Death Returns

by J. C. Diem

  “I’m different from the others in that way. My blood is toxic to humans.” Actually, it seemed to be lethal to all life forms. I’d yet to be bitten by anything that had actually survived the attack.

  “Oh.” He pondered that news silently then changed the topic back to our current enemies. “Do you think these Viltarans,” he stumbled over the unfamiliar word, “are crazy or are they just evil?”

  My brief moment of hilarity had already faded. “I’m pretty sure they’re both,” I told him. My senses detected enemies approaching and I held up my hand to stop him from asking any more questions. “You’d better tell your boss that some Kveet imps are heading this way.”

  “How many are there?” he asked as he reached for his radio.

  “About five hundred.”

  “General Sanderson,” he said into his radio, “this is Corporal Higgins.”

  “Go ahead, Higgins,” his boss responded.

  “Natalie has advised me that five hundred or so of those little grey monsters are heading in our direction.”

  “Roger that, Corporal. Head back on the double.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I kept pace with the soldier as he sprinted down the stairs and through the streets back to his team. Sanderson’s expression was grave as he walked towards me. “I know you hate my guts and I don’t blame you for feeling that way.” Gee, how nice of him to give me permission to despise him, I thought snidely but he continued speaking before I could voice it. “I’m asking you to put aside the animosity you feel towards me. Like it or not, we’re going to have to work together until this mission is done.”

  I briefly wondered which of us hated the idea of being allies more and suspected it would be too close to call. “Then you’re going to shoot me in the back again, I suppose?” I said cynically. Higgins peeked at me from the corner of his eye then tried to pretend he hadn’t heard my remark.

  “Which direction are these imps coming from?” the general asked, ignoring my question and the heavy sarcasm that had come with it.

  “From there and there.” My hands pointed west and north. Relaying the information to his men, Sanderson then ordered radio silence. “I have a question for you, Sanderson,” I said quietly.

  “Make it quick.” He flicked a glance at me then went back to scanning the area for threats.

  “What did you do with my original swords?”

  His eyes dropped to the plain yet functional samurai swords in my hands. “I took them to a scrap metal yard and watched as they were melted down.” I heard no satisfaction in his tone yet sensed it anyway.

  “That was stupid. They were thousands of years old. You could’ve made a fortune if you’d sold them to a collector.” I felt a stab of pain that my prized weapons had been lost beyond any hope of recovery but I kept my expression neutral. He’d done his best to wipe away any trace of my existence but he’d failed. I was back now and he was going to pay. The destruction of my weapons was just one more crime he would answer for.

  A small pile of ammunition rested on the street after being retrieved from the river by my friends. Dripping with water, they were otherwise still in good condition. I was pretty sure being immersed in water wouldn’t render the bullets useless. If it did, why would the soldiers bother to send us in after them?

  Kokoro’s head broke the surface, drawing the attention of a soldier. She swam over to hand her loaded backpack to him. While she held it up easily in one hand, he gave a grunt of effort and grabbed it with both hands. Kokoro spared an envious glance at my dry state and clean clothing before accepting an empty backpack and diving to hunt for ammunition once more. While some of the ammo had broken free from their containers, some intact boxes had also been retrieved. Just as I’d suspected, small bombs sat alongside the magazines that contained bullets and explosive rounds.

  I heard the twittering cries of the approaching clones long before they came within range of human detection. A few of the soldiers cursed beneath their breath when they caught sight of the army of ravenous imps. All were questing for food and none would stop until they had either eaten their fill or were dead.

  Snipers began picking off the small critters but they barely made a dent in the numbers. More soldiers had been stationed on the first floor of the nearby buildings so they could shoot their targets without the risk of being eaten by them. At their leader’s signal, they leaned out of windows and opened fire.

  The Kveet milled in confusion as dozens of their companions were blasted off their feet. Then one spotted a soldier who peeked too far around the car he was hiding behind. With a high pitched cry of glee, the clone sped across the road. Remaining calm, the soldier put a bullet into the clone’s brain but hundreds more were fast on its heels.

