Hercules was, indeed, hitting the SUV with everything he had, and the chunky oversized car was rapidly getting beaten out of shape. Segments of bodywork flew off. The radiator grille fell. The headlamps popped out and dangled on their wires like enucleated eyeballs still attached to their optic nerves. Finally, with a grunt, Hercules clean-and-jerked the SUV off the ground and tossed it into the air. It came down in the centre of the road on its roof and lay there, crumpled, leaking oil and water.
That was when Hercules noticed the cameraman and the reporter. He came straight over, cloak billowing out behind him. His face was flushed, his eyes bloodshot and swimmy. He reached for the camera. The cameraman shied away, the image veering shakily to one side.
"Give me that," the Olympian growled. "Give me that fucking — that fucking thing, fucker."
"Hey, I'm filming here," the cameraman said. "I'm allowed to film. This is a public space."
"Give!" Hercules made another lunge for the camera, missing, his outstretched arm blurring from right to left.
"Chuck, give it to him," hissed the reporter.
"Freedom of the press," said the cameraman. The man behind the lens was, it seemed, braver than the man who usually stood in front. "In this country we have something called the Constitution. We have rights. We're allowed to shoot whatever we — "
Hercules's third attempt to grab the camera was successful. The onscreen image swerved in all directions, now showing a section of kerb, now the sky, now someone's sneakers, before finally settling on an extreme close-up of the Olympian's own face. Every pore in his skin was visible. The pockmarks on his nose looked like lunar craters.
"Rights?" he boomed, so loud that it overloaded the microphone and his voice crackled with distortion. "Hey! People out there! You hear this man? You think you have rights? Don't make me laugh. What about my right to walk down a street without some moron poking a camera at me? Huh? What about that? What about my right to let off steam and have a few drinks and chat up some nice piece of eromenos without some dick of a paparazzi intruding?"
" Eromenos?" said Sam.
"Boy lover," said Landesman.
"I'm not paparazzi," the reporter protested. "I'm an accredited journalist with — "
"Shut up, you cheap-suited media monkey," Hercules snapped. Spittle flecked the lens. "I'm talking here. Didn't your mother ever teach you to keep quiet and listen when your betters are talking? Now, where was I? Oh yes. Rights. Understand this, people of America and the rest of the world. You have no rights. Not while we're in charge. You used to have some, maybe, a few, in the early days after we took over. We started out treating you with respect — as much as we felt you deserved. We hoped you'd be wise enough, mature enough, to gladly and meekly accept what we were offering. But no-o-o, you objected, you resisted, you fought back, and that was when you forfeited your rights, any rights you thought you had. And now you're doing it once again, resisting. We thought you'd settled down but you haven't. You've started being treacherous, treasonous little savages again, and that means as far as we're concerned the gloves are off and the only right you have left now — hah, right, left, ha ha — the only right you have left is to bow your heads and do whatever the fuck we tell you to. Case in point: these two bottom-feeders."
He swung the camera round to show the reporter, whose suit was a cheap designer knockoff, and the cameraman, scruffily but more honestly dressed in jeans, windcheater and Phillies cap. Both of them were very scared, but the cameraman was doing the better job of hiding it. He fixed Hercules with a hard stare.
"See them?" the Olympian sneered. "These cogs in the media machine. They work for… Which channel do you work for?"
The reporter told him.
"Well," said Hercules, "I have a message for your employers, and for everyone watching. And it's this: do not harass us, do not question us, do not cast us in a bad light, do not challenge us — in short, do not fuck with us. Because this is what happens to those who do."
The image juddered wildly, as though an earthquake had just struck. It broke up into green and white squares, then stuttered, blinking in and out of blackness. This was soundtracked by yells of pain, and thumps, and then some ghastly wet crunching noises.
Finally normal transmission resumed. The camera had been set down on the ground, on its side. There was a spidery pattern of cracks across the lens. There were spatters of red on the lens as well. And lying within shot, slumped on the now-vertical sidewalk as though leaning against a wall, were the reporter and the cameraman. They were recognisable by their clothes only. Where they had once had heads, now they had collapsed, vaguely head-shaped messes. Their hair was matted with blood and dribbles of brain matter. Shards of skull poked out here and there. The slap-slap sound of Hercules's sandalled footfalls could be heard, diminishing in volume. Far off, a woman started screaming.
Then, thankfully, someone back at the studio had the presence of mind to cut the live feed.
Landesman, Lillicrap and Sam were silent. Stunned. Sickened.
"My God," Landesman said at last. "That was… My God. Truly horrible. But looking on the bright side — and there is one, and we must look on it — Hercules's timing can't be faulted. What a godsend, no pun intended. He's just handed us a propaganda coup. Our second today. First the Agonides clip, now this. Nobody, seeing what we've just seen, can have any uncertainty any more that what the Titans are doing is right, that we're on the side of the angels. If anybody was hesitant about backing us before, they won't be now."
"Popularity is all well and fine," said Sam. "I'd rather have the public on my side than against me. But it's hardly going to help us win the war, is it?"
"We'll see, Sam," said Landesman. "If things continue to go as I hope they do… well, you never know. Public support might just make all the difference."
32. THE MINOTAUR
T he Resistenza Contru-Diu Corsu, to be honest, did very little actual resisting but talked a good fight and had made enough of a nuisance of itself to warrant the Olympians' interest and earn their antipathy.
That was principally on the strength of two incidents. The first took place during a diplomatic visit by Aphrodite to the island's capital Ajaccio, when the goddess of love came under fire from an RCDC member with an antiquated Kalashnikov. The sniper's accuracy was hampered by three things: the age of his rifle, the half bottle of cognac he had downed beforehand in order to steady his nerves, and the fact that, in his crosshairs, Aphrodite looked so lusciously, delectably beautiful that it seemed to him almost a crime to damage such magnificent female physical perfection in any way. All these factors conspired to make him miss her by a mile and instead wing his country's president and gravely wound the regional prefet, both of whom were sharing a podium with the Olympian as they bestowed on her the freedom of the island and a civic medal or some such meaningless official trinket.