Anthony DeCosmo - Disintegration

Trevor asked, "How many?"

"As I have indicated, they go to great lengths to hide their numbers. My best estimate is somewhere between three and four hundred."

Trevor sighed. With three armies approaching, he had hoped to outdo enemy quantity with quality. It now seemed that the Vikings alone would pose problem enough.

He transmitted, "Okay, then, you need to slow them down. Whether we live or die might just depend on how much of a pain in their ass you can be."

"I will endeavor to be as big a pain as possible."

The communication ended.

Dante, sitting in the co-pilot's seat, asked, "Now what?"

"Now we start our own little war up here."

"Let me get this straight, buddy. Two thousand Red Hand warriors marching toward us and to stop them we’ve got me, you, and about three hundred K9s? That sum it up?"

Trevor told Dante, "You’re forgetting something."

He changed to a different frequency and radioed, "So, sweet heart, you ready?"

Nina’s voice answered, "Roger that, we’re coming up on you."

Dante cocked an ear and, after a moment, heard the beating blades of two Apache helicopters.

"Okay, I get it, we've got the choppers. Still, man, ain’t these odds kind of shitty?"

Trevor answered him honestly, "Get used to it."

– "Let us labor with the strength of the Lord! Put your back into it, for Christ’s sake!" Reverend Johnny directed his words at the work party digging trenches, building earth walls, and clearing fields of fire along the summit of a ridge.

His workers wore t-shirts and heavy-duty boots; jeans and sweat pants, even a few in khaki shorts. Those men and women-some old, some young-once worked as teachers and retail clerks, waitresses and stock boys. Now they were something akin to army engineers.

Johnny’s ridge served as the first of three defensive lines atop three consecutive wooded mountains separated one by one by small valleys. In front of his position descended a forested slope. To his right and far below ran the lanes of Interstate 81 as that road cut through the mountains south of Wilkes-Barre.

The Reverend supervised a crew of nearly one hundred laborers and he knew that soon they would trade in their shovels and spades for rifles and mortars.

Jerry Shepherd's voice came from the radio Johnny carried: "We need to work faster, people, we need time on our side, and it ain’t there yet."

Reverend Johnny’s answer traveled the airwaves to a camouflage-painted Winnebago parked along the highway in the rear area of the ‘southern front.’

"We will endeavor to increase our pace, Mr. Shepherd, Lord willing these battlements will stand ready within the hour."

Shep, inside the mobile command post, did not bother to answer. He knew everyone in his command, including Johnny, understood the challenge ahead. It probably served no good to badger them but, for the time being, Shep could do little more than badger.

Estimates put the Viking army at less than three hours away. The newly christened General feared his men would not be ready for the fight. However, a piece of good news did arrive when Rhodes, dressed in worn BDUs and a Kevlar helmet, walked into the RV and informed, "The big guns are five minutes away."

Rhodes referred to a pair of the captured Redcoat artillery pieces.

"Good. We’ll need em’."

Shepherd turned his attention to a map drawn on construction paper. It approximated the area he aimed to defend but lacked scale. Shep’s mind saw not the crudely sketched lines but, rather, the force mustered to defend those lines. He mentally counted the assets at his command.

Assets? Now don’t go foolin’ yourself, Shep. You’ve got yourself a patchwork of people, half of which might just run at the first gunshot.

He could not really blame them. Most of the two hundred souls he directed had received some kind of basic training over the summer: marksmanship, weapon maintenance, and rudimentary tactics. That did not change the fact that most had no combat experience and while survival in the face of Armageddon had hardened their skin, shooting at and running from monsters did not compare to the chaos and focused carnage of battle.

Still, Shep worked with the dealt hand. He knew these people to be brave, for they had survived the end of the world. He knew them to be strong, for the weak had long since perished.

Instead of dealing with the intangibles, he re-examined the basic equation.

He knew Stonewall counted fifty riders in his two brigades and currently harassed the enemy flanks. Half of Shep’s remaining force worked under Johnny’s whip atop ‘Alpha’ hill. Most of the other one hundred hurriedly prepared a second line on ‘Bravo’ hill.

A third hill still waited to be transformed into the final line. Shep understood that victory did not depend on stopping the Vikings at the first line, or the second. It depended on reinforcements from Jon Brewer and Trevor before the Vikings could overrun the third. That, of course, depended in turn on Jon’s ability to win a quick victory.

So many ifs. So little time.

– Jon Brewer knew he faced one of the most perplexing assignments given to any military commander in history: defeat a pack of giant robots. He had to do it with one hundred human fighters resembling a ragtag militia armed with carbines, shotguns, and a few alien firearms, two of the captured Redcoat artillery pieces, and a half dozen armored vehicles including Strykers, Bradleys, and an Abrams tank.

His arsenal also included a full ton of the Redcoats’ explosive powder synthesized from Omar’s salvaged matter transfiguration machine. A little of that powder would be used to operate the artillery. Jon found other uses for the rest of the volatile chemical.

The field of battle? A 1970’s vintage shopping mall with Bon Ton and Sears anchor stores surrounded by a large parking lot.

To his advantage, Jon easily discerned the enemy’s approach: the robots would continue along Route 115 descending a mountain road into the valley leading to a major intersection north of the mall where the Cross Valley Expressway, Kidder Street, and Interstate 81 converged.

He prepared his forward positions on a grassy slope overlooking that intersection. The land there further aided his cause in that Rt. 115 led into the intersection via a long straightaway.

The first part of Jon’s plan placed abandoned cars on that patch of straight road.

Boylen-the big Irish guy-rigged those cars with explosives.

Jon, laying prone on the grassy bank at the intersection, raised his field glasses to survey the car bombs on the road ahead. Boylen sat nearby checking a makeshift detonator board.

Brewer muttered, "Wow, well, I hope this does the trick."

Major Tom Prescott's voice broadcast over the radio: "Hey Brewer, you out there?"

Jon answered the call, "Yeah, Tom, please don’t tell me the roof gave way."

"Relax; you got the US Army on the job. Both of the guns are up on the mall’s roof and, yeah, they’re holding. But, pardon my French, this was one heck of a job."

Jon relaxed… a little. The demo charges were in place and the artillery pieces were exactly where he wanted them. Two less things to worry about.

Nothing left to do now but wait for the 'Roachbots' to make contact.

– The Red Hands swarmed south on Route 11 like army ants. Several dozen human slaves-shackled-shambled along in the midst of that swarm porting sacks for their masters.

To the north of Pittston, Route 11 ran on the eastern side of the Susquehanna River. However, as it moved into the quaint downtown stretch of that small town’s Main Street, the route crossed the river via two bridges.

The northern most of those two bridges crossed to the same intersection where Trevor had first met Reverend Johnny during the battle with The Order’s missionary. The second-a quarter mile south of the first-led to a sedate riverside neighborhood.