Death Returns

by J. C. Diem

  Hundreds of cars were crammed together on the structure as panicked people tried to escape from Manhattan. Many humans had abandoned their vehicles when the way had become clogged and were fleeing on foot. Some made it to the far side but the vast majority were about to become casualties in our campaign against the aliens.

  The ship lowered then momentarily became visible just above the skyscrapers. My friends and I could see it clearly enough but it was just a dark blob against the sky to the humans. Several blasts of violet light issued from beneath the ship and streaked towards the bridge. This time it wasn’t an electromagnetic pulse but something far more damaging. A gaping hole appeared in the middle of the structure as cars, steel, cement and people were blasted apart. With a tortured scream, the bridge collapsed into the river, taking hundreds of lives with it.

  “Dear God,” Sanderson breathed in horror. “They’re making sure no one can escape from the city.” Pulling his radio from his belt, he called for backup but the ship was already heading for the next bridge to cut off any hope of escape for the people who resided in or had the great misfortune of currently visiting the city.

  Several loud explosions went off a few blocks away in the same direction that Sanderson and his men had come from. I detected several contingents of droids heading towards us as thick black smoke billowed.

  “I hope you brought a lot of spare ammunition along, General Sanderson,” Ishida said to the soldier as he whirled around at the noise. “You and your men are stuck here with us now and I am guessing that your vehicles have just been destroyed by the robots.”

  “Natalie, what do you sense?” Gregor asked.

  “Eighty killbots are heading straight for us from two directions.” I pointed towards where the explosions had just gone off to the southeast and directly to the north.

  Thinking fast, Sanderson deployed his men. “Teams one and two, head for the rooftops. Teams three and four, spread out and take cover.” His men followed his orders and scattered. He’d brought eight hundred soldiers along, which gave us far better odds than just us seven. All were equipped with vampire killing guns. They probably also carried the small bombs that could destroy several of our kind at once. The Kveet had used a similar type of explosive device and they had proven to be effective against the droids.

  Gregor motioned for us to hide and we all ducked behind the cars that had been abandoned all along the street. Sanderson kicked open a door to an apartment building and stepped into the foyer. Half a dozen of his men followed, quickly ducking out of sight. Speaking into his radio, he gave his men further orders. My hearing was exceptional and his order easily carried to me. “Wait until they are all visible before you open fire. Our ammunition isn’t infinite so choose your shots wisely.”

  Quietly and almost stealthily for such large contraptions, the metal men converged on our position. A few low mutters were issued and quickly stifled when the first few metal men came into sight. Far plainer than the translator droid we’d left behind on Viltar, these robots had pointed ears and red eyes but only rudimentary features and a slit for a mouth.

  All eighty automatons entered the street before the first shot was fired. The surprised droid looked down at the small hole that had just been punched in his chest. Before it could attempt to extract the projectile, the bullet exploded and tore it apart. Another murderbot screeched a warning and fired at the unseen sniper. The violet blast petered out before it reached the third floor of the seven story building. Now aware of the limits to their enemy’s weapons, the soldiers stepped out of hiding and focussed on eradicating the automatons.

  Letting the soldiers handle the fight, I hunkered down beside Geordie and peered out from behind a battered piece of junk that was at least a decade older than me. The droids were methodically cut down one by one beneath the barrage of fire. The humans were efficient and ruthless and reduced the robots to twisted chunks of dull silver metal.

  Sanderson only lost two of his men during the fracas. I’d expected more of them to die during their first major tussle with the alien robots. The general hadn’t grown complacent since our absence. Maybe he’d expected us to return one day and that we’d bring trouble with us when we did.

  Instructing half of his force to keep watch from above, the general cautiously left his position to take a closer look at the carnage. One of his men fished a small video camera out of his backpack and filmed the fallen androids. I doubted it would be the only footage taken of the invaders. I was fairly certain that almost everyone on the planet had a cell phone, or whatever communication device they used these days, that could record videos. If any of the civilians survived this invasion, they’d make a fortune selling their footage.

  Taking out a radio that looked like it hadn’t evolved much during our absence, Sanderson contacted his people to give them an update. “This is General Sanderson. I would like to speak directly to the President.”

  “This is Vanessa Rivers,” a female voice responded almost immediately. “What can you tell me about the situation in Manhattan, General?” Her voice was slightly gravelly, indicating she was, or had once been, a heavy smoker.

  I was momentarily shocked that the Americans actually had a female president. She sounded capable and determined but would probably turn out to be just as treacherous and cowardly as the former president who’d ordered us to be expelled from our world.

  Sanderson advised his leader of the type of threat and numbers we were facing. “We require backup, Madam President, but it might not be safe to send anyone in by air.”

  “The police have reported that all avenues in and out of the city have just been destroyed, General Sanderson. How else are we going to send more men in? By boat?” Her tone was sarcastic but hinted that she wasn’t entirely joking.

  “The Navy has submersibles that we might be able to use, ma’am.”

  After a brief hesitation, probably to confer with her advisors, she responded. “They’ll be readied for transportation as soon as possible, General. Sit tight and remain available.”

  “You have a female president,” Geordie said with almost insulting surprise when the radio went silent.

