“Well, neither,” Helena said. “I was thinking ‘follow the leader.’ But with a bit of a twist.”
“Okay,” another girl said. She had a chubby face, with two little dimples in each cheek. Somehow, the blue ribbon in her hair had survived all the crazy and remained intact, although a bit cruddy-looking. “What’s the twist?” She smiled up at Helena.
A very good sign, Helena thought.
She took a quick glance behind her. The demon Def C had recovered from the self-inflicted knock on his head and appeared to be recovering his senses, too. The befuddled look was fading, and a serious and troubled look was descending, dark clouds overtaking a blue sky.
“Okay,” Helena said, struggling to keep a convincing smile on her face. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. One girl is followed by one boy. You can’t say anything; you can only touch soft fingertips on the head of the person in front of you, until they start down the hole. Don’t break the pair. You are working together as a two-person team. When you get to the bottom, sit along the wall, and don’t say a word. Boys on the left side, girls on the right. Sit right across from the boy or girl you went down with. Now, GO!”
Helena waved her hand straight up. Then, with two fingers to her mouth, she let a whistle break out of her lips for a bit of added excitement.
The line started moving with determination now. One after another, the kids dropped down the hole, in pairs. The children seemed eager now, almost enthusiastic.
Def C still stared from across the large room at the activities, inexplicable to him, happening on the far side of the space. His visage grew darker now. He seemed displeased with what he was witnessing, but he was not sure why he was unhappy about it.
The female demon, Angie, rounded the corner next, her privates healed. She caught on much faster. She screamed: “STOP!”
Def C turned toward her. It was as if her yell had helped him connect the dots. He whipped his head around and stared at the group huddled around the manhole. All the kids had made it down and the healthies had begun to move. They were swift, determined, and driven by fear and the faint whiff of freedom. He hollered at the group:
“EARTHLINGS. FREEZE!”
His wings flapped, but it was as if they had been jabbed with NovocainPLUS.63 They worked, but sloppily. He couldn’t get all the way off the ground, so he settled for a kind of wing-powered skidding across the concrete. Nonetheless, he was approaching fast.
Angie was less “under the influence” than Def C, and she rose up into the muggy air in anger, flying with an assassin’s agenda toward the group, fire flaring out of her nostrils, ears, and all of her assholes.
Angie passed Def C in seconds, arced up in front of the group, then dropped to the ground with a loud thud. She landed in a crouched position, like a linebacker, less than twenty feet from the group, staring at them, scanning from face to face to face. Her eyes overflowed with hate, anger, and malevolence. She stared, calculating which move would cause the most immediate death and destruction.
“Oh, no,” Dani said. “Oh mighty no-no of the big bad no’s!”
DANI’S WAY
Angie pounced, swiping with all three arms and six clawed hands at the victims closest to her. She ran-skipped into the helpless group; she was an out of control chainsaw.
An old man with thick glasses, but which no longer held the lenses he needed, pumped along almost in slow motion. It was his top speed, but it was nowhere near fast enough. Angie swiped him once, her arm a blur. The old man screamed. Angie jabbed at him again, her long, sharp fingernails cutting into his chest, piercing his heart. The old man gasped, his eyes wide open ping-pong balls, and he collapsed.
Meanwhile, Def C had caught up with Angie and joined the mayhem. Two people had grabbed a hold of either end of one of the barrels. They swung it back and forth, preparing to let it fly and, with luck, take out one of their demonic adversaries. Before they could let it go, Def C was upon them. Angie watched, having lost focus on the hunt. She was laughing as Def C finished with the men.
The remaining group of humans still not down the manhole, however—now fewer than thirty—had not stopped moving despite the horrors being acted out all around them. The manhole was small and only one person could fit in at a time. Progress was frustratingly slow, but it was progress.
Through sheer will and determination, the group was now down to twenty-five still vulnerable, then twenty. Like Dani, these were all the hurt and wounded now. Helena was the next in and down, but Dani was still topside, yelling encouragement and giving updates on the proximity of the two demons. The demons came out of their stupor, snapping their heads simultaneously in the direction of the remaining members of the group. Only fifteen humans remained above ground.
