Anthony DeCosmo - Empire

Trevor surmised, “Your own Battle of Five Armies. But you let them get to your front door step. You fought on their terms, not yours.”

“Yes,” George closed his fist and gnawed on a thumb knuckle. “I heard my people screaming…dying…ripped apart.”

“So you hid,” Stone knew the rest of the story. “You abandoned your people as they were slaughtered. You fled to the cave and you piled their bodies high to hide your hole. You stayed there and drew your pictures.”

“So…alone…” George mumbled.

Ashley broke in, “This has nothing to do with us! This has nothing to do with our son!”

George threw his eyes at her with anger but it was Trevor who spoke.

“Don’t bother, Ashley, you can’t reason with him. He came here to try and hurt me with all these revelations, to impress me that he could get by my dogs and guards, all to show he was one up on me because he figured a lot out while he was sitting in his cave. Beyond that, he doesn’t have a plan. Maybe some fantasy about killing me and taking my place, but even he’s not insane enough to really think that would work.”

George trembled, closed his eyes for a brief second, and then said, “I think I had one advantage you didn’t, little brother. Your pieces are put together like a puzzle, mine are all jumbled up and missing parts because I only had dad, not the right mom. From my mess, I was able to see the picture. Point is, sitting in my cave I had visions. Probably something in my genetic code slipping out because it was all afoul and whatnot. That’s how I put together the pieces. I dreamt everything. Our family line, our genes stretching back through time and around the world. You’ve got blood in your veins from every point on the compass.”

“A responsibility I never wanted,” Trevor said. “I can’t run from it and it’s made me do some things I regret. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just another monster that came to this world five years ago with the rest of them.”

“Oh yes, yes, you are,” George whispered. “I’ve seen it, Trevor. I’ve seen the monster inside you because it’s inside me, too. You think nature was going to choose some knight in shining armor? This isn’t a kid’s storybook. There’s messy work to be done. For every Sir Lancelot in your blood, there’s a Genghis Kahn. You were built for this, and they used a lot of parts from the dark side of the workshop. Me? Well, I didn’t get all the right parts.”

Trevor asked, “So what do we do now? What brilliant plan have you got… brother?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? Where do we go from here?”

Ashley said, “Please, let my son go.”

George pulled the knife away from Jorgie…then quickly returned the blade to his throat. Ashley gasped but no blood came, not yet.

“I was thinking,” George smiled. “Maybe I can’t be the man who saves the world. But maybe I can be the man who makes sure the world ends. Maybe I can be a bigger monster than even you, Trevor. I just have to slice this tender little throat and maybe that will do it. Of course, I’ll have to carve up the two of you just to make sure.”

A gentle smash sounded in the room, as if a glass knocked over. Trevor saw the balcony curtains flutter and a tiny canister roll on the floor.

Suddenly the room erupted in a blinding flash of light. A high-pitched tone blocked all sound from Trevor’s ears. He could smell the smoke of the detonation.

His eyes blurred. Figures burst into the room; the sharp report of gunfire. He felt a pair of hands on his shoulders throw him to the ground then the weight of a body on his back.

“Tango down! Tango down!”

More commotion, voices shouting.

Trevor blinked his eyes rapidly. They slowly cleared but his ears continued to ring.

Lights snapped on in the office. He heard Ashley crying.

Then he heard the voice that was most important to him.

“Fa-Father? I don’t feel so good.”

“Easy, easy does it,” came Gordon Knox’s voice as Trevor tried to stand.

Knox spoke to someone else: “Status?”

“Clear, Sir.”

Gordon Knox stood, releasing Trevor from his protective tackle.

Trevor stumbled to his feet.

“Jorgie? JB where are you?”

Gordon led Trevor by the arm because his vision remained fuzzy. Trevor realized I.S. agents filled the room. Someone must have heard the commotion in his office and alerted the standby tactical team.

Jorgie sat on the floor behind the desk with his hands on his ears saying, “I can’t hear anything.”

“Son…are you okay?”

“He’s okay,” the voice of Benjamin Trump said. “Got a good bump on the head, though.”

Trevor turned to the blurry figure who sounded like his father-in-law. He put a hand on the older man’s shoulder and said, “It was you? You alerted I.S.?”

“Haven’t been sleeping much, not with what happened in the den the other day. I heard something going on, snuck up the steps and peeked in the door. Instead of rushing in and getting us all killed, I figured I’d call in the cavalry.”

“Good job,” Trevor said as his eyes cleared a little more. Then he knelt to the ground and hugged his son.

Ashley staggered over, nearly crawling on the floor and calling for, “JB!”

The boy reacted to his mother’s voice. “Mommy? Mommy,” he cried softly and jumped as fast as he could into her arms.

Grandpa came over and hugged both his daughter and grandson.

“Sir,” one of the Internal Security agents examined the prone form of the intruder. “He’s still alive, barely.”

Trevor staggered to George Junior who lay on his back. He did not look so scary with all the lights on. More sad than anything else.

Blood flowed from a bullet wound to his skull. His eyes fluttered as his life drained.

“George, tell me,” Trevor spoke softly. “You said something about my son being special. What was it George? What do you know that I don’t?”

“Hey Richie…don’t…don’t stop…don’t stop fighting. That was my…my mistake.”

“My son, George. What about my son?”

“Maybe…maybe I’ll meet our father…Rich…I’d like that.”

The billboard blared, “Keep Yelling Kids! They’ll Stop!”

Stonewall cast an eye at that tribute to commercialism but noted, wryly, that yes, he and his men would, indeed, stop.

2 nd Mechanized Division approached the South Carolina border on Interstate 95. Infantry in a collection of ‘uniforms’ ranging from army fatigues to football team t-shirts marched in uneven order along the shoulders of what had once been the north bound and south bound lanes of the highway, forming four distinct lines. The men and women of the division carried gear in backpacks, duffel bags, purses, shopping bags, and wheeled suitcases making them resemble less an army and more a ragtag band of grubby hitchhikers.

Their weapons consisted of hunting rifles, shotguns, and some military-grade carbines; a variety of arms requiring a variety of bullets, a situation that created constant supply challenges.

Cavalry units formed a loose picket line in the distance ahead while crawling APCs, Humvees, and civilian-model vehicles clogged the middle of the road.

General Stonewall McAllister trotted along on horseback with Captain Kristy Kaufman as well as his bugler-freckle-faced Benny Duda-at his side and a perfectly blue sky above. The terrain ahead appeared flat and featureless; except for gaudy billboards promoting the “South of the Border” tourist stop.

Kaufman finished the most recent intelligence report: “There are no signs that the Hivvans have sent reinforcements from Columbia to support the supply depot at Dillon. That means the garrison there is on their own.”