Death Returns

by J. C. Diem

  Sanderson peeked around the corner at the clones that I could sense huddled together. Two and a half feet tall, grey skinned and red eyed, they almost looked like dolls, until you saw their razor sharp teeth. “Food?” a clone cried pitifully.

  I knew someone would do or say something stupid and I made sure I was right beside the soldiers when one did. “Aw,” said a soldier who was peering over Sanderson’s shoulder. “They’re so cute.”

  The clones’ hearing was almost as good as mine and they instantly whipped their heads around. “Food?” several imps queried as they slowly began to shuffle down the street.

  Spying the cluster humans, a clawed hand rose to point. “Food!”

  The soldier’s face drained of colour and he took a step back before he gathered his courage. “Do you still think they’re cute?” I asked from right behind him. Ears flushing red in embarrassment, he tried to pretend he wasn’t terrified of the small herd of creatures that was now stampeding towards us.

  “Can normal bullets kill these things?” Sanderson asked me calmly. His serenity was a façade. He might be able to control his expression but I caught a whiff of the sweat that popped out on his skin. Fear was never a lovely odour.

  I shrugged. “Probably.” Then I cursed myself for forgetting that I’d decided I wasn’t going to speak directly to him.

  Waving the rest of his men forward, the general made an adjustment to the oversized weapon they all carried and fired a short burst of normal bullets rather than explosive rounds at the rapidly approaching imps. Blown off their feet, they weren’t like monsters in a horror movie that kept popping up no matter how many times they were shot. Bright yellow blood leaked from their small, broken bodies. They reminded me of the imp baby that I’d watched claw its way out of its dead mother’s womb what seemed like a thousand years ago. It had also been pitiful after I’d sliced it in half. Of course, it had tried to eat me as soon as it had seen me so I hadn’t felt much remorse for killing it.

  When all two hundred or so clones were either lifeless or on the ground, twitching in their death throes, the soldiers shared shaky glances. For most of them, this was their first encounter with alien life forms. A few veterans had been present in the First’s cavern of doom when Sanderson and I had forged an alliance the first time but even they were grey faced at seeing the Kveet imps for the first time. While the earlier imps had been humanoid, these were clearly from another planet. It was still a shock to me that other intelligent beings existed. We’d thought we were alone and we’d been wrong.

  “If you think they’re bad, wait till you see a human that has been turned into a clone,” one of the veteran soldiers said to his younger comrades. He looked vaguely familiar and had probably been with us during the battle with the First or possibly his protégé, the Second.

  Word quickly spread through the group that they could expect to face imps that were much larger than the ones they’d just encountered. The humans who had been turned into alien clones would be an average of seven feet tall and would be far more formidable than the Kveet imps.

  Drawn by the sound of battle, five units of silver automatons hastened to investigate. I took refuge with my friends and watched from the safety of an alley as the human and robot armies clashed. The death rays cut through metal and flesh easily enough but had no effect on brick or concrete. Sanderson lost a few more men before they managed to subdue the enemy. The soldiers automatically reloaded and checked their ammunition after the last droid went down.

  Sensing movement high above the city, I searched the sky but the ship remained invisible. I followed its unseen path northward and had a premonition of disaster seconds before a searing bar of orange light shot from the ship. The vessel momentarily became visible as the ray hit its target. Just close enough for even the humans to hear it, an explosion ripped through the buildings. Too many skyscrapers hid the catastrophe from our sight but a massive cloud of dirt billowed up then spread out to enshroud the entire city. I felt the sudden absence of thousands of human lives.

  “What the hell was that?” Sanderson barked. His eyes watered from the orange glare that still lit up the horizon to the north. Most of his troopers shaded their eyes with their hands and squinted at the brilliance.

  “I am fairly certain that was the weapon the Viltarans almost destroyed their entire planet with,” Gregor replied. His prediction was proven to be correct as the sky turned a sickly shade of yellow.

  Geordie wrinkled his nose as the sour smell of rotten eggs wafted to us on a breeze. The humans gagged uncontrollably, losing their last meal in most cases. Far across town, thousands, then tens of thousands then hundreds of thousands of human lives winked out. The survivors began fleeing southward to escape from the deadly fumes, unwittingly running directly towards the murderbots and imps that were waiting for them.

  “Christ! It smells like a giant stink bomb,” one of the soldiers gasped then heaved again.

  “That stink bomb just killed over four hundred thousand people,” I told him.

  “How can you possibly know that?” General Sanderson rasped. Taking a sip of water from his canteen, he swirled it around in his mouth then spat it out. His face was almost as pale as mine and sweat gathered on his forehead. His breath hitched again but he controlled himself this time.

  “I’ve changed, Sanderson,” I told him ominously. “I’ve gained abilities that will make your hair turn white if you saw them.” I glanced at the grey in his hair. “Make that whiter.”

  “I am afraid you will just have to trust that Natalie’s information is correct,” Gregor intervened before I erred and said too much. The soldier and I stared at each other for a long moment. Neither of us was willing or even capable of trusting each other at this point and neither of us was about to break eye contact first. It was a given that I would win because I could go for a very long time without blinking.

