Death Returns

by J. C. Diem

  My instincts proved to be true and they unerringly led us beneath the toxic cloud and into the outskirts of Vegas. I figured it would be safe enough for us to surface when I sensed live humans up above.

  Stopping at a rusty ladder, I cautioned the others to wait and climbed up to the top. There were no droids or imps nearby so I lifted the manhole cover and set it down gently on the road. A faint whiff of gas washed over me in a sluggish breeze.

  “Eww, what is that stench?” a teenage girl in a house across the road complained. The smell spread and humans in the houses around me made retching sounds. While they were stricken with nausea, at least none of them fell over dead. We were far enough away from the ring of death for it to no longer be lethal.

  Higgins climbed up the ladder first when I motioned that it was safe to leave the tunnel. Reaching the surface, he covered his nose and mouth with one hand and held his gun ready in the other. Filled with both bullets and explosive rounds, it was too heavy for him to be able to hold one handed for long.

  Curtains were drawn aside and faces peeked out at us as more and more soldiers emerged from beneath the ground. One civilian was brave enough to open his door. “What’s going on? Are we under attack?” His face was pale and I detected a faint hint of vomit on his clothes.

  “The alien ship that attacked Manhattan has now targeted Las Vegas,” Higgins informed the civilian. “It would be safest for you to stay in your home and barricade the door.” That wouldn’t stop the droids from kicking their way in, or the Kveet from eating their way in for that matter. I had a feeling that nowhere in this town would be safe for long.

  “Screw that,” the civilian replied and pushed his door open to reveal a shotgun in his hand. “Consider me to be your newest recruit.” Somewhere between thirty and forty, he had a paunch and a week’s worth of stubble on his face. Wearing a stained white singlet and torn cargo pants, he didn’t look particularly fit or healthy. He was putting on a brave face but the slight tremor in his voice gave away his fright.

  Higgins slanted a glance at me and I nodded. We would need all the help we could get if we wanted to win this war. “Fine. Grab as much spare ammo as you can carry as well as some food and water,” the soldier instructed the civilian.

  More doors opened and people were given the choice of joining us or remaining in their homes. Most who had weapons decided to join our hunt. Each was sent back inside to retrieve ammo and supplies. This war wasn’t going to be won overnight. It was going to drag on for days, if not weeks, depending on how many reinforcements were sent to our aid.

  What happens if you do manage to kill all of the droids and imps? I paused at the question my inner voice raised. Do you think the Viltarans will just give up and go away? They’d most likely blast our planet with toxic gas in a fit of rage. If Gregor’s hunch was right and the vapour would dissipate over time, the aliens could always hide out on their ship until the air became breathable again. Of course, all of the humans and most of the birds, insects and animals would die. The aliens would be able to rule over whatever life remained, which would probably be only cockroaches. If they did unleash their deadly stink bombs and killed off all animal life, they’d be left with nothing to eat. Unless they like fish, I mused. I wasn’t sure if any of our aquatic life would be affected by the airborne toxins or not.

  More and more civilians opted to stand and fight when they saw us marching quietly towards the battle. Each one that joined us gave us a greater chance of success. It amazed me to see so many people carrying anything from handguns to assault rifles. I felt a chill at the thought of my countrymen coming under alien attack. It was against the law for Australians to own guns, except in a few instances. While we had a low rate of deaths by gunshots, the average Aussie would be defenceless against the droids and clones.

  Our force quickly increased to around ten thousand, most of whom were civilians. Undisciplined and untrained, the townsfolk were a noisy, unruly mob. Halting the crowd, the soldiers gathered to discuss our options. General Sanderson and his people had engaged the enemy and he was too busy trying to survive to organize our troops for us.

  Sergeant Wesley stepped up to take charge. Not much taller than me, he was wide through the shoulders, which made him seem shorter than he actually was. The other soldiers were willing to obey his orders, which meant they respected him. “I suggest we break into ten teams of a thousand. We should have enough people per group to take on large numbers of either droids or clones without sustaining too many casualties.”

