DEMON DAYS: Love, sex, death, and dark humor. This book has it all. Plus robots.

by Carl S. Plumer

  “Okay, everyone, let’s go. It’s important that we keep moving. Good, good. That’s the way. Okay, so, I have a quick announcement.”

  A general sound of intolerance emitted from the group along with quite a few expressions of “Ugh,” “not again,” and “here we go.”

  “Our only chance for survival might rest on our ability to locate an offshoot of the path we’re on,” Helena said.

  “What do you mean?” someone called out.

  “Could be a side passageway that’s narrower, tighter. Might give us an advantage over the huge demons, slow them down again. Just be on the lookout, and call out if you see one.”

  Noises of general annoyance rippled through the crowd. But the group continued on, picking up the pace, with most people’s heads looking right and left as they made steady progress. Although about ready to give up, almost everyone in the crowd was, for some reason, eager to be the special one to spot any side passage of potential safety.

  Somewhere, Mallory Alexandria floated on a river of black, encased in goo. She was breathing, although she was sure she was underwater. She floated and was pulled toward some center, some point of no return. She was towed there by swift currents, by dangerous magnetism. She was part of something bigger than herself. She had become one with something huge, something hideous.

  She drifted in a canal of evil, surrounded by a deep blackness never before known on Earth. She slithered toward her destiny, her final exit.

  Mallory Alexandria was about to be reborn.

  STRATEGIZING

  “THE STINK GROWS WORSE.”

  Mal agreed:

  “INDEED. FIND THE SOURCE. THERE ARE MANY FORKS IN THE ROAD DOWN HERE. SEE? THERE’S ONE. THERE’S ANOTHER. STAY WITH THE SCENT. IGNORE THE DISTRACTION OF THESE SIDE CHUTES.”

  The demons sped up again, all nodding in agreement with their leader’s advice. At the next intersection, however, they paused, hovering in the air, a nightmare version of Peter Pan’s lost boys and Tinker Bell. Anguigena Caprigenus spoke up:

  “WHAT IS IT? WHAT’S WRONG?”

  “THEY LINGERED HERE. THEIR SCENT HAS DISPERSED. THEY MAY HAVE CONTINUED, BUT THEY COULD JUST AS WELL HAVE GONE DOWN THIS SIDE AVENUE HERE.”

  Mal pointed with the second hand on his third arm at the passageway on the right. The opening was smaller than the corridor that they hovered in, but not by much. Three men could fit together side by side, and the ceiling height was the same as the width. Any demon would be able to travel through with only a bit of trouble.

  “CAN’T TAKE A CHANCE ON THEM GETTING AWAY. ANGIE AND DEF C, TAKE THE SIDE PASSAGE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY IF THE SCENT FADES. ATRŌX AND I WILL CONTINUE DOWN THE MAIN CORRIDOR.”

  Deflagro Cinefactus agreed:

  “RIGHT.”

  He and Anguigena Caprigenus were off, tucking their wings in just a bit to allow for the narrower hall. Mal and Rocks continued straight ahead. All of the demons strove to reach maximum speed as soon as possible.

  After just another two hundred yards or so, Mal pulled to a stop again.

  “THEY WERE HERE. I WAS DECEIVED AT THE LAST INTERSECTION.”

  He drifted down to the floor and wiped a finger across the dirty cement. “CHILD’S POO.” He peered closer. The outline of a small human butt was just visible in the fine layer of dust on the concrete floor. “I DON’T THINK THEY ARE MUCH FARTHER NOW.”

  Def C and Angie arrived separately. When she approached, she said: “WE FOUND NOTHING, MALUM.”

  “YES, THAT WAS WASTED TIME. THEIR SCENT IS EVERYWHERE AT THIS SPOT. THEY LINGERED FOR A WHILE. WE ARE CLOSE NOW.”

  Mal swiveled his heads so that one was looking at Def C on his right and one at Angie and Rocks on his left. The dead-baby head stayed facing front.

  “WHEN WE CATCH UP WITH THEM, WHICH IS INEVITABLE, WE SHALL RIP THEM ALL TO SHREDS. FIND ONE HUNDRED NEW HUMANS TO REPLACE THEM. THEN RETURN TO OUR MISSION: SEARCH AND DESTROY ZACHARY ZEMERITUS!”

  The demon smirked, lost in a private fantasy.

