all vaguely scared of you, and you've never been in an accident because...you're lucky."
    "That's it? That's all you've got? I'm lucky?"
    "Fine. Lucky and skilled."
    "Thank you. Did that kill you to admit it?"
    "Safe following distance is safe following distance," said Tuck, crossing his arms. "You can't argue with the laws of physics."
    "Yes I can."
    "Sure you can, but physics usually wins."
    "Not with me."
    "Are you going to answer my question?"
    Paul was grinning. "Of course I am. I just like messing with you. You focussed now? Done stressing about the body? That's all it is, Tuck. His soul is long gone. Just a body."
    Tuck breathed in and out. "That's what you were doing. Thanks. Right. Just a body. The soul is free and we have a job. What have they learned?"
    Paul looked Tuck in the eyes for just a moment more. Making sure I'm all right. Thanks, Paul.
    "The window," said Paul, turning. "Bullet resistant, so either Forgotten Zed was expecting this or was just generally paranoid, which wouldn't be surprising for a guy who's family fights ended destroying an entire nation and a dozen other gods. Two shots, high powered rifle, first takes the window, second takes Zed. That's all we've got."
    "That's it?"
    "Sniper job, so no other evidence here. They've got the bullets, but we won't know much from them until they get to the lab. Everything points to a pro, though." Paul walked over to the window and Tuck followed. "The angle on the shot puts the shooter somewhere in those buildings over there."
    Tuck looked at the nine buildings tall enough for the shot, each with dozens of lighted windows scattered across their faces, mixed in with the black of unlit rooms.
    “Heck of a shot.”
    “Yep.”
    "Also a lot of searching to do."
    "Sure is. By the time we get done with that, our shooter is long, long gone, and you know what that means."
    "Yeah, I do. You think Zed had much juice left in him? Like you said, nobody has worshiped him for centuries."
    Paul shrugged and brushed back the sides of his suit jacket, tucking his hands into his pockets. "I wouldn't think so, but you know we can't take that risk. All the power his relatives stored up had to go somewhere. We can't be certain it didn't all go to him. And if it did, well."
Paul didn't have to say what 'well' meant. Crazy to kill a god, certainly, but possibly crazy with a plan. And if that plan was taking all of Forgotten Zed's power, that plan wasn't something the Theological Crimes Division could let go, no matter how long they had to keep looking.
    "Hang on," said Tuck. "What you said. How could Forgotten Zed die? Gods never die."
    "Short of being killed by other gods, you mean," said Paul.
    "Short of that, yes. A rifle? Why would someone even try killing him with a rifle? And why bullet proof glass? You remember when Oprah got shot."
    "Yeah. Didn't even phase her. I think she bought the shooter a car."
    "She did not."
    "Why not? She buys everyone else cars. Just not me."
    "Me neither. But guns don't kill gods. Gods kill gods."
    "Is that a bumper sticker?"
    Tuck shrugged. "Maybe it should be. How would someone even know to try? It normally would be like bringing a pea-shooter to a nuke fight."
    "A pea shooter doesn't leave a hole that big," observed Paul. "Not through bullet resistant glass."
    "That's the other thing. Why would a god even NEED bullet proof glass? It wouldn't slow down another god more than a heartbeat--"
    "If it's an ANGRY god."
    "The term is 'wrathful,' and yes, if it were a wrathful god--so the only reason for bullet resistant glass is for regular joes."
    "Or demons."
    Tuck rolled his eyes. "Or demons."
    "Or angels."
    "Stop it. I have a legitimate point here."
    "Yes," agreed his partner. "You do. For some reason, Forgotten Zed knew he was vulnerable. That's the only explanation I can think of."
    "But WHY? Why would a god be vulnerable?"
    "Dude, go get a degree in applied theology. All I've got is criminology, ballistics, and an art history minor."
    That made Tuck pause. "Really? Art history?"
    "Something wrong with that?"
    "I didn't know you liked art."
    Paul shrugged, his hands still in his pockets. "I don't, particularly. I mean, there's nice stuff to look at, but the theory about metaphor and meaning and symbolism and all that other stuff only goes so far before it becomes completely ridiculous."
    "So why art history?"
    "Cute girls."
    Tuck made a silent 'oh' with his mouth. "I understand now."
    Paul nodded.
    "Say no more."
    "Nothing more to say."
    Tuck sighed. "Too many rooms over there to search quickly."
    Paul shrugged again.
    "You want me to figure out what room the shot came from."
    Another shrug.
    "Quit doing that."
    "What? Shrugging?"
    "Yes."
    "Okay."
    "I hate doing this."
    "I know."
    "Is that why you didn't ask me to?"
    Paul looked out the window. "I knew you'd come around to it. We've got to find this guy, and you're our best shot. It's how we got our job, you and I. We do what has to be done."
    Tuck kicked at the glass on the carpet. Yes, he'd do what had to be done. He took this job to take care of people, and that meant using every resource he had. Even the resources he didn't much like.
