They watched her lie to him and did nothing of the fact. No - the did less than nothing. Apollo yawned and looked around with his tired eyes to see the other group idling away in their van. So it was, him and Dion in their little Volkswagon. And the rest, the gang of degenerates (as he knew them as) all in Thaddeus's van. What a loud and obnoxious group too, with no more humility or civility than a pack of dogs.

They rocked the van, left and right. And screamed and all the while Apollo watched the doors of the house for Luanne who spoke to her betrothed (or at least the guy she was fucking that wasn't Floyd). She pushed her hands together, perked her chest forward and did all those actions of surrendering humility she was prone to do. It's not seduction, but it's what came to his mind. She thrust the child into his chest, and he took him in his arms. Then she walked back, drying fake tears from her eyes and cleaning the mascara.

Of course, they were around the corner, the very long corner that stretched past the estate. Past gates and lined dried cactus trees and artificially grown grass and yards of gates with vines.

"He's the man I was going to marry." She said. "I was trying to get a clean life before everything happened."

"Does he know you fucked your brother," Apollo narrowed his eyes. He pointed to the closing gates. "Or that the kid ain't even his?"

She glared at him.

"What right do you have to be angry?" He asked. "Incestual, schemer, liar. As far as I can tell, you're all of the above and then some. What right do you have to be angry?"

She walked past them, to the van.

Dion sniffed and coughed.

"I'm surprised you didn't tell me to stop," Apollo said.

"Even I can run out of pity."

"And here I was thinking you had enough to spare for years."

Dion leaned out the window, hot air brushed his hair back.

"Do you think this is going to work out?" Dion asked.

"What is?" Apollo asked.

"The plan. Do you think Luanne's going to cooperate? Do you think we'll lure Turnus out? Or that we'll kill Ritcher?"

"Kill Ritcher? I ain't got the mind to do anything that severe." Apollo said. "I just want to talk to him."

"Your talks are never just talks." He said. "Besides, you met him, right? At the dinner? He's intense, and it's the type of intensity that you can only get with a strong-willed conviction. I would know."

"You used to be like that." Apollo started the car. It hummed twice, by the third it murmured. "I think I preferred you when you were preaching that god shit."

"Me too," Dion said. "But some things die, and there isn't any use in bringing them back. Not like I could anyway."

"That's about the smartest thing I've heard you say."

They drove to the left, out to open streets, following the van that went with true aim towards the main street of the city. Broken streets, like a vein, leading to the heart, a malfunctioning tower where all insanity could be found.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It didn't take them long to go there, and it took even less time to figure out something was wrong.

Because one look into the main hall of the casino; the cashier's desk where a body slumped over a table, and you could tell something had gone wrong. It doesn't take a genius to spot trouble where bodies are.

And they were everywhere. Slumped over each other, some huddled and sprawled out on the floor with their mouths open and dried tongues out. Tongues, so drained of all moisture and life and color that they looked like the bark of trees.

The bodies were even toned, the same brown sludge color. They wore body armor. They had goggles and helmets (some of them), and they were all terrified before their existence ended. Their faces showed the stiff expressions - mangled, crooked eye terror.

Apollo stepped out. He looked to the boy with his little bird flapping about. Then he looked to Dolores.

"You two are going to protect each other." He turned to Aenea. "You're helping, too."

"I want to go in there with you." Aenea stepped forward. "He's my brother and my problem to deal with. I'm not a kid."

"Your problem is with Turnus. You're dealing with him." Apollo turned to Dion. "We're dealing with Ritcher."

He nodded his head up and down.

"So that's how it goes. Got me? And you -" He pointed to Luanne. "You're definitely coming with us."

"Is that how it is then?" She said. Her voice awful and hoarse with the qualities of not so much a frightened woman, as a bitter one.

"Don't try anything either," Apollo said. "For your sake, because as far as I could see inside that big ass hall - I think Ritcher is a bigger problem than you thought."

He sniffed and spat.

"So I'd think real hard about your chances - him or us."

She rubbed her arms then looked to the group and to the two hunters.

"Maybe if I did kill you two, I could serve you in on a platter for h-"

Apollo looked her down, with a stare too deep and encompassing that she could not look away. He stared into her. Her eyes lowered into submission, her arms opened up a bit, and she stepped forward, into the hall.

"Alright. Call us if anything goes bad, call us if Turnus shows up, got me?" Apollo passed Aenea a phone. "I'm trusting you. Alright?"

"I can handle myself."

"We'll see." Apollo smiled. "A pampered princess versus the obsessed psychopath. I'd like to know how that ends."

They made their separate ways, Apollo and Dion and Luanne all walking forward into the rising dunes of the main hall, waves of sand so high that they were halfway the twenty yard long vaulted walls. Sands so high, they were their own tiring journey just to get over. Behind the hills, an elevator smacked against a lodged object. A corpse forced the doors open. The elevator cart itself was broken. Sparks flew out the control panel, cable lines dangled and swayed in placid, near-silent, circles.

It looked like a ripped noose, a sabotaged noose.

They made their way past a hill. There was supposed to be a concessions stand here, a bar next to it and a few machines. Perhaps some half-nude women with drinks; loud noises and problematic drunks - there was nothing. Corpses. Death.

Death so overbearing and ubiquitous, it wasn't just hard to miss, it was hard to ignore.

Apollo almost tripped, he caught himself midway and looked down.

There was a body below him- strange too, not that it was dead but that it was freshly dead. Apollo looked down, it was a crushed corpse with bones protruding from its flesh at strange angles, he must have suffered disheveled amounts of pressure.

His skull, his femur, his shoulder blades, all collapsed in as if strangled by a grip. His ribs, sticking out, almost all of them protruding from his flesh like a bear trap, with the teeth ready to bite down.

"This happened recently," Apollo said. "Looks like there was a fight here."

He looked out to the horizon, craters in the floor distinguished themselves, small pockets where sand collapsed into with a slow slide.

He rubbed his chin, the front doors looked so far now behind the undulations of sand.

"I mean, does it matter?" Dion moved his head away, fingers over his nose.

"It means he might be close, right?" Apollo asked.

Luanne tugged on Dion's arm. Lowered shoulders and a tucked in chin hid skittering eyes.

"Be careful." Apollo looked up. His eyes widened. "You won't know what you'll find."

There, clung to a wall, with her own eyes wide and a hand upon her mouth, was Jaimi. She stood on a bird, her muscles tense around the neck.

And as if shock, or perhaps as a gesture of peace, she collapsed from her bird and fell to the floor in spasms, then stiffness. It looked like she was trying to make an angel in the sand like children do with snow.

Without that same, childlike innocence. With a more...obscene sporadic movement.

"Jesus Christ." Dion made the cross with his pointer finger. "We should help-"

Apollo walked up to her, with calm, without heat in his voice.

He bent down to her and looked into her spastic grey and orange eyes and said; "Can you tell us what happened here? Or are you going to die on me?"