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

by Carl S. Plumer

  As the crowd dispersed and the demons flapped about like wet dogs, Zach continued to pour the cold water on them. He then, with great care, set the water tank down on the street and began to shoot freezing air at the beasts. The water already drenching them turned to ice quickly, freezing their extremities first. The fingertips, then the fingers, the hands, the wrists. From the bottom up, the cloven and taloned feet, the ankles, the tips of their tails. Their various noses and horns also started to freeze. Freezing from the outside toward the middle. The weight of the ice and the coldness of it all caused the demons to drop to their knees, screaming in pain and frustration.

  The demons had been defeated, at last. Captured and frozen. The real “Deadliest Catch.”

  A roar of approval rose up from the thousands of New Yorkers viewing the battle live on-site or in their homes via Pay-Per-View. They had won! This new superhero, whoever he was, was “the shit!” It felt good to be an American again.

  But the victory proved too little, too late, and really not much of a victory at all.

  Angie rose upwards, somehow flying with frozen wings. The leathery wings beat slowly, enough to crack the ice. As the she-beast rose high into the air, the sun took over, melting the ice and awakening her devil body. Once free of the ice and the cold, she stretched her wings and flexed the muscles on her sinewy body, face to the sun. She then turned around, heading back to Earth, flames blowing down twenty feet ahead of her, blazes which reached the ground well before her, melting her ice-encased comrades and scorching any bystanders too scared, trapped, or stupid to get out of the way.

  Angie swooped down, blasting flames out of every hole in her body, until all of the demons were warm and free. The other demons immediately heated up and began shooting flames everywhere.

  Meanwhile, the firefighters had caught on to what Zach was up to and commenced spraying water at the monsters, hoping to help refreeze them. But the demons fired back with fire, torching the fire trucks and sending firefighters scattering. Then, the demons were aloft, taking out humans everywhere, as easily as a child roasts a marshmallow over an open flame.

  Zachary was in a panic now. His one trump card—freezing their asses off—had failed. He zipped around in the sky ineffectively. He tried to save the people who had gathered ‘round to watch him whip demon ass, to teach these aliens a thing or two, USA-style. However, things didn’t quite work out as envisioned.

  Zachary flew from disaster to disaster, trying to anticipate where the demons would strike next, but always guessing wrong. He decided it was time to go on the offense again, and Borgy couldn’t agree more.

  Pushing a number of buttons on his MegaMan69-type sleeves caused a light to fill the entire area under the elevated subway tracks where the demons had swept down to continue bringing the pain, up close and personal. The light had a strange effect: everything and everyone was now moving in slow motion. Zach had no idea what the science was behind this. He was only doing what Captain Borgnine was telling him to do.

  “Good. Perfect,” the robo-insect said.

  This time, instead of having to drill into Zachary’s brain in order to communicate with him and control some of his functions, Borgy sat inside a purpose-built slot on the side of Zach’s mostly metal head. The slot was the exact size and shape of Borgy’s wasp robot body. When he snapped in, his system was instantly wired to Zach’s, as if they were one organism.

  “I didn’t know I could do that,” Zach said.

  “Yes, well,” said the Borgy-robo-wasp. “Please keep in mind that the effect of the slo-mo ray is temporary. It will wear off in less than five minutes, and you cannot use it again for twenty-four hours. It is quite powerful and needs that much time, at least, to recharge.”

  “Got it. So what’s next?” Zachary Zemeritus said, looking, to anyone who might be watching, as if he was having a conversation with himself. All the more so because he had to shout above the sounds of sirens, explosions, screams, and the roaring of the demon beasts—all in an odd, slow-motion audio effect.

  “Just start shooting.”

  “Shooting what?”

  “On your shoulders, you have mini-atom bombs. Now, you must be hyper-careful with these.”

  “No, really?”

  Having not been programmed to recognize sarcasm, the cop bot continued. “You could blow up a city block with just one of these bombs, despite the fact that they are not much larger than a pencil eraser. Do not get me started about the radiation . . .”