  Surrounded by heavily armed soldiers, the tiny terrors were gunned down unmercifully. They lacked the intelligence to understand the concept of surrender. Even when their numbers had been whittled down to a bare handful, the clones continued to attack. Climbing over the bodies of its kin, one of the final remaining imps scurried towards Sanderson. Scarlet eyes were trained on the general’s face as it dodged bullets more by accident than on purpose.

  Standing beside the man who’d betrayed me, I made no effort to stop the gremlin as it raced across the graveyard of its fallen brethren. It came within ten feet of Sanderson before Higgins finally managed to blow the creature in half.

  Leaving its body from the waist down behind, the starving Kveet imp doggedly used its claws to drag itself a few inches closer before finally collapsing. Taking a stride forward, Sanderson calmly pulled his pistol from the holster at his hip, pinned the dying alien down with a boot on its back and pumped two rounds into its head. Its skull exploded, staining his boot with brains and bone. The image was very similar to the one I’d had of ripping the human’s spine out of his back. I doubted he’d appreciate the comparison and batted my lashes innocently at his suspicious glare.

  Nearly twenty men had fallen beneath the wave of starving mini demons before they’d finally been cut down. Bare skeletons with chewed bones were all that remained of the deceased soldiers. Still trembling in a combination of fright, horror and adrenalin, a few men picked their way through the carnage to strip the weapons and ammo from the corpses of their comrades.

  “That’s what you sent us to face,” I said to Sanderson’s back. He looked over his shoulder at me as he reloaded his weapon by touch. “We found ourselves on a planet that was almost completely devoid of life. The only creatures that were left were the Kveet, ten aquatic aliens, various types of clones and the Viltarans.

  “The Viltarans are so warlike and bloodthirsty that they almost killed each other off when they ran out of other worlds to conquer. They turned their planet into a wasteland and they have to live beneath the ground because their air is no longer breathable. Now they’re here and, if we don’t stop them, they’ll do the same thing to our planet.” After a brief silence while he contemplated this bleak future, I continued. “If it were up to me, I’d let the Viltarans turn you all into their food and slaves for what you did to my kind.”

  “I’m sorry,” he forced out through stiff lips. The gun in his hand twitched as he turned around, as if he wanted nothing more than to point it at my face and pull the trigger until the clip was empty. “I’m sorry I was ordered to betray you and for what my government did to your people.” I noted how he neatly avoided taking responsibility for the deaths and torture of my kin. “Surely you don’t want your own planet to become an uninhabitable ruin like Viltar?”

  “No. I don’t want Earth itself to be harmed. I just want the people that inhabit it to suffer.”

  He waved his empty hand at the chewed up skeletons of his men then swept it northward, presumably indicating the civilians that were currently being rounded up. “Don’t you think there has been enough suffering by now?”

  My smile was small and tight. “Not by a longshot.”

  “What happened to you?” he asked quietly. “You used to
care about humans. Don’t you have even a shred of compassion left? Don’t you have a heart anymore?”

  “You happened to me, Sanderson. I used to feel compassion and care about your kind but that was before you turned on me. Now my heart is as cold and dead as the rest of me.”

  “Why did you come back then? Your friends seem eager enough to help us but I don’t understand why you’re here if you hate us so much.”

  He was truly bewildered and it would be my great pleasure to explain my motives. “Isn’t it obvious?” At his blank stare, I spelled it out for him. “I’m here for revenge.”

  “You want to kill me,” he said flatly.

  “That’s the general idea, no pun intended.” Hovering nearby, still trying to pretend he wasn’t listening in, Higgins stirred slightly but didn’t point his weapon at me for threatening his boss. Now that he’d heard my side of the story, maybe he had some doubts that I’d turned into a power mad vamp and had tried to take over the world.

  Sanderson didn’t smile at my quip and his hard blue eyes bored into mine. “If I promise to hand myself over to you when this is all done, will you give me your word that you will do your best to assist us?”

