Death Returns

by J. C. Diem

  There were plenty of targets to choose from stashed away beneath the ground and I led the way to a small pocket of Kveet clones first. Most of the sixty or so creatures were deeply asleep and the rest were hovering on the verge of it. Lying side by side in the subway tunnels, they looked almost peaceful. Geordie was reluctant to use his weapon on the tiny targets while they were unaware but Ishida was more practical. Far, far older than his fellow teen, Ishida had survived many wars with the rival European vampire nation. One shot from his death ray disintegrated four clones.

  The blasts of light woke some of the others but we circled them and kept shooting until only their dust motes remained. Kokoro waved the cloud of minute particles away from her face in distaste. It wasn’t much fun shooting them when they were half asleep and unable to fight back but it was necessary so we continued on through the tunnels.

  A few hours later, Gregor stopped and pointed upwards. “How is the hunt for the droids going?”

  I sent my senses out to investigate the status of the ongoing battle and relayed what I’d found. “They’ve wiped out most of the robots. The rest are on the run and the humans are nipping at their heels.”

  “Where are the robots running to?” Ishida asked.

  I followed the progress of the remaining two hundred or so murderbots and my blood tried to run cold. They were heading directly for the small group of humans I’d rescued from the Kveet clones earlier. I tried to tell myself that I shouldn’t care what happened to them but the picture of the little boy wrapping his trusting hands around my legs refused to fade.

  Giving in to my newly resurrected conscience, I turned and sprinted down the tunnel. None of my friends asked me what the urgency was. They kept up with me as I raced through the subway tunnels in a blur. It was midday and the sun was still high in the sky. It would be madness to leave the safety of the subway but I was going to leave it anyway. I mentally crossed my fingers that the skyscrapers would offer enough shade that none of my friends would burst into flames. The sun had a different effect on me, my flesh tended to boil then melt right down to the bone. After drinking Viltaran blood, I wasn’t sure how my friends would react to direct contact with the sun.

  Spying stairs, I raced up them and emerged onto the street a block ahead of the droids. As I’d hoped, deep shadows prevented the sun from scorching me. Even with the shade, the brightness was almost too much to bear and I blinked painfully. Geordie hissed out a curse and covered his eyes with one hand, peeking out through his fingers. Not that long ago, he would have been dead to the world during daylight hours.

  Fleeing from certain death, the metal men didn’t realize they were running from one danger straight into another until we opened fire. The droids were quick to react and we scurried for cover as they sent retaliatory blasts of violet light towards us. At their backs, the humans closed in, firing either bullets or death rays. Jubilant screams came from the citizens. After two nights of being eaten and turned into monsters, they could all but taste victory.

  Only two blocks behind us, the people I’d rescued earlier cowered inside the apartment building they’d chosen to hide in. We were being pushed backwards by the droids and soon they would pass us. I wasn’t sure if the droids were intelligent enough to use the townsfolk as hostages or not but I’d rather not find out.

  Pocketing my death ray, I raced towards the rapidly diminishing number of robots. Halting their forward rush, I sliced into them, chopping off arms and stabbing faces while vampires and humans alike closed in to finish them off.

  When the last automaton fell, General Sanderson fought his way through the crowd and nodded his thanks to our small group. He took a few moments to catch his breath before speaking. “I didn’t think you could be outside during daylight hours.”

  “We are safe as long as the direct rays of the sun don’t touch our flesh,” Gregor explained. He didn’t add that any normal vampire would be steaming by now and would shortly catch fire before turning to ash. Only we seven could withstand being outside and even for us, it caused some pain.

  “Is it over?” an overweight man armed with a machine gun asked. From the familiar way he was holding it, I suspected it came from his own personal arsenal. He carried a small backpack that was most likely full of extra ammunition. He must be one of those weekend warriors I’ve read about. They were the type who spent their weekends camped out in the middle of nowhere taking pot shots at cardboard cut outs of animals. I couldn’t fault his hobby since it had prepared him for an alien invasion. I guessed the doomsday preppers weren’t entirely crazy after all.