  “Pencil eraser, eh? You mean those fat pink ones, or those square gum erasers?”

  “Neither. I was talking about the little erasers on the top of a pencil.”

  “Damn, that is small.”

  “Regardless. If you make a direct hit on one of these demons—and let me see: the most vulnerable area would be via the ear canal—the implosion will take place 100% within their bodies. This will result in no external personal damage, no soft tissue collateral damage, and no damage to structures, vehicles, or objects. Best of all, no radiation threat.”

  “Will do.”

  “It is a very difficult shot, so you must trust the ‘Force.’”

  “The ‘force’?”

  “Yes, the Force of Gravity. What did you think I meant?”

  “Hmmm. . . nothing. Go on.”

  “Well, anyway, you will have to get close enough to aim,” continued the little bot, “but not so close that one of these demons might strike first, either physically or via flame. The bomb must go into the beast’s ear canal at ninety degrees, not one degree more or less, and it must follow the path all the way into the head.”

  “Instant death, no doubt.”

  “You know,” said Borgy, “there is really no way we could have tested that in advance. We do not technically know. It has got to hurt at least, do you not agree? I mean, the thing is an atomic bomb, after all! I do not care how small it is, it is still atomic. As in, BOOM!”

  Zach was uncomfortable with launching atomic bombs, no matter how small, into a crowded New York street. Even though a good many people on these adjacent blocks were at this moment being mauled to death by demons, he was still hesitant.

  “What are you waiting for?” Borgy asked.

  “Seems to me releasing atomic weaponry might end up doing more harm than good.”

  “You are not paid to think, Zemeritus, but to take action. Decisive action, no less. Or as we say in robot talk, ‘ƉƋƐƍƇƱƪ ZUP^TR MPY ȬɆȺɰʬʄʨʚ ]SHOF YP:: ÆÉĄĚĜÖ NIY YP ʭlzϠϞϦЊ ҈҉ ÅÅĦŊŅ. XRTRTOY!!OD. #YSLR# ϾϪѬѼ.’ ”

  “Hmmm. I have to disagree. Both with your English argument and your Robotic one.”

  While Zach and Borgy hashed out their philosophical differences, the demons from deep space noticed the preoccupied hero apparently lost in a discussion with himself, and attacked “en masse.”70

  They collided with Zachary in mid-air, their horns piercing his carbon fiber and titanium armor like toothpicks through room temperature butter. Wounded, Zachary nosedived back to Earth.

  The crowd cried out in shock as he fell—their Superman. Others squirmed among the dead on the ground, dying themselves.

  From where he lay, Zachary made out people talking and yelling and wailing, but it seemed to be from hundreds of miles away. The world around him turned dark and darker, and his head spun. He forced himself to stay conscious, but he was losing too much blood to stay awake much longer.

  One at a time, the demons joined him on the street, each making the point to land forcefully on Zachary Zemeritus with incredible power, driving him inch by inch into the tarmac. Zachary grunted with each pounding, drifting further and further into unconsciousness. He peered out at the world through a thimble of light; everything else in darkness. He assessed the demons surrounding him, but it was as if he were scanning them using a tiny fish-eye lens. The demons appeared distorted, wavy, and far away.

  Zach tried to extract himself from the pavement, to rise up and defend himself, to protect the people of N
ew York City, but his strength had faded to almost nothing.

  “Patient Z, you still there?” Chief Borgnine said, communicating into Zach’s left temporal lobe.71

  “Yes, but not for much longer,” Zachary choked out, barely audible. His head fell back from the exertion.

  “You will notice, sir, that there are no human beings in the immediate vicinity.”

  Zach checked. Borgy was right, it was just him (or them, if you counted Borgy) and the monsters.

  “Yes, I see.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “No chance of a ‘friendly fire’ situation, am I right?”

  “What?”

  “What I am saying is, there is no chance now of hitting a human being by accident.”

  “Oh, right, yes. Okay. Um, so . . . ?”

  Zachary Zemeritus was groggy, to say the least.