  No one disagreed with his decision, so he chose a team leader for each group. Higgins was momentarily surprised when he was picked to lead a team. He ranked far lower than some of the other men and women in uniform but again no one argued with Wesley’s decision. Higgins had participated in both battles against the aliens and he’d comported himself well so far.

  It was decided that our teams would stay close so we could come to each other’s aide if necessary. Our ten groups moved through the suburban streets, staying mostly parallel when the streets allowed us to.

  Keeping my senses on a constant sweep of the area, I picked up on a group of adversaries. “There’s a herd of Kveet imps ahead,” I warned Higgins. While small, they were highly dangerous and shouldn’t be underestimated. Anyone who’d witnessed them in a feeding frenzy knew just how quickly they could strip a human down to a twitching skeleton.

  “How many are we facing?” Higgins had become a seasoned warrior since I’d first met him in Manhattan. He could almost have been mistaken for being in his thirties instead of mid-twenties now. Responsibility had settled around him in an invisible weight that he bore stoically.

  “Five hundred.” It wasn’t an exact number but it was close enough. “I can also sense a couple of units of droids. They’re only a couple of blocks away from us. As soon as we start shooting the clones, we’ll draw the robots straight to us.”

  “That sounds like an opportunity to set a trap to me,” he mused. All of the team leaders listened in when Higgins called them over his radio. Everyone in our group quietened down while the corporal explained the situation. “We have five hundred Kveet clones and forty droids just ahead. If we play our cards right, we should be able to take them all down relatively easily.”

  I hid my snigger at his card analogy. I wasn’t sure if it had been said on purpose or unintentionally. We were still in the suburbs rather than the Glitter Strip yet gambling was probably on everyone’s minds. We were in Las Vegas after all.

  My mind tried to wander as the soldiers discussed our options. I preferred action to long, drawn out planning but there were too many creatures to just attack them head on. To my relief, it didn’t take them long to agree on a plan. “Do you mind being the bait?” my pet human asked after they’d hammered out the details.

  My attention was drawn back to their discussion. “Better me than any of you,” I decided. I was far quicker than a human and I had recently learned a new trick that could rapidly carry me out of harm’s way, if needed.

  Everyone moved into position as stealthily as was possible for hundreds of humans. When they were all hidden, Higgins gave me the nod that it was time to bait the trap. With my swords held nonchalantly under one arm, I strode down the street and around the corner. Whistling tunelessly, I pretended that I had no idea that I was walking into danger.

  Small grey shapes that were just vague blobs in the darkness turned when they heard me. Scarlet eyes illuminated their faces almost too well. “Food?” one of the tiny monsters queried hopefully. It didn’t wait for a reply and scampered towards me. The rest of the mob quickly scrambled after it.

  Running back the way I’d come, I made sure I stayed in sight of the pursuing monsters. With their low level of intelligence they might forget about me if I moved out of their line of sight.

  As planned, the street I turned into ended in a cul-de-sac. Piping shrieks of glee rebounded from the houses as the little aliens closed in on what they thought was helpless, trapped pre
y.

  I waited until the small horde of clones had almost reached me before employing my new talent. One second I was about to be chewed to pieces and the next instant I was standing on the roof of a car parked in a nearby driveway. I fired my death ray into the mass of milling, ravenous imps and half a dozen of the creatures were instantly disintegrated. It was the signal the humans had been waiting for. They stood up from behind the cover of fences, cars and even rooftops and opened fire on the enemy.

  Even the soldiers who were seeing the aliens for the first time were well disciplined. They’d been warned of what they’d be facing and fired single shots into the heads or chests of the Kveet imps. Sanderson’s people opted to use their guns instead of death rays in order to lure the droids into the second part of their trap. The noise was horrendous and my ears rang painfully. Their tactic worked and I sensed the murderbots heading towards us. “The droids have taken the bait,” I shouted to Higgins. He nodded and spoke into his radio.

