Rocks strode back to the open window and said, “THERE IS NOTHING HERE. I WAS WRONG. MARTIN BEEMER WILL DIE TONIGHT.”
Mal joined him: “AND SO SHALL MANY OTHERS. ‘TIS TIME TO REPLENISH OUR STOCK OF HUMAN CATTLE. GO!”
The devils flew out the window and back above the Manhattan skyline. They banked downtown, passing over the Central Park Air Force Base as they went. As this base was still very much under construction, no shots were fired, no jets were sent in pursuit.
Mal commented on it: “WHAT IS ALL THE HUBBUB ABOUT?”
“WHAT HUBBUB?”
“DOWN THERE. . .”
“DAMNED IF I KNOW.”
“LET US GO CHECK IT OUT.”
They circled around the construction site a couple of times and were joined by the two other demons—Anguigena “Angie” Caprigenus51 and Def C. The full group of fiends, reunited (and it feels so good), swooped in for a closer inspection.
“What the freaking hell is that?” Dani asked, pointing at the sky above the rooftops.
“What? Oh, screw me!” Helena said, catching sight of what Dani was fingering. “It looks to be a pack of Satans.52”
“I used to smoke those, you know. I’m clean now,” Dani said.
“No, not the cigarettes. Jeezus! I’m talking about, y’know, a bunch of Satans in the sky.” Helena joined Dani in pointing to the heavens, but with a bit more vigor. “Those Satans!”
“Oh . . .!” Dani said. “I think you’re right.”
“I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but what I do know is we should run.”
“I agree.”
None of the people working the heavy machinery in Central Park appeared to be carrying weapons that day, and at the moment, there were no soldiers on site. In effect, the site was utterly defenseless.
“We can’t expect anyone here to do anything on our behalf,” said Helena. “So I suggest we get the hell out of here.”
The two turned and ran, still holding hands, one brown and one white, and both clinging onto the other very tight.
The demons swooped down into the site.
“Dragons!” somebody shouted.
One of the demons set him on fire with its fiery dragon-breath.
“Holy HELL!” someone else yelled, and everyone seemed to be getting the message at last.
The workers and others dashed for cover, which, because most of the original Central Park had been bulldozed, there wasn’t much of. People, therefore, for the most part, ran pell-mell and every which way.
The demons from space found this humorous, and flew in low to attack. A couple of the demons landed and took up the chase on foot, catching their prey and killing them.
Helena and Dani continued sprinting, as well as they could with Helena in fashionable heels and Dani in thigh-high boots. They didn’t look behind them, but they heard the screaming, the crying, the gnashing of teeth.
Next, unfortunately for them, they also heard the flapping of wings up close, the dry wind the wings created blowing over their bodies, smelling of rotten meat. The shadows of the beasts fell over them.
The two women were gathered up along with about twenty others and lifted into the sky. The demons carried their new toys off to where the sun was setting a deep red.
Above it all, a strange metallic figure floated, harmlessly unengaged in any of the human or demon activities far below him in Central Park on this fine day.
BACK IN THE HIVE
Back in the hive—the vast cement cave beneath the city—the surviving humans, now down to less than seventy-five, huddled in a far corner. Some were still standing, but most were physically destroyed and emotionally empty. In the back room, the demons’ private area, Timmy Jimmy and Patty Patty hung lifelessly on hooks, their skin covered in blood, blood that oozed to the ground in the same way as a butchered animal’s trickles in the slaughterhouse.
The demons returned, carrying their latest victims, and dropped the screaming, fresh bodies to the cement floor. Two or three died on impact. A few more cracked a leg bone, an arm bone, or their spines and they would die sooner or later, either as demon food or from infection. For them, hell had already begun.
The rest of the fresh arrivals, who had not been too destroyed on entry, stood up and surveyed the place, stunned. They witnessed the existing humans, who by this time looked only half-human, huddled scared in the corner. The new folks moved with caution toward them. To those who had just arrived, the existing victims looked zombie-ish. Many were crying; and most of the new people joined them.
