Chapter 32: Chapter 32
Chapter 32. The Right Bait
With the Palace now well and truly in the hands of the Army of Darkness, and with the most pressing matters of the prisoners and searching out any radios in Dystopia taken care of, the next order of business was tending to the Maestro's prisoners, who were milling around in confusion, after having been freed from the dungeons (which were then refilled with the prisoners taken by the Army of Darkness). They were in sad condition. Most were starved, covered with unspeakable things (there were no toilets, or even chamber pots in the dungeons), had fleas, ticks, and other parasites, and more than a few had been tortured. They had to be tended to, given medical treatment, deloused, and fed. Nor were they reassured by the dark uniforms or the name of the Army of Darkness, and it took a while to convince them that they had not traded one form of slavery for another before they would cooperate with any of it.
None of it went easily. It seemed that every problem that needed to be solved first required that at least two other problems be solved first, and once it had been solved, created at least two other problems to be solved afterwards, as well. For instance, the medical inspections could not be carried out in the dim interior of the palace, and a runner had to be sent to replace the fuses Aster had removed, earning her glares from the freed prisoners when they heard she was the one who had Made the Darkness, as if she had done it specifically to frighten and inconvenience them.
Then, there was screaming from several of them when their clothes were taken to be burned, and they had to be given new clothes before they were re-assured that the removal of their clothes was not intended to be a prelude to a rape of some kind. The clothes were also a problem, since almost all the clothing available in the palace was green, and the Maestro's former prisoners were reluctant to wear the colors of their enemy. Eventually, they accepted the idea, for lack of any alternative other than wearing a burlap sack.
Nor were the results of the medical examinations entirely optimistic in some cases. Weeks of starvation, filth, and infestation by parasites had caused bad infection in some of them. The antibiotics that could have easily treated it didn't exist any more. All that could be done was to clean the infections as well as possible, lance them, and in some cases, cauterize them with a hot iron. As there were no anesthetics either, this brought on more screams, especially from the children who were convinced they were being tortured by the Army. A few of the younger ones had to be strapped down. Aster watched it, clenching her fists until she thought her fingers would dig into her palms. The smell and screams reminded her of when the Maestro had bodily thrown people into his fireplace. And now the Army she had joined was performing the same burning of flesh, even if it was on a smaller scale and for a good reason. It hurt her then and it hurt her now. And in a way, it was worse. Partly because it was her and the Army she had joined doing it, partly because of the meager and disgusting rations they had had for so long. She was just so hungry and the burned flesh smelled like BACON! and she couldn't help salivating. She cursed the Maestro under her breath for bringing her and the rest of the Army to such desperate straits. She hated seeing it, and she liked hating it. She intended to see the Maestro dead someday, if she could, and when the time came, she didn't want a single shred of mercy in her heart to stop her.
It seemed to take forever, but it was really less than an hour until the screaming of those who had had to have infections cauterized died down to a whimper. However, after being sat down at a long table in the Maestro's dining room, a far greater number of them began screaming at Aster when she directed that they be given nothing more than thin soup, and not much of that, either.
"I haven't eaten in WEEKS!" a woman shrieked, glaring first at Aster, then at the overhead lights. It was more light than she had seen since she had been imprisoned, and her eyes were having trouble adjusting due to vitamin deficiency. "And how can you deny decent food to starving CHILDREN?! Don't tell me you don't have food, I can see a bunch of you bat-faced lot over at the other table stuffing your faces." Several conversations between both the former prisoners, and the members of the Army that had freed them were silenced, and heads turned to look at her. It was, perhaps, not so much her shrieking, as her insult toward the uniform they had earned.
Aster was out of patience for stupidity. "It's dangerous to eat too quickly after you've been starved." She told the woman. "My father told me that. The shock can kill you."
"Your father? Who the fuck was he?"
"Joshua Aversa."
The woman seemed to search her memory. "The zookeeper? What's a damn animal keeper know? Damn lackey of the Maestro's, if you ask me. And the zoo's gone, anyways. Has been for a years, now." She waved the thought of the Zoo, and anything that an animal keeper might have known away with a disparaging gesture.
"He knew a hell of a lot more than you do, apparently." Aster said, feeling like dumping the bowl of soup onto the woman's head for the rude comments she had made about her father and the Zoo. "Now, you can eat the soup, or you can eat nothing. It's your choice."
Nobody chose to eat the nothing. They sat down to soup, and Aster only then remembered that she had a promise to keep to herself.
"Is there anyone here by the last name of 'Black'?" Aster asked the freed prisoners. "Anyone whose husband or father was a man called 'Frederick Black'?"
There was no response for a several long seconds, and more than a few of the prisoners looked at her as though the question were a trick of some kind. Finally, a brown haired boy, his hair close to Aster's in color, and perhaps 6 years old raised his hand.
"He was my pa." The boy said. He pointed to a girl next to him, who was a year or two younger, and holding her bowl of soup in her hands in order to sip at it, rather than using a spoon. "Mine and my sis's both. Do you know where he is?"
"He's… dead." Aster did not want to tell him that the leader of the Army of Darkness, General Monroe, had hung their father for spying. Not yet. They would find out soon enough. Let them get a little strength from the soup, first. "Where's your mother?"
The boy shook his head. "Don't know. The Maestro took her away… I don't remember how long ago. She never came back. Do you think she's in the palace somewhere? She was pretty. I heard the Maestro had pretty lady servants around here."
Servants. Now there was a euphemism if Aster ever heard one. But if the boy's mother had been alive, and among the Betties somewhere, surely she would have asked about her children, once the Army of Darkness had taken over the palace. And she would have tried to see her children or get a message to them, even before then.
"I don't think… she's probably dead." Aster did not know a very polite way to put such a horrible subject before children. Diplomacy was not her strong point. The most she could do was to refrain from mentioning the horrible way their mother had probably died.
"No!" The boy looked as stricken as if he had been condemned to death, and hugged his sister. It was probably a realistic assessment of the situation. The chances of survival of young orphans in the post-War world was not good. And the things many of them had to do to survive were so unpleasant that in some ways they might have been better off dead. And she had no idea how to approach the subject that she was part of the Army that had killed their father. They were a pathetic sight. The clothing they had been given was far too large for them, especially as they were practically nothing but skin and bones, and the girl had finished her soup and was looking around with big eyes for seconds that she would not be given for at least another hour or two. Their skin was pale from lack of sunlight, and starvation. They looked like ghosts, in oversized green garments. As if the Maestro had already killed them, and they didn't realize they were dead.
Aster wondered if their father, Frederick, had been told by the Maestro, or guessed, that his children would not be fed unless and until he brought back information about the Army of Darkness. And whether he had actually believed that he could save his children, or whether he thought that the most he could get for them was a quick and painless death.
