Death Returns

by J. C. Diem

  “Wet!” one said disgustedly and glared down at the water, as if wishing it could take a bite out of the flowing stream.

  “Food?” another said hopefully as a wad of toilet paper drifted by. A clawed hand reached out and stuffed the pulpy mass into its mouth. The wad was spat out a second later and the imp’s face scrunched up in disgust. “Not food,” it decided mournfully. It was interesting to see they were smart enough to make that distinction. It was also something of a surprise to see their vocabulary extended beyond a couple of words.

  A dead rat floated towards them and their interest perked up again. “Food!” several declared and began racing towards it. They were hampered by the flow of water but three imps reached the rodent at the same time. They immediately began to squabble about who the tasty treat belonged to. They became a viciously clawing mass of tiny grey bodies all intent on devouring the rat.

  My death ray cut a swathe through their ranks and also zapped the rat. Holding a tail that was the only remnant left of the rodent, a surviving clone turned on me with accusing scarlet eyes. It threw the tail down with a cry of rage and started towards me. It was easy to pick it and the rest of them off as they struggled against the flow of water. The screams of the human captives helped to muffle the slaughter that I doled out.

  The next group I came across were just as miserable as the first. They should have been asleep by now but would either drown or drift downstream if they tried to lie down in the water. There were only fifteen this time and I sent several bursts of violet light in their direction. They probably would have thanked me for ending their torment, if I’d given them the chance to speak.

  Moving as quietly as possible, I knew the next group were former humans even before I saw them. My senses could easily make the distinction. All forty-three were sitting shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the slimy walls as I crept to within a few yards of them. Snores reverberated around me, sounding vaguely like a small avalanche tumbling down a mountainside.

  They were so deeply asleep they didn’t hear me as I snuck in close enough to tickle them. Water covered their legs and pooled in their laps. My swords did their duty and snuffed out their lives one by one. Conscious that some of my teammates were normal everyday civilians, I merely stabbed the imps through their hearts instead of hacking them limb from limb. There was no need to cause anyone worse nightmares than they would already have, if any of them were lucky enough to live through this ordeal.

  I wasn’t sure when my concern towards the mental health of humans had reasserted itself but it was difficult to ignore. While I wanted to hate all of humanity for what a few of them had done to me and my people, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.

  It was impossible to be completely noiseless when walking through water, even for me, and an alert Kveet imp heard me approaching the next group. Probably hoping I was food, it headed towards me. The tunnel curved, hiding me from view. I waited for the clone to round the bend then leaped forward and stabbed it through the chest. The sword speared straight through it and the imp hung from my weapon like a piece of meat on a skewer. It slid off, plopped into the water and floated back towards its comrades. The rest came to investigate and I used my death ray to annihilate them all.

  Finishing off the last few groups that barred the way from the much larger herd, I resisted the temptation to rush to the rescue as yet another captive was pulled to pieces. Slobbering sounds of imps chewing with their mouths open made my stomach want to flop over. The red glow from my eyes intensified as my rage increased. Holding onto my anger tightly, I edged to the corner of another intersection. My right eye popped out of its socket and I cautiously held it out into the tunnel to see what I was up against. It was unnerving to see it still glowing softly even when it was no longer attached to my face.

  Several tunnels had converged to create a large open space. It was packed wall to wall with newly made seven foot imps. Their captives were gathered in the centre of the small lake of human waste. Many of the clones were asleep on their feet but were scrunched in so tightly that they were in no danger of falling over. If all of the monsters had been asleep I might have tried using my holy marks to destroy them. If I attempted it when they were awake, they’d most likely kill their captives in their rush to get to me. Like it or not, I’d have to call my teammates to help.

  Backtracking for a few tunnels, I used the radio. “Are you there, Higgins?” I whispered.

  “I’m here,” he responded.

  “The way is clear.”

  “Did you leave marks for us to follow?”

  I hadn’t and it had been a stupid oversight. “I didn’t, sorry. I’ll have to guide you to me.”

  “You can remember the way you took?”

  I couldn’t blame him for his scepticism, but he had no idea of what my mind was capable of now. Just by closing my eyes, I could bring up a map of the route I’d taken. “I remember it well enough. You’ll know you’re on the right track when you come across blood splattered walls.”

  “Go ahead. I’m ready when you are.”

  It took precious time that we didn’t have to move the whole team through the tunnels. More humans were slaughtered while I waited for my allies to turn up. Finally, I heard the splashing of hundreds of footsteps sloshing through the water. Higgins came into view a few minutes later. Relief smoothed out the frown he’d been wearing when he reached me. As quietly as possible, the rest of our team gathered around. I described what we were facing and word was passed back to those who were too far away to hear me.

  “Our priority is to rescue the captives,” Higgins whispered. “Unfortunately, it sounds like they are surrounded by the enemy. I propose we split into three groups and try to lure the clones into an ambush using these three tunnels.” He pointed at the tunnel to our right and one directly opposite from us. That meant two groups would have to try to sneak across the fourth tunnel opening without being spotted by the imps.

  “It’s a pity we don’t have a blanket,” I said quietly.