Helena and Dani were among the last to stand up.
“This is B.S.,” Dani said, swiping strands of purple out of her eyes and mussing it back up with the rest of her black hair. “Total B.S.”
“No kidding,” Helena said, easing herself to her feet. “You got that gun?”
“Which one?” Dani laughed, despite herself, despite their predicament. “Yeah, got both.”
“Good girl. Where are you hiding them?”
Both Dani and Helena, possibly in shock, seemed unconscious of the situation they now found themselves in.
“You won’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
“My chastity shield has a secret panel.”
“You’re kidding, of course.”
“No, seriously. Daddy made it for me, so I could protect my virginity. Holds two small pistols and twenty rounds of ammo.”
“How big is this chastity belt thing?” Helena laughed, flipping back her blonde-and-crimson-streaked hair.
“It’s big, you better believe it. Haven’t I ever showed my strap-on to you?”
“No, you haven’t. But believe me, I’m not complaining.” Helena smiled, blushing slightly.
“Well, take a look.”
Dani lifted her miniskirt. A shiny golden chastity shield about the size of a tiny hubcap was fitted to her front and ass. The front of the chastity shield displayed an ornate carving of, of all things, a phoenix bird rising from the fire. Dani noticed Helena staring at it.
“That was my idea,” she said. “The ultimate transformation.”
“Yeah. Nice. So where’s the gun?”
“‘Guns,’ you mean. Right here.”
Dani hit a switch on the side of the chastity shield and a door popped open, revealing a blue-velvet-lined case with two small, shiny guns inside.
“Wow,” Helena said. “Impressive. What about the ammunition?”
“You have to help me with that,” Dani said. She smiled and turned around. She bent over teasingly, and looked back over her shoulder at Helena. “Rub my button, right in the middle of the shield. You see it?”
“Yeah, I see it,” said Helena, suppressing a giggle. She stroked the knob and a slot opened in the chastity belt, looking similar to a gumball machine dispenser. Only instead of gumballs, twenty adorable bullets fell out and rolled across the ground.
“Not quite an arsenal,” Dani said. “But it will get us through the night.”
Helena knelt down and picked up the bullets.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get loaded for bear! I’m itching to kill me some hellspawn!”
Mallory Alexandria was so beautiful, it almost made his eyes hurt. Zachary smiled and approached her across the room, walking as if in a dream.
“Hi,” he said. He took her hand in his hand and kissed her gently on her mouth.
“Hi,” she whispered back.
She was wearing a black nightgown, one that flowed all the way to the floor. There were little butterflies in red at the shoulders and along the hem, which brushed the ground. A single crimson butterfly accented the cloth where it met at her breasts.
Zachary kissed her again, and she was in his arms completely. They moved as if one to the bedroom. Zachary stroked her tan leg, which she had lifted up to him, wrapping him with it. He took her down to the bed and lay on top of her, still kissing her. Mallory wrapped both legs around him, and he entered her. She let out a low moan and closed her eyes in the
dark.
In another dark place, in the current time, Mallory was alone, in misery. She could be dead. She could be alive. Her stillness was deceiving. Where was she? She couldn’t tell. Her senses provided no information for her to process other than to know she was miserable and terrified. She had a dream, she thought, a vision of him and her and the way it used to be. Then all was black again, and she disappeared inside her own soul.
HOMEWARD BOUND
Zachary began his return flight back to his hospital room, the only home he remembered, at least until his brain should start working right and give him some other memories to work with. He floated towards the building. On the sidewalk below, he noted a small crowd had gathered around what appeared to be a crushed body wearing a white lab coat.
He noticed right away his room had been on fire, and the sprinkler system had put out the flames. He glided through the broken opening where the windows used to be and landed in a wet pile of ash. Patient “Z” surveyed the damage using—what’s this?—heat vision.
