Anthony DeCosmo - Disintegration

Everything stopped. All the mixed words. All the confusing emotions. Time halted.

Nina Forest filled with fear. She had never felt vulnerable before and now she stood there with her heart wide open. He could have shattered her with a word. He could have killed her if he walked away.

Trevor moved his arms from her shoulders to her back and gently pulled her in close; her face buried in his chest and the warmth of their hug chased away the cold of the day.

She whispered softly, "I don’t know…I don’t even know what that means."

"We’re going to find out," he stroked her hair. "We’re going to find out, together."

The Apache buzzed over barren treetops with Nina at the helm. She scanned the horizon seeing the late morning sun, brown grass fields with isolated patches of ice and snow, and thin forests laid overtop a series of rolling hills. She did not see what they searched for.

Three vehicles following an old dirt road emerged from a cluster of light woods and stopped at the edge of a clearing.

The sound of the Apache somewhere in the sky filtered into the cabin of the lead Humvee. Trevor, riding in the passenger’s seat, worked the ‘send’ button on his radio.

"Hey, hawk eye, see anything?"

Nina’s bird banked and gained altitude.

She answered, "Look, for the third time, I’ve got nothing up here."

Trevor worked the radio again. "Well what am I paying you for?"

Her static-laced reply: "You haven’t paid me a nickel."

"Well, you haven’t earned it yet. Get on the stick and stop fooling’ around up there."

A series of colorful descriptive phrases-proposals as to how Trevor could best carry his radio-scorched the airwaves.

Trevor called to a different listener: "Jon, you doing’ better?"

Brewer stood on the open face of a hill flanked by Tolbert and Cassy Simms. Specks of white snow lay on the ground around them. All three wore camouflage and carried motorcycle helmets. Three hovercraft bikes sat parked behind them.

The elevated position afforded Jon a fantastic view of the countryside.

Jon answered over the shared radio frequency, "Ah, that’s a negative, Trev. All I can see is a helicopter flying around sort of aimlessly out there, like it’s lost or something."

More obscenities came from that pilot. Trevor, meanwhile, sat in the Humvee and let loose a series of frustrated mumbles. He warned the driver, Reverend Johnny, "If that lizard fed us a line I’ll rip its neck out."

"That may be difficult, my friend. I believe our informer has long since departed this area as per your instructions. I must confess my surprise at your decision to let it live."

"I was in a particularly good mood," Stone said in regards to the intelligent, bipedal lizard they had found on the outskirts of Shavertown and interrogated with the help of a Redcoat translation device. "Besides, if it’s right, there’s something pretty cool out here."

Overhead, Nina stopped in the midst of mumbling and radioed, "I think I see something. Look, about a half-mile northwest of your position."

Following her directions, the vehicles came upon a long, wide trench cutting across a meadow and ending at a bluff of red rock. A mound the size of a yacht rested there covered in upended soil and frosty snow. Nina’s chopper hovered above.

Trevor radioed Nina: "Um, howabout doin’ a sweep around here. I know how much you’d hate it if we got ambushed by a couple of Deadheads or something."

Nina’s rebuttal crackled over the radio: "Gee whiz, that’d just ruin my day."

The Apache dutifully circled the area.

The ground team disembarked. Omar (a smoldering smoke jabbed in his mouth), Jerry Shepherd, and a mass of K9s exited the convoy of SUVs.

"Here we go," Trevor said as they walked alongside the trench. "According to that lizard-thing, this ship crashed last summer, thanks to an F-16."

Omar said nothing; he couldn't-not with such a huge grin on his face.

Shepherd grabbed Reverend Johnny’s shoulder.

"Hey, what exactly is it that critter said we’d find here?"

"Some sort of industrial equipment built, no doubt, for the vilest of purposes."

"Not exactly," Trevor cut in. "The lizards who owned this ship were transporting an industrial-strength matter transfiguration device."

"A what?"

Omar explained, "A machine that manipulates matter on the molecular level."

"One more time?"

Trevor tried: "A big piece of equipment that some aliens were using to build things they needed by changing other things. Like, oh, taking wood and changing it into metal. For example, um, you ever watch Star Trek?"

"No."

"Really? You never watched Star Trek?"

"Seemed a right bit too far fetched for me," Shepherd considered the new world, scratched his head, and admitted, "Guess that makes me the asshole."

Trevor went on, "Okay. All things are made up of molecules. Wouldn’t it be neat-o if you could take something that you didn’t need and re-arrange its molecules into something you did need? Like taking a cardboard box and transforming it into glass for a solar panel."

Omar said, "I am thinking that Mr. Stone is being overly simplicity in his words. But if it is here then we have found the important piece of an alien factory."

"And that’s both good and bad," Trevor told them. "Something like that working for us could help with supply problems."

Reverend Johnny boomed, "Praise the all mighty! Where is the bad?"

"The bad," Trevor said, "is that it means the new arrivals on our planet have the means to set up their own heavy industry. It means, gentlemen, that they’re here to stay."

– Jon pointed to the map on the desktop in the Command Center.

"We found a bunch of Redcoats here, but they weren’t a problem after a few bursts from the artillery."

Trevor said, "It's been nearly a week since we broke them up, and there are still some of them around?"

"Shows you how lucky we got. They're tough, especially once they establish a position. Problem is, however many are left they are running out of food and ammo."

A week since the battle for Wilkes-Barre, the true scope of the victory was becoming apparent. Not only had they managed an against-all-odds rout of a larger, better-armed opponent, but the Redcoat army had slaughtered hundreds of hostile animals.

Before the battle, Wilkes-Barre hosted a den of nightmares. Not any more. Despite their defeat, the Redcoats had thinned the monsters in the city while also leaving behind their artillery, stores of the explosive powder used in those guns, and many chargeable Redcoat muskets.

Trevor did not want to waste the opportunity. Jon formed small Grenadier-assisted recon teams who spotted for artillery strikes on clusters of dangerous animals.

Trevor and Nina piloted the one remaining fully functional Apache in alternating shifts around the clock while Jon’s teams moved through the Wyoming Valley. From a multi-legged turtle the size of a garbage truck with the head of a praying mantis to a demoralized squad of Redcoats hiding inside a Dairy Queen surviving on very old Blizzard mix, the Apache, the captured artillery, and the ground teams worked in unison to eliminate the threats.

Better still, they found a dozen survivors. While badly malnourished, they were the toughest of the tough, for they had lived in the lion's den for months.

Trevor asked Jon, "So what do you think? We don’t need to rush things. All the same…"

"All the same," Jon caught on, "you’d like to have control of this city."

"It’d be a big step, but I’m patient. We still don’t have a lot of manpower."

Jon answered, "Wow, well, we can take this slow but I think we can have a good chunk of center city and the northern suburbs cleared out in a week."