  “BUT FIRST, WE SHALL ENJOY OURSELVES WITH THIS GROUP, ONE LAST TIME.”

  The demons chortled and ran their greasy tongues over their cracked, blistered lips. Mal burped, then floated up about ten feet high and flew on. The others caught up right away. They steamed down the corridor together, a fast moving subway train from Hell.

  “Look!” someone cried out. Helena gazed back at the group. It was Timmy Jimmy’s voice and he was pointing past her right shoulder. She turned back around to check out what he was indicating, and she smiled. Just up the way, hidden in the shadow of a set of a dozen large pipes, was a small opening, about the height and width of an exceptionally tall, plump man.

  “Damn,” she said. “Can’t believe you even saw that. Okay, cool. Timmy Jimmy, go check it out. As quick as you can! Make sure it really goes somewhere and that we aren’t just creating our own deathtrap.”

  “On it,” he said, jogging as fast as his frail body could take him.

  “If it’s good to go, we need to get people moving through that opening fast. It’s going to be mostly single-file, except for the smallest among us,” Malcolm S said.

  “Yes, exactly,” Helena said.

  Timmy Jimmy reached the entrance of the tunnel and ducked inside. His thin frame fit between the tightly-spaced walls with no problem. Running as fast as he could, which was painfully slow for all concerned, he made his way farther and farther down the passage way.

  The path turned twice, doubling back on itself, as if the shape of a capital “Z” had been inserted into the construction diagram for the passageway. Timmy Jimmy wondered what the reason could have been for such an odd series of bends in the route. After about five minutes, he reached a dead end.

  The whole approach to this point had been lined with cement, old stones, and bricks. The only metal any of them had seen had been in the pipes above their heads. No doors, no hatches, no gates. But here it was, if he wasn’t seeing things: a metal door. To where?

  Timmy Jimmy played with the handle, trying to rattle the door open, which appeared to be locked. Time to go back and report this dead-end. They would all be trapped in here if they were to take this route.

  “Dammit,” he said, propping his hands on his hips and releasing a huge sigh of frustration. He raised his downturned head and turned to go back and deliver the bad news. Voices wafting down the passageway towards him, human voices, faint at first, reached his ears. Panicked whines and terrified chatter.

  DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

  Helena watched as Timmy Jimmy disappeared into the newly discovered entrance along the side passageway. Then she cocked her head to the right, listening behind her. People were talking together, mostly comforting each other.

  “Shhh,” Helena said. “I heard something.”

  Bit by bit, people brought their conversations to a halt. All listened. Then they caught it, too: the swoosh of large, leathery wings scraping against the sides of the tunnel, drooling, spitting noises that the demons made when they hunted.

  “They’re here,” Helena whispered. “Everyone, into the side route. Follow Timmy Jimmy. Go now.”

  The entrance only allowed one or two at a time. Adults took children’s hands and went in together. Panic set in.

  “Careful,” Helena said. “Take it easy. Stay calm, or we won’t make it.”

  Senior citizens shuffled along, taking too much time. Even so, the first twenty were in within sixty seconds. Forty or so more to go.

  The beating of the demons’ wings grew louder still. Outside the passageway entrance, Helena crinkled her nose at the growing demon stench; the smell of death and sulfur and cold fires. More of the escapees poured through the narrow opening; less than thirty remained outside in the main corridor, then twenty-five, then down to twenty nervous people.

  “Helena, you first,” said Malcolm S. “One of us needs to be with those already inside. It has to be either you or me to lead them.”

  “In that case, you go. I will be last, after e
veryone is safe.”

  “No, don’t be ridiculous. Please go in before the demons arrive, before it’s too late.”

  Helena studied him. “All right,” she said quietly.

  Taking slow and deliberate steps, she guided another half dozen through the opening before entering herself.

  Malcolm S followed her, one of the last ones in. Screeching and twisting their heads, the creatures, the things from Hell, swooped in, swiping at those unfortunates at the end of the long line of humans. A human head careened off its body and bounced against the opposite wall as blood shot out of the neck. Rocks pounced on the body and sliced it like deli bologna.

  Def C chased down two others, two quiet, old people, a husband and wife. He chewed them up like eating gingerbread men. Mal knocked three others to the floor and disemboweled them. Others in the group screamed and tried to force their way into the side passage, jamming the entrance.