  “Shoot them.”

  “Come again?”

  “Fire your little atomic bombs at the demons.”

  “Oh, right!”

  “So. . .?”

  “Yes, doing it . . .” Zach said.

  “Zach,” Borgy said after a pause, “what seems to be the problem?”

  “I forget which button.”

  “It is on your neck piece, on the right. But you need to aim with your shoulder, at least roughly.”

  “Got it.”

  “Then you must say the coordinates out loud.”

  “How would I know the—”

  “I will feed you that information. Now, get ready,” Borgy said.

  “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Zachary said.

  “Okay, here we go then. First coordinates. Oh, hey, could you sit up a little bit? I’m using your eyes.”

  “Oh, sure.” Zachary groaned as he edged up out of the asphalt an extra inch or two.

  “That is it. Perfect. Okay, we will take out the she-beast first. Let me see. Got it. Here you go: x – 0.0024, y 2.1098. Prepare to launch.”

  “Are you using the Mil-Dot Reticle72 system, or MOA73?” Zachary asked, surprised by the knowledge implanted in his brain.

  “Mil-Dot, why?”

  “Just curious.”

  “And arcane. Okay,” Borgy said. “Counting down from 5.”

  “Ready.”

  “5 . . .

  4 . . .

  3 . . .

  2 . . .

  1 . . .

  FIRE!”

  Zachary hit the button on the right side of his carbon-fiber-shielded neck. A soft POP occurred on his left shoulder. A miniature hatch opened and a teeny, tiny rocket rose up.

  Zachary called out, at the top of his voice, “x – 0.0024, y 2.1098!”

  Smoke billowed out of the back of the device and, in a second, it was off, heading precisely for the target as defined by the coordinates given. It darted through the air, twisting and turning to correct its location in relation to the target. In less than four seconds, it had made contact with the ear of the she-beast, roaring into her ear canal toward the thing’s brain, where it collided with a concussive blast.

  Angie slapped at her ears and her head and then tumbled to the ground face first, screaming. The bony spikes projecting from her spine shuddered, while the thin, nearly transparent skin that covered the bone spurs, spreading from barb to barb like sails, rippled along with her pain.

  Borgy was right, Zachary contemplated: If she wasn’t dead, she was most assuredly wishing she was.

  DEMON DOWN

  The other demons turned around and, seeing Angie down on the ground, shaking in pain, attacked Zachary like a pack of insane wolves, leaping over the distance between them and him in one crazy bound.

  Zachary took off into the air, just missing the demon pileup, and, as he soared skyward, they followed him, close on his heels. He dipped, dove, and dashed, but he couldn’t dodge them.

  “The rest of mini-bombs,” Borgy “told” him in his Wernicke’s Area. “We have half a dozen. Use them.”

  “I’d be more than happy to,” Zach said. “Problem is, these bastards won’t stay still long enough. And if I stop to aim, they’ll rip me apart.”

  “Good point. Keep flying. Too save time, I will not say the coordinates out loud. Instead, I will inform you mentally of the coordinates. You will have to take over from there. You will have to call out the target’s latitude and longitude for each of the demonic targets. If you do not, the mini-bombs will misfire.”

  “I understand all that. Just do it already.”

  “One other thing.”

  “What?”

  “The rest of the bombs are located on the back of your shoulders. Your rear deltoids.”

  “So?”

  “So, you will need to adjust your flying position accordingly to aim your shoulders in their correct direction.”

  “Are you saying, I need to fly backwards?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  “Hold on. They are as good at flying as I am—better. But if that’s what it takes . . .”

  “Yes, that is what it takes.”

  “Okay. I’m flying backwards,” Zach said, the wind buffeting him from behind, slowing him down, drawing his enemies closer.

  “10-4. Firing #1,” Borgy said.

  The micro-miniature atomic bomb blasted from Zachary’s shoulder, spinning off towards the monsters, looking as harmless as a cheap Fourth of July firework.

  “x – 0.0075, y 2.1494,” Zachary shouted as Borgy mentally fed him the coordinates.