    "Death is such a powerfully destructive act," he said, knowing that now he was just whining.
    "It is," agreed Paul.
    "I wish you could do this."
    "If I could take it I would. Sometimes I think we got switched at birth."
    "Got switched...genetically?"
    Paul started to shrug again then stopped himself. "Sorry about the shrug, and so it's not a perfect metaphor. Not even a metaphor at all, actually. So sue me."
    "One of these days I might. I'm kidding. I wouldn't really."
    "Tuck."
    "Yes?"
    "We have a bad guy to catch."
    "Right."
    So Tuck did what he'd been born knowing how to do, and something he'd hated since his childhood more than one-hundred-forty years ago. He opened himself to one of the twin forces that ran through the world since God first called it out of chaos, either thousands or millions of years ago, depending on whom you believed. Angels were lucky, in Tuck's opinion. They got to work with preservation. Demons got stuck with the flip side. Entropy. Destruction.
    "Dang," he said.
    Paul snorted. "Sometimes I wish you'd just come out and swear."
    "I swear when it's warranted."
    "The death of a god doesn't warrant a little cuss word or two?"
    “Is there such a thing as a ‘little’ cuss word? They all seem pretty bad to me.”
    “That’s the point. They’re supposed to be bad. That’s why people say them.”
    Tuck shook his head and concentrated. It always felt so ugly, opening up his senses to the entropy and decay that were always running through the world. He knew it was important--without destruction, without decay, there was only stasis and stagnation, no creation, nothing new, no passing, no changing--but he wished he didn't have to FEEL it so strongly. It was like sap on his skin, clinging between his fingers, and he wanted to wash and wash and wash, but he knew it wouldn't come off. Maybe Paul was right: maybe this did deserve some good, old fashioned swearing. Or even modern swearing. Post-modern swearing. He swallowed back burning in the back of his throat and concentrated.
    "Definite path here," he said. "Going from Zed out through the window. No other powerful entropic connections that I can find. Kinda sad that the god's strongest connection in the last minutes of his life is with his killer."
    "Sad, sure, but understandable," said Paul. "Hey, don't glare at me that way. I'm upset about this, too, but we need a bit of practicality, and you tend to get too caught up in the emotion of a situation."
    "Someone should," Tuck protested.
    "Yes, someone should, and I'll totally support you in that as soon as we find the man who did this. We'll go to Denny's and order two of whatever it is you want to eat. And one of those fruity ice drinks, if they have any."
    "Why Denny's?"
    "They're always open, and since there's no predicting when we'll get the guy--"
    "Yeah, yeah. I think I've got an angle on this thing." Tuck closed his eyes to concentrate better. He stepped between the hole in the window and the dead god behind him, holding his fingers in the air in front of his chest. The residue of violence was strongest on the path right...along...there. He pointed, his arm out straight.
    "That it?" asked Paul, coming behind Tuck to look over his shoulder.
    "As best I can tell."
    "That narrows it down to one building. We have the manpower to search the top floors of one building. Thanks, buddy."
    "Please don't call me 'buddy.' Makes me feel like I'm seventy again."
    "Sure thing, Sport."
    "Ugh. Now I'm remembering the Fifties."
    "What's wrong with the Fifties? I liked them."
    "Not as much as you liked the Seventies."
    "I'm telling you, disco was divine and nothing you can do will ever convince me otherwise. I'll get the uniforms headed over to that building. You need a minute to recover?"
    Tuck nodded. "I'd love a minute. Not in here, though."
    "Of course not," agreed Paul, grabbing his partner by the elbow and starting him walking toward the door. "Here are my keys. I've got hot chocolate and doughnuts in the car."
    "Lemon filled?"
    "Of course."
    "I hate lemon filled."
    "Don't I know it," said Paul, smiling. "But there's also Boston Cream."
    "I'll take it."
    "I knew you would."
    They stepped around the uniforms and crime scene investigators and made their way out of the last home of possibly the oldest living god in the world. Formerly the oldest living god. Tuck could imagine humans aspiring to become divine, but he didn't think that anyone who'd be willing to kill to get the power would be a very good god.
    But then, how many of them really were good gods? Decent was often the best you could hope for. As he glanced back through the door and out the window, Tuck realized he wasn't hoping very hard.

    Veronica sweeps had cleaned up the best she could. The table was back across the room, the carpet covering the holes in the floor, the screen replaced. The rifle and its mount were disassembled and packed back into the camera cases, the cups and tea pot sitting in the sink for someone else to wash up when the landlord realized the tenants of this apartment were never coming back. She realized it wasn't courteous to leave the dishes that way, but she stifled that small part of her upbringing. No need to be obsessive when there's real work to be done.
    Work like disposing of Marius Tombs body. Fortunately she'd had a plan for that. It wasn't a long-term solution, but it would do for long enough. The police could find Marius, and that would be okay. They could even find her, eventually, and she was prepared for that. The ones they couldn't find were her employers, and they would be safely back in Brazil by the time all this had gone through. Settled out. Passed. That was all the time she needed.