There was a pain in her chest, of feelings that wouldn't quite lend themselves to examination, like the minnows in the ponds at the zoo that had always darted out of her hand, the very moment before she thought she had caught them. Not this time. She thought. The boy's father, Frederick Black, was a spy against the Army of Darkness, but he had done that only because the Maestro had held his family as hostage. And the damned green bastard had raped Black's wife to death, regardless. Probably he would have raped the girl, too, if she had been eight or ten years older. So perhaps the children's parents had paid with their blood for the lives of their children. It was a price… a bait… Aster could not refuse. Even though she wasn't at all sure she could take on more burdens than she already had.
"Alright." Aster said. She spoke loudly so that others would be sure to hear her. "Your mother and father are dead, but I won't leave you alone. They were brave people, so you'll grow up to be brave like them. From now on, you're my children. There's a lot of things I have to do, so I'll be busy a lot, but I'll see to it that you're taken care of. You'll get food, and clothes, and a bed. And I'll teach you how to find your own food. And I own things, so even if I die, you can trade them to get the food and stuff you need. Ok?"
The boy nodded silently.
"What's your name? And your sister's?"
"I'm Zack. And my sister is Maria. Please… can't we have more than soup? It's yucky and we're hungry. Can't we have hams and bread and pies like you Army people?" He pointed at a table several feet away where cold food had been brought out, not understanding that although the Army had been on short rations, and eaten disgusting things like rats and bugs the past several weeks, they were not dangerous starved like the Maestro's former prisoners. All he understood was hunger, and that he saw food and was being denied it. At only 6, he could not understand, and his brown eyes held a glint of a feral, starving animal.
"Zachariah?" The boy nodded. Zack Black. Cute. His father might have been a spy, but had at least had a sense of humor. Or no sense at all. Aster took off her bat shaped cloak and handed it to him. "You wear this. It's big, but it will show people you're part of the Army of Darkness now. Since I'm in the Army, and you're under my protection, that makes you and your sister both part of the Army. I have things to do, but you wear that so I can find you again. And right now I know you don't understand, but I'm afraid you have to eat only soup, until you get stronger. You'll get the same food as the people in the Army do in a few days or weeks, I promise. I'm sorry you can't have it now, but you tell people that Aster Aversa said you and Maria were to get a good bed, ok?"
The boy nodded. Aster wished she could have stayed with him, and had mixed feelings about her decision to adopt him. The things she would be doing in her life would be dangerous, and if she died, or got into trouble for the things she had to do, then where would the boy and his sister be?
No worse off than they are now. She decided. And in a sense, perhaps the boy could have been her son. The age he was, 6 years or so, he might very well have been conceived the very night she had been raped by the Maestro. The night she lost… the night the Maestro stole from her any children she might have ever had.
Aster leaned against the wall, weary with exhaustion. She couldn't even spare the time to talk any more with the two children, or think of a polite way to explain that the Army of Darkness had hung their father as a spy. With the Maestro's former prisoners being taken care of, what Aster wanted more than anything was a nice long bath. With hot water and some of the Pre-War soap she had seen. Then a change of water. Then another bath. Then all the food she could think of and eat. Despite his cannibalistic habits, the Maestro had a pantry filled with what amounted to riches to the famished Army of Darkness. Turkeys. Chickens. Sides of beef, pork, venison, mutton, and goat. Cooked to tender perfection and served piping hot with salt and exotic herbs from the Maestro's greenhouses. Canned fruits and vegetables. Warm bread and cakes and pies. Aster drooled to think of it. Then once she was full, a nice long sleep of at least 15 hours.
What she and everyone else got, unfortunately, was a 5 minute shower (though they did at least get the nice looking Pre-War soap), and food served cold, and eaten on the run. The latter being the 'stuffing of faces' that the starving woman had expressed her jealousy of, and that had been denied to children such as Zack and Maria who were too young to understand why.
It was disappointing. Aster supposed that everyone else in the Army, like she did, had had a somewhat childish mental vision of being rewarded for taking the palace by (once they had also secured the city, made sure their children were safe, and other immediate tasks accomplished) being able to spend at least a few days in the same sort of luxury as the Maestro and his sycophants lived in. With said sycophants being made to serve them as slaves at least for cooking and bringing food and scrubbing them in the baths.
But of course, except for those who were wounded too badly to work, they couldn't. As General Monroe pointed out irately, when he found most of the Army, including Aster, sitting around and stuffing their faces with fruit and nut pies, they were on a SCHEDULE.
And unfortunately, it wasn't their schedule. They had no way of knowing when the Maestro would get back. They didn't expect him back for over a week, but the Maestro was mad, and hence unpredictable. For all they knew, he was on his way back at that very moment. They had no time to waste wallowing in luxury and doing nothing productive.
It was because they had no time to waste that General Monroe grew irate when he heard about those members of the Army who had planned to rape the Maestro's Betties. If they had no time for hot food or long sleep, they sure as hell didn't have time for sex. Besides which, he had specifically ordered that the Betties be locked in their tower. Raping them was not part what he had ordered them to do. And how many times did he have to tell them to follow the Orders they were given, no more and no less, and not adding creative (or rather, disobedient) embellishments of their own?
He also asked them why they didn't actually complete their rape of the Betties, and was told what Aster had done to stop them. This made him squint at Aster with something like angry suspicion for nearly a minute, but he said nothing.
Aster posed a problem that the General, determined to create a dynasty for his children, did not like. He could not simply assassinate her, or arrange an accident. Not after the things she had done. She was a hero. Even though she was dangerous. Or would have been dangerous, if she were anything resembling sane. There were things going on in her head that - he had to admit to herself - were nearly as far beyond his own capacity as the Maestro's strength was. Look at the way she had faced down several times her own number, when they had intended to rape the Betties. With a single gun, or more likely, the words she had spoken to them, she had stopped a mob of would-be rapists in their tracks. It was the power of leadership. Of Kings.
And then what had she done with it? Made herself Queen or gotten a promotion, at least? As anyone else would have?
No. Aster had done nothing. Once she had accomplished the immediate goal of stopping the other soldiers from doing something she found highly offensive, she simply set the power down, like a tool she was done with, and gone on to other things she found more interesting.
Not that what she had done wasn't bad enough. Though he could not say so, Monroe actually would have preferred that the mob had carried out the rape of the Betties, and that nobody had stopped them. It would have tarred his whole army with the brush of guilt, and guilty people were easier to control. To rule, as he intended his children to. Once people had blood or other guilt on their hands, they were caught in a moral trap, in which they and the powers they served had to be right. Right, regardless of any wrongs that were done. Otherwise they would have to face their own guilt, which few people had the strength to do. Aster had kept his army out of that trap, which he could have used for his children. And her informal adoption of the children of the spy he had executed had further undermined the sort of authority he would have liked to have given Evan and Gina. Perhaps now they would still rule, but not as thoroughly as he wanted. Still, perhaps it was better this way. Aster's way. The path she had made meant his children might be deposed, if others did not like their rulership, but they probably would at least not be hung.
