Jerry called the farm and Randy answered.
Jerry outlined the situation and told him what they were going to do. All Randy said was “Roger, dad. Good luck and try to keep Eddie from shooting himself in his own ass.” Jerry didn’t think this was a time for levity, but his son was always ready to lighten the mood. Eddie was listening and when he smiled at his friend’s remark, Jerry figured a little humor might help ease the stress of what Eddie had seen through his binoculars.
~ ~ ~
Jerry never understood how or why his son and Eddie, a rail-thin, carrot-top with geeky black-rimmed glasses became friends. Eddie had been a snappy dresser for being from a poor family, where Randy dressed in his farm clothes for everything but when he attended church. While they both liked playing video games, Eddie was more into games like Call of Duty and Modern Warfare while Randy played more of the first-person adventure games.
For whatever common ground they had found, one day Randy had brought Eddie home for dinner when the boy’s mom had gone off somewhere. The boy became a part of the family and helped out for a few extra bucks Jerry could offer him. He worked hard and paid attention to what he was doing and didn’t hurt himself. He was a good influence on his son, and Jerry just started treating him like a second son.
~ ~ ~
The three men took a five minute break, drank some water and relieved themselves. They made sure they had everything they were going to need to go check on the men in the parking lot and with a nod to Terrill, who’d gotten back into the driver’s seat of the truck. Jerry and Eddie went back to the billboard sign to wait.
They heard the truck start up and leave, heading back the other way down the two lane highway away from town. Jerry and Eddie moved up beside the road separating them from the food mart’s parking lot. This time, as close as they were, Eddie could tell the men, at least one of them, was alive.
Leaning close to Jerry he whispered “Tony, on the left has moved his legs. He’s not the way I saw him sitting last time. That must be Jeff on the right, but he ain’t moved.”
“Good. Maybe they’re both still alive and Jeff is just sleeping. Now we wait for Terrill.”
Terrill had taken the truck away from town as quietly as the big diesel truck could. A mile down the road he slowed and watched his rear view mirror to make sure he wasn’t being followed. After 10 minutes, he turned the truck around and accelerated to better than 70 miles per hour.
There was a long straight road going into town, and they agreed that they’d need the truck if they were going to rescue the two men, so Terrill drove into town with the engine off, coasting the truck the last quarter mile, past the white wood fence he’d seen headed out of town, and into a parking lot across the street from the food market that Jerry had described. The truck rolled quietly to a stop and Jerry and Eddie both had their rifles up, ready to defend Terrill.
Everyone waited.
The minutes passed and no one moved.
Sweat dripped from Jerry face. He hoped whoever had left Jeff and Tony tied up had left the area until evening, or better yet, for good, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Jerry and Eddie scanned the food mart and the building to the east.
He saw Terrill slip out from the truck and look through the big binoculars while staying mostly hidden. Terrill also scanned the area before giving the hand signal which told the two men laying in the weeds the coast appeared clear.
Jerry looked over at Eddie. “Okay, I’m going to cover you as you cross the road and hide in that ditch,” he said pointing at the corner of the parking lot nearest the highway. “When you’re there and ready, you’ll cover me as I go see how those guys are tied up.
“If I can cut ‘em loose, I will and you’ll give Terrill the signal to get the truck over here pronto and you’ll cover the both of us as we load both the men up.
“If I can’t get them loose, we’ll get back across the road and come up with another plan.”
“Got it, boss,” was all Eddie said. They’d gone over this plan already and he knew what had to be done. Playing video games all his life, he’d killed thousands of video graphic people and zombies. He kept telling himself, that’s what Jerry was asking him to do now, but in this case, they really would probably shoot back at him and like Jerry said, there is only one life in this game.
“Good boy. Go when you’re ready.”
With one last good look through his binoculars, Eddie rose to his knees, slung the binoculars behind him, grabbed his rifle with both hands and dashed across the road. Jerry watched the front of the store while Terrill watched the other buildings. He missed seeing what would have been a perfect slide into second base, had Eddie played baseball.
Nothing moved in the store and Jerry waited a good two minutes after Eddie gave him the signal that he hadn’t seen anything either. Swallowing, his throat was dry and he wished for a drink of water, but knowing he’d left his canteen belt with the truck, Jerry knew he had to go now.
He admitted to himself he was scared. Someone had tied those men up and he had no idea where they were at. He did know they weren’t zombies. He knew there were humans, probably watching them, ready to shoot and use him and Eddie as bait for the zombies.
“Damn,” he said quietly, then just as sincerely asked God to watch over him as he carried out his own stupid idea. He wasn’t as fast as Eddie had been, but he knew both Eddie and Terrill were watching his back and covering him.
He moved down the ditch before crossing the road so he would be on the side of the store where there were no windows. He looked toward the parking lot and could see Eddie was scanning left to right and not watching him. That was just what he’d asked the kid to do.