  “Your promises mean nothing to me, Sanderson,” I scoffed. “Besides, handing yourself over to me won’t be any fun. I’d rather hunt you down, like you did to my kind.” His face paled and he shifted his grip on his gun slightly. “Don’t even think about it,” I warned him quietly. “If you or any of your people fire at me or my friends, I will shove my hand down your throat and rip your intestines out through your mouth.” I wasn’t sure where that idea had come from but I liked it immensely. It was an even better threat than tearing his spine out would have been.

  Quailing from my dark promise, he turned and walked away. Higgins sent me a wide eyed stare before turning away to keep a lookout for approaching enemies. Are you having fun baiting Sanderson? My inner voice sounded dry as it asked me the question. I’m having more fun than I’ve had in years, I responded airily. Physical pain was only one way to torture someone. Mental anguish was turning out to be somehow far more satisfying.

  ·~·

  Chapter Eleven

  A faint blush of light touched the horizon when my friends finished hauling the last of the ammunition to the surface. The soldiers had quite a cache by now. It still wouldn’t be enough to destroy all of our enemies, but it would help to cut down the numbers of murderbots at least. The fewer droids that were running around firing nanobot guns meant we’d have fewer clones we would eventually have to destroy. I didn’t kid myself that this would be in any way easy. We had a long, hard fight ahead and it didn’t look like backup was going to arrive any time soon.

  Squinting against what was searing brightness to us and barely noticeable sunlight to the humans, Gregor had a quick word to Sanderson. “The clones will be seeking shelter from the sun by now and my friends and I must do the same.”

  “They’ll be heading for the subway, I assume?” Sanderson asked.

  Gregor arched an eyebrow at me in silent query. I’d been keeping track of our adversaries as they headed into the dark tunnels the humans had thoughtfully made for them and nodded. “So it would seem,” Gregor replied.

  Sanderson had been on enough monster hunts against nocturnal creatures to know their habits. He was well aware of our limitations as well and knew we would also need to find shelter. “I’ll have some of my men escort you to the nearest subway entrance,” he said. “The rest of us will join you shortly.”

  Corporal Higgins was one of the men chosen to be our escorts. He nodded at me politely as he jogged past.

  “He seems awfully friendly,” Geordie said suspiciously as he walked at my side. Dripping wet, he peered out through his dirty blonde hair.

  “Higgins escorted me when I took a shower.” The teen’s eyes bugged at that and Luc’s head twitched in my direction. For a moment I debated about pretending that I’d fed my flesh hunger on the human to make Luc jealous. Then I realized how ridiculous that idea was. A vampire as worldly and attractive as my one true love would never be jealous of an ordinary human. “He waited out in the hall just in case I sensed any enemies approaching,” I explained.

  Geordie gave a weak laugh. “For a moment there I thought you’d fed your…” he trailed off when Igor frowned threateningly at him.

  “Natalie is choosy about who she shares her flesh hunger with,” Ishida said with a sly glance towards my ex-beloved. “She had the choice of several humans on our island and she refused them all.”

  “Sex with humans is overrated,” Geordie said with a careless wave. “They are far too fragile and break easily.” I hid my smile, wondering how many humans he’d had sex with since he’d been turned. Something told me it would have been few. The sardonic look his mentor gave him backed up my theory.

  “I disagree,” Ishida said with a rare smile. “If treated gently, humans can be very satisfying bed partners.”

  Goggling at his fellow adolescent, Geordie almost tripped down the stairs. I grabbed him before he could fall and dispel the myth that we had preternatural, catlike reflexes. Most of us did but even we could be clumsy at times. “You’ve had sex with a lot of humans then?” Geordie asked.

  Ishida nodded almost casually. “I usually shared my bed with three or four girls at a time.”

  Geordie turned to Kokoro to see if the former emperor was telling the truth. She confirmed his story with a nod. “I really, really wish your island hadn’t been bombed,” he said mournfully.