“Jump!” Dani said. “Just jump!”
It was a long way down, about the distance of a fall from the roof of a two-story home. Not necessarily deadly, but the chances of twisting or breaking something were at least 50-50. Nevertheless, the already wounded men and women at the front of the line, fear in their eyes at the sight of the vicious destruction of their friends, hesitated only a second. One by one, they plunged down into the black hole, hitting the cement floor below hard.
At last, Dani was the only one left, just seconds from jumping in. She was going to make it! She leapt up just a foot or so into the air to begin her descent into the mouth of the manhole.
But she was caught in the talons of “Rocks” Manzer. As he/it carried her up to the ceiling, Rocks bellowed:
“YOU WANT TO FALL?”
He laughed his hideous laugh and then he shouted:
“THEN, BITCH, FALL!”
Dani plummeted twenty feet from the ceiling towards the manhole. She bicycle-kicked and screamed, her arms grabbing at the air, trying to adjust her trajectory. She crashed into the manhole, one arm snapped out of its socket as if the manhole had been designed with razor-sharp edges at the rim. Her leg broke with a loud snap, and her head bounced against the side of the manhole entrance, the impact crushing the back of her skull.
She toppled down the manhole like a ragdoll, landing at the bottom with her legs under her in an impossible position, her remaining arm behind her back, blood rushing from her empty arm socket and dripping out of her skull.
Helena ran to Dani’s crumpled form.
“Dani! Dani! NO!”
Helena got down on the ground, close to Dani. Dani’s eyes were open, staring but unseeing. Helena sobbed and pulled Dani’s lifeless body to her breast.
“Don’t go, Dani. I need you. We all need you,” she whispered, her words slurred by tears and snot.
But Helena knew Dani was already gone. She wiped her tears away and sniffed harshly as she pressed Dani’s eyelids down to close her eyes for the rest of time.
“Helena, babe, sweetie,” McMillian said. “Say goodbye. It’s time to go.”
Still looking at Dani Pistachio—or what was once Dani—Helena struggled to her feet.
“Screw you,” she mumbled. Then, to the rest of the group, she shouted, “Let’s move out.”
The pounding at the concrete floor above her head told them that the demonic monsters had not given up. Helena turned to see Timmy Jimmy standing right in front of her. He looked only half-human anymore, but he was a welcome sight. She collapsed onto his chest, and he put his tired arms around her.
“So sorry about Dani,” he said. “But if it’s any solace, remember that she saved a bunch of us. She was very brave.”
“Yeah,” Helena said. “She sure was.”
The concrete and metal ceiling above them shuddered again from the pounding of the demons. They howled in frustration and beat at the manhole opening with their multiple feet and fists.
“We should be safe, right? I mean, they’re about twenty times too big to fit down the hole?” Helena said.
“I wouldn’t bet against those bastards,” Timmy Jimmy said. “They’ll just rip themselves a bigger opening.”
“Then we better go. And fast.
”
McMillian looked at Helena and nodded. Then he turned to the group.
“Run,” he said with no emotion. His face was stony as he stared down the dark passageway. Fear had at last trumped his stupidity.
CONFLAGRATION
In the great room above, the demons from another galaxy stomped and bashed their multiple fists onto the manhole opening. They reached in, trying to grab something, someone. Atrōx Manzer tried to smash the manhole, with no success. Frustration mounted. They were crazed monkeys on drugs.
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? WHERE ARE OUR GUESTS?”
The thunderous voice of Malum Regnator-Infernus’s main head ripped through the huge space, bringing all activity to a halt.
The three demons turned. Before they could explain themselves, they saw that Mal was holding two Earthlings in a couple of his hands. The Earthlings squirmed and cried out for mercy, which acted like an aphrodisiac to the demons, exciting them to near orgasm.
“THESE FOUR WERE RUNNING AWAY. I PRESUME THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE ESCAPING.”
He tossed them to the concrete. Freight Train landed with a grunt, lying breathless on her back. Smother Mother splatted on top of her, bounced against Freight Train’s massive rolls of fat. Both women would soon be dead. Cacklebird and Winterwheat thudded off the cement with strange, hollow, popping noises. They were already dead, the blood long since drained from their bodies.