Besides, Aster was not really all that dangerous, but she was, perhaps, useful. Monroe wasn't sure if Aster would actually keep the children. The Zookeeper was very young, and might get tired of them. But it did send a useful message. The Army delivers what the Maestro only promises. Useful enough that Monroe would have to see to it that someone else would care for the two children, if the Zookeeper did get tired of them. They were at least old enough to eat and go to the bathroom by themselves. A few scraps of food and a warm bed wouldn't cost that much, and would make the Army look good, and perhaps more importantly, give them pride.
And as annoying as her stopping of the rape of the Betties might have been, it had taught General Monroe a valuable lesson. A few words, the right thought, at the right time, could give a King, or even a mad would-be Zookeeper more power than the strongest army in the world. It was, perhaps, why he himself now found himself in charge of an Army, and the beginnings of a new nation, rather than a ragged band of robbers. Because others had believed his words of a new start, somewhere else, away from the Maestro. It was a lesson his children could use. He would see to it, as best as he could before the end, that they would learn the art of words from Aster, and the art of War and rulership from others.
The fact that words ruled thoughts, and thoughts ruled what a man did, and that this would, in effect, give Aster Aversa the rulership he sought for his children did not occur to him at that time, though it eventually would. But by then it would be too late for him to do anything about it.
In the meantime, as the commanding officer of the Army, he had to deal with the would-be rapists. The offending soldiers (both men and women) were sentenced to five lashes each, with the whip. Then the sentence was suspended, on the grounds that the whipping would slow them down even further than their stupidity already had, and the offenders were instead denied the hot showers that the rest of the Army got, and was allowed to eat only meat, vegetables, bread, and water. They were not to get any fruits, cakes, or pies, and once they had eaten about half of what was on their plates, they were told they had had enough and General Monroe set them to the grueling labor of shoveling and bagging up wheat, rye, corn, and other grains from several silos that were set on one side of the palace.
The rest of the Army got 30 minutes to eat as much as they could, then drank thick coffee. At least they called it 'coffee'. It was actually chicory root. Coffee came from South America, and was not available in Dystopia. Not for any price, in money or blood. Not even for the Maestro himself. Aster heard that the Maestro had once grown it, a long time ago, in his palace greenhouses, but it had died out long before she had been born. Like so many other things. The Heroes. The Zoo animals. Her family. Plague and lack of genetic variety were killing much of what had managed to survive the War, and the Maestro seemed likely to kill everything else.
Once the Army was scrubbed and fed, and given energy by the fake chicory-coffee, it was time to get back to work.
The younger children of the Army members, those under 5, were put into a room full with the few toys they had, and plenty of blankets, in case they wanted to sleep. The former prisoners, being too weak with hunger and the effects of beatings and torture were put in a different room on mats and given blankets (except for Zack and Maria, who, having been adopted by Aster, were allowed to join the other children of Army members). Everyone else was assigned tasks, either loading the trucks, or deciding what was to be loaded, or doing support work for those in the first two categories. The old men and women were sent to the kitchen to prepare food, or to the trucks to write an 'inventory' of what was being loaded, and the older children were set to work running food to the hungry soldiers in the Army and relaying written messages back and forth.
There were tanks of diesel fuel in the basement. One of General Monroe's first orders was to connect hoses to them, so that the fuel could be pumped into the courtyard. Things they didn't want or couldn't use were burned, or if they were inflammable, were loaded onto the trucks (which had driven into Dystopia as soon as a runner had informed them of the victory), and then driven a few minutes to the harbor, where they were dumped into the ocean. Some of it the Maestro probably would be able to salvage. Others items would be lost forever. One of the latter was salt.
General Monroe had sent most of the members of the Army of Darkness to load as much food, weapons, and hand tools onto the trucks as they could find, and to destroy anything they were sure wouldn't be useful. Knowing that Aster had read far more books than anyone else, he told them to consult with her if they were in doubt as to whether something would be 'useful' at their destination or not. Then he told Aster to look around the palace for anything unusual, special treasures of the Maestro, that they might be able to use, and if she found any, to put it on the trucks. And if she needed help, everyone else had standing orders to load whatever she told them to load, regardless of whether they understood why or not.
The first thing that Aster wanted to get, if she could, was knowledge. Aster had a very hard time understanding or using political or social power. To her, knowledge was power. And she needed as much of it as she could get, if she were to achieve the small possibility of success, in the far future, that she had worked out. And she didn't have anywhere near the amount of knowledge, of power, that she would need. There was so much she needed to know that she didn't. And much she needed to have that she didn't. But in Aster's scheme of priorities, knowledge came first before material goods. After all, goods could be stolen, but how could anyone steal what was in her head?
Accordingly, after checking on Zack and Maria, to make sure they had been given the good bed and blankets she had promised. They had the blanket, but were rolled in her bat-wing shaped cloak under it, which made Aster smile. She felt naked without the adornment, but took the silver, bat-shaped pin off it and fastened it to her shirt, justifying it with the thought that it might possibly poke them in their sleep. Then she patted them on the head and let them know she was going to be busy for the next several hours. That done, she made her way into what was left of Dr. Llewellyn's office, to sort through his books.
Most of them, she decided, were useless. They detailed surgical techniques that required complex tools that in the Post-War world probably existed only in Iceland and Dystopia. And likely, they would not exist in Dystopia for much longer. Things were falling apart. Nineteenth century medical texts would have been of more use to her.
She did take the copy of 'Fundamentals of Biochemistry' by Dr. Michael Morbius, smiling slightly at the sight of the moustache she had scrawled on his face so many years ago. She had been young, then. It seemed a lifetime ago.
Then of course there was a set of encyclopedias. She did not take them, even a century after the War there were probably still encyclopedias to be found in Wisconsin if they looked hard enough, but she did look up the entry for that state in the W-Z volume. She wanted to know if there was anything they had in the palace that they didn't have in Wisconsin. And she found it.
The right bait.
Or part of it. There were other parts, that would come soon enough.
And it helped that it was all true. She felt slightly ashamed at the trap she was making for General Monroe, but it wasn't as if she were going to hurt him, or anyone else. Or even make them worse off than they were before. In fact (she justified the matter to herself), she was actually going to make him better off. It was hardly her fault that Monroe would never let her have what she needed. Not if he knew about it. So she had to give him other things, things that she didn't need, in order to distract him.
She took the encyclopedia back up to the courtyard, where General Monroe was burning pots of orange tree saplings from the greenhouses. She waited, in the proper posture of attention, until he turned to her.
