The main doors opened. "Somehow, Toto," said the fat kid Shadow had last seen sitting in a limo, "I don't believe we're in Kansas anymore."
"We're in Kansas," said Mr. Nancy. "I think we must have drove through most of it today. Damn but this country is flat."
"This place has no lights, no power, and no hot water," said the fat kid. "And, no offense, you people really need the hot water. You just smell like you've been in that bus for a week."
"I don't think there's any need to go there," said the woman, smoothly. "We're all friends here. Come on in. We'll show you to your rooms. We took the first four rooms. Your late friend is in the fifth. All the ones beyond room five are empty-you can take your pick. I'm afraid it's not the Four Seasons, but then, what is?"
She opened the door to the motel lobby for them. It smelled of mildew, of damp and dust and decay.
There was a man sitting in the lobby, in the near darkness. "You people hungry?" he asked.
"I can always eat," said Mr. Nancy.
"Driver's gone out for a sack of hamburgers," said the man. "He'll be back soon." He looked up. It was too dark to see faces, but he said, "Big guy. You're Shadow, huh? The a**hole who killed Woody and Stone?"
"No," said Shadow. "That was someone else. And I know who you are." He did. He had been inside the man's head. "You're Town. Have you slept with Wood's widow yet?"
Mr. Town fell off his chair. In a movie, it would have been funny; in real life it was simply clumsy. He stood up quickly, came toward Shadow. Shadow looked down at him and said, "Don't start anything you're not prepared to finish."
Mr. Nancy rested his hand on Shadow's upper arm. "Truce, remember?" he said. "We're at the center."
Mr. Town turned away, leaned over to the counter, and picked up three keys. "You're down at the end of the hall," he said. "Here."
He handed the keys to Mr. Nancy and walked away, into the shadows of the corridor. They heard a motel room door open, and they heard it slam.
Mr. Nancy passed a key to Shadow, another to Czernobog. "Is there a flashlight on the bus?" asked Shadow.
"No," said Mr. Nancy. "But it's just dark. You mustn't be afraid of the dark."
"I'm not," said Shadow. "I'm afraid of the people in the dark."
"Dark is good," said Czernobog. He seemed to have no difficulty seeing where he was going, leading them down the darkened corridor, putting the keys into the locks without fumbling. "I will be in room ten," he told them. And then he said, "Media. I think I have heard of her. Isn't she the one who killed her children?"
"Different woman," said Mr. Nancy. "Same deal."
Mr. Nancy was in room 8, and Shadow opposite the two of them, in room 9. The room smelled damp, and dusty, and deserted. There was a bed frame in there, with a mattress on it, but no sheets. A little light entered the room from the gloaming outside the window. Shadow sat down on the mattress, pulled off his shoes, and stretched out at full length. He had driven too much in the last few days.
Perhaps he slept.
He was walking.
A cold wind tugged at his clothes. The tiny snowflakes were little more than a crystalline dust that gusted and flurried in the wind.
There were trees, bare of leaves in the winter. There were high hills on each side of him. It was late on a winter's afternoon: the sky and the snow had attained the same deep shade of purple. Somewhere ahead of him-in this light, distances were impossible to judge-the flames of a bonfire flickered, yellow and orange.
A gray wolf padded through the snow before him.
Shadow stopped. The wolf stopped also, and turned, and waited. One of its eyes glinted yellowish-green. Shadow shrugged and walked toward the flames and the wolf ambled ahead of him.
The bonfire burned in the middle of a grove of trees. There must have been a hundred trees, planted in the rows. There were shapes hanging from the trees. At the end of the rows was a building that looked a little like an overturned boat. It was carved of wood, and it crawled with wooden creatures and wooden faces-dragons, gryphons, trolls, and boars-all of them dancing in the flickering light of the fire.
The bonfire was so high that Shadow could barely approach it. The wolf padded around the crackling fire.
In place of the wolf a man came out on the other side of the fire. He was leaning on a tall stick.
"You are in Uppsala, in Sweden," said the man, in a familiar, gravelly voice. "About a thousand years ago."
"Wednesday?" said Shadow.
The man continued to talk, as if Shadow were not there. "First every year, then, later, when the rot set in, and they became lax, every nine years, they would sacrifice here. A sacrifice of nines. Each day, for nine days, they would hang nine animals from trees in the grove. One of those animals was always a man."
He strode away from the firelight, toward the trees, and Shadow followed him. As he approached the trees the shapes that hung from them resolved: legs and eyes and tongues and heads. Shadow shook his head: there was something about seeing a bull hanging by its neck from a tree that was darkly sad, and at the same time surreal enough almost to be funny. Shadow passed a hanging stag, a wolfhound, a brown bear, and a chestnut horse with a white mane, little bigger than a pony. The dog was still alive: every few seconds it would kick spasmodically, and it was making a strained whimpering noise as it dangled from the rope.
The man he was following took his long stick, which Shadow realized now, as it moved, was actually a spear, and he slashed at the dog's stomach with it, in one knifelike cut downward. Steaming entrails tumbled onto the snow. "I dedicate this death to Odin," said the man, formally.
