Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

“But of all the people I’ve lost in this whole damned war, it was the death of my father that bothers me the most. I mean, a girl can always find another husband, right?”

“I–I suppose so.”

“My father was a great man. A real, honest-to-God leader. He had it all figured out.”

Nina felt the hair on the back of her neck stand firm. A tingle. A warning.

“But you know what happened to him? He was murdered, too,” the woman spoke faster. Her eyes grew taut. Nina thought she saw a shake in the stranger’s shoulders.

“Maybe you know his name? Maybe you’ve heard of him?” the woman’s voice grew acidic. Her last words came laced in bitterness. “His name was Robert Parsons- of New Winnabow.”

The newcomer’s hand had remained in her purse after replacing the lipstick tube. Now she pulled that hand out again-with a gun.

Nina whirled around as Sharon Parsons leveled a. 38 caliber revolver from her purse. Her left hand slammed into Sharon’s right wrist, pushing the gun away as it discharged while Nina’s right hand drove forward in deadly palm-heel strike that impacted with lethal force into the bridge of Sharon’s nose.

The woman who had once been Evan Godfrey’s wife-the woman who had sworn revenge against whoever had assassinated her father at New Winnabow nearly six years before-fell limp and dead to the grungy tile floor of the dance hall bathroom.

Nina stared at the dead body for a moment with her breath heaving in and out.

Then she noticed a thin stream of red oozing across the tile, coming from beneath the closed stall door; the door with a bullet hole from the errant shot.

Nina’s heart exploded. She ripped open the stall door pulling the rusty lock free of its screws. Denise sat there, on the toilet, with a large red stain across her chest and shock on her face.

She also held in her hand the stem of a glass, all that remained of her red wine. The bullet had missed the girl but hit her beverage, sending the rare vintage splashing across the tile.

Mother and daughter gazed at one another with wide eyes for several long seconds. Behind them the door burst open and Shep-his side arm drawn-led a group to the sound of the gunshot.

Denise began to laugh, and then cry, and then she fell into her mother’s arms.

Omar Nehru stood at his bedroom window holding a simmering cigarette and watching the first rays of dawn glitter off Harveys Lake. A pair of tree swallows darted out from shore, zigzagged over the lazy water, and returned inland toward the forested slopes surrounding the basin. Omar admired their blue-black coat and wondered what spring game they played.

He watched the day begin from the A-frame home situated a few yards north of the main estate, the place where a small band of survivors had weathered the early storm of the invasion some eleven years before.

Even after the arrival of Stonewall’s brigades and Tom Prescott’s band of roving soldiers the lake kept that isolated feel. Now-so many changes and so many years later-the center of The Empire bustled with activity.

Although Trevor remained far away at the front lines, the estate had regained its mantle as the heart of humanity’s fight for survival. Many of the functions the ill-fated President Evan Godfrey had transferred to Washington DC during his temporary reign returned to the estate. As a result, trucks and cars and helicopters constantly buzzed the area. The two lane perimeter road often grew congested with traffic.

He found it hard to believe so much time had passed; that the fledgling band of survivors had grown into a nation.

From survivors to conquerors. From an extended family to an Empire. Over the course of those years the changes felt gradual, to the point he hardly noticed.

Through it all he maintained a sort of detachment, even when traveling to Atlanta to bring the captured Hivvan matter-makers on line; even when investigating the strange structure in the Ohio countryside that had facilitated Trevor’s disappearance four years ago.

Omar relied on fronts to maintain that detachment, including a finely honed sense of sarcasm and a forced accent to comply with the stereotype of his Indian heritage. Yet those fronts could not help him now. As he watched the birds play and the sun flicker, Omar felt a sense of doom falling like a shroud over everything. It pierced his well-cultivated detachment and brought an ache to his heart.

Omar raised the cigarette to his lips and inhaled a deep drag.

More than a decade ago he came to Trevor’s estate with a six-year-old son, an eleven-year-old daughter, and Anita, his wife.

His boy now worked with a logistics and transportation company supporting garrison units along the northern border. According to last week’s letter, he operated from the ghost city of Toronto. Omar found small comfort in his son serving away from the front lines, but also knew that eventually everyone would face Voggoth’s onslaught.

His daughter worked as a pharmacist/nurse at a hospital outside of Virginia Beach. Last time they had spoken on the phone, his daughter told him that she saw surprisingly few wounded come through her ward. Omar did not tell her that the reason so few wounded reached the rear area was because the troops retreated too fast to save them.

Omar tasted another puff of tobacco to sooth his nerves. Post-Armageddon cigarettes were far cruder than the old world’s, but also more direct in delivering their effects.

My family. What has happened to us?

Of course he had always known that his children would leave home someday. The pain of watching them make off for a new life without you is a hardship for which every parent prepares but it still comes as a bitter pill. But that pain was meant to be shared with the one woman he had ever loved, his beautiful wife, Anita.

He turned his eyes to the King sized bed. The sheets on one-half of that bed were asunder from a night of tossing and turning. On the other side the sheets remained neatly tucked, having been unused for the third night in five.

It seemed to Omar he no longer shared his home with his wife. She had found a new home. Or an obsession. An obsession that threatened to devour not only her time and attention, but her sanity.

For a long time now Anita Nehru no longer lived at the A-frame house along the coast of Harveys Lake. For a long time now Anita Nehru lived in Hell.

Anita Nehru walked in sluggish strides along a catwalk enclosed in heavy glass. A line of containment pens the size of small gymnasiums stretched below, all with transparent ceilings.

One pen held a large predator known as a Shellsquid. A study of the radiation damage done to the creature’s stem cells suggested it came from the same world as the Duass. At the moment the creature rested silently in one corner with its tentacles withdrawn inside what resembled a conical shell.

Anita paused and stared at the predator with a blank gaze. Bags carried under her eyes. The white lab coat she wore smelled from two days’ worth of sweat and wear. Her once-striking long black hair hung in tangled strands.

She moved on-zombie-like-to the next pen. This one presented the biggest puzzle in all of the Red Rock Research Facility. The creature in Large Specimen Containment Area Number Three had been in custody for several years.

Not so long ago, this fifteen-foot tall Stick Ogre resembled a horrific combination of a walking-stick insect and a bald humanoid. Stick Ogres fed primarily on various tree leaves and fruit and their excrement proved not only highly pungent, but highly fertile.

While quite capable of defending their nesting areas-even using small trees as clubs-Stick Ogres usually remained quiet and reclusive.

That had changed in the blink of an eye last year.