"Well, Zookeeper." He seemed actually slightly respectful, which was probably about as friendly as he ever got with anyone other than his own two children. Though he still squinted slightly in suspicion. Aster wasn't sure what to make of that, but she didn't like it. He glanced at the two thick volumes she carried. "More books. What a shock. Learn anything useful?"
"Salt." Aster said bluntly. It was her first bit of bait. It was not the last.
The General frowned. "Are the cooks having another problem of some kind?" The earlier problem he referred to had been the matter of a half dozen gutted human corpses that had been found hung in the large freezer where the meat was kept. They had been cut down and put with the dead Army soldiers. He folded his good arm over his chest, his expression suggesting that now that the matter of the Maestro's cannibalistic habits had been taken care of, nobody in his army had better be having a problem with something as simple as getting meals prepared in an entire palace full to the brim with tons of food.
"No." Aster waved the encyclopedia. "I looked up… our destination in the encyclopedia. To see if I could learn anything that the Millers and other people there hadn't told us. And there's no salt there. Or at least not very much, not enough to mention in the encyclopedia. And salt is important. You need at least some to live. And a lot to salt down meat and make soap and leather and God only knows how many other things. We've got tons of it here, from the ocean. We should load some on the trucks. Trade goods. The carrot is always better than the stick. The more goodies we have to offer the people living there to buy our way in there, and the less threatening we have to do, the easier a time we'll have of it."
"Hmm." General Monroe considered the idea. "You're sure about this? The stuff is heavy. I don't want to end up with nothing to eat but salt in a few months, because we took that and left wheat behind."
Aster waved the encyclopedia. "You can look at it for yourself. I can't really see any reason for a Pre-War encyclopedia to lie. And from what the Millers and other people from our destination say, there's plenty of fish, and game and wild plants there to be eaten. Especially the Helianthus Morbiusii. Which I'm pretty damn sure we better eat, regardless."
The Helianthus Morbiusii (or blood sunflower as the people from Wisconsin called it, though whether this was because of the red color it had or because it had been created by a Vampire they didn't seem to know) was the genetically engineered sunflower that had been the topic of a great many discussions between Aster and the higher officers in the Army of Darkness, including General Monroe and Daniel Wolfkiller. Somehow, it cured radiation. Both in the land, and in the people who ate it. It was why the people in Wisconsin survived.
It was why Morbius, the Vampire, survived. Like the vampire bat, he was an obligate hematophage. He had to drink blood. And unfortunately, unlike the vampire bat, not just any old sort of blood would do. It had to be human blood. The Vampire needed the human species to survive, or he would starve. What he had done was clever, and Aster admired clever people. He had ensured the survival of both humanity and himself. True, he killed people, which Aster could not advocate and certainly intended to put a stop to, but it was still clever.
And then, apparently, several years after the War, something had gone badly wrong, and he had gone mad. Or perhaps a better word would be feral, since the behavior described by the people from Wisconsin was more like that of a wild animal, than a sadistic madman like the Maestro. What had gone wrong, Aster didn't know. The people from Wisconsin were uniformly evasive on many of the details about the Vampire, which Aster didn't like. Surprises were for birthday and Christmas presents, not for things affecting her own survival. But asking them about it simply got nothing but either silence and guilty looks, or nonsensical answers (with the same guilty looks) that contradicted each other.
Aster was fairly sure that if she had had several months, she would be able to get the truth out of them by means of logic and sufficiently tricky questions. But she didn't have several months. General Monroe was no more happy with the evasion than Aster was (and the humorless, sociopath general did not like surprises even on holidays), and he was sure that if he had several days, he would have gotten the truth out of them by far more direct and brutal methods. But though he had the time, he couldn't use those methods. He didn't dare alienate the people who might be able to get them accepted in whatever society existed in Wisconsin without having to fight a war.
In the mean time, Aster had another way to get at least some information about the Vampire, as well as distracting the attention of General Monroe and the rest of the Army from things she intended to get that she did not want them to know about.
The right bait.
Now that she was actually looking at her commanding officer, Aster felt a bit guilty about this, but it wasn't as if she was betraying the Army. In fact, what she wanted to do would help them. But if they knew about it, they wouldn't allow it. They would take for themselves the assets that Aster needed to save all their lives, over the long term.
"I need six people, and a few of the small carts that the guards used." Aster told General Monroe. "I want to have a look around the Hall of Fallen Heroes. There's stuff there we can use."
"We?' General Monroe looked askance at Aster. She may not have craved power, but she was only slightly less greedy than anyone else. And he had heard fantastic tales of some of the artifacts in the Hall of Fallen Heroes. He dismissed most of them as exaggeration, but if even a fraction of them were true, there were weapons there that could not be gotten anywhere else for any price. Weapons fit for royalty, which is what he intended his children to be.
Aster shrugged. "There's stuff *I* can use. I don't think it would be much good to anyone else. Except maybe the Vampire, if we can get him to cooperate. Before he became a Vampire, he was awfully smart. He wrote books I can't begin to understand."
"And what about the rest of it?"
"I wish I could have it all." Aster admitted. "But I know damn well you won't let me. There is some armor there, it belonged to someone called 'Captain America'. Supposedly, it's invulnerable. I know you're probably going to want that, maybe not for yourself, but for Evan, when he gets older."
"Obviously." General Monroe said dryly. At least he and the Zookeeper both understood greed.
"I'd like to have it for myself, but I know you won't let me. At least, not permanently. But I'd like to use it once, when we get to Milwaukee."
"And once you get it on, then how exactly do we get it off you?" He sneered.
"It'll protect me from weapons. At least if it does what people say it does. I don't think it will prevent twelve other people from jumping on me and keeping me immobile enough to get me out of it. Or suffocating me and stripping it off my body."
The general thought this through. "True enough. What do you want it for?"
"I intend to try and catch a Vampire." Aster's lip curled slightly. "So I need the right bait. You taught me that. In this case, the right bait is blood. I haven't got the stomach to chain someone else up, cut them, and wait for the Vampire to show up and kill them. So all I have is myself. And I don't intend to use myself as bait for the Vampire without protection of some kind. I don't think acid will help, and I don't want him hurt, in any event. So it has to be armor."
"You'd be better off using someone else as bait." General Monroe remarked as casually as if he were discussing fishing methods. "Then you might have a chance. But if you want to go and get yourself killed over stupid conscience, then so be it. I don't think you'll catch the damn Vampire either way. It's hard to live trap a man or an animal. Especially a man. It's easier to kill them. Really, though, I don't give a damn. It's your life to fuck up or throw away the way you want. But I will try that armor first. You say all it does is make one invulnerable, but I'm not sure. I've heard God knows how many stories about the stuff in that place. If it makes me stronger, or gives me powers of some kind that would make it hard to get the armor back from you, I'm keeping it."
Aster didn't like that. She needed protection. "I need that armor. I'll give it back when I'm done."