Jerry got to the corner of the store and was only about 15 feet from the men. He slung his rifle over his back and unsheathed the eight-inch hunting knife. This was his signal to Eddie that he was ready to approach the men in the parking lot. Eddie nodded and gave Terrill the signal that Jerry was about to approach the men in the open.
Eddie scanned two more times before giving the go ahead and Jerry crouched as he ran to the men.
Tony raised his head as Jerry approached and tried to say something, but Jerry shushed him. They were trussed up with speaker wire and Jerry’s knife had trouble cutting through.
“They’re over there,” Tony rasped through dry lips. “We’re bait for the zom…gren…on…eff” was all he got out before the first shot was fired. The shot hit the pavement a foot from where Jerry was kneeling.
“Oh shit,” was all Jerry could say as he struggled with all the wiring that bound the men to the pole.
He heard Eddie’s rifle fire and a window shatter in the building on the left side of the store. He didn’t look up because he was afraid of cutting the guys’ wrists he was trying to free. Another shot from Eddie broke the silence and two more shots came from the building. This time they were aiming at Eddie and not Jerry, which was both good and bad.
He heard his truck start up and knew it’d be here in less than 15 seconds.
Three more shots came from the building and Eddie returned each shot with one of his own as Terrill screeched into the parking lot as fast as the big truck could maneuver. He slid the truck between Jerry and the building from where the shots were coming, slamming on the brakes as he was shifting it into park before jumping out to help Jerry load the two men.
The unmoving Jeff was freed first so Terrill could grab him while Jerry worked on freeing Tony.
“Oh, Christ,” Terrill exclaimed as he pulled Jeff’s jacket. He immediately let go, instead grabbed at the fragmentation grenade that fell out of Jeff’s shirt. Jerry didn’t see it and didn’t look up. He was focused on cutting through the last wire holding Tony to the post.
Jerry never saw the grenade or the last act of heroism by the former soldier.
~ ~ ~
Terrill’s life ended six seconds after the pin popped off the grenade inside of Jeff’s jacket, but it stretched out long enough for Terrill to fee
l like he was redeeming himself for the life he’d lived.
In those six seconds, Terrill’s life did flash before him.
He’d been a coward in elementary school, beaten up and picked on by others because he was small, weak and passive. In high school he had few friends and played no sports because he had always been afraid of losing or getting hurt. When he joined the Army after high school, he hoped they’d teach him to get over his fears and help instill in him the courage he never had.
He became a communications specialist and found he was not like a lot of other soldiers who were a little afraid, but ready to fight. It was what they were trained to do and he heard others talk about how they were ready to be deployed and see some action.
Terrill joined their bravado talk even though inside he knew he was a lot afraid.
His first tour as a private, he was assigned to a signal company and spent most of his time fixing radios. It was boring, but not life threatening. After 12 months he was rotated back stateside. Six months later he was scheduled to be deployed again with his battalion.
He was assigned to a transportation unit and worked for the unit’s commander, Lt. (P) Luther Morgan, as radio operator. Where ever Lt. Morgan went in the field, Terrill was there with the radio.
Lt. Morgan was a West Point graduate on the fast track for promotions and was currently on his third tour in Afghanistan. He’d already served as a platoon leader for an infantry unit twice, and was waiting for his captain’s bars to be awarded. The IED which killed him exploded and the HUMVEE flipped 270 degrees landing on the passenger side. The lieutenant, outside whose door the device exploded, was dead before the truck landed. His upper body landed in Terrill’s lap.
Morgan’s captain’s bars were awarded posthumously.
The specialist driving the HUMVEE died hours later from shrapnel wounds.
Terrill was stunned, but never lost consciousness. He felt a lot of pain in his right leg when it was crushed, and he knew he was partially deaf. He couldn’t move because of the equipment crushing him and he cried and prayed and screamed for help as soldiers from his unit struggled to cut him and the others out of the HUMVEE, all while taking fire from insurgents. The fire from the explosion burned his right side with an intense pain like none Terrill had ever felt before.
He cried in the hospital and refused the medal offered him by the officer who visited him at Walter Reed. He just wanted to hide from the fear he always felt.
He started drinking after he left the hospital. He couldn’t hold the most menial job because he was drowning in the bottle. His family tried to help, they tried to get him to seek professional help, offered him money and a place to stay, but Terrill just wanted to be away from everyone. He was arrested several times for public intoxication and once for defecating in public.
Then the real end of the world came.
The coward in Terrill hoped he would die soon, but the man in Terrill lived on while those around him died. In the days and weeks after the fall, he saw others who died at the hands of vigilantes or the not-deads, but Terrill kept on living.
When Mike stopped on the highway, Terrill made the choice then that he was not ready to die. For some reason, he believed, God kept him alive for some purpose. He still drank, and he kept to himself all the horrors he’d seen, but Jerry was a nice guy, never pried into his past, offered him respite from the hell with which he lived and made him feel like he was part of something greater.