  Gun smoke drowned out the vague smell of rotten eggs for a few moments after the last bullet was fired. Not all of the imps were dead. One crawled towards a human who’d jumped over a fence to take a closer look at the enemy. A large hole had been blasted in its back and yellow blood spurted from the wound. Its piping cries sounded pitiful and birdlike to the soldier. “Poor thing,” the female soldier said as she put a bullet into its skull.

  “Do you want to know what it was saying?” I asked her as I leaped to the ground. My sneakers skidded in the alien blood and gore but I managed to stay on my feet. Unlike Geordie, I did possess catlike reflexes.

  “You could understand it?” Her scepticism was heavy but I nodded anyway. “Ok, what was it saying?”

  “It was asking if you were food.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  I didn’t feel like explaining my miraculous ability to understand and speak foreign as well as alien languages. “A translator robot on Viltar taught me a few of their words,” I said instead.

  “Oh.” Looking down at the imp she’d made the mistake of feeling pity for, her gaze hardened. I doubted that particular soldier would have any qualms about mowing down any more clones, no matter how pathetic they appeared to be.

  Higgins waved for silence as a report came through his radio. Even a hundred yards away I could hear the report clearly. “We’ve just spotted the droids,” Sergeant Wesley advised. “We’re about to go radio silent.”

  “Copy that,” Higgins replied and was echoed by the other team leaders. “The droids are almost in position,” he said to the rest of us. We had played our part and now it was up to the other teams to demolish the two approaching units of automatons. There were only forty of the metal men so the humans shouldn’t encounter too many problems. The civilians in Wesley’s team had been cautioned to keep quiet. So far, they were obeying orders and hadn’t given their trap away.

  I couldn’t actually view the battle remotely with my eyes but the scene lit up for me as coloured dots on a black background in my mind. The dull silver spots of droids walked between two far larger groups of yellow dots that were humans. More yellow dots penned them in from behind then we heard the sounds of gunfire a couple of blocks away.

  We converged on the droids just in case the other teams required assistance but the skirmish was already over by the time we arrived. Death rays were stripped from the fallen robots and handed over to those without. None of the civilians were given access to the alien technology. A death ray in the wrong hands would be a disaster.

  While the civilians let out cheers that our trap had worked so well, the soldiers remained impassive. We’d only made a tiny dent in the overall number of our adversaries. We hadn’t lost any of our people yet but our luck couldn’t hold out forever. Casualties were a given when it came to war and this one was going to be brutal.

  ·~·

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Since it had worked so well the first time, we kept up the tactic of luring imps or droids into traps then overwhelming them with superior numbers. Our plan ran smoothly for several hours before disaster struck and one of our traps backfired. The soldiers were beginning to flag and civilians were weaving on their feet in exhaustion. It was only a matter of time before it went pear shaped.

  The soldiers had grown complacent with their steady run of victories. They’d split up into smaller teams so they could target more than one group of enemies at a time. My warning that they would be safer to stay in larger groups had been ignored. It had seemed obvious to me that the more spread out we became, the larger the risks we’d face.

  My hunch came true and I sensed several units of killbots converging on one of our groups. They’d drawn too far away from the others and were quickly isolated and surrounded by droids.

  Warning Higgins about our people’s plight, we hurried to their location. We arrived in time to see the last few humans being shot by nanobot guns. Horrified mutters were uttered as naked, hugely muscled grey monsters were born.

  “Cut them down!” Higgins screamed as the newly made clones lumbered towards us. Dozens of droids followed behind their newly made servants. They fired their dart guns with the intention of reducing our numbers and increasing the size of their imp army.

  Sliding my death ray into my pocket, I caught a flicker of motion from the corner of my eye and saw a dart flying straight towards Higgins. Moving lightning fast, my hand flashed out and caught the tiny syringe when it was a mere inch from his face. I grimaced as the tiny dart pierced my flesh and more micro-robots were released into my bloodstream.