He shrugged. "Maybe you really mean that. Maybe you don't. But power has a way of corrupting the best of us. Even you, even if you don't think so now. But you've changed, you know. Maybe you don't see it, but me and Daniel Wolfkiller do. Once you taste owning something like that, you might change your mind."
"I won't change my mind." But General Monroe didn't seem to care. Leaning on a curved staff he was using as a cane, he called over the six soldiers Aster had requested. He sent three of them for some of the small electric carts, one of which he sat on, while Aster and the rest of the soldiers walked beside it, and went down the main hallway of the palace to the Hall of Fallen Heroes.
The doors were locked, of course. The Maestro's trophy museum had not been open to the public since his unborn son had died. Even if it had been, since that event, since the Maestro had gone further into madness, nobody would have wanted or dared to enter the palace willingly, without specific invitation.
Not that the doors were much barrier. They were wood. Thick, and strong enough to keep out the casual intruder, but no match against six strong men, once they fetched a few sledgehammers. Two of the soldiers bashed at the door several times, and the lock broke off with a splintering, ripping sound. The hinges opened with a squeal, like a coffin being opened. It was dark inside, and a little dust drifted out into the hallway, along with a musty smell. It reminded Aster of breaking into an ancient tomb. Which, perhaps, it was. The bodily remains of several dead Heroes were inside, of course. It was a tomb of noble kings, of Heroes. An image came to her mind, of the spirits of the Heroes lined up, glittering glowing figures of gold and silver, regarding her with disapproving judgement. Aster felt slightly ashamed, nothing but a scavenger, little better than a rat, robbing them. She could never be worthy of them. Never be a Hero. Never be anything more than… a phrase from a book came to her mind. "..that which moved and bred on a corpse." In this case, the corpses were quite literal. But she had very little choice. She needed what was inside that room.
Besides, she thought petulantly, what did the Heroes know? They had lived lives like Kings and Gods before the War, eating meals every day that were rare feasts to Aster, and unknown to almost everyone else in the Army. Certainly they had never eaten rats or bugs, or been raped by the Maestro, or had to watch him throwing living people into a fire, or eating children. Or had their sister raped to death and father kill himself.
And despite all that, they failed. They had been killed by the Maestro, leaving Aster and everyone else left alive to pay the price of their failure. The only one with the wits to keep himself alive was the Vampire, Morbius. Who had been spit on by all the others, but he was still smarter than them all, so far as she was concerned.
Aster made an obscene gesture at the imagined souls of the Heroes, that might be standing inside that door.
"Fuck you." She said under her breath to any ghosts that might be listening. "You failed. Failed and left me to pay the price. Now I'll take what I bloody well need from your stupid dead bodies to do what you couldn't."
General Monroe spared Aster barely a glance. Whatever obscenity she was mumbling about was obviously not directed at him, so it didn't constitute insubordination. He got off the cart, pulled the doors wider, and squinted at the darkness. "We'll need torches or flashlights." He said sourly. The lights elsewhere were working, now that the fuses had been replaced. The ones inside must have been broken or burned out. Or so he thought.
"Maybe not." Aster said. Screw the ghosts of the Heroes anyways. She half closed her eyes, remembering the room before them from years ago, when it had been well lit, and she had spent time there. There had been lights in the ceiling. So there must have been a switch. Surely it was near the door… if she could just remember. She reached in with one hesitant hand, as if one of the dead Heroes inside might somehow come back to life and seize such an unworthy looter as herself. Surely it had to be near the door… this door… she wasn't sure she was brave enough to try and cross the room in the dark to look for the switch if it were near the doors on the other side. After everything she had done, sneaking into the palace, attacking the two guards by herself, stopping a crowd of would-be rapists, and promising two children not all that much younger than herself that she would take care of them, it felt like whatever little courage she had was used up. Even though she still needed it.
There it was. She felt a cold, plastic bump with her hands and flicked it upwards. There was a hum, and a clicking noise, and the lights on the ceiling blinked on. At least most of them did. A few were burned out and two of them were broken, smashed somehow. There was a streak of dried blood across one of the broken lights and thick stains on the floor that looked like blood had puddled there, then dried as well. Aster ignored it. It was no surprise, after the rest of what she had seen in the palace. Just one more horror story out of hundred, or perhaps thousands, that had been authored by the Maestro and his guards.
General Monroe paid little attention to the condition of the lights, or evidence of murder. He had interest only for the practical contents of the room. His eyes lit up as he saw some of the ancient weapons that were on display.
"Nice." There was a slight leer on his face, that reminded Aster of the expression Paul Rasse and his friends had, the times they had raped her. It struck her as slightly sick that General Monroe would feel some sort of sexual attraction towards weapons meant for killing, but perhaps it was none of her business. And so long as she got what she wanted, and he was distracted by this bait, she was prepared to ignore a great deal of perversion on his part.
The injured General directed one of his soldiers to take a large, complicated looking gun out of a case. With difficulty, wincing at his injuries, he lifted the gun, aimed it at a point at the ceiling and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
"Bloody fuck." A few worse words came out of his mouth. "Is there any ammo around for this thing?"
Aster looked at it. "I don't think it uses bullets."
"Bullshit." General Monroe spat. "All guns use bullets."
"It's not…" Aster struggled to find the words to explain what the problem was. "It's shaped like a gun, and it probably killed people at one time, but I think it works differently than regular guns. If you look at the end of the barrel, there's a lens, like a magnifying glass, rather than a hole that a bullet comes out of. And there's little wires on the one side there. I think it must have used some sort of battery, like the ones in the trucks, except smaller and probably more powerful, and shot a laser or something."
General Monroe knew what a laser was. Sometimes if one was unlucky or stupid, one would run into one of the Maestro's guards who had a laser weapons. It didn't happen very often. Such weapons were rare. They had all been made before the War, and most of them had broken at some time during the last century. But there were still a few around.
He swore and tossed the gun - or whatever the hell it was - aside. There was little chance of getting whatever sort of batteries or other sort of power source the weapon might have used. In fact, he was forced to admit to himself, at some point in the future, Evan, or Evan's descendants would inevitably run out of Pre-War bullets for ordinary guns. And there was no way to make more, not at their current level of technology. Brass was reusable, and making lead balls and gunpowder were within their capabilities as well. But the primers in the back of the bullets were some sort of exotic chemical they had no way of making.
And then what? Back to bows and arrows? A lot of the people living around Dystopia has already gone that way as had most of the people in Wisconsin. Daniel Wolfkiller had some notion of converting rifles to flintlocks, or possibly making his own flintlock on a forge, but in Monroe's opinion, Wolfkiller was an impractical dreamer, barely any more connected to reality than the Zookeeping bitch herself. Just look at how he had screwed up his own life, leaving Monroe's service to run off with some woman, then losing her to the Maestro.