  McMillian, in a rare moment of selflessness, tried to pull the knot of people apart, tried to control the chaos, but it couldn’t be done and the passage remained blocked. Still others ran down the corridor, looking for a place to hide or maybe even a way out.

  “Rocks” Manzer landed at the entrance and proceeded to bite at the heads and buttocks of the people crammed there, pulling out brains and intestines as the victims fell to the ground, still alive, squirming and twitching. Meanwhile, Mal pursued the small group that had run down the hall and caught them with ease. He toyed with them awhile, a cat with mice, then killed them quickly by crushing their skulls between a few sets of his hands.

  When the bodies had been dragged free of the entrance by Rocks in his frenzy, McMillian ran for it, leaping over two corpses just near the opening. He was in, he had made it; he just needed to keep running, to get away from this horror that never ended.

  He felt something pulling at his back.

  A claw in his shirt. Then it was in his flesh. Next, his spine. McMillian was yanked back outside by his spine, which ripped free of his body when he popped out of the side entrance and back into the main corridor. The female demon Angie had reached in at the last second and snatched him. McMillian shrieked in agony, but Angie just dropped him to the floor, enjoying his pain. She jawed on the fat around his spinal column as if it was barbecued ribs and when she was done, she tossed the “ribs” aside and chowed down on the rest of him as if she were in a pie-eating contest and McMillian was the pie.

  Inside the smaller passage, the remaining group moved fast, working their way deeper and deeper into the bowels of the new route. They entered the strange “Z” and followed turn after turn, until at the last turn, they saw Timmy Jimmy standing and staring at them.

  “What are you all doing in here?” he asked, his face tense. “This is a dead end. There’s no way out. I was coming back to tell you, Helena,” he said, seeing her in the crowd. “It’s that deathtrap you were talking about. We’re in it now.”

  “Okay, jeezus, let me think,” Helena said. “Timmy Jimmy, will you take us to the dead end anyway? I want to see what the end of my life is going to look like.”

  “Yeah, sure. I guess,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He reluctantly led the group further down the passageway, Helena at his side.

  Just before the last wall where the door was, the pass widened into a circle shape. All of the “earthlings” fit, with plenty of room to spare.

  Helena let out a huge sigh. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do a quick head count. See how many we’ve got, how many we are. How many we lost . . . Count off, okay? I’ll start. One.”

  Timmy Jimmy said, “Two.”

  Studebaker, an old Buick of a man, said, “Three.”

  A woman in her thirties next to him, who everyone christened Maybell, said, “Four.”

  Patty Patty, in a tiny voice, said, “Five.”

  On it went. The count stopped at sixty-three. They were down by twenty or so from the numbers they had when they first discovered the manhole cover. Down by over fifty from just a few days ago.

  Helena closed her eyes and prayed silently for everyone who was still alive, and everyone who had died.

  DEATHTRAP

  Outside, in the main corridor, the demons regrouped. The corpses scattered around them were drained of life.

  The demon monsters studied the entrance to the new passageway, puzzling how to get by it. The opening parted less than half as wide and half as tall as the shortest of them. This would not be easy.

  Rocks Manzer bellowed: “WE HAVE TO GET THROUGH THIS SOMEHOW. THIS IS BRICK AND CONCRETE AND STONE. WE HAVE NO ALTERNATIVE.”

  Mal turned to face him. “OF COURSE. BUT NOTICE: ONCE WE GET PAST THE OPENING, WE WILL BE IN A BIGGER PASSAGEWAY. BUT IT IS STILL TOO NARROW AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE . . . I AM OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS.”

  Def C stepped up. “WELL, WHAT ABOUT FIRE?”

  “FIRE?”

  “YEAH. LOOK HOW OUTDATED ALL THIS IS DOWN HERE. MAYBE A HUNDRED YEARS OLD. I DON’T THINK ANY OF IT WILL STAND UP TO THE BLASTSES FROM OUR ASSES.”

  “THAT MAY BE, BUT—”

  Angie interjected: “HE COULD BE RIGHT, IT WORKED UPSTAIRS.”

  Mal smirked. “WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A FEW BARRELS OF EXPLOSIVE LIQUIDS.”

  Def C laughed: “HA! TRUE. BUT UP THERE WE WERE DEALING WITH SOLID CONCRETE. THIS IS OLD MORTAR, NOT VERY HARD TO BREAK DOWN.”