  “General, we’re going to run out of ammo long before we can subdue the droids and those…imp things,” a soldier with a few medals on his chest warned his boss.

  Nodding, Sanderson used the interruption as an excuse to break our staring contest. Turning his back on me, he addressed Gregor. “Is there any chance your people could retrieve the ammunition that went down with the choppers into the East River?”

  Gregor was ostensibly in charge but he wasn’t our absolute ruler. He looked at each of us for our opinion. Everyone gave him a nod and I gave him a shrug to say that it was his choice. It hadn’t been my decision to call for Sanderson’s help so they could deal with the details. “We are willing to try. After you, General,” Gregor invited the soldier with a small bow.

  I remained on full alert as we jogged eastward to where the choppers had gone down into the murky water. Sanderson had kept in shape while we’d been floating around in space as frozen vampsicles. He was barely breathing hard when we came to a stop near the dark water just north of the Brooklyn Bridge.

  The area was deserted now that the bridge no longer offered the way to freedom. Dozens of bodies lay strewn in the wreckage and bobbed in the water below. My stomach tried to lurch at the thought that the victims would become imp snacks once the clones came across them. At least they’re already dead. The humans that were being held captive throughout the city would still be alive when their captors began to eat them. The earlier version of human imps had preferred to cook their meat before eating it. Somehow, I doubted these clones would even be able to figure out how to start a fire.

  Sending some of his people out to scout the water, Sanderson waited patiently for several minutes until his radio came to life. “General, this is Sergeant Wesley.”

  “Go ahead, Sergeant.”

  “I’ve located where the choppers went down, sir.”

  “Where are you situated?”

  “I’m roughly halfway to the Manhattan Bridge, General.”

  “Stay put, we’ll be there shortly.”

  It didn’t take us long to reach the waiting soldier. A number of men wearin
g army uniforms floated in the river, helping to pinpoint where the helicopters had disappeared.

  “Will you advise the soldiers if you sense danger approaching?” Gregor asked me as Sanderson deployed his men to strategic positions in the buildings around the area. The Manhattan Bridge had also been destroyed, as had any other avenue that had once offered a way to safety.

  Glancing at the smelly, polluted water, I nodded. “I’ll keep watch. It beats going back in there.” Kokoro’s delicately beautiful face briefly registered disgust as a dead rat floated past. Waterlogged and bloated, it showed clear signs that it had been feasted upon by its fellow critters. With ropy intestines bulging out of its torn stomach, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Not happy about leaving me behind, Geordie opened his mouth to protest. Igor picked him up and threw him into the river before he could utter more than a startled squeak. The Russian tossed the teen an empty backpack a soldier handed him then took one for himself. My other five friends followed him beneath the surface and disappeared from even my keen sight.

  “Don’t they need to come up for air?” someone asked quietly after several minutes had passed.

  “They’re undead, stupid,” a female soldier replied with a hint of derision. “They don’t need to breathe.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.” With a sheepish smile, the male soldier subsided into a watchful silence.

  Dozens of lifeless bodies were retrieved by a small group of their comrades as they waited for the ammunition to be rescued from its watery grave. They placed their deceased in a neat, respectful row. The rest of the soldiers would still be entombed within the choppers that rested on the bottom of the river. It would take hours for my companions to retrieve all of the ammunition from the metal coffins and I didn’t envy them their task.

  No one could have lived through a fall from the height the choppers had been so they didn’t bother to search for survivors. That didn’t stop me from sweeping the river in search of anyone still clinging to life. Once their lives ended, I could no longer sense the humans. I wasn’t surprised when I came up empty.

  My clothes were now dry and no longer clung to my skin but they were filthy and tattered. The closest enemies were a dozen blocks away and none were moving in our direction. I decided it would be safe enough to get cleaned up and to find a change of clothes.

  Picking one of the soldiers at random, I pointed at him. “You. Come with me.”

  Blanching at the command, he sent a mute glance of appeal towards his superior officer.

  “What do you want with Corporal Higgins?” Sanderson asked suspiciously.

  Forcing out a completely unnecessary sigh, I explained my intentions. “I’m going to take a shower and find something else to wear. If I sense anything coming this way, your man can radio a warning to you.”

  Searching for a flaw in my logic, the general finally nodded his permission, not that I was seeking it. “Make sure he comes back in one piece,” he warned me.

  “Make sure he comes back in one piece,” I mimicked in a high pitched undertone as I walked away. The soldier following on my heels suppressed a snigger. We both knew the general wouldn’t do anything to me. I could pull my new lackey apart with my bare hands and leave him in a dozen pieces if I really wanted to. We all knew that Sanderson needed my talents, and the help of my friends, if he wanted his people to survive this invasion. Even with our help, there was no guarantee that we’d be able to stop the alien invaders from becoming Earth’s new evil overlords.

  ·~·

  Chapter Ten

  Heading to the closest apartment building, I ignored the elevator and trudged up the stairs to the first floor. The smell of mothballs coming from the first apartment strongly hinted that an elderly person had lived there so I continued on. Checking doors that had mostly been left open when their occupants had fled in a panic, I finally found an apartment on the second floor that had housed two young women. Sorting through a chest of drawers, I pulled out a pair of jeans and checked the size. The U.S. sizes were very different from the Australian sizing system but they looked like they would fit me.