No, they were going to go backwards. Still, that didn't change his dreams. The kings and queens of hundreds of years ago had ruled vast empires with bows and swords, and his children could do much the same. And speaking of swords, weren't those blades of some sort that he saw up on the wall? He got off the cart and limped over to them. Yes, they were blades. Six of them, sharp and curved, and attached to a metal skeleton of all things. Perhaps it was an ancient metal sculpture of some kind. There was a tag below it, covered with dust. General Monroe, wiped it off and read what was written there:
"Wolverine" He spoke the word, and frowned. He looked over at Aster, who seemed to be staring at the lights above them. "What's a 'Wolverine'? I thought it was an animal of some sort."
The General's question broke Aster out of her macabre speculations of what might have happened to splatter blood around the room. "It is, but it's also the name of one of the Heroes from before the war. Look, there's a file cabinet below him… or his skeleton. It probably tells about him in there."
Aster pulled open the metal sliding drawer with a loud scrape. A few flakes of reddish rust and black paint fell to the floor, and Aster pulled out the first folder. She skimmed through the papers quickly. A few minutes went by, and she finally set them to one side. "Interesting." She commented.
"What's interesting?" demanded the General.
"Oh, it talks about his skeleton. And those sword things coming out of it. Some kind of metal called 'Adamantium'. I never heard of it, but it says it's supposedly indestructible."
"Yeah, that's interesting." Monroe licked his lips. "Real interesting. If I put a hilt on them, they'd make damn good swords."
"Probably." Aster said in a tone that indicated she wasn't much interested in swords. She preferred the bow. Why put yourself close to an enemy if you didn't have to? "But what's more interesting is that it says in here that this 'Wolverine', whoever he was, could supposedly heal any injury or disease. No matter how bad it was."
"Well, that's real nice for him and all" the sarcasm in Erick Monroe's tone was obvious, "But that hardly does me any good, now does it."
"No, it doesn't. But it should maybe worry you. Because apparently, he ran into something he couldn't heal. Something killed him at any rate."
The General shrugged. Perhaps the theoretical question of what could kill someone who was unkillable was interesting to Aster, but since it would take far less to kill him or other mere mortals such as himself, it really didn't matter. Besides, he didn't have much longer anyways.
"Probably the War." Aster speculated aloud. "Or maybe the Maestro."
"Possibly." Monroe agreed, but he really had no more interest in the matter, than Aster did in swords made of exotic metal. He pointed at the skeleton and gave an order to his soldiers. "Get that down from there and find a way to get those blades off. Bring the over to Wolfkiller and see what he can do about getting hilts on them. They'll make good swords for my children… and the best of those who protect them."
The latter statement was deliberately calculated, of course. His children were not the Maestro. They could not lift a truck, or rule by themselves. They would need many others to support them, and the others would have to share in some of the rewards of power, such as the swords made from indestructible, Pre-War metal. Because if they were not given rewards for supporting his children, they would sooner or later take what they wanted for themselves by overthrowing them.
The skeleton of 'Wolverine' was mounted to a dark board with several bolts, and one of the soldiers opened a case of tools, and began working on freeing it, being careful to avoid cutting himself on the sharp blades. In the meantime, General Monroe looked at the other treasures that were in the Hall of Fallen Heroes, his eyes getting wider with each new sight. There were several guns that looked like they took regular bullets. And who knew, when those ran out, perhaps Daniel Wolfkiller could pull off his promised miracle of conversion to flintlocks. Power was relative. When those around you were armed with little more than sticks and stones, the army with flintlocks would rule.
The greed in Monroe's eyes did not go un-noticed by Aster. She waited for an opportune moment, when the other soldiers from the Army of Darkness had wandered some distance away, gaping at the ancient treasures that had once belonged to Heroes.
"These aren't the only weapons in the Palace." She whispered in Monroe's ear, laying out several more layers of bait. "There's an armory, somewhere, for the guards."
The General nodded. He took the bait. Of course he did. He was not Aster, and could not turn down power of any sort.
"Sergeant Billings!" He snapped at the nearest soldier.
The man snapped to attention. "Sir?"
"There has to be an armory somewhere in this Palace, where the Maestro's guards kept their weapons." He turned to Aster, "Do you know where it is?"
"I think corridor E, on the third floor. Or maybe it's corridor D. I'm not sure." Aster knew perfectly well that it was corridor D, but she wanted to make the General look smart in front of his men by making herself look less intelligent than she actually was. The more he thought about the power he was getting, the less time and brain cells he would have to think about what Aster might be up to.
"You heard her." General Monroe said to the sergeant. "Go and get as many men as you need, and some more of these carts. Find it. Take everything we can use. Destroy the rest, there's no sense in leaving weapons in the hands of our enemies."
Sergeant Billings hurried off, and Monroe looked around some more at the treasures of the room. He pointed at a red, white, and blue suit of scale armor, mounted on a wall plaque similar to the one that 'Wolverine's' skeleton had been on. There was a matching shield next to it. The colors were bright, despite a layer of dust on them. "Is that what you were talking about? Captain America's armor?"
"I think so. Let me check." Aster was not one to rely on myths and rumors. She dusted off a plaque beneath the armor, and verified that it did, indeed, say 'Captain America'. However, much to her annoyance, there was no file cabinet associated with it. She made a face.
"Well, it says that it's Captain America's armor. But there's no files about it. I don't know why."
"Easy enough to see if the stories are real." General Monroe gestured at the nearest soldier. "Shoot the damn thing and see if it leaves a hole."
Aster opened her mouth, about to warn against this, but before she could, a shot rang out from the soldier's rifle. There was a loud 'clink', then a 'zing' of a bullet rebounding through the air. She glared upwards, along the path the bullet had taken after being repelled by the armor, then glared at Monroe. That was not a good idea. What did Monroe think, that the bullet would simply stop and stick to the front of the armor, or fall to the floor? All that energy had to go somewhere.
She wanted to berate the General for such a stupid mistake, but forced her mouth to shut. Nobody had actually been hurt, and the last thing she needed was for the General to concentrate his thoughts on her, rather than the bait.
"Sorry." Monroe apologized of his own accord. "I wasn't thinking. I never really saw anything that was bulletproof before. I ought to have taken it out and tested it with some sort of berm or sandbags around for protection. Still, it's the hazards of war, and no harm done, and now at least we know."
He waved at the soldier who had fired the shot. "Get that down for me so I can try it on."
In a few moments the armor was laid out across the back of the cart. Injured as he was, General Monroe needed the soldier to help him put the armor on. Aster turned to face the other way. While the close quarters they had lived in while in the Underworld, the former iron mines where they had trained meant that both male and female soldiers in the Army of Darkness often saw each other naked (and were expected to be disciplined enough not to act inappropriately because of it), somehow this was different. Perhaps because it was not the Underworld, perhaps because despite the fact that she was not completely obedient, Monroe was still her commanding officer, or perhaps due to lingering embarrassment over the act she had started to perform on him when he asked her to demonstrate how she would go about seducing an enemy soldier as a distraction.
