Anthony DeCosmo - Disintegration

Nina’s voice spoke from his radio headset, "Are you going to tell me where you learned to fly helicopters?"

He smiled to himself.

"I just picked it up."

– The two Apaches swooped in low over the lake and banked hard as they arrowed for the estate. The mechanical whirl of the turbojets and the heavy pounding of the rotors echoed across the water basin.

"Well this changes things," Trevor radioed Nina.

He could still feel her eyes-sharper than the laser targeting mechanism-on his chopper.

She grumbled, "The convoy should be back here in twenty minutes or so."

Trevor beamed. What a glorious day for humanity’s comeback!

"I’ll land on the helipad next to the mansion; you go to the fields to the west. Wait until every…one…sees…"

Trevor’s voice drifted and he shivered in his flight suit.

Bodies lay strewn in front of the mansion porch and around the driveway.

"Oh shit."

"What?" But Nina saw.

He commanded, "Put down at the crossroads by the church, I’m landing on the pad. Rally at the main entrance."

"Roger that."

The choppers split.

Stone landed his ride with a quick, heavy thud. He opened the canopy and retrieved his M4 then jogged along the driveway with his head on a swivel. He desperately wanted to start searching but first he had to meet Nina.

On the way to the main gate, he spied a dead German Shepherd and two killed Rottweilers. Primitive arrows had pierced one of the dead dogs. The other two showed massive stabbing traumas from knives or spears.

The K9s were not the only dead things on the lawn.

Trevor found the corpses of humanoid hostiles with bodies similar to man. They wore clothing made of animal hides and woven plants. The tribesmen had pale skin, elongated fingers and not one trace of body hair. Near the dead aliens lay bows and arrows, knives made of wood, and heavy clubs.

Trevor did not stop until he reached the main gate. Nina, her Apache parked near the church, joined him.

Facing the unknown together forced the two to act in unison, with no wasted words and no stray thoughts. Trevor ordered that they secure the ‘barn’ behind the mansion first. She followed his orders without question.

There, at the nest egg of the K9s, they found two dead Dobermans but twice that number in chewed attackers. The K9s had held the barn, keeping safe the pups and mothers-to-be.

Stone dispatched two Greyhounds to the farms with hand-written warnings tucked in their collars. The warnings commanded: ESTATE ATTACKED. HUNKER DOWN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Trevor and Nina next entered the mansion through the back door. In the main hallway, they found the remains of battle. Bullets had ripped away plaster chunks from walls. Blood from one K9 and three dead tribesmen mixed in pools on the floor. The space there felt warm and musty and a fine dust floated about.

Lori Brewer sat on the floor propped against a wall loosely holding a. 357 magnum revolver. The Doberman named Ajax hovered next to Lori, panting.

Stone knelt next to her. She struggled with her breath to make words: "Oh…shit…they just kept coming…I could hear them outside."

Trevor gave her a quick examination while Nina stood guard. He saw no wounds other than the exhaustion and fear that had caused her collapse.

"I heard shots. I couldn’t get out there 'cause the god damn dogs wouldn’t let me go."

Trevor smiled, a little, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"They were doing their job."

Trevor turned his attention to Ajax. That dog had no information other than that the house remained secure.

"Stay here. You’ll be safe here. I’ll be back. Jon will be back soon, too."

Lori nodded. Nina and Trevor went outside, leaving Ajax to keep the mansion safe.

The two checked the apartments above the garage and found Evan Godfrey hiding in his closet. After telling Godfrey to stay put, Trevor led Nina off the estate grounds with the aim of searching the church. Their plans changed when they heard a groan from the dock. There they found two people.

Trevor recognized the first person as hailing from Stonewall’s mortar teams: a chubby fellow with a "Maryland Terrapins" sweatshirt. Blood from a massive gash on the fellow’s neck drenched that sweatshirt. His dead hand held an empty AR-15 rifle. Shell casings from the weapon surrounded the nearby corpses of two primitive attackers.

However, the groan had come from the second person: Sal Corso. He lived, for the moment, despite four arrows driven deep into his body.

Nina helped Sal into a sitting position against the boathouse. His lungs drew his last breaths but Corso’s hand still gripped an empty pistol in the vain hope of continuing the fight.

"What happened?" Nina asked sternly.

Sal coughed blood. "They came out of the-aarrgg-woods…a couple dozen of ‘em."

He started to fade, then snapped, "Not long after you left… musta been watching… bastardi…"

Nina interrogated in an unyielding voice: "What’s the status here? Casualties?"

Sal spoke before her questions finished. He might not have heard her at all.

"They…they left…oh Christ, this hurts…I think there’s still a bunch of our people hold up in the church…awwwggg…I dunno ‘bout mansion…they were all over us…"

Suddenly his eyes widened as much as a dying man’s eyes can widen.

"Sheila…they took Sheila."

Sixty minutes later, Trevor convened a meeting in the Command Center on the second floor of the mansion. Nearly everyone who lived within walking distance, including those who had been a part of the airport convoy, crowded into the room. Stonewall entered last.

"We think they're gone," Trevor said but he could not be sure; with the bulk of his Grenadiers still on their mission to the north, he could not dispatch scouts. "Before Sal died he told us they'd been gone for about an hour but-"

"Frank Dorrance."

Stonewall’s voice derailed Trevor's thought.

"What’s that?"

"His name," Stonewall explained. "Most of you were already well acquainted with Mr. Corso. Frank had not yet had the pleasure to become better known in our community."

"I see," Trevor said, but he did not.

"Frank lost two children back in June. I met him outside of Martinsburg, West Virginia."

"West Virginia?" Trevor repeated. "I thought he was from Maryland."

"Because he wore a Maryland University football shirt. I had the opportunity to learn about the man beyond his favorite sports teams. He was over weight despite two months of near starvation, yet no one worked harder. I saw fit to assign him to a mortar team."

Woody Ross recalled, "He did a man’s job at the battle of Harper Tavern."

"I see," Trevor said again.

"I thought you should know the names of those who died under your command."

Nina changed the conversation: "Let's get the choppers in the air."

Stonewall had more to say on a different subject. "She’s probably still alive."

"What?" Lori Brewer gasped from across the room.

Woody "Bear" Ross’ said in his deep voice, "The raiders were from the ‘Tribe of the Red Hand.’ ‘Least that’s what we call em’. They take human slaves."

Stonewall drawled, "We drew engagements against many of their number during our march. They are what your database would call a ‘primitive and organized’ force. Yes, I believe that would be the description."

Ross said, "Each will have at least one hand stained red with blood. This is some kind of rank. They look like us ‘cept they have no hair and their eyes are all the same color. "

"Almost ivory in shade," McAllister said. "I’m sure a physical examination will produce more points of differentiation. I believe the most important information is that they appear to abhor all machinations of our modern, technological society. They fight with primitive weapons and make their encampments in the wild. From what we saw on our journey north, they divide their tribes into a series of smaller camps, spread out but close enough for cooperation on the hunt. You’ll find them in clusters."