  “All of the droids in the city have been destroyed,” I confirmed. Cheers rang out and the nearby crowd broke into a joyous dance. A thin, sallow man grabbed a woman twice his size and whirled her in a circle before staggering and almost dropping her. She steadied him then leaned down and planted a kiss on his mouth. His grin was dazed as he shyly slipped his arm around her sizable waist. Surprisingly, she cuddled him against her side. True love had been born in the aftermath of battle. I tried to form a cynical snigger but I was too depressed at the state of my own pitiful love life to manage it.

  “How many clones remain?” Sanderson asked.

  I didn’t need to check since I’d already scanned the area. “There are still over twenty-thousand Kveet imps hiding out in the buildings and sewers.” Groans of disappointment were issued by several soldiers. “Plus more than one hundred thousand human imps.” This time the groans were louder and more numerous.

  I’d expected dismay from the townsfolk and was astounded when a woman old enough to be my grandmother hefted her shotgun. “What are we waiting for? I say we hunt these suckers down while they’re still sleeping.” Roars of approval met her words. Their blood was up and they were eager to take back their city.

  “Most of them are in the subway,” I told Sanderson. “Only a few thousand are hiding in the apartment buildings.”

  “If I show you a map of Manhattan, do you think you could pinpoint their locations?” he asked. I’d had practice using maps to find my enemies on Viltar so it shouldn’t be a problem using the same tactic on my home planet. I nodded, pretending it didn’t feel like my eyeballs were boiling from being outside while the sun was still up. A slight tic started up beneath my left eye and I hoped no one noticed it.

  “Let’s take this meeting back in the subway,” Gregor suggested and headed for the stairs to the closest tunnel.

  My pain immediately abated once I was beneath the ground again and my tic disappeared with it. The others blinked a few times but that was the only indication they gave of the discomfort they’d been feeling. Soldiers and civilians crowded into the subway with us. While we waited for someone to appear with a map, Sanderson sent a few soldiers to cut the power to the tracks. It was a smart move and would prevent the unwary from being fried.

  A few minutes later, a soldier rushed to Sanderson’s side and handed over a map. The general spread it out on the ground and pulled a pen out of his pocket. I hunkered down across from him and pointed out where the imps were hiding. They were spread out all across the city but stayed well clear of the area that had been blasted with the poisonous gas. The clones weren’t immune to the poison and would also die if they came into contact with the spoiled air.

  Manhattan had been turned into a prison by the Viltarans and we were about to turn it against their creations. I could easily picture the aliens gnashing their fangs in fury that the puny, less-than-technologically-advanced humans were proving to be far more resilient than they’d ever expected.

  ·~·

  Chapter Fourteen

  Not all of the survivors were willing to participate in the imp slaughter that was about to take place, but enough volunteered for us to be able to get the job done. Everyone had a weapon of some kind, even if it was just a meat cleaver. Personally, I’d rather slink quietly away and hide if that was the best weapon I could come up with.

  Sanderson gathered everyone together and split them into v
arious sized teams, with at least a few soldiers in charge of the civilians. The chosen team leaders would keep in contact with the general by radio as they spread out and began flushing out the enemy.

  It took time to organize the groups but they eventually began to head back up to the surface to search the buildings that had been marked on the map. Other teams took off down the train tunnels in search of enemies. In the past, Sanderson had always made sure he and I were on the same team. This time we went our separate ways, much to our mutual relief.

  “You can join us if you want,” Higgins invited. With a shrug, Gregor followed the young soldier as he hastened after his team leader.

  “You like that human, don’t you, chérie?” Geordie said with a nod towards Higgins as we jogged behind the soldier down a long, dark tunnel. Some of the civilians were still recovering from chasing after the droids and were gasping for air as they struggled to keep up. Flashlights speared through the gloom, lighting the way for those without.

