Anthony DeCosmo - Disintegration

Jon knew they neared The Order’s facility when they ran into a gathering flock of converts along the riverbank north of Allentown.

Reverend Johnny tore into the converts picking and choosing targets based on complexion. He saved several of the near-zombies and dispatched a chubby female missionary of Voggoth and her box of slug-like implants.

After, the exhausted convoy camped at the Lehigh Valley Airport.

During the night, they fought off several more waves of ghouls, a troll, and a cross between a grizzly bear and a horse.

Ames broke her arm when a shipping container serving as a battlement toppled. Johnny set the bone in a makeshift splint. Fortunately, Ames could still shoot.

Time, Jon knew, was not on their side. Did Trevor live? If so, for how much longer? Besides, they could not rest: not with the denizens of Allentown attacking every hour. They needed to find and assault The Order's facility while they had the strength and supplies to do so.

Shortly after sunrise, he formed a scouting party and, with Reverend Johnny pointing the way as well as Stonewall and Shepherd in tow, found The Order’s base on the grounds of an industrial park. They watched from a rooftop far away.

Fifteen-foot organic green walls protected a variety of structures inside. Those structures included a pair of strange domes reaching two-stories tall, a number of small square buildings, and one particularly large rectangle.

Outside the grounds roamed Spider Sentries, robbed figures with swords, and varying numbers of human converts in raggedy civilian clothing filing in and out of the compound.

Jon lowered his binoculars and muttered, "Wow. So that’s it, huh?"

"Yes, that is it," the Reverend answered.

Shep asked Brewer, "The question is, do you got a plan?"

"Yes, in fact, I’ve got a plan. Well, sort of an outline of a plan… kind of."

Johnny: "Will it deliver destruction unto our enemies?"

"Or destruction unto us, I suppose."

"The Order are an arrogant bunch," Reverend Johnny knew. "They believe they can do whatever you can do, better. Think of it this way: if you pinch them, they will pinch you back but harder. If you kick them, they will kick you harder."

Jon nodded. "I see."

"That makes one of you," Shepherd said. "So what have you got up your sleeve?"

"I plan to pinch them. And then dare them to pinch me back."

Stonewall asked, "We’re going to-what’s the word? — ‘goose’ them?"

"Mr. Brewer," Reverend Johnny warned, "Have I fully conveyed the magnitude of the monstrosities that will be unleashed upon us?"

"On us, Reverend Johnny? No, no. On you. After all, they know you, right?"

Reverend Johnny swallowed hard and said, "May the Lord have mercy on my soul."

Jon’s forces stayed hidden as a 'Chariot' eased into the air from the courtyard within The Order’s outpost, and soared away to the west. He could not imagine a less aerodynamic airship.

Essentially a big square, The Order's facility covered an area equal to four football fields. One large gate remained open on the north side to accommodate the influx of new recruits.

Inside that square waited two strange domes, several small buildings, and a main structure resembling a large shoebox with veins running through its green walls.

The fortress sat in the center of a massive parking lot. To the north, across from the open gate, stretched three hundred yards of dead cars and pavement followed by trees and grassland.

To the east and south lay nearly a square mile of empty blacktop so wide open that any attacking force from that direction would be dangerously exposed.

To the west, another fifty yards of parking lot then a grassy patch followed by squat, 1980’s vintage office buildings.

A sour, rotting odor emanated from the walls of The Order’s compound, cast about by blasts of a sharp, cold wind as if the facility caused a storm to brew, yet the white clouds in the afternoon sky suggested otherwise.

Three spider sentries patrolled outside the smelly walls and one inside. Nearly two dozen robbed figures roamed the grounds within the battlements; the Reverend identified them as ‘monks’, the lowliest of The Order’s ranks armed with small swords.

Behind the tree line to the north, Reverend Johnny checked his watch and announced, "The appointed hour has arrived, my friends," to Stonewall McAllister, Sanchez, and Simms.

With a helping hand from above, Johnny hauled himself on to the back of Stonewall’s horse while struggling with a heavy M240-B machine gun.

Stonewall remarked, "Your hands must be endowed with incredible strength."

"The Lord is my strength. Your hands smell like gasoline."

"Indeed."

"Let us begin this work in the name of the Father and deliver vengeance unto-"

"Tallyho!" Stonewall cut the sermon short.

The three horses galloped from cover screaming and whooping as they swerved between abandoned cars and trucks.

Sanchez and Simms fired shots from rifles in the direction of the compound. Stonewall deposited Reverend Johnny among the dead cars of the parking lot.

"But God will smash the heads of His enemies," the Reverend shouted as he rested the heavy weapon on its tripod atop the hood of a compact car. "Crushing the skulls of those who love their guilty ways!"

A heavy rat-tat-tat-tat and a rain of jingling shell casings broke the calm afternoon. Johnny took aim at a Spider Sentry near the main gate more than one-hundred yards away. His machine gun-chattering and shaking fiercely-blew apart tires, windshields, and skipped bullets across the pavement.

The Sentry counter-attacked, marching forward on its creepy legs and firing the Gatling-like gun embedded in its faceplate. Streams of hard spores aimed first at the Reverend and then at the other riders who galloped amidst the dozens of dead cars. Those projectiles struck Simms' horse, killing it and sending her tumbling to the pavement behind a burned-out mini van.

Stonewall harshly spurred his steed, tugged the reigns, and came about to her rescue. Shaken but unhurt, Simms climbed aboard his horse.

Sanchez closed on the Sentry and slapped its round head with rifle fire. Then Johnny found his mark as a bullet tore through a leg joint; the sentry wobbled in search of balance. The Reverend finished the creature off with one last burst.

"Feel my wrath, non-believer!"

A strange alarm erupted within the compound; it sounded like someone trying to speak through a mouth full of cotton balls.

As Sanchez incinerated another Spider Sentry with a firebomb, The Order’s main line of defense prepared to engage.

The domes inside the compound rose into the air…ten feet…twenty feet…forty feet…sixty feet high. They resembled building-sized mushrooms. Tendrils drooped from the undercarriage of the caps. A massive red and black eye hovered from a thick tether.

The dome-the mushroom cap above the dangling eye and the bush of tendrils-vibrated and then spun, releasing its own ordnance: a hundred flat discs-like saw blades-flew out from the monstrosity in a swarm of deadly Frisbees.

Stonewall, with Simms on his horse, ducked behind a toppled commercial delivery truck. He heard the sharp discs smack into the opposite side: thwang-thump; thwang-thump.

Sanchez galloped for the cover of an old Ford pickup with massive ‘monster truck’ tires. His horse made it. Sanchez’s body made it. His head did not.

Johnny-not in the creatures' initial target zone-ran into clear view of the two mushroom-like Guardians, some one hundred and fifty yards away inside the compound. He locked onto the solitary, massive eye of the lead monster.

"I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword will devour flesh — the blood of the slaughtered and the captives, and the heads of the enemy leaders!"