“WHERE ARE THE OTHERS?”
Angie answered, pointing. “THEY HAVE ESCAPED DOWN THIS LITTLE RAT HOLE.”
“HOW THE HELL. . .?”
This time it was Def C who replied, pointing at his dicks. One was still swollen, although mostly healed.
“THEY HAD A WEAPON. SHOT US IN OUR PRIDE, AMBUSHED US.”
“I SEE. SO, WHAT? GO GET THEM.”
“WE WERE TRYING. WE CAN’T GET THROUGH THIS DAMN OPENING.”
“DID YOU TRY FIRE?”
“THAT IS NEXT.”
“STAND BACK.”
Mal sauntered over to the manhole, slapping Rocks and Def C behind their ears when he passed them. He raised his hands above his head, muscles rippling, and screamed. Fire blasted out all of his assholes, his dick holes, his ears, his nose, and the corners of his eyes. The whole area was covered in flames. Nearby structural beams heated up. Other pipes and wires melted together. Most of the metal down the manhole, including the narrow ladder, glowed red. The concrete, eight feet thick, held its own.
Mal stopped shooting flames out of his ass (and everywhere else) and drooped over, out of breath, his many hands dangling.
Rocks, Def C., and Angie stepped up to the plate. Together, they followed the exact same method as just performed by Mal. Flames shot out of every available opening. The floor shook, every piece of metal bright red with heat or already melting. The cement floor rippled, as if liquefying. Then the demons stopped, collapsing as Mal had, out of breath.
“WE ARE SO CLOSE,” Malum Regnator-Infernus bellowed, his voice echoing around the enormous chamber. There were no longer the soft bodies of a hundred humans in the space to act as sound-absorbing sponges.
“THIS CAN’T BE AS HARD AS WE’RE MAKING IT SEEM,” Del C added.
“WE’RE OVERTHINKING IT. JUST THE SAME,” Malum said, “LET’S TRY AGAIN. LET’S GO THROUGH OUR CHECKLIST.64 FIRST, DID EVERYONE HAVE FLAMES COMING OUT OF THEIR MOUTHS?”
Rocks, Angie, and Del C. replied in unison: “CHECK.”
“FULL BLAST?”
“CHECK.”
“EARS?”
“CHECK.”
“EYES?”
“CHECK.”
“ANUSES?”
“CHECK!”
“PENII?”
“CHECK!”
After a short silence, Rocks spoke up: “WELL, TO BE ONE HUNDRED PERCENT HONEST, I MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN GOING FULL BLAST. TOOK SOME SLUGS IN MY NUTS EARLIER. MAY HAVE BEEN HOLDING BACK JUST A WEE BIT.”
Mal thundered: “OKAY. FIRST, GREAT INPUT. THANKS. SECOND, DO NOT HOLD BACK THIS TIME. PUSH THROUGH THE PAIN.”
Rocks, one head smiling, the other giving a kind of pained smirk, which he may have meant to be a smile, replied: “WILL DO.”
“OKAY, EVERYBODY. LET’S GIVE IT ANOTHER TRY, THIS TIME FOR THE GIPPER. EVERY ORIFICE, EVERYTHING YOU GOT.”
Team Demon nodded all of their heads, a total of six if you didn’t count Mal’s dead-baby head. They went at it, a welder’s convention gone mad. Flames everywhere, sparks flying off of anything metallic. The rebar in the concrete was red-hot, warping out of the cement. All of the metal in the vicinity was glowing scarlet. Even the barrels on the floor filled with who-the-hell-knows-what were this time glowing hot, too.
The demons managed somehow to increase the heat, up the intensity. The cement floor was rippling again, same as last time. Unlike last time, however, the concrete rippled fast and the “waves” were higher. The demons grunted, groaned, and screamed. Their faces contorted, all their muscles tense and pumped. They looked to be each wrestling with the biggest, most stubborn crap of their lives.
Then, the barrels exploded.
The metal drums, each of which held variously industrial lubricant, machine oil, and gasoline, as well as some industrial-strength cleaning liquids, shattered one after another, a string of giant firecrackers, creating a bigger detonator that exploded with a massive “BOOM!”