"It is only a gesture," he said, turning back to Shadow. "But gestures mean everything. The death of one dog symbolizes the death of all dogs. Nine men they gave to me, but they stood for all the men, all the blood, all the power. It just wasn't enough. One day, the blood stopped flowing. Belief without blood only takes us so far. The blood must flow."
"I saw you die," said Shadow.
"In the god business," said the figure-and now Shadow was certain it was Wednesday, nobody else had that rasp, that deep cynical joy in words, "it's not the death that matters. It's the opportunity for resurrection. And when the blood flows…" He gestured at the animals, at the people, hanging from the trees.
Shadow could not decide whether the dead humans they walked past were more or less horrifying than the animals: at least the humans had known the fate they were going to. There was a deep, boozy smell about the men that suggested that they had been allowed to anesthetize themselves on their way to the gallows, while the animals would simply have been lynched, hauled up alive and terrified. The faces of the men looked so young: none of them was older than twenty.
"Who am I?" asked Shadow.
"You?" said the man. "You were an opportunity. You were part of a grand tradition. Although both of us are committed enough to the affair to die for it. Eh?"
"Who are you?" asked Shadow.
"The hardest part is simply surviving," said the man. The bonfire-and Shadow realized with a strange horror that it truly was a bone-fire: rib cages and fire-eyed skulls stared and stuck and jutted from the flames, sputtering trace-element colors into the night, greens and yellows and blues-was flaring and crackling and burning hotly. "Three days of the tree, three days in the underworld, three days to find my way back."
The flames sputtered and flamed too brightly for Shadow to look at directly. He looked down into the darkness beneath the trees.
A knock on the door-and now there was moonlight coming in the window. Shadow sat up with a start. "Dinner's served," said Media's voice.
Shadow put his shoes back on, walked over to the door, went out into the corridor. Someone had found some candles, and a dim yellow light illuminated the reception hall. The driver of the Humvee came in holding a cardboard tray and a paper sack. He wore a long black coat and a peaked chauffeur's cap.
"Sorry about the delay," he said, hoarsely. "I got everybody the same: a couple of burgers, large fries, large Coke, and apple pie. I'll eat mine out in the car." He put the food down, then walked back outside. The smell of fast food filled the lobby. Shadow took the paper bag and passed out the food, the napkins, the packets of ketchup.
They ate in silence while the candles flickered and the burning wax hissed.
Shadow noticed that Town was glaring at him. He turned his chair a little, so his back was to the wall. Media ate her burger with a napkin poised by her lips to remove crumbs.
"Oh. Great. These burgers are nearly cold," said the fat kid. He was still wearing his shades, which Shadow thought pointless and foolish, given the darkness of the room.
"Sorry about that," said Town. "The nearest McDonald's is in Nebraska."
They finished their lukewarm hamburgers and cold fries. The fat kid bit into his single-person apple pie, and the filling spurted down his chin. Unexpectedly, the filling was still hot. "Ow," he said. He wiped at it with his hand, licking his fingers to get them clean. "That stuff burns!" he said. "Those pies are a class-action suit waiting to f**king happen."
Shadow wanted to hit the kid. He'd wanted to hit him since the kid had his goons hurt him in the limo, after Laura's funeral. He pushed the thought away. "Can't we just take Wednesday's body and get out of here?" he asked.
"Midnight," said Mr. Nancy and the fat kid, at the same time.
"These things must be done by the rules," said Czernobog.
"Yeah," said Shadow. "But nobody tells me what they are. You keep talking about the goddamn rules, I don't even-know what game you people are playing."
"It's like breaking the street date," said Media, brightly. "You know. When things are allowed to be on sale."
Town said, "I think the whole thing's a crock of shit. But if their rules make them happy, then my agency is happy and everybody's happy." He slurped his Coke. "Roll on midnight. You take the body, you go away. We're all lovey-f**king-dovey and we wave you goodbye. And then we can get on with hunting you down like the rats you are."
"Hey," said the fat kid to Shadow. "Reminds me. I told you to tell your boss he was history. Did you ever tell him?"
"I told him," said Shadow. "And you know what he said to me? He said to tell the little snot, if ever I saw him again, to remember that today's future is tomorrow's yesterday." Wednesday had never said any such thing. Still, these people seemed to like clichés. The black sunglasses reflected the flickering candle flames back at him, like eyes.
The fat kid said, "This place is such a f**king dump. No power. Out of wireless range. I mean, when you got to be wired, you're already back in the stone age." He sucked the last of his Coke through the straw, dropped the cup on the table, and walked away down the corridor.
Shadow reached over and placed the fat kid's garbage back into the paper sack. "I'm going to see the center of America," he announced. He got up and walked outside, into the night. Mr. Nancy followed him. They strolled together, across the little park, saying nothing until they reached the stone monument. The wind gusted at them, fitfully, first from one direction, then from another. "So," he said. "Now what?"