  “Wait out in the hall,” I told Higgins. The last thing I needed was a stranger hovering nearby while I showered. “I’ll yell if I sense anything coming.” He gave me a salute and retreated from the apartment.

  Locking the bathroom door automatically, I stripped off my filthy clothing and turned the hot water on full blast. I used a quarter of a bottle of shampoo and conditioner before I was convinced my hair was finally clean. My skin was bright red from the boiling water when I was finished scrubbing it. I was no longer affected by extreme temperatures and it might as well have been lukewarm to me.

  Wrapping a fluffy towel around my body, I blow dried my hair, glad the power was still on in the city. Combing it into a semblance of neatness, I stared at my reflection. Despite my lingering insecurities, even I had to admit that I was now beautiful. My pale skin was flawless and my features were perfectly formed. I might look gorgeous on the outside but I guess I’m still plain on the inside, I thought sadly. Maybe, if my personality had been more vibrant and loveable, Luc might not have given up on me so quickly.

  Fighting down the childish impulse to smash my fist into the mirror, I sorted through the chest of drawers again for more clothing. I found clean panties that were my size but the bra was two cup sizes too small. The other occupant of the apartment was larger than her friend and her bra was a better fit. Returning to the first bedroom, the jeans I struggled into were tight enough that they would have been in danger of cutting off my circulation, if I’d had any. The plain white t-shirt and red hooded sweater were perfect but the sneakers I found beneath the bed were a size too large. I tied the laces tightly so they were in no danger of falling off.

  When I joined the soldier in the hall, he stared at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. “You really are gorgeous, aren’t you?” he asked me in wonder.

  Now that my disguise of several layers of dirt was gone, my magical vampire hotness was on display. “Yes,” I replied honestly. “Let’s go.”

  Scrambling to catch up to me, Higgins walked at my side, sneaking frequent glances at my face. “Can I ask you something?” Average in height, weight and looks with brown hair and eyes, he was the sort of guy who could blend into a crowd and not easily be remembered. His expression was earnest and curious, which made a nice change from the hostility displayed by some of his fellow troopers.

  “If you must.” His instinctive fear of me was abating if he felt comfortable enough to play twenty questions.

  “What happened the day you and General Sanderson fought the crazy vampire that called himself the Second?”

  Being in his mid-twenties, the trooper would have been a teen at the time. “I fought the Second,” I corrected him. “Sanderson and his three stooges waited for me outside while I entered the abandoned castle in Bulgaria.”

  I remembered it well, since to me the episode in question might only have happened a few months ago rather than a decade in the past. The crumbling ruin had been half taken over with clinging vines. The Second had used it as a lair to stash the beginnings of an army of newly made vamps. My task had been to stop him from creating more servants. I’d snuck into his hideout at dawn, which some might call a cowardly act. I considered it to be practical. Doing so had meant I’d only needed to battle the master of the ruins rather than dozens of his devoted minions.

  Skipping most of the details, I stuck to the main points. “I had a one on one battle with the Second and turned him into a slimy puddle of ooze then headed downstairs to polish off his lackeys. When I finished stabbing the vampire fledglings to death, I called out to Sanderson that it was safe for him and his men to enter the castle.” I remembered the moment of the then colonel’s betrayal clearly.

  “His men rushed inside, grabbed me and tossed me out into the sun. Then they shot me with their guns,” I gestured to the weapon in his hands that was now standard issue, “and blew
me apart. They stomped my bones to pieces and let the sun turn me to ash. Lastly, they sealed me inside a metal box and threw me into the sea. After that, they either killed or captured my friends and allies and performed horrible experiments on them.”

  Doubt was reflected in the soldier’s eyes. “That’s not what they said happened.” I guessed the ‘they’ he was talking about had been the government at that time.

  “What story did they tell you?”

  “That you went power mad and tried to hypnotize the General and his men. They were forced to imprison you and your people to prevent you from attempting to take over the world.”

  For a moment I was too astounded to speak, then I started to laugh. Wiping dry eyes that would have been streaming with tears if they’d been able to, I finally regained control of myself. “If I’d wanted to hypnotize Sanderson, he wouldn’t have been able to stop me. As for taking over the world, I don’t even want to rule my kind let alone your kind.”

  “Why not?” he asked curiously as we headed down the stairs.

  “I don’t have any interest in ruling anyone,” I responded. “If my friends were to create an army of our kind, we’d be constantly at war with you humans. Only the really old vampires want absolute rule. And some of the crazy ones,” I added as an afterthought. When I really thought about it, the ancient vampires tended to be crazy anyway. Kokoro, Igor and Ishida were some of the oldest vamps I knew and, so far, they seemed to be sane enough. Igor was just too practical to turn insane and Kokoro and Ishida were too self-disciplined to succumb to madness. Not that I was an expert on mental illness. If any of us was likely to go mad, it would probably be me.

  “Why would your friends have to create an army? Can’t you do it yourself?”