Jerry even gave him a bible, one of the small ones with just the New Testament and Proverbs, when Terrill was seen reading from one Jerry kept in the living room. He never said a word, just handed Terrill the bible and went back to what he was doing.
Terrill kept the bible with him always and read it when he felt the need. He remembered a passage from John 14:1, and it was the last thing he thought before the grenade extinguished his life: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.”
~ ~ ~
Terrill grabbed the grenade, pulled it deep into his curling up body, putting the light pole between himself and Jerry and Tony, and his life ended.
The concussion from the blast stunned Jerry, but between the concrete which held and protected the light pole from cars, and Terrill’s heroic sacrifice he was able to get Tony in the truck.
There was still sporadic gunfire from Eddie and the building as he reached for Jeff.
Jeff’s head lolled to one side and Jerry knew that the neck was obviously broken. Jeff’s life had been shortened long before he’d been discovered by Jerry. He left the former auto mechanic where he was and jumped in the truck. It was still running thanks to Terrill and Jerry was able to drive it up to Eddie. He heard two hits on the truck, but they hadn’t hit anything important and the truck kept on running. Eddie dove into the bed of the truck before it had even stopped and hollered at Jerry to “Go! Go! Go!”
Jerry matted the accelerator, tears rolling freely down his face at the sacrifice Terrill had made for them.
“Get a good seat up there, soldier,” he said as the truck raced out of town. “You deserve the best.”
Chapter 3
J erry drove the truck away from Odenville at a speed which was not fast enough to outrun the memories, but fast enough that if anyone was following them, they’d play hell catching up.
Eddie, having jumped in the back, hung onto one of the quads with one hand and his rifle with the other. He was watching out for anyone following them as well.
Jerry stayed on the highway to put as much distance between them and anyone following from the store. He drove faster than he had since high school and kept a firm grip on the wheel. He paid very close attention to what was ahead of him. There weren’t many vehicles left abandoned on the road, but there were enough and Jerry didn’t want hit any of them. If someone was following, Jerry was sure Eddie would let him know by shooting first.
After several minutes he slowed to a more reasonable rate of speed and cresting a hill he saw a dirt road off to the right. He slowed quickly and made a wide turn so as not to raise any dust. He hoped Eddie was hanging on tightly to the quad in back. He drove slowly until the highway was out of sight and he pulled over and shut the truck off.
The silence was nearly absolute, except for a few birds complaining about having their territory infringed upon. He quietly got out of the truck and listened. He heard vehicles in the distance so he grabbed his rifle from the front of the truck as Eddie jumped out of the back and stood behind him. Both had their rifles at their shoulder, ready to shoot, but the vehicles never slowed at the dirt road and soon they were far enough away that both men lowered their weapon.
They looked at each other.
The smile Eddie had perpetually worn was gone. He’d been the only one who had a perfect view of Terrill’s sacrifice and it had changed him…aged him.
For Jerry, it had been a trial he’d never expected having to face, but he’d done it without thinking about it too much, though he knew he’d play it over in his head for the rest of his life.
No words needed to be said and neither of them really wanted to talk about it anyway. They turned their attention to Tony in the back seat. Jerry opened the rear door on the crew cab. Tony, who Jerry had unceremoniously manhandled into the truck, was lying on the back seat, feet on the floor and arms hiding his eyes from the light.
Tony’s clothes were dirty and sweat dried. From the stains and smell, it looked like the boy had been tied up there overnight. He was obviously in a lot of pain.
There was dried blood from his nose on his face, and more in his blonde hair. He had taken a beating, and it was plain to see bruises on his face and arms. His right ankle was at an odd angle, but Jerry didn’t know how to set it and he knew Eddie didn’t either.
“How you feeling, Tony,” Jerry asked gently.
Not moving his arms, he rasped “Not good, Jerry. I feel real bad. They beat us up real good.”
“We’re going to get you home, Tonedeaf,” Eddie a
dded, using his friend’s made up nickname. “Don’t you worry,” It was Eddie and Jerry who worried when Tony leaned over and threw up on the floor. There was blood in it.
“Sorry,” he barely whispered. Jerry grabbed a red handkerchief to wipe the young man’s face and Eddie held the canteen up to his lips.
“No sweat, Tony. Just take a sip of this. There you go, not too much,” Jerry said to him. “I’ll clean it up after we get you home. That’s what we’re going to do right now, as fast as we safely can.” Eddie took the hint and went around the other side of the truck. Jerry shut the door, careful to not shut Tony’s foot in it. The way the foot was angled, it might very well be broken.
Jerry climbed in to the driver’s seat and started up the truck. Once they were on their way he indicated the CB and told Eddie to tell the shelter that they were on their way back with Tony.
“Don’t give them any details except that we got Tony,” Jerry told his son’s friend. “Tell them we’ll be there in less than an hour and coming in the same way Kellie had.” Eddie knew Jerry