Anthony DeCosmo - Disintegration

Trevor glanced at Nina. She stood still but he could see every muscle in her body tighten in anticipation of the fight to come.

He returned his attention to his 'army'.

"It is time to decide. WILL YOU FIGHT?"

A few vacant eyes glowed alive. Isolated murmurs of ‘yes’ danced through the crowd.

"For our slaughtered families…for the enslaved children…for your lost lovers and murdered brothers…you are DEMONS waiting to be set loose."

More eyes filled with life. Heads nodded in approval.

"Think of all you lost. Think of what they have taken from you. Look at what they have made us! Who took our homes? Who killed our children? They are guilty! All of them! And they expect us to roll over and die? I say NO! They will take NOTHING MORE FROM ME!"

The words raced from his lips and he felt the power. It surprised Trevor that he could find the nerves to touch, the buttons to push. As he watched, he saw that ragtag army change into a mob of murderers.

Yes, maybe that was his gift. He could turn people into killers. Is that what the Old Man saw in him?

It did not matter. The ends, Trevor now realized, justified the means. He would turn them into barbarians if he needed to for it was his charge to save mankind in the name of all who had died in the flames of Armageddon.

"Unleash your hate now and…and…AND SLAUGHTER THE ENEMY! LET THIS BE THEIR GRAVEYARD! MAKE THIS THE DAY THE TIDE TURNED AND MAN’S VENGEANCE WAS DELIVERED TO THE INVADERS!"

Clenched fists and raised rifles pumped in the air.

Woody "Bear" Ross stepped forward.

"Three cheers for Trevor Stone!"

"Hoo-rah! Hoo-rah! Hoo-rah!"

Trevor shouted: "I’M TIRED OF WAITING FOR THOSE SONS-A-BITCHES! LET'S GO AND KICK THEIR ASS OFF OUR WORLD! NO MERCY! KILL THEM ALL! EVERY LAST FUCKING ONE OF THEM!"

The soldiers-policemen and garbage collectors, salesmen and teachers-roared in anger. Trevor had conjured the faces of dead friends, dead brothers and sisters, moms and dads, sons and daughters. They remembered living under the yoke of slavery and running in terror from ghastly creatures.

No more hiding. No more running. A thousand wrongs ached for vengeance.

"Sir, you may need this," Stonewall handed one of his Civil War era swords to Trevor. "Now I am prepared to follow you straight to Hell."

The weight of the blade felt good in Trevor’s hands. Natural.

Trevor sought out and locked eyes with Nina. He saw his lover there. He also saw a wolf.

"Nina…this is your moment. Seize it."

She smiled a smile to chill the darkest heart.

Trevor raised his sword.

"Charge!"

Benny Duda played the corresponding melody on his trumpet. The mass poured from higher to lower, roaring across the open killing field and into the woods below.

So many nightmares had come to Earth. So many hideous beasts and terrible creatures.

They had made one mistake: they had awoken the most horrible of beasts. They had awoken the vengeance of mankind. The day of reckoning had come. Man would no longer run and hide. Man was coming after the nightmares. Hunting them.

The ground trembled as the human stampede practically fell down the hill and collided with the alien army amidst the trees and rocky ground of the mountainside.

The forward tier of the Viking force stopped, stunned into inaction by the brazenness of the assault. The enemy raised rifles but had little time to fire for Trevor’s legion smashed into them not as a cohesive military formation but as a murderous, savage mob.

A few quick pops of rifle fire echoed through the dense forest; an explosion sent a trio of poncho-clad soldiers flying. However, the weapons of modern battle were quickly discarded in favor of more barbaric means: knives and rifle butts and swords and fists and teeth and fingernails and anything that could wound and kill.

This was no genius tactical maneuver. It was a frenzied swarm. Barbaric.

Unexpected.

Trevor spent his last five pistol shots as he raced forward, and then swung his sword. It cut through ponchos easily.

Brewer strangled a Viking fighter with his bare hands. Shep fired shotgun blasts until out of shot, and then swung the gun like a club.

"At the wrath of the LORD of hosts the land quakes, and the people are like FUEL FOR FIRE; No man spares his brother, each DEVOURS the flesh of his neighbor," boomed Revered Johnny as he swung his baseball bat with both hands.

Woody "Bear" Ross snapped the neck of one of the enemy. Cassy Simms held two pistols and fired and fired and fired while laughing hysterically.

The K9s bit and clawed, shredding disorientated Viking warriors into tatters.

Dustin McBride wrestled the gun off a foe then used it to pummel the creature to death.

"THAT’S ALL FOLKS!" Casey roared as he drove a bayonet into one of the poncho-wearing villains.

Stonewall joined the fray, skewering an enemy through the chest.

The Vikings returned fire in a chaotic fashion. Their columns had been prepared to thrust at a static defensive line, not repel a horde. They marched toward the mountaintop expecting to find a defeated, demoralized enemy' not maddened demons at close quarters.

For her part, Nina killed with precision.

While still jogging down the slope, she raised her M4 and squeezed the trigger once. A single bullet killed a single enemy.

She darted to her left as a pellet buzzed past her head, then back to her right to dodge another. Her weapon rose. Her eye found the mark. The trigger pulled. A bullet pierced a goggle on her opponent.

She raced forward again. Two Vikings-staggering backward in the face of the onslaught-noticed her approach. Their magnetic rifles discharged. She spun and jumped and rolled behind an Oak. The unfriendly rounds tore away tree bark.

Nina popped out on one knee, fired her third shot and with it killed a third alien; the gray and black colored poncho rolled lifelessly away.

The other enemy fired with shaky hands. His shots missed high. She launched her fourth of five bullets. It missed. The alien stepped behind the tree in search of cover.

Nina immediately took to her feet and sprinted around the other side of that tree. The sound of raging battle filling the forest hid the crunches of her feet on dried twigs and leaves. She surprised the alien from behind, placing the last of her five bullets into his skull at point blank range. The top of the poncho exploded into mess.

She pulled the extraterrestrial’s rifle from his dead hands and gazed at its slender, plain barrel and the oddly shaped firing mechanism. She did not understand the weapon's rate of fire, how to clean it, or even how to reload it. Nonetheless, she understood triggers well enough. She understood barrels.

The natural-born soldier raised the strange rifle and fired at the nearest enemy fighter. She felt no recoil, only a small vibration. No smoke discharged. No casing ejected. Yet the result was familiar: one of her enemies crumpled to the ground.

Nina charged again, further down the slope, hunting for her next victim. Her eyes sorted through the churning chaos of intertwined combatants and gave it order. She lived for the fight. Now she fought not because it was all she knew, but because she had so much to fight for. She fought for the right to live. She fought for the love she felt for Trevor. She fought for her people, not as an outcast warrior but as one with them.

Nina waded into the battle knowing that when the alien gun ran dry, she could turn to her knife and should that break she would use her bare hands.

Trevor led the mob of enraged humanity and chased the Vikings not only down the slope, not only over the stream and fields of the valley below, but also back up the second mountain.

The aliens ran in terror from the devils that pursued. They screamed in horror as they realized how horrid the monsters they had unleashed. They cried with fatal regret that they had dared come to this planet of death.