  “As do I,” Ishida replied with a dark look at the soldiers that were flanking us. It had been men like this who had eradicated our kind, even if it hadn’t been these particular soldiers.

  We descended the stairs into the subway. Apart from rats, I heard and sensed no signs of life in the nearby vicinity. A strong odour of urine came from a dark corner. A pile of filthy blankets and a few flattened cardboard boxes had once been a homeless person’s resting place. From the empty booze bottles and syringes lying around, neatness wasn’t particularly important to the hobo. When the pile of blankets suddenly moved, Ishida almost blasted it with his death ray. A pair of rats glared up at him before scampering off towards the tracks.

  “Can you sense what is happening on the surface?” Igor asked as we gathered into a small group further away from the smell of pee.

  Sending out my senses, I confirmed that the human and Kveet clones had all taken shelter either in the sewers, subway tunnels or inside hastily vacated buildings. Hundreds of thousands of survivors were currently making their way southward. The rest were huddled inside their homes, hoping to be overlooked in the next robot sweep. The droids had drawn back somewhere to the north, since any human they turned into an imp would probably burst into flames once the sun hit their flesh. I described what I’d sensed to the others.

  “How many humans have been converted now?” Luc asked without looking directly at me.

  “Four thousand or so.” Exact numbers didn’t matter so much when we were outnumbered so badly. We’d been in a similar situation twice before but this time we had even less chance of taking down our enemies. Fighting hordes of the First’s imps and then the rabid fledglings made by his once banished disciples had been tough but we’d managed to kill them all with only a minimal loss of human lives. The Viltarans had a weapon that was capable of eradicating all life on the planet and were going to be slightly harder to counter. They’d already murdered hundreds of thousands of earthlings and they’d just gotten started.

  Gregor took a seat on one of the benches and settled into his classic thinking pose. He was already concerned about the numbers we were facing and his worry was about to increase. “There’s something I think you guys should know.” Their heads swivelled to me. Even Luc turned in my direction but averted his gaze, as if he couldn’t stand to look at me. “The Viltarans aren’t alone on their ship. They have more droids up there with them.”

  “How many more?” Gregor asked with a h
int of alarm showing through his calm.

  “Thirty thousand.”

  “Thirty thousand?” Geordie’s voice was a high pitched tone that sounded startlingly like our Kveet allies back on Viltar.

  “They have a few more Kveet imps with them as well,” I added. “Eighty thousand in total,” I said before anyone could ask.

  Igor thumped down on the bench beside Gregor with a weary shake of his head. “If they have so many servants, why do they not just release them all at once?”

  “They are most likely testing the humans’ defence capabilities,” Gregor told him.

  “They know about our nuclear weapons,” Ishida reminded us. Anything we’d told Robert the robot had been relayed to his master, Uldar. “But they also know how reluctant the armies will be to use them.”

  Geordie had a different theory. “I think they are toying with us. They like watching the humans squirm.”

  “We need to disable their ship,” Gregor said.

  “How?” Luc’s tone was despairing. “They will shoot down anything that comes within their reach.”

  “Do you think they will be able to shoot down missiles that are fired from a distance?” Ishida asked.

  Hearing the last part of our conversation, Higgins wandered over. “Missiles need a target to lock onto and the alien ship is invisible to our detection systems.” It sounded like they’d already tried to target the space craft and had failed.

  “Then there is no hope of blowing it out of the sky?” Geordie asked.

  Higgins shook his head mournfully. “Nope.” He returned to his team after receiving a sharp glance from a superior officer.

  “They don’t know it yet but everyone in Manhattan is screwed,” I said softly enough that the soldiers couldn’t overhear me.

  “You are giving up on them already?” Luc said almost bitterly.

  “Giving up is more your style,” I said coldly and stalked off before my temper could turn into sorrow. Dry sobbing in front of the soldiers would be far too humiliating. Disappearing into the darkness of the subway tunnel, my now scarlet eyes lit up the area a few paces ahead of me.