    So Marius went into a large cooler, and the cooler went onto a dolly along with the rest of the equipment, and it all fit together into the elevator.
    "Going out for a shoot?" asked the middle-aged woman riding down along with her husband.
    "Pardon?" said Veronica, surprised.
    "The camera equipment."
    "Oh! Of course. No, just coming from one. A private shoot for someone upstairs."
    "Family portrait?"
    "Individual."
    "Pay much?"
    "Not in money, no." Veronica smiled. "But still worthwhile."
    "That's nice," said the woman, smiling. "Isn't that nice, honey? Someone who does her work because it matters to her. It's meaningful."
    "My work is meaningful," said the husband, rubbing his hand over his thinning hair.
    "Of course it is," said his wife, who then leaned close to Veronica. "He replaces asbestos ceilings with the non-carcinogenic kind."
    "That is meaningful," agreed Veronica, smiling at the husband.
    "But not BEAUTIFUL," said the wife. "I'm sure the work you do is beautiful."
    Miss Sweeps smiled a little sadly. "Not always, ma'am. But as important as I can make it."
    They reached the ground floor and the husband kept his finger on the 'door open' button while Veronica navigated her load out through the door with a 'thank you.' The couple went one way and Veronica the other, pushing her strange cargo through the chilling evening air. It seemed early for a cold night in November, but that was certainly just her Southern upbringing coming through. Wisconsin was beautiful enough, but she was glad she didn't have to stay here any longer than this night.
    Down two streets and over one, a short way down an ally behind a large supermarket, and she was at the dumpster she had chosen. She'd checked the schedules, and this one was emptied in the very early morning. With luck, the police would be on a man-hunt for a fleeing assassin, not on a dumpster dive for a dead one. There was a possibility that a demon or angel might be able to track the residue of violence or divine power--Veronica had understood that risk from the beginning--but that would lead them first to Marius, and only after that to her. By then her job would be done.
    As she pushed her dolly up next to the dumpster's low front edge--another reason she had chosen this place, since Mr. Tombs was not exactly a small man--she realized she was feeling funny. It wasn't shock, or at least she didn't think it was. She was still trembling inside from the feeling of Marius on top of her, holding her down. She had felt powerless, like when she was a child and her brother would wrestle with her more fiercely than she had ever like--but this was much, much more frightening. She had known her brother loved her. Marius probably wasn't much capable of loving anyone. Hadn't been. He was dead now. She had killed him. That was something worth shaking about, too.
    But this feeling wasn't shock. She was more certain of that. She felt warm. Healthy. She felt like she'd just been on a run, but better. Like she wanted to run more, like there was a trail out there waiting for her. Was this what it felt like? Was this what life was like for a god? Feeling good this way?
    Suddenly Veronica was frightened. She'd been warned about this, the feeling of euphoria. She couldn't let it get to her. She wasn't going to become another god like Forgotten Zed, using the divine power to spin the world around her like a hurricane, starting wars, ending wars with destruction and death. No, she would not be pulled in by these feelings, no matter how good they were. With a rush of adrenaline, she grabbed a board, propped it up against the front of the dumpster, and slid Marius up the improvised ramp inside the cooler, tipping it in among collapsed cardboard boxes. It slid into the metal wall of the dumpster with a muffled clang. The camera boxes followed and the board last of all. She pushed the dolly over against the wall next to the supermarket, leaving it there. It looked like it belonged. Good. Time to go. Time to meet with her employers and get rid of this power. It felt too good. She was almost giddy and definitely terrified, uncertain how the two could fit in the same body at the same moment. She had to hurry.
    Her car was a two blocks down and one over, and she walked, not really seeing the people around her. The divine power was filling her. She could definitely feel it now, and it was distracting. There were lights from the front of the supermarket, people laughing, teenagers pushing other teenagers inside shopping carts that she could see through the window, cars moving by on the road, a man walking next to her. A man? A huge man, walking with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Something about him made her uncomfortable, so Veronica walked faster, leaving him behind, then she turned down the smaller street she'd chosen as a short cut.
The road was empty of people, almost a shock after the major road she'd just left, and it was ten steps before the hair on the back of her neck informed Miss Sweeps she'd just made a terrible mistake. The feeling of a hand closing on her shoulder was almost an unnecessary afterthought, as if the universe were incapable of subtlety. She looked back up at the man, towering over her, who had been walking next to her. His hair was very light, his smile genuinely amused.
    "I've found you," he said, his English faintly accented, though Veronica couldn't have guessed from where. He kept her walking forward down the street.
    "Do I know you?"
    "No. You don't."
    "Do I ask what you want?"
    He laughed. "If it would make you feel better. But I bet you can guess."
    Veronica swallowed. "I'm going to die, aren't I?"
    "Oh yes. You certainly are going to do that."