Or perhaps it was that Monroe was old, and ugly, and scarred and had who knew what sorts of malformities from the cancer he had, and she simply didn't want to know what he looked like under his clothes.
"Well," Monroe said a few minutes later, "How do I look?"
Aster shrugged. "Like the old American flag, I guess."
"Not the best of colors." The general grimaced. "If I had time, I'd get this thing painted or something. That is, if I had any paint." He laughed at his own joke.
"How do you feel?" Aster asked. "Are you any stronger? Or is it healing the injuries you have?"
General Monroe poked at his own body a few times, reminding Aster of something she couldn't quite remember at the moment. "I still hurt like a son of bitch. As much as before, so far as I can tell. If it heals wounds, then it doesn't do so immediately. And I don't think I feel any stronger. Let me see."
He limped over to one corner of the cart, put his hands under it, and attempted to lift. It raised a bare fraction of an inch, due to play in whatever sorts of springs or shock absorbers it had, then the General let go.
"Not any stronger, either." He seemed disgusted and disappointed. "I won't be using this to fight the Maestro any time soon, and if you ask me, you're a damn fool to think you can use it to fight the Vampire. Still, I'm not going to stop you. If you want to use it, once you're at the Destination, I'll instruct my soldiers to let you. But if you try to keep it for yourself, instead of giving it to Evan once you're through, I'll tell them to strip it off your dead body, understood?"
"Fair enough." Aster nodded. "There's only a few other things here I want, and I don't think they'd be any good for you. Everything else is for you, or whoever you say should have it."
"I'll decide what is good for me, Zookeeper." General Monroe said bluntly. "What is it that you want from here."
Aster pointed at a ragged, bloodstained suit of red and blue cloth, the one that had once belonged to the Vampire, Morbius. "I want the Vampire's clothes. And all the files on him, that are below it. If I'm to catch him, I need to know as much as I can about him."
"Fine." He nodded. "What else do you need."
Aster pointed at a large skeleton, nearly as tall as the Maestro himself, inside lightly tinted glass. The skeleton appeared to have a light green tinge to it, though perhaps that was merely caused by the glass.
"That skeleton." She insisted. "And whatever files are down below it."
General Monroe read the name tag below the large glass case. "Leonard Samson. Big fellow, wasn't he? Who was he, a giant Vampire?"
"No. Not a Vampire. I remember reading about him. He was a Gamma." The word was spat out as a curse. "Like the Maestro."
The thought of anyone else like the Maestro alarmed General Monroe, and most of the soldiers with them, who made various gestures of obscenity or appeals to whatever gods they believed in.
"What the hell do you want that for?"
"I'm worried the Maestro might find us, someday. Even at the Destination. Before that happens, I want to find a way to kill him, if I can. I don't dare bring the Shulk along, I don't trust a live female Gamma any more than I'd trust a male one. But a dead one, that's another story. I don't know how much I can learn from those files, and his bones. But I'll take every resource I can get. And if I can somehow get the Vampire on my side, he used to be a doctor. He might be able to tell things that I can't from the bones. Forensics and stuff."
The general frowned at the skeleton. "I've heard stories that Gammas can come back to life, even from bare bones, if you pump enough radiation into them. And there's a lot of hot areas, between us and the Destination. You sure this is a good idea?
"I'll put it in a lead lined chest." Aster said. "And check on it several times a day. If it looks like it's growing new tissue or something, I'll burn it. Trust me, I'm not a fool. I don't want a live Gamma anywhere around me, any more than you or anyone else does, and I don't care to be raped nearly to death now by a 'Leonard Samson', whoever the hell he was, any more than I cared to have the Maestro have done the same thing back when I was 14."
The older man's face wrinkled as he squinted suspiciously at the skeleton. "It's not that I don't trust you… but I don't trust you. Or anyone. Especially a Gamma. Even a dead one. You can take it with you, but I'm going to appoint someone to check on it several times a day during the trip as well. Just in case you forget, or decide to do something stupid."
"Fair enough." Aster agreed.
General Monroe gestured at his armor. "This damn stuff is heavy, and it hurts where I was shot. But I'm going to wear it, for a while yet. It'll keep me from getting shot again, just in case there's some of the Maestro's guard's that we missed."
That was not his only reason. Aster thought. Wearing the armor of a dead Hero made General Monroe seem almost like a Hero himself. It was all about getting as much power as he could. Power that he intended to give to his children. If he could. Aster had her doubts. Still, there was yet more power that she intended to offer him. Not that he'd likely be able to take it. Supposedly the Maestro himself could not take it. But the General would not be able to resist it. And it was one final distraction, so tempting it would likely keep a large part of the entire Army of Darkness occupied for at least a few more hours. The time Aster needed.
"There's another thing in here you might be interested in, General." Aster said. "A hammer. Supposedly it has the power of a God. There's something odd about it anyways. I heard that the Maestro himself couldn't lift it."
Aster led General Monroe over to a rather plain looking table, with an ancient, battered hammer resting on it. It had a rather short handle and thick head that looked like it weighed at least 20 lbs. The general moved slowly, wincing slightly from the armor pulling on his injuries. Her instinct was to hold him up, but that wouldn't do. The man who had to be held up by a woman would look weak to other men, and if she embarrassed General Monroe in that way, he would probably not give her the things she wanted.
Too big for me, Aster thought. Or even for most men. Wolfkiller might be able to manage it.
She thought about Wolfkiller easily lifting large barrels of water, back when they had camped by some old train cars, and flushed slightly red. His strength was attractive… but the unpleasant horsemaster was not her type. He had been nasty to her too many times, even if some of it was intended to help her.
General Monroe was close enough to the Hammer now, to read the inscription on the metal head:
"Whosoever holds this hammer,
if they be worthy,
shall possess the power of Thor."
"Thor's Hammer." General Monroe was impressed, which said a lot. "Is it real? Or just a model?"
"There's something odd about it." Aster said. She frowned at an unpleasant thought. "The Maestro used to try, sometimes, to lift it. But never could. He'd always pitch a fit, afterwards."
"To have the power of a God!" General Monroe breathed heavily. He reached out to take the hammer, and Aster sucked in her breath. She didn't think that he would be able to lift that hammer. Not if the Maestro couldn't. It was a calculated risk. She needed the distraction the hammer would inevitably provide. But she still not want to see General Monroe with the power of Thor, if Thor were real. Power corrupted, and the General was not a nice man to start with. With the power of a God, he might be as bad or worse than the Maestro himself. It was, after all, only the fact that he was not as strong as the Maestro and needed other people to fight in his war and found his nation of Monrovia for him, that kept his worst impulses in restraint.