  “‘Like’ is too strong a word,” I replied. “He hasn’t tried to kill any of us yet, so I’m tolerating him.”

  “He seems to be very attached to you,” Ishida said from my other side. “You should think about turning him into your companion since Lord Lucentio no longer appears to hold you in his regard.” Walking a few paces ahead of us, Luc stiffened slightly.

  Ishida had used the word ‘companion’ but turning someone into one of us would make them into my slave. I’d have complete control over them and they wouldn’t be able to defy my direct orders. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Remember what happened to that fledgling in Africa who accidentally bit me?”

  Both teens shuddered at the memory. I’d saved Sanderson’s life when one of his men had turned after being drained then fed vampire blood. The undead soldier had chomped down on me after I’d pushed Sanderson out of the way. The black ooze that passed for my blood had eaten its way through the fledgling’s stomach, meat and skin. It had melted half of his face off before Sanderson had put a bullet in his brain to end his suffering.

  “I’d forgotten about that,” Geordie said in a small voice. They gave me pitying looks, as if I’d suffered a debilitating injury that somehow made me less of a vampire. I didn’t feel as if I was missing out on anything. The thought of turning a human into my minion horrified me. My life had been brutally snatched from me and things had gone downhill fast ever since. I’d never wanted to put someone else through the awfulness of being converted into the undead. Eternal life might sound great but, for me, it had mainly sucked so far. I had a feeling it was going to continue to suck for a long, long time. Possibly forever.

  Our group was larger than most and was made up of a thousand civilians, twelve soldiers and seven vampires. Most of the imps we’d encountered tended to stick to smaller groups, so I doubted we’d have too much trouble eradicating them. We’d be bound to lose some of our teammates along the way. There were always casualties in any war.

  Huffing, puffing and wheezing, some of the older humans were in real risk of having a stroke if we kept up this pace for too long. The soldier in charge kept glancing back at me but was too intimidated to ask me to join him. I figured he had a question so, with an internal sigh, I made my way to the front of the pack.

  “Hey,” a wheezing man said and grabbed my arm to stop me. “There’s a rumour going around that you’re a vampire.”

  “So?” I tried to disengage my arm but he held on tight. If I yanked my arm away I might accidentally rip his off in the process. My compassion was still a new and precarious thing and it wasn’t going to stretch very far if I became annoyed.

  “Prove it.” His expression was belligerent and his dark grey suit expensive. His belly hung over his belt and I doubted he’d be able to see his shoes. Clearly, he was the type of guy who usually got what he wanted.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I said and peeled his fingers free. Luckily for him, I didn’t snap any off.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you!” He lunged after me but Geordie and Ishida intercepted him.

  “Are you certain that you want proof that we are vampires?” Ishida asked the man coolly.

  Less sure of himself now that he wasn’t confronting a lone female that was half his size, the guy stammered his reply. “Y-yeah.”

  “How about I bite you on the neck and drain your blood?” Geordie offered. “Will that be enough proof for you?” The two boys were much smaller, not to mention thinner, than the human but I heard him back away a step anyway as he searched for a reply.

  Two slaps rang out and I glanced back to see the teens rubbing the backs of their heads. Igor gave the belligerent American a flat stare. Reaching out, he grabbed the man by the shirt and lifted him two feet off the ground with one hand. “Is this enough proof for you?” he asked around the fangs that had suddenly sprouted from his gums.

  “Ok! Ok! I believe you!” Feet kicking in panic, the civilian was on the verge of fainting in terror when Igor dropped him. Losing his balance, he went down on one knee before staggering to his feet and darting away into the crowd.

  Catching my eye, Igor gave me a rare grin. His fangs retracted back to normal in the blink of an eye.

  “I can’t believe they’re letting loud-mouthed fools like that carry firearms,” Gregor said to me out of the corner of his mouth.