  Eyes wide, the soldier gave me a shaky nod of thanks. “Tell everyone to retreat and form into ten groups again,” I told him. “I’ll take care of the droids and imps.”

  Knowing his teammates would be eaten or transformed if they remained to fight, Higgins bellowed for his people to retreat. None needed to be told twice and they turned to flee. Already ravenous, despite being created only moments ago, the imps went on the chase. I ran to intercept them and my swords went into motion. Droids fired their nanobot guns and death rays at me but I used the imps as cover as I sliced my way through their ranks. Battle lust took over, making me as close to happy as I was ever likely to get now that Luc and I were no longer a couple.

  Spearing hearts, slicing throats and stabbing deep into eye sockets to reach the brain, I hunted down every last imp before turning my attention to the droids. A wave of violet light speared towards me but I disappeared before it could hit me. I found myself standing in a well-maintained yard with a high fence and a very angry guard dog growling at me. Mostly black with a few brown markings on its face, I was pretty sure it was a Doberman. White teeth gleamed as its lips drew back and its growl intensified.

  Distracted by the sound of splintering wood, I glanced over my shoulder to see a droid punching its way through the fence. I turned back as the dog lunged forward and sank its teeth into my upper thigh.

  A second droid appeared in the robot sized hole in the fence and aimed its death ray at me as the dog savaged my leg. I shifted out of harm’s way, leaving behind a confused and angry dog.

  “Toby!” The alarmed shout came from the bushes beside the house as a teenage boy burst out of hiding a moment after I shifted. The darts that had been intended for me hit the dog and his owner instead.

  Screams and howls of agony pierced the night as the pair began to transform. I’d seen hundreds, if not thousands of adults converted into clones before but I’d never witnessed a teen turning into one. As always, the morphing process took only seconds. The end result was a stunted, six foot imp that was much less muscular than usual. I would have to ask Gregor why this was the case, but I suspected it was because the boy hadn’t finished growing to his full potential yet.

  The dog’s transformation was far less smooth and I watched it writhe and howl in horrified fascination. Black fur disappeared as its body bulged, swelled and turned ashen. The howls turned deeper and became almost guttural as it voiced its agony
as its entire skeleton seemed to change subtly. It’s already pointed ears grew longer and curled at the ends while long, sharp claws sprouted from its paws. The process took only a few seconds longer than usual and the beast struggled to its feet as its master spied me.

  “Food!” the former teen declared and loped towards me. Red light glowed from the dog imp’s eyes and it bared teeth that were now much longer and sharper. On closer inspection, they weren’t teeth at all. In fact, they looked a lot like vampire fangs.

  I wasn’t alone as I watched the battle between the pair. More of the fence was torn away as several droids came in search of me. They viewed the biting, clawing imps with a detachment that I wished I could share. Yellow blood flew as grey flesh was torn open to expose meat and bone. Roaring in rage, the stunted imp batted at the doberclone’s head. He shrieked in agony when the vampirelike fangs sheared through his wrist. Spitting out the hand of its former master, the doberclone lunged upwards and closed its teeth around the stunted imp’s throat. With a grisly wet tearing sound, the imp’s head toppled to the ground.

  Turning to me, the doberclone’s head was on a level with mine. It had doubled in height and more than quadrupled in bulk. Hate and rage blazed from its scarlet eyes and I prepared myself to leap to safety. Instead of attacking me as it clearly wanted to, the dog imp turned to face the droids. It almost seemed to be guarding me.

  “Interesting,” one of the droids remarked. Plain silver and with only rudimentary facial features, it didn’t look anything like Robert the traitorous robot but it sounded eerily like him.

  “This is a strange anomaly,” another remarked.

  “Shall we initiate the Third Protocol?” the first droid asked the others.

  “Agreed,” all replied and levelled their death rays.