Demon Zero Read online

  Simon gritted his teeth. He’d forgotten about the school. He stepped backward as the zombie clamored to its feet and took two uneasy steps on shaky, rotting legs. He peeked over the hill, down toward the section of the graveyard that sloped down to the lake. There was a blue tarp on the ground in the distance, covering a half-dug grave.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “Keep it busy.” Then he turned and sprinted off in the direction of the lake, jumping over the chain and running down the hill.

  “Keep it busy?” Virgil said, incredulous. “Keep it busy how?!” But Simon was out of earshot. “Great,” he mumbled miserably. The zombie had found its footing. It lurched forward, throwing out its hands. It had a surprisingly long reach, and Virgil cried out as the creature’s fingers brushed against his shirt. He stumbled backward, falling down onto the grass behind him. The zombie threw itself forward, snarling and slavering. It collapsed on top of Virgil, gnashing its teeth, reaching out for bites of his flesh. The zombie smelled like putrid death, and Virgil gagged as rotten skin and flecks of thick mucus flew into his mouth. He threw up his forearms, blocking the monster’s teeth by holding back its throat. The creature was surprisingly strong; Virgil gasped for breath as he worked to hold the thing back. His arms began to press into the soft flesh, and then he felt something warm and wet spread down across his wrists. He looked up and almost vomited when he saw that his arms had pushed themselves straight through the zombie’s skin, and its throat was leaking blood and saliva.

  “Oh, gross!” Virgil moaned. He managed to get his feet up under the monster’s ribcage, and he pushed off as hard as he could. The zombie flew up into the air, its arms and legs flailing like shredded pinwheels, and Virgil rolled out of the way just as it crashed back down onto the ground. Virgil scrabbled away on his hands and knees, heading toward the older graves.

  The zombie pushed itself to its feet and stumbled after him, gasping and snarling. Virgil jumped up and jogged forward, laboring for breath. He hurried down the hill and spied a tall gravestone, a pillar with a stone angel perched on top. He ran around the grave marker and nudged it with his shoulder. It was heavy, and solid, but it swayed just a bit at his touch.

  The zombie lumbered closer, slipping and sliding down the grass, moving faster than Virgil would have expected. It wasn’t the slow, shuffling gait like in the old horror movies; this zombie stalked forward on jerky legs, his pace the regular walking pace of a human. It closed the gap quickly, and soon it was close enough for Virgil to smell the stench of it again.

  He reared back, then jammed his shoulder forward, hitting the concrete pillar so hard that something in his elbow popped. The tombstone rocked forward, and the angel on top wobbled a little, but that was it. The zombie swiped its ragged fingers at Virgil, and he danced back, out of reach, and spun around the pillar, keeping the tower between himself and the zombie. He faked left, and the zombie dove, snarling. Virgil jerked himself back to the right, gave himself enough room for a running start, then sprinted forward, giving a throaty battle cry as he smashed into the concrete pillar with every ounce of force he could muster. The pillar swayed, and the angel on top tipped forward and balanced perilously on the edge of its base…then it fell forward, toppling head over heels as the zombie lurched forward.

  The angel landed with a hard thud in the soft earth just to the left of the undead creature.

  “Aw, come on,” Virgil whimpered.

  The zombie lunged again, and this time, he caught the hem of Virgil’s shirt. The monster reared back its rotting head, exposing the hole that Virgil’s arms had made in its throat. It snapped its head forward, teeth open and gnashing toward Virgil’s arm.

  Then the broad side of a metal shovel blade caught the zombie in the side of the head, sliced through the flesh, and stuck into the skull with a soft, wet thump.

  The zombie fell over, dead. This time, for good.

  “Took you long enough,” Virgil groaned.

  Simon shrugged, out of breath. “That hill is really steep.” He tossed the shovel to the ground and helped Virgil to his feet. “You okay?”

  “I had it under control,” he said, brushing the grass from his pants.

  “Yeah, it sure looked like it,” Simon said.