  “Why?” my faithful right hand man asked.

  “We could hold it up across the opening while everyone moves into position. The imps are so stupid I doubt they’ll even notice they can’t see down the tunnel any longer.”

  “I have a blanket you can borrow,” a woman said. “I thought it might be cold down here so I grabbed it just in case,” she explained when she received several strange looks.

  At my impatient gesture, the blanket was passed up the line and into my hands. I’d been hoping for a dark fabric but instead was faced with a hot pink one. Even worse, it had pictures of fluffy cats all over it. Higgins looked at it doubtfully then shrugged and took one end. I leaped across the tunnel opening so quickly that I was barely a flash of colour. Landing lightly on the other side, I held my end of the cat blanket up. No startled sounds came from the horde of imps so I motioned the first group to start moving.

  Creeping as quietly as possible, two groups of soldiers and civilians splashed quietly down the intersecting tunnels. The more experienced warriors were in the front ranks. Once the clones began to attack, they would drop down and shoot from a kneeling position while the ranks behind them fired over their heads. Everyone in the front row would use their death rays to disintegrate the enemy’s bodies and stop them from piling up and hampering our shots.

  Once everyone was in place, I tossed my end of the blanket to Higgins. It might come in handy later so he quickly folded it up and handed it back to its owner. She scurried down the tunnel to hide behind the soldiers.

  Higgins and I stood in plain sight in the middle of the four-way intersection and waited to be spotted. Most of the imps closest to us were deeply asleep and the rest were too stupefied with weariness to notice us. I used my death ray to blast a full dozen monsters into nothingness before they realized they were under attack.

  With a gurgling cry of anger, an imp pointed at us with a clawed hand. “Kill them!” he bellowed and his kin began to wake. The captives s
creamed at us to save them, waking even more of the creatures with their desperate pleas. They were buffeted by their captors as the clones stampeded towards us. Some went down and didn’t rise again.

  Higgins fired more violet rays into the crowd, creating a small pocket of death. The enraged clones surged towards us and we put our plan into action. Higgins raced into the left tunnel and I went straight ahead. Reaching my small team of sixty civilians, I took up a position in the second row and fired at the imps as they reached the intersection.

  Dazzling violet light, that was even brighter than the neon on the surface, blazed from three directions as we cut down hundreds of creatures that were intent on murder. Their rage and hunger were so intense that they ran directly into our beams in their determination to end our existence. The Viltarans may have made a grievous error when altering their nanobot formula. They’d stripped too much of their slaves’ will away and had taken their sense of self-preservation with it. What use was an army of servants that were so stupid that they would allow themselves to be slaughtered without putting up even a token defence?

  A heavy cloud of particles hung in the air when the last imp winked out of existence. At first there was silence as my teammates waited for more clones to burst into sight. “That’s all of them,” I said and someone cheered. He was immediately shushed by the others. We had annihilated only a fraction of the monsters that hunkered within the tunnels. Making too much noise could draw them straight to us. Even now, I could sense another group of Kveet imps slogging their way in our direction, drawn by the battle cries of their far larger contemporaries.

  Still huddled together, standing knee deep in polluted water, the captives didn’t realize they’d been rescued at first. Their screams and sobs drowned out Higgins when he tried to get their attention by shouting. Firing a bullet into the carcass of a dead Kveet imp silenced them to whimpers. “The clones that were guarding you are all dead and you’re safe now,” he said to the cringing prisoners.

  “Safe?” a woman in her fifties croaked. “These monsters tore my husband apart and ate him right in front of me! We won’t be safe until every last one of them is dead.” Her voice had been bordering on hysteria at the beginning of her short speech but she ended in a dull whisper.

  “We’re working on it, ma’am,” one of the soldiers said wearily. “I’m sorry for your loss.” His sympathy cut through her shock and she started to cry in great, wracking sobs.

  “Let’s get these people out of here,” Higgins said to his fellow troopers.

  A small contingent of two soldiers and a dozen civilian recruits escorted the survivors back through the winding tunnels and up to the surface. We’d saved most of the captives but there were many more humans under siege all throughout the city and sewers. Despite our best efforts, we weren’t going to be able to save them all. Their lives would be added to the tally that I would no doubt have to answer for.

  ·~·

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I kept track of our overall progress as the day wore on. By late afternoon, we’d eradicated a total of seventeen thousand imps. There were still forty-six thousand Kveet clones and twenty-two thousand human clones in hiding. They’d wake up as soon as the sun set and would first eat before rounding up more victims for the droids to convert.

  Speaking of the murderbots, the Viltaran ship began to lower as the sun faded from the sky. Sanderson had recalled his troops from the sewers an hour before dusk. Almost all of his troops were crouched behind cover. All were ready to spring into action the instant the ship dropped off its bipedal cargo.

  A particularly foul curse escaped me when I sensed the ship swinging wide of the area it had used as a drop off point last time. “Tell Sanderson the Viltarans aren’t going to fall for our trap,” I told Higgins. “They’re moving towards the south instead.”