And Aster had never liked thinking too much about the Hammer, from the first time she found out about it, back when she had been a Betty. The thought that magic might be real, or at least had been, before the War, was extremely disturbing to her. It was bad enough that the world was not the way she wanted it to be. For the world to not even be the way she believed it to be was nearly intolerable.
Her calculated risk paid off. General Monroe could not lift the hammer. Not an inch. He yanked at it several times, then finally glared at Aster.
"Is this thing attached to the table, somehow?" He barked at Aster in annoyance.
"No, if that were all it was, the Maestro wouldn't have had a problem with it. At one time I thought maybe it was made of something really heavy, like metal from a dwarf star or something, that could weigh hundreds of tons and still be that small. But if that were the case, then the table couldn't hold it up. It's real. Magic. Not that I like it."
General Monroe wasn't entirely sure what a 'dwarf star' was, though he gathered from the context that it was something extremely dense, so that a small amount of it might be far too heavy for even the Maestro to lift. But as Aster had pointed out, something that heavy would not be able to be supported by the table, or even the floor, for that matter. It was magic, probably, but to him it was useless. He couldn't lift it. And it didn't seem likely that prayers to the God Thor would change that fact, or bring about an act of divine intervention that would cure his cancer, or anything else useful or pleasant.
As the General was lost in his thoughts, Aster frowned at the hammer, offended by it's very existence. For the most part she wasn't sure that she believed in God. Or any God. But she could not deny the evidence of a hammer that even the Maestro himself could not lift. And probably the God, Thor, was insulted enough that filthy scavengers like herself and the rest of the Army of Darkness were daring to soil his hammer by laying their unworthy fingers on it.
But then, she thought, it was just his hammer. Thor himself was not here. And the hammer was in the Hall of Fallen Heroes. Logically, that meant that Thor, immortal or not, had fallen, had been defeated at well. Somehow. Either by the War, or by the Maestro.
Tears welled in Aster's eyes. If a God, an actual God, had failed to destroy the Maestro, then by what sort of incredible audacity did she think she could succeed?
Perhaps she could not succeed. Probably she could not succeed. Perhaps the most she could do was merely to run away, which was the extent of even General Monroe's ambition.
But she would still try. As insane as it was. Most of the others in the Army of Darkness thought her mad, though they also respected her for the things she knew, and the things she had done. And that was part of her madness, that once she was presented with a problem, she would not rest until she found an answer, even if it took her the rest of her life to find it, and even if it was beyond her ability to carry out.
Monroe was disgusted by her tears. He curled his lip. It was unbefitting of a soldier. What the hell did she have to cry about anyways? She wasn't the one having her guts eaten by cancer. "Why don't you try lifting it?" He suggested.
"Me?" Aster seemed surprised at the thought. It was what she had hoped for in a way, that Monroe would occupy himself testing people in his army with Thor's Hammer. It would keep him busy for the time she needed. But that he would consider her first had never occurred to her. She didn't really want the power of a God, especially a God of War. Maybe people told themselves romantic stories about War, so they could live with it, but she'd seen what it was. It was bad and worse. It started out working yourself nearly to death under horrible conditions in order to train so that you might be able to fight and survive the war. And it ended up with people like Frederick Black being hung for doing things they had little choice about, and women and children being raped and tortured and starved. And drooling at the smell of roasting human flesh even when you had a perfectly good cold sandwich a few feet away. She looked at the General, puzzled that he would choose her when she felt that way.
Monroe shrugged. "I obviously can't use it myself. The next best thing would be to have someone else in my Army who can. It would solve a lot of problems. To have an actual God on our side. Unless it's just some sort of magical joke, that nobody can lift, then you have to be 'worthy' to lift it. You did stop those soldiers from raping the Betties. Nobody else did. I wouldn't have. So why don't you try it? You might as well, since you're here."
Aster frowned. Despite her dislike of the hammer, and everything it represented, she couldn't think of a good excuse not to try it. She rubbed her hands together and gripped the handle of the hammer…
Which would not move. She might just as well have been trying to uproot Ygdrasil, the world oak tree from the same stories that Thor was in.
"It doesn't like me, either." Aster said bluntly. "Fine. I don't much like it. Fuck it, and fuck Thor, too, if he's still around."
"Blasphemy." said one of the soldiers, crossing himself, which was rather funny, considering it was a non-Christian diety in question. "You shouldn't talk that way about a God."
"I'll talk any way I damn well like. No God ever helped me, when I was going through hell. So, so far as I'm concerned, they can just leave me alone. Because I can promise you, there will be trouble if they do not leave me alone." Aster stuck her nose in the air. After all, the Maestro had bowed down to her that one time. It didn't seem like he had ever bowed to Thor. He had simply killed him (unless the War had done that), and all that was left of the stupid old God was his dumb hammer. She guessed that made her smarter than Thor, God or no God.
Speaking of the hammer, she pointed at it, and spoke to General Monroe. "If there's no-one who can lift that, do me a favor and rope it off. It's actually a pity there's no way to melt it down. I honestly can't think of anything more useless than a hammer… that you can't even use as a hammer. And something that can't be moved - at least by most people - seems dangerous to me. What if it ends up blocking a road or something?"
"There's no road here." The General shook his head. Really, the Zookeeper did think of the most insane damn scenarios. He turned to one of his soldiers. "I don't know if this thing is real or not, but if the Maestro can't lift it, it's at least Magic, if nothing else. It's worth trying. Go back and get every man, woman, child, and bloody abortion in the Army down here, in groups of ten. Start with Evan and Gina, then the highest ranks first. Not that some three year old brat has much chance, I'd say. But if Thor thinks a 3 year old is 'worthy', I'll still take it, and worry about how to get him to follow orders, later."
Aster had to hide a smile. Other than the possibility of someone in the Army being 'worthy', things could not be better. It would take at least a few hours for everyone to try that hammer, and in the meantime, nobody would be thinking of much else.
"I want to go look at loading some of the salt for myself." Aster said to the General. It wasn't actually a lie. She was going to get salt. However, it wasn't the only thing she was going to get. "Can you get a couple men to load up that skeleton and Morbius's stuff for me onto a couple pallets? After you're done with the hammer, I mean? I'm going to go get one of those powered forklifts for the salt, so I'll wheel this stuff into my truck later."
"Fine, I'll see to it." Monroe waved distractedly. Let the Zookeeper have her trinkets from this room, and her salt. He'd take the weapons here, and in the Maestro's armory, and Thor's hammer, if anyone could use the damn thing. Maybe Wolfkiller, though in his opinion (which was the only one General Monroe cared about) the Horsemaster was a coward who had let his own wife sacrifice herself to the Maestro. So probably he wasn't 'worthy'. What would a God of War consider 'worthy' anyways? Humans were easy to bait. Even one as logical as Aster.
But what sort of bait would a God want?