This detonation cracked the concrete and covered the demons in flames. The demons continued to grunt and scream and struggle, flames shooting out of the ears, mouths, noses, and assholes like flamethrowers.
The demons were oblivious to the explosions around them and were, as expected, unaffected by the flames that licked every inch of their bodies. In fact, these new external flames from the barrels of chemicals and petroleum products seemed to fuel their internal fires even stronger.
It was a crescendo of fire in a symphony of heat. There was a tremendous cracking, as if the Earth was splitting open and, with a giant “WHOOSH,” all the fire in the top level was sucked down below.
The excessive heat and sudden cooling cracked the concrete floor like ice, opening a massive fissure in the floor where the manhole used to be. Team Demon toppled backward from the edge of the crevice to lie exhausted on the ground.
One after another, the demons sat up. They had succeeded, with the help of a few dozen barrels of chemicals. They turned their various heads and looked at each other. They smiled with wolfy grins, then got to their many feet.
General Malum Regnator-Infernus made an official proclamation: “WE ARE IN!”
He was the first to jump down into the crater, followed immediately by Rocks, Angie, and Def C. They hovered down below, beating their wings lazily, studying the long passageway, and sniffing the heated air, searching for the scent of their human prey.
“THEY LEAVE QUITE A STINK, DON’T YOU AGREE?” Angie smiled at her own quip. Then the beat of her wings increased and she torpedoed off down the passageway. The rest of Team Demon followed suit, and they were on the hunt.
TUNNELING
Not that much further down the passageway, the surviving humans limped along. They were able to run for a while, at least some of them. Unfortunately, that tactic turned out to be a huge mistake. Everyone was either too exhausted from days of not eating, or from too little sleep, or from witnessing horrors, or from being the victims of various levels of torture, or all of the above. Now, they moved with as much urgency as they could, which wasn’t very fast at all, the children and the elderly moving slowest of all.
A thunderous noise blasted toward them from the end of the passageway. It shook the building like a Richter-scale level 7 earthquake. This was followed by blowback: hot, rippling winds rushed past them. Some of the old folks and a couple of the smaller children were knocked back a step or two. The tiniest child, a three-year-old boy with golden locks, fell right down on his butt as if he’d been pushed. Everyone’s hair was singed a bit by the hot breeze; some eyes watered.
“Jesus, what
the hell was that?” Helena said, stopping and turning to face down the passageway from where they’d come. “Sounds like a damn bomb went off.”
McMillian held up his hairy, freckled hand, and anyone who hadn’t yet stopped did so now and turned around, too. “It was an explosion, all right. Crap, do those creatures have access to explosives and detonators?”
“If, so,” said Helena, “that means they’ve enlarged the manhole. Which means, if they aren’t down here with us already, they soon will be.”
“Oh my God,” one of the women in the group said, bursting into tears. “I thought we were safe. I– I don’t think I can take any more . . .”
Others in the crowd mumbled similar sentiments of terror, fatigue, and resignation.
“We can’t afford to despair or panic. Just keep moving. Motion is our friend.”
Helena walked up to Malcolm S. “Have you seen any secondary passages along the way?”
“No,” Malcolm S. said. “Why do you ask?”
“Maybe we can lead them on a wild goose chase. Throw some of our clothes down a different route” She frowned. “Or maybe there’s a side passageway that would be too narrow for them to fit through. Slow them again long enough for us to get a good head start.”
“I still think our best bet is to stay the course,” Malcolm S said. “Continue travelling straight ahead. If we see a smaller side passage, we’ll take it.”
“Agreed,” said Helena. “But once the demons get down here, all bets are off. They can move at ten . . . twenty times our speed. The only advantage we have is that we can fit into smaller spaces than they can.”
“Right, right . . .” Malcolm S said, scratching his chin.
“We should tell the group,” Helena said.
“Be my guest.” Malcolm S swept his arm toward them. Helena jogged to the front of the group. She didn’t stop moving, though, and didn’t want the group to either. So she addressed them while walking backward, waving them toward her.
DEMON DAYS: Love, sex, death, and dark humor. This book has it all. Plus robots. Page 12