  Thousands more soldiers had landed a short while ago and were making their way towards the drainage tunnels to bolster our numbers. Apparently, my senses weren’t the only ones to detect them. The Viltaran ship didn’t stop to set down the droids but instead continued southward. It passed high over the toxic cloud to avoid being gassed and hovered over the only entry point to the city.

  Choked screams came through Higgins’ radio as the aliens blasted a fresh wave of noxious poison at what was supposed to have been our backup teams. It seemed there would be no more fresh troops entering the city to bolster our flagging numbers.

  “What just happened?” Sanderson asked. He and my friends were on the far side of a parking lot, hidden behind the ornate fence of a gigantic casino.

  “The drainage tunnels have just been cut off by the Viltarans,” I said to my pet human. Higgins relayed the information to his commanding officer. I turned to follow the ship’s course as it stopped to offload some of the droids. It moved in a circular pattern, stopping briefly until every last robot had been released from its hold before returning to its position high above Vegas.

  With the vast bulk of our forces gathered in the centre of Las Vegas, any civilians who had chosen to remain in their homes were about to be hunted down. We’d never be able to reach them in time to stop them from being converted into clones. Our enemies would grow in number while we would slowly but surely be worn down with each sortie onto the battlefield.

  “You’d better tell Sanderson that our plan just went out the window.” I tried to keep my tone neutral but some of my despair came through. “The droids have the city surrounded and are working their way towards the centre. They’re converting every human they come across into imps.”

  While I could function for an unknown length of time without sleep, the soldiers and civilians were exhausted. They’d only managed to snatch a few minutes of rest while we’d waited in vain for the spaceship to descend into our failed trap.

  The general uttered an even worse expletive than I’d used when Higgins updated him. “I suggest we all find transportation and attempt to head the droids off,” Gregor said calmly, presumably from right beside Sanderson. We were going to have a long night ahead of us, followed by another long day of hunting down the freshly made imps. This isn’t looking good for our side, my inner voice said. There’s a good chance you’re going to lose this time. I wished it was wrong but I was very afraid that it might be right.

  Utterly cut off from help, the city was doomed unless we could destroy the androids. Sheer numbers had worked for us in Manhattan but we only had a fraction of the civilian population behind us this time. It wasn’t that the city lacked warm bodies, they just didn’t seem to have the same drive to survive as the Manhattanites. I could sense hundreds of thousands of humans cowering inside the casinos and hotels. Most would be tourists and the rest employees of the hotels and casinos. It was doubtful many were armed. We had gathered enough death rays to arm several thousand more people but the soldiers were reluctant to hand them over to the townsfolk.

  “We need to convince the civilians to help us again,” I told Higgins. “They need to know that they will all either be eaten or turned into monsters if they don’t get off their arses and start fighting.”

  “We don’t have enough weapons for all of them,” he said with a helpless shrug.

  “Give them your guns if you don’t trust them with the death rays.”

  I hadn’t realized my words were being broadcasted until Luc spoke through Higgins’ radio. “Natalie is right. You have to put your mistrust aside if you wish to save not just your country but the entire world.” I felt a small tingle of happiness that he’d agreed with me. Then I felt depressed that something so small could make me feel happy at all.

  Sanderson had little choice but to succumb to common sense. “Agreed.” Higgins looked relieved at his commander’s capitulation and so did his comrades. “Head for the most densely populated hotels and casinos and start recruiting help,” Sanderson ordered. “When you’ve handed out all of your spare weapons, find transportation and make your way to the suburbs and start taking down the droids. I’ll cont
act the President and ask her to send out a message to everyone in the city asking them to rally and help us fight.” It had worked last time and hopefully it would work again.

  The team leaders acknowledged their orders then, still in teams of five hundred or so, we scattered. I pointed at one of the smaller hotels, where I could sense several hundred humans hiding. The lobby doors were locked but a booted foot sent them crashing open. Muffled screams came from the staircase, followed by fleeing footsteps and slamming doors. Pairing up, soldiers headed for each floor while our civilian team members waited in the foyer. Some took the opportunity to pilfer bottled water from a vending machine. A couple of hungry men were prying open the snack machines when I followed Higgins upstairs.

  Most of the survivors were relieved when they realized it was soldiers rather than monsters knocking on their doors. We eventually coaxed everyone downstairs and out onto the street.

  Higgins launched into the speech he’d prepared. “Some of you may have heard of the attack on Manhattan several days ago.” Nods and murmurs of agreement sounded. “As you’ve probably guessed by now, Las Vegas has now been targeted by that same spaceship. The city has been cut off by a cloud of toxic gas. This means no one can get in or out.”

  “You mean no one is coming to rescue us?” a woman in her seventies or eighties asked timidly. She was dressed in a worn pink robe with matching slippers. For reasons I couldn’t define, my heart went out to her. She was just a harmless little old lady who’d probably never hurt anyone in her entire life. Now she was being hunted for her meat, as if she was nothing more than a mindless animal.

  “I’m afraid not,” Higgins replied gravely. “We’re outnumbered and the enemy ranks are growing every hour. We need your help to fight the droids and clones or we’ll be overwhelmed within days.”