The place was still hot, but there was something else. His heat vision was picking up traces of someone, or something, that had been here earlier. Not of this Earth. The heat “print” was huge. As if the things, whatever they were, were somehow hotter than the fire that engulfed the room and most of the thirtieth floor.
Odd.
Zachary didn’t know what to make of this, but he did make note of it, filing it away in his partially artificial brain for future analysis.
He kicked at the burnt equipment, vaguely recognizing it, although he was not sure why. Blackened wires hung from the ruined apparatus and from sockets in the walls. These, too, looked quite familiar. To Zachary, it felt as if his own house had been broken into, violated; which was odd, because even in his confused state, he recognized that this setup did not constitute what most people consider home.
Patient “Z” pivoted to peer out the window, switching to his night vision. The city was dark, with few lights on. The smell of fire and burnt things was everywhere, he now realized, not just in this place. He glided outside again, this time with a growing sense of urgency, although he didn’t yet understand why. A dread began to grow deep inside of him that something was very wrong and that maybe, just maybe, he might have something to do with it.
Then he noticed the stone embedded as part of his metal “armor.” The gem glowed there, alternating green and black and red and purple, reflecting his confused emotional state. The beginnings of a memory began to stir.
Alexandrite. From across the years, as if his dead birthmother were calling to him.
Alexandria. Another woman, too. Calling to him to remember.
Alexandria.
Mallory Alexandria.
TIMMY JIMMY
Timmy Jimmy opened his eyes. His face was pulpy, having been smashed against the wall by one of the demons and kicked in the face by two others. He spat blood and one of his teeth out onto the floor. He moaned and tried to get his bearings. Then he remembered Patty Patty.
Oh my God, the little kid!
He couldn’t do anything to help her; he had been nearly unconscious when they had turned their attention on her to “teach her a lesson.” The demons beat her just as they had beaten him, but she was so much smaller. They seemed to want to defile her, but their rage and bloodlust somehow worked to short-circuit that need.
Timmy Jimmy blacked out again. Then, as if slowly awakening both from and to a nightmare at the same time, he realized he was suspended in space. At first, he didn’t understand how or why he hovered. Until he felt the metal pressing against his back, the hook they’d hung him on. He glanced to his right along the floor, searching for the remains of Patty Patty, but saw nothing. What had they done to her? Smashed her to bits? Eaten her?
He searched the area to his left, discovering Patty Patty hanging right beside him. He gasped, almost crying out, but his throat was constricted. She hung there, a sack of meat. Nothing moved, not her chest, not her eyes, nothing. Blood dribbled out of her petite blazer sleeve onto the concrete below, a drop here and another there. The little girl appeared to be dead, and Timmy wasn’t sure if that might not be for the best—for her to be out of her misery. Yet a different part of him still wanted a chance to save her.
“Patty?” he whispered. “Patty Patty, are you alive?”
Timmy Jimmy wept hard, shoulder-shuddering tears.
The demons entered then, and so Timmy Jimmy went quiet and played dead. The demons talked together about someone named Martin Beemer. Then they regrouped and were gone again, flying past Timmy Jimmy and Patty Patty without giving them a second thought.
“Oh, God,” Dani said, loading one of the guns. Dani and Helena huddled together in a dark corner, where they had thrown some debris and old, dirty, bloody clothes over themselves in an attempt to stay hidden while they prepared for their counterattack.
What they weren’t expecting was for the demons to return from that back room, the room the beasts had entered with such determination only seconds earlier. But now, the hellspawn had left again, down that large hallway and no doubt up that ladderless shaft to the outside. To freedom.
“What the hell?” Helena said. “Where are they going now?”
“Damned if I know,” Dani said.
“Best to assume they’ll be back soon.”
A black man stood before them.