  The bomb swerved and dipped, but so did the demons. It passed right by them and disintegrated a few yards beyond.

  “I had to engage the self-destruct sequence to safely implode the warhead, neutralizing the radiation,” Borgy said. “Once it missed them, it might have done untold damage on the population.”

  “Understood,” Zach said, switching to normal flying mode to try to put some distance between himself and the demons. “So, what’s the new plan?”

  “We are still going with the mini-A,” Borgy said. “Give me a second. I am calculating their evasive maneuvers so the mini-A will be in the right place at the right time.74 Based on what I observed with this attack, we can predict their flight pattern with precision. We will get a direct hit next time. I am five nines75 here.”

  “I’m willing to give it a try.”

  “You in position?”

  “I am now,” Zachary said, rolling around to face his pursuers again and positioning his shoulder at “Rocks” Manzer. “Fire when ready.”

  “Firing missile #2,” Borgy said.

  “x – 0.0195, y 2.3362,” Zachary hollered.

  Another mini-A left its mini-bay and hurtled through space on its calculated path.

  This time, it hit its target.

  Rocks writhed in agony, grabbing at the ears on one head. He dropped to the ground, a fallen god. Crashing on top of some abandoned cars and yellow cabs, he rolled off in pain onto the street. Both heads screamed in agony, even though only one head had actually been hit. The demon bled profusely out of his ears on his left head, smoke billowing out of his mouth. Rocks curled up like a hurt dog unable to move, as if he’d gone into shock.

  Flames shot out the mouth, nose, ears, and bottoms of Mal and Def C. They snarled and snatched at the air in their attempt to grab Zachary Zemeritus to torture him and tear him to pieces. Metal Zachary managed to stay outside of their grasping reach, however, arcing and diving above the Manhattan skyline.

  He zoomed straight up into the skies. The sun lowered in the sky, the clouds pink. The sky darkened and the lights of the city flickered on. At the periphery of his vision, Zachary saw the military beacons bursting into blue brightness all throughout Central Park Air Force Base (CP-AFB). Jets landed and jets took off, but none were headed his way. He was on his own. If he failed, that would be the end of mankind.

  Perhaps the armed forces might be able to slow these things down, but how much real fighting could they do without first evacuating the entire city? Even after th
e city was made “safe,” what would become of New York? Would it be blown back to the Dark Ages in an attempt to destroy these beasts? Could these demons even be stopped? A direct hit to the brain with an atomic bomb—given, these were boutique A-bombs, but nuclear bombs all the same—appeared to only stun or hurt them on a temporary basis.

  Shouldn’t they be dead? Shouldn’t their brains be splattered all over the place right now? All these bombs seemed to have done was to give the stricken demons what appeared to be a real bad headache, maybe even a migraine. That wouldn’t be enough, even as terrible as migraines can be, to make them leave Planet Earth once and for all.

  Meanwhile, the other two demons were nearly upon Zachary Zemeritus.

  “Zach to Borgy, Zach to Borgy. Come in, Borgy.”

  “This is Borgy.”

  “Borgy, I’m about done here. If you don’t want to be much more than earwax in a dead body, I suggest we try to strike again.”

  “Time for the big guns.”

  “We have bigger guns than atomic bombs?”

  “Yes. You have a triple-head A-bomb missile that launches off your back. Unfortunately, though, to utilize it, you have to fly not only backwards, but upside down as well.”

  “Um, pretty much means certain death. Just saying.”

  “Right, but not if we get them first. Fear not. I am calculating the flight pattern and avoidance trends of the largest of the monsters, the one with the three heads. We launch in five seconds.”

  “Fair enough. But that leaves the other one, the last of them, and he’s close.”

  “The impact of three micro-mini A-bombs on the gigantic one—one in each head—should give him pause. If nothing else, the shockwaves should send him off course for a bit. Long enough for you to regain the advantage. At which point, we will follow up quickly and take the two-header out as well.”

  “Forever the optimist.”

  “I am sorry. I do not follow.”