  “President Rivers is the most competent person I’ve met so far who has held the Presidential position,” Sanderson told the teen. “I have faith in her capabilities.”

  Ishida shared Geordie’s astonishment that a female was in charge of the American government and its people but wisely kept his mouth shut. Even Kokoro’s eyes were wider than normal at the news.

  Sensing trouble coming, I warned the large gathering. “Two hundred robots and five hundred Kveet clones are heading this way.”

  “What the hell is a ‘Kveet clone’?” one of Sanderson’s men wondered. A full dozen soldiers were keeping their eyes on us without openly pointing their weapons in our direction. They probably thought they were being subtle about being ready to blow our heads off at the slightest provocation. My powers of observation had sharpened considerably since leaving my mortality behind. It helped that I wouldn’t trust any of these men and women as far as I could throw them.

  “Pray that they do not get close enough for you to find that out for yourself,” Igor told the human.

  “Do we fight or do we run?” Sanderson asked Gregor. One thing I’d admired about him, before he’d betrayed us all so horribly, had been his willingness to listen to our counsel. We knew far more about our mutual enemies than he did and he had no trouble bowing to our experience.

  Gregor’s answer was short and succinct. “We run.” With the soldiers carrying minimal ammunition, they’d quickly run out. Each man wore a small backpack that presumably held extra bullets and explosives. It wouldn’t be nearly enough firepower to destroy all of our enemies. It was pretty stupid of them not to bring a stockpile of ammo along. If they had, it had been blown up along with the trucks.

  Sanderson ordered everyone who was keeping watch in the surrounding buildings to descend to the ground while the rest of his people fell in behind
him. They might have a female president but they still didn’t allow many female soldiers on the front lines. Only a handful were scattered amongst the troops.

  Gregor urged me into the lead, since I was our best chance of escaping without running into either robots or clones. I led my friends and despised allies through the broad, mostly empty streets towards the west. Not everyone in the city would be aware that they were under attack but word would surely spread quickly enough. Pandemonium would break out when they realized they were trapped. Like sheep in a pen, they would be rounded up and to be either eaten or converted into imps. I couldn’t dredge up much pity for them. For reasons that were beyond me, my friends still cared about the humans. For their sake, I would cooperate with the soldiers but I wouldn’t be stupid enough to trust Sanderson ever again. He didn’t know it yet, but he was a dead man walking.

  Sensing a team of droids around the next corner, I motioned for the others to be quiet. “A unit of twenty robots is just ahead,” I whispered to Gregor. I might have to work with the soldiers but that didn’t mean I had to interact with them directly.

  Gregor conveyed the news to Sanderson. “Since your ammunition is limited, allow us to destroy these droids for you,” he offered.

  Sanderson didn’t waste any time arguing. “Fine. We’ll wait here.”

  Drawing into in a small circle, we listened to Gregor’s plan. “Natalie, I’d like you to circle around them and get their attention while the rest of us fire on them from behind.”

  “Will do,” I responded immediately. I didn’t mind being the bait when it meant I’d have a break from being in Sanderson’s presence. Shooting a brief glare of intense hatred at the general, I sprinted down a side street and came out on the far side of our quarry. I peered around the corner to see the droids searching the buildings for victims. One held a small device that could most likely locate potential prey. My senses reported that most of the buildings were empty. A solitary human remained towards the far end of the street. The person was either paralysed or in a death-like sleep and had missed all the excitement.

  Sauntering out into the middle of the street, I waited for the droids to spot me. A robot turned its head to scan the area and went still when it saw me. “There! A human,” it said in the guttural Viltaran language.

  “Guess again,” I murmured when they swung their nanobot weapons towards me. I might look like a human but I was an entirely different and far more dangerous being.

  “That is not a human,” the killbot with the monitor advised. “It’s one of the vampires. Change weapons.” It reached for the death ray that had been fixed to nifty tool belt at its waist. Dozens of refills for the nanobot gun were lined up in a neat row on its belt. The darts were full of a glowing fluorescent yellow fluid. The fluid was a combination of the blood of a Viltaran and the miniscule robots that transformed sentient, intelligent creatures into moronic, grey skinned clones.

  Spreading out, the droids fired their death rays at me but I was already on the move. They didn’t stand a chance of tracking me as I easily dodged their shots and streaked towards them. I sheared the arms off two of the droids as violet light bathed them from behind. My friends closed in, picking off targets as I sliced my way through their front ranks. Set to destroy metal, the beams from our weapons were harmless to me at the moment. Since they were extremely harmful to my swords, I shielded them from the blasts with my body.

  Our exchange with the enemy hadn’t gone unnoticed by the soldiers. “My God, did you see how fast she moved?” an incredulous trooper whispered from the corner where he’d watched the short skirmish.

  “I saw,” the general replied grimly. “She wasn’t that fast ten years ago.”

  A small smile touched my mouth. Sanderson had no idea just how much I’d changed since he’d seen me last. All of my naivety had been scoured away and I would end his life without a qualm at the first wrong step he took. In fact, I was kind of looking forward to it. Fate owed me after all that it had put me through. Surely it wouldn’t be so unkind as to deny me the joy of pinning Sanderson down with a foot on his back and tearing out his spine.