  “Hey, it wouldn’t have been a problem if you had just stomped on it like I told you to.”

  “No way,” Simon said, shaking his head. “These shoes are brand new.”

  They stood over the ruined body of the zombie. Virgil nudged it with the toe of his sneaker, just to make sure it was dead. “If the dead are going to start rising more often, we should bury them with air fresheners,” he said, making a sour face.

  “Almost makes me glad there was nothing left of Laura to bury,” Simon said. Virgil gave him a questioning look. “I just…wouldn’t want to think of her breaking down like that. You know?”

  “Yeah,” Virgil said, nodding. “I know.”

  Simon scratched his chin. “Does it seem weird to you? A demon and a zombie, both in Templar at the same time?”

  “You know, I think most people would say either a demon or a zombie was pretty weird,” Virgil said. He sighed. “Do you ever think that we should move to a normal city?”

  But Simon waved this away. “No, I mean, think about it. This sort of thing has been happening a lot more often lately. That serpent in the lake just last month, and then a demon a few weeks later, now a zombie, too? We used to get maybe one weird thing a year.” He frowned down at the zombie’s lifeless body. “What’s happening here?”

  Virgil chewed his bottom lip. “You think something’s happening?”

  Simon raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. It is weirder than usual, so much happening so close together.”

  “It’s never been like this before.”

  They stood quietly for a few minutes, each of them lost in thought. Slowly, a smile broke across Virgil’s face. “So are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Simon shook his head, and he sighed. “You know, Virg…I’ve got a bad feeling that I am, in fact, thinking what you’re thinking.”

  Virgil looked at Simon. Simon looked at Virgil.

  Together, in perfect unison, they said, “Templar needs some heroes.”

  Chapter 4

  “This is so exciting!” Virgil hissed in Simon’s ear.

  Simon elbowed him, nudging him back. “Will you stop saying that?” he said. “And be quiet. And it’s not exciting, it’s terrifying. And be quiet!”

  They were crouched in the alley across from Mrs. Grunberg’s house, hiding from the streetlights of Evergreen Street in the shadow of the oversized dumpster. It had been thirty-six hours since they had taken down the zombie in the graveyard. Simon had spent most of those hours wondering why in the world he had agreed to become an amateur monster hunter. “I must be out of my mind,” he mumbled.

  “What you are is a solid eight percent cooler today than you were yesterday,” Virgil said cheerfully.

  “Remind me again why we think this stuff will work to take down an immortal spawn of Satan?” Simon said, inspecting the contents of their duffel bag for the fifth time since leaving their apartment. They had packed a box of Crayola chalk, a thick red candle, a lighter, four bottles of Jolt cola, a cylinder of Morton sea salt, and a length of nylon rope.

  “Because the internet said so,” Virgil said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The internet knows everything.”

  “The internet thinks David Bowie was an undercover Colombian spy,” Simon said.

  “Can you prove that he wasn’t?” Virgil asked, prodding Simon on the shoulder. “Huh? Go on, I dare you. Prove that he wasn’t.”

  “You are such an idiot.” He zipped up the bag and peered out from behind the dumpster. Mrs. Grunberg’s house was an old Tudor-style mansion with a small yard nestled between two five-story ap
artment buildings. It looked completely out of place on the city block, with its sharply peaked roof and dark brown timber trim. A few wide flagstones served as a path from the sidewalk to the front porch steps. The front edge of the elevated porch was covered by white latticework, designed to hide the crawlspace beneath the floorboards of the porch. Normally, the space behind the latticework was dark. But for the past couple of weeks, a dark red light had been pulsing out through the small basement windows. The pulses made it look like a visual heartbeat, or a slow, dangerous breath.

  There could have been any number of non-supernatural explanations for the weird light. But that wasn’t the only change to the Grunberg house. The flowers in the small gardens lining either side of the house had all turned black. They hadn’t died; they weren’t shriveled or flaking away, losing their leaves or petals. They stood as strong as ever. They had just turned black. And every day, the darkness of the flowers seemed to grow thicker, and wetter. As they watched now, from across the street, Simon could swear that the black begonias were actually dripping.