“Hi,” he said. “They call me Malcolm S. Thought I’d introduce myself. For some reason known only to God, I have managed to survive nine days down here in Hell. Can’t say I’m a welcoming committee, because no one should be here. You have my condolences.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Malcolm S. Nice to meet you.” Dani smiled and curtseyed. She extended her hand, batting her eyelashes. “I’m Dani.”
“Girl, this ain’t no debutante affair,” Helena said under her breath.
Malcolm S took Dani’s hand, but stood there awkwardly, as though unsure what to do with it—kiss or shake it. After a moment, he just let go.
“I believe you should always be polite and always keep a positive attitude,” Dani said to Helena.
“That’s a good one,” Malcolm S said. “Hard to do either of those things down here, I’ve found.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Dani said, making a pouty face and blowing her red-striped bangs out of her eyes. “But I intend to try.”
“Good for you, young lady. Good for you,” Malcolm S said, chuckling.
Moaning came from the other chamber, and the three of them turned toward the noise.
“Jesus, what was that?” Dani said. “Sounds like someone’s in trouble.”
“We’re all in trouble. But, yeah,” Malcolm S said, “what you’re hearing are the demons’ latest victims. A couple of true blue American heroes. Both with rhyming names, as chance would have it. What are the odds. . .?”
“Rhyming names?” Helena said, wrinkling her nose a bit in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s this little girl, Patty Patty. Her real name is Patricia Patterson, just so you know. Then there’s this other guy, brave bugger. Skinny, though. His name is, let me think, let me think. . . Oh yeah. His name is Timothy James, but he calls himself Tim–”
“Timmy Jimmy!” both girls yelled in unison.
ROBO-ZACH
Somewhere in the foggy recesses of Zachary’s drug-addled brain, something began to boil, to come to life. Things were adding up, but he was not sure what they added up to. This burnt-out hospital floor at the Department of Neurological Surgery at Columbia University Medical Center and New York-slash-Presbyterian Hospital.53 The transformation of Central Park. He used to play baseball there, f’christsake! They paved paradise and put up an Air Force base.
The city, too, was unnaturally empty. Then there was this room. And these ominous heat prints, left by large beings that gave off some extreme heat of their own. Puzzling, all of it. Not the least: What the hell am I doing, being made half out of metal now? And, oh yeah: Is t
his the future? Can everyone fly now, or just me?
As if to answer these questions, a bug flew in the window and said to him, “I suppose you have a few questions. Quite a few, I’d imagine. Perfectly understandable.”
Zach’s jaw dropped open and his eyes squinted as the tiny, metallic bug buzzed across the room and came to rest on the side table next to Zach’s bed.
“You are right about that, yes sir!” Zachary said with mock cheerfulness. Zachary smiled to himself, knowing he’d lost his marbles. Unless this was the future now, where even the bugs are super-sensitive and intelligent. And speak perfect English.
“Shoot,” the little bug said.
“What?”
“Ask away, Citizen Zachary. I’ll do my best to answer.”
“You’re a, a bug,” said Zachary dismissively. “A talking bug. Which makes me certifiable.”
“Not really,” the bug said. “I may have the dimensions of an insect found in nature, but I have no organic materials; I’m all metal and silicone. One hundred percent. To the casual observer, yes, I do appear to be an ordinary insect.”
“So you’re a fake bug.”
“I would not put it that way.”
“Well, what kind of bug are you? A bee? Or a fly.”
“I am modeled on the biomechanics of certain genus of wasp,” the bug stated, as though insulted. “To be more categorical, a common type of mud wasp, the Potter Wasp: Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Eumeninae.”
“So, you—a talking wasp—are now telling me your exact species and order. . . I’m done.”
“No, not my species; I am not a real wasp. I am a SCRID.54 I am merely informing you as to the organic species upon which my synthetic systems are modeled, and upon which my flight mechanics are based.”
DEMON DAYS: Love, sex, death, and dark humor. This book has it all. Plus robots. Page 9