  ·~·

  Chapter Nine

  A voice came through Sanderson’s radio before we could head out to hunt down some more targets. “Sanderson? This is General Hart.” He sounded stern and around Sanderson’s age.

  “I’m here, Hart,” Sanderson replied into his radio.

  “Reinforcements will be arriving at the Wall Street Heliport in five minutes.”

  “Roger that. We’ll head towards the heliport immediately.”

  I heard the choppers approaching and they rapidly drew closer. Dozens of the flying machines swarmed towards us like angry wasps on the warpath. A quick count told me that they carried a thousand troopers on board. Despite Gregor’s warning, they’d sent their people in by air. I shook my head in warning but Sanderson ignored my silent disapproval.

  Geordie sidled up to me and huddled in close. “Why do you not want more reinforcements to arrive, chérie?”

  “More men means there will be more of them to turn on us later but that’s not the problem.”

  Overhearing us, Ishida moved closer. “Then what is the problem?”

  I simply pointed towards the incoming machines that had just come into our view. Four of them were framed between the buildings closest to the river. A second later, bursts of white light streaked towards them from out of nowhere. My dream came true and the first dozen choppers, now without power, dropped out of sight into the water. The rest veered away and beat a hasty retreat. Two more went down before the Viltarans stopped firing. I could almost feel them up above us, chortling in glee at shooting down the force of soldiers. Fighting earthlings would be child’s play to the far more advanced aliens.

  Staring at the spot where his men had just lost their lives, Sanderson lifted the radio to his mouth again. “I don’t think it would be wise to send any more soldiers in by air, Hart. They were just shot down by an electromagnetic pulse.” He flicked a glance at me and I kept my expression neutral rather than mocking. While it might be fun to goad him, it probably wouldn’t be very wise. You could only push someone so far before they snapped and I didn’t want to test his tolerance at this early stage of our already fragile alliance. “Have the submersibles been readied yet?”

  “I’m sorry to say that they aren’t available. Apparently, the entire fleet has been taken out on an exercise.” The general had the grace to sound embarrassed by the admission even though they belonged to the Navy rather than the Army. “It’ll take two days to get them back and have them readied.”

  Far from a master strategist, even I knew it was doubtful we’d last two days against a superior force that had advanced weaponry on their side. Sanderson lifted his eyes heavenward before responding. “We’ll hold tight and work with the vampires to take down as many of these robots and clones as we can.”

  “So, the blood suckers are really back?” General Hart might be a highly decorated man of war but he sounded as scared as a kid who’d found himself in the middle of a nightmare. It was a fitting description of what we were facing.

  “Yes, they’re really back. And they brought a whole lot of trouble with them.” Sanderson muttered the last bit beneath his breath but we undead heard him anyway. I slanted a look at Gregor and he nodded in acknowledgement of my warning. The flesh sacks were willing to team up with us again but their leader held us responsible for the invasion, just as I’d known he would. If anyone had taken me up on my bet, I’d be a billion dollars better off right now. I should have bet a hundred billion dollars. A billion probably isn’t worth all that much now. It was still a shock to realize that ten years had passed while we’d been floating around in outer space. So far, nothing much seemed to have changed. Manhattan didn’t seem to be all that different from the dozens of movies I’d watched that had featured the city. The skyscrapers still scraped the sky, stores still had enticing displays in their windows and cars still ran on the groun
d instead of hovering in mid-air.

  Sanderson motioned for everyone to gather around and gave a short speech. “Since our reinforcements are cut off, we have little choice but to attempt to whittle down the enemy’s numbers as best we can.”

  Sensing a small mob of enemies wandering in our general direction, I put a finger against my lips in the universal sign for everyone to be quiet. “We can start whittling them down right now,” I said in a low voice and gestured for everyone to follow me.

  Nearly eight hundred humans were anything but silent as they crept through the empty streets of one of the greatest cities on the planet. I smoothed out my grin when Gregor narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously. Understanding at my amusement dawned when he heard the piping, high pitched queries for food. I’d decided it was high past time for our allies to meet the Kveet clones. Gregor slanted a frown at me for my childishness. I managed to curb the impulse to stick my tongue out at him, but it was a struggle. Seeing the humans panic at their first sight of the alien clones was about the only enjoyment I’d be likely to have over the next few days, or possibly weeks, to come.

  “What is that noise?” one of the men behind us asked when we were one street away from our next target.

  “It sounds like birds,” another man whispered. “Lots and lots of birds.”

  “They aren’t birds,” Geordie said without turning around. “They’re Kveet clones and they’re very, very hungry.” His solemn words were more effective than if he’d run screaming in terror. With audible swallows, the soldiers braced themselves for a battle.

  Choosing thirty of his men and women to follow him, Sanderson snuck up to the building on the corner. Mannequins from a clothing store watched us with blank, creepy eyes. The latest fashion seemed to be sheer shirts and micro shorts so tiny that my butt cheeks would have been visible if I were to don them. Geordie and Ishida eyed the outfits in appreciation but refrained from making juvenile comments.