  “Definitely a sign of a demon,” Virgil whispered, reading Simon’s thoughts. “The internet confirmed it.”

  “What would a demon want with Mrs. Grunberg’s basement?” Simon wondered aloud.

  “Probably some peace and quiet,” Virgil said. “Grunberg probably doesn’t have Alexa or internet or anything. She’s super old.”

  “Demons don’t just appear,” Simon muttered. “They’re summoned. And they don’t usually stay in one place, unless they’re somehow trapped there.”

  “Oh, two days ago you’re not ready to be a monster hunter, today you’re a demon expert?” Virgil said, rolling his eyes.

  Simon was suddenly grateful for the darkness behind the dumpster; it hid the fact that his face had turned pink with embarrassment. “I…read it on the internet,” he admitted.

  “Boy, what did people do before wi-fi?” Virgil wondered.

  “They went to the library.”

  “Ew.”

  Simon exhaled. “I’m just saying, we might have bigger problems than a demon.”

  Virgil screwed up his face in confusion. “Like what?”

  “Like someone with enough knowledge and strength to conjure up and control that demon.”

  Virgil considered this. “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, ticking his head back and forth. “Old lady Grunberg has been doing pilates…”

  Simon gave him a look. “How do you even know that?”

  Virgil smiled smugly. “I pay attention.”

  Simon turned and sat down on the cracked asphalt with his back leaning against the dumpster. “All right. Let’s go through the plan one more time.”

  “We’ve been through the plan eighty thousand times,” Virgil moaned, pressing his hands against the sides of his head in misery.

  Simon looked over at him, his bright blue eyes as serious as death. “Then let’s make it eighty-thousand-and-one.”

  “Okay, okay.” Virgil crouched down and planted a finger on the ground. “This is the house.” He drew his finger around in a wide circle. “We run over, we open the salt, and we pour it in a circle around the house.”

  “An unbroken circle,” Simon clarified.

  “Yes, an unbroken circle. A ring of salt should keep the demon from escaping, because I guess demons are more of a sweet tooth kind of monster.”

  “This is assuming the demon wants out, or is able to get out,” Simon reminded him. “I’m telling you, it’s not natural for it to just camp out there without being trapped and controlled.”

  “I know, I know, you asked Jeeves, and now you’re a genius. The salt is there as a safety net, just in case it does try to run.”

  “Okay,” Simon nodded. “Then what?”

  “Then we do recon. Look through the windows and see what we can see.”

  “Try to assess what type of demon it is.”

  “Sure, I guess,” Virgil shrugged. “I don’t know why it matters.”

  “I’d like to know if it has horns, or hooves, or if it breathes fire, or has razor claws. I’d like to know what we’re dealing with, exactly.”

  “It’s a creature from hell, Simon, it’s not going to have a whole lot of soft surfaces.”

  “We assess what type of demon it is,” Simon said, getting them back on track. “See what we can see.”

  “Yes. We see what we can see, and we scope the layout of the basement, you find the best way in, and we make a plan of attack. Then we sneak in, head downstairs, light the candle, and say the magic protection words so the thing can’t touch us.”

  “You brought the words?” Simon asked.

  Virgil held up his phone. “All loaded up,” he said.

  “Remind me which website you found those on?”

  “PurgeYourEvil.org.”

  “Great,” Simon moaned. “Sounds really legit.”

  “Dude, it’s a dot-org,” Virgil said. “It’s for real.”

  “Okay,” Simon said, rolling his head on his neck and shaking out his hands, “okay. We pour the salt, scope the room, get inside, light the candle, say the words, face the demon, do the binding thing with the rope, draw the runes on the floor, say the purging spell, and if somehow the demon doesn’t roast us with his fire breath or melt us with some acid vision along the way, that should send it back to hell.”