  Rocks said: “YES, ON THE OTHER HAND, WE MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO WEAKEN THE BINDING AND THE CONCRETE.”

  Def C countered: “ON THE OTHER OTHER HAND, BRICKS MIGHT JUST TUMBLE AWAY WITHOUT MUCH EFFORT ON OUR PART.”

  Mal interrupted, shouting: “ENOUGH! EXECUTIVE DECISION: WE’RE DOING THIS.”

  Team Demon started again, as they had on the floor above. They cranked up their strength and heat and hatred and blasted fire and smoke and ashes out of all of their orifices: noses, ears, mouths, and asses.

  The combined flames created a giant devilish flamethrower that exploded around and in the opening.

  Down at the end of the “Z” passageway, the group stopped talking and just listened.

  “It’s a furnace,” Marjorie Morningbar said (so named for her habit in her previous life of only eating chocolate bars for breakfast). “Headed our way.”

  “No, it’s hellfire,” Helena said, her face stony.

  The flames came powerfully; they roared down the passage, a raging warehouse fire. Ten feet closer to them, twenty feet, fifty.

  “Oh freak!” Malcolm S said. “Our fate is to be fried food, fit for feasting!”

  But the flames came no further.

  “What happened?” Malcolm S. said, tilting his head to one side. “The flames kept getting closer and closer, growing louder. I don’t think it’s making any more progress . . .”

  “It’s stopped for some reason,” Helena said. “I guess that’s as far as they could send their hellish flames?”

  “No,” Timmy Jimmy said. “It’s the ‘Z.’”

  “The what?”

  “The zigzag in the passageway, remember? The Z shape. The flames are trapped in the switchback and can’t get through it.”

  “Yes! You’re right. Now I understand why they built the ‘Z’: in case of a fire or explosion, people working down at the end of this passageway would not be harmed.”

  “We’re saved,” Marjorie said, beaming.

  “For now,” said Timmy Jimmy, his voice sinking. He shook his head, staring at the ground and frowning. “They’ll get to us. They’ve got nothing better to do, and we’ve got nowhere to go. All of us—demons and humans—we have all the time in the world.”

  He drooped back against the locked door. When he did, the door moved, just a hair, exposing a small crack between the door and the frame.

  Through this slight separation streamed the first sign of light some of them had seen in weeks.

  Sunlight!

  CRASH AND BURN

  Beyond the thunder room, where the flames and heat pounded at the walls within walls of the “Z” formati
on in the narrow passageway, where the last of the survivors huddled near the rusted metal door, the demons huffed and puffed and blasted firestorms out of their butts.65

  Mal gave the “cut” signal, passing his hand repeatedly across his neck like a dagger. “ENOUGH! I’M NOT HEARING ANY SQUEALING. WHICH MEANS THEY ARE, FOR WHATEVER REASON, BEYOND OUR REACH.”

  The rest of the demons cut off their fire supply. Now only wisps of black smoke and ashes flowed from their orifices.

  Adjusting her six breasts, which had flopped in all directions from her all-out effort, Angie questioned him, not without a little sarcasm: “WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST, O MIGHTY ONE?”

  Mal slapped at the bricks with three of his hands. The bricks flew apart, turning to scrap and dust. He spoke: “SEEMS TO ME, THIS STRUCTURE IS COMPROMISED. LOOK AT THE BRICKS; THEY ARE THE TEETH OF A HOMELESS MAN, JUST BARELY HANGING ON. THE MORTAR, TOO. . .”

  Mal scraped at it with one yellowed fingernail claw, as if scratching at dried soap. Next, Rocks strode up to the opening and threw his full weight against one side like a defensive tackle. The entire wall crumbled to bits.

  Then Mal said with a gleeful smile stretched across his cracked and bleeding lips:

  “WE ARE GOING IN! EVERYONE PICK A WALL AND MAKE IT FALL.”

  Team Demon were wrecking balls; smashing, crashing, jumping, punching, kicking. They jackhammered their way down the passageway, taking down walls as they moved. A demonic earth-drill,66 moving at about ten yards, or thirty feet, per minute. At this rate, they would reach their intended victims in less than twenty minutes.

  Def C giggled as he called out to the captives.

  “HEEEEEEERE’S JOHNNY!”

  Down at the end of the long hall, a chill ran up Timmy Jimmy’s spine.