  Stifling my snigger, I finally reached the team leader. Short and compact, he had sandy coloured hair and a pug nose. “I’m Sergeant Wesley, ma’am,” he said by way of a greeting and gave me a polite but reserved nod. “Can you tell me how close we are to the targets?”

  “They’re just at the next station,” I replied. “So we’d better try to keep the noise down from now on.”

  While the civilians weren’t being overly noisy, they also weren’t making much effort to be stealthy. I doubted many of them had ever been on any kind of hunting trips before let alone pursuing something that had come from outer space.

  Wesley sent his soldiers out to round everyone up and also to warn them to be quiet. Gregor and Sergeant Wesley had a brief discussion on our best course of action as the stragglers caught up to the rest of us.

  The strategy they decided on was fairly simple. We would creep up as close to the enemy as we could get then riddle them with bullets. My senses told me that there were less than sixty adversaries ahead. It was decided that an equal number of us would engage the imps. The rest of the team would act as our backup if any of the monsters survived the first barrage and managed to flee.

  Our force of twelve soldiers, seven vampires and forty-one humans closed in on the slumbering targets. Sneaking about as effectively as a cow with metal buckets on all four of its feet, the civilians shuffled through the dark tunnel towards the light ahead. A few of the humans carried flashlights. Their beams moved up down and from side to side like searchlights on the hunt for an escaped prisoner. Someone sneezed and was loudly shushed by half a dozen people. Kokoro shook her head in despair that we had been lumped with civilians that could best be described as inept.

  Motioning the small group forward, the soldiers crept up to the imps. No matter how many times I saw the human clones, they always gave me a shiver. Their faces had been transformed into a semblance of the Viltarans but their grey bodies were still human, if far larger and far more heavily muscled than usual. They slept deeply and didn’t sense our approach. Bereft of their intelligence, they were too stupid to think of leaving someone awake to stand guard.

  When we were close enough that even the worst shooter amongst us would have at least a fifty-fifty chance of hitting a target, Wesley signalled for us to fire. We had nineteen death rays in our group and violet light bathed the slumbering giants. The clones that hadn’t instantly been disintegrated woke up and struggled to their feet. The thunder of bullets was painful and ricocheted off the tiled walls and back down the tunnel as the humans panicked and opened fire. The skirmish was over quickly and with no loss of life on our side.

  Two of the soldier
s checked to make sure the imps weren’t just faking death as cries of triumph rang out from the rest of our team as they ran to catch up to us. “Are they going to be like this every time?” Geordie complained, wincing at the cacophony.

  “Probably,” I responded with a grimace. “I have a feeling that it’s going to be a long day.”

  It was a long day and the sun had begun to wane by the time we approached a group of clones that was far larger than any we’d encountered before. Halting Sergeant Wesley, I advised him that we would be outnumbered by around five to one if we were to engage the enemy.

  “I’d better call for backup,” the soldier decided and reached for his radio.

  “Don’t bother,” I told him. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Higgins’ expression clearly reflected that he thought I was crazy. “You can’t take on five thousand of these things alone!”

  He turned to my friends for support but Gregor just shrugged. “Natalie has the capacity to destroy a large number of clones. If she did not think she was capable of eradicating them, she would not have made the offer.”

  “But…how?” Higgins asked, at a loss of how I could possibly achieve such a claim.

  “With these.” I tucked my swords beneath my left arm and held my hands up to show him my palms. At the soldier’s continued bafflement, I nodded to Gregor. "You explain it to him. The imps will be waking up soon and I’d rather they were dead before that happens.”

  “I hate it when Nat goes out on her solo missions,” Geordie said to Ishida as I headed away from them.

  “Did he just call her a gnat?” a tourist said in heavily accented English. “Isn’t that a kind of insect?”

  Geordie’s shrill giggles chased after me as I put on a burst of speed. Seriously, how many times have I heard that comparison now, I grumbled internally.