  Virgil looked at him, confused. “What is acid vision?”

  Simon grimaced. “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out. And you’re sure Mrs. Grunberg isn’t home?”

  “Does it look like she’s home?” Virgil asked, gesturing over at the house. Aside from the pulsing red glow, there were no lights on in the entire place. “It’s Monday. On Mondays, she plays bridge.”

  “How do you even—”

  “I’m telling you, I pay attention!”

  Simon’s hands were slick with sweat. He rubbed them on his jeans. “So I guess that’s it.”

  Virgil clapped his hands. “I feel good about this plan. Do you feel good about this plan?”

  “I do not feel good about this plan, no.”

  “Great,” Virgil said, jumping up to his feet. “Now let’s go be heroes.”

  Chapter 5

  There was an unmistakable heat emanating from beneath the house. Virgil could feel it radiating through his clothes, giving his skin a sickly warmth. “Gross,” he muttered.

  Pouring the salt in an unbroken ring was harder than it seemed. For one thing, Mrs. Grunberg had a fence encircling her backyard, with a locked gate, so Virgil had to climb over the fence to make it all the way around the house. The fence also made it challenging to make the circle unbroken; he had to toss salt beneath the slats of wood to bring the line into the backyard.

  For another thing, there were a lot of plants around the house with wide leaves and sharp barbs. He tried pouring the salt down onto the plants, hoping it would rain down onto the ground thickly enough to continue the unbroken line, but the leaves were like umbrellas, scattering the grains of salt in all directions. So he had to push the plants down in order to draw the salt circle along the ground, and the thorns cut at his hands.

  By the time he made it to the backyard, he was sweating, bleeding, and annoyed.

  And, of course, the throbbing red glow from the basement was ever-present. He tried to complete his job quietly, and without drawing the attention of the demon, but at one spot in the backyard, where the storm windows were bigger than the thin glass plates along the sides of the house, he couldn’t help himself, and he peeked inside.

  The basement was mostly empty, except for a few stacks of weathered cardboard boxes in the corner, full of old clothes and Christmas decorations. There was a furnace, a hot water heater, and an old utility sink that was covered in cobwebs and looked like it hadn’t been used in decades. The concrete floor was covered in dust...and t
here, in a high-backed wooden chair in the center of the room, sat the demon.

  The creature was facing away, so Virgil couldn’t get a good look at him. He was huge; that much was obvious. His shoulders rose high above the back of the chair like bulbous mountains, and his knees were spread wide, and seemed to take up half the width of the room. The demon wore a suit that stretched to fit his massive frame so the only skin that showed through was on his hands and the back of his head. It was impossible to tell the color of his skin in the dark red light, but Virgil could see the texture of his hands. The demon was covered in scales, like a snake.

  Virgil gasped out loud at the sight of him.

  The demon turned his head, just a little.

  Virgil rolled over and cowered behind a bush for a few long moments before he gathered up the courage to slide out from behind the bush and peek back into the basement.

  The demon had turned to face the window Virgil was looking through.

  “What are you doing?” Simon hissed.

  Virgil nearly jumped out of his skin. “Don’t sneak up on me!” he whispered back, slugging him on the arm.

  “What are you doing?” Simon said again. “You’re supposed to be drawing the circle!”

  “I am drawing the circle! I just stopped for a look.”

  “Yeah, I looked too,” Simon admitted, sounding guilty. “He’s terrifying.”

  “He’s huge!”

  “I think we should leave.”

  “It won’t help to come back later...demons don’t sleep,” Virgil said, though he was completely guessing.

  “No,” Simon said, shaking his head, “I think we should leave forever, and never come back.”

  “What?!”

  “Virgil, you saw that thing! You can’t honestly think we can take him!”

  “There are two of us!” Virgil pointed out. “And only one of him!”

  “This is insane.”

  “We can’t leave, Simon. Who else would deal with it?” Virgil hissed.

  “No one! Because we’re the only idiots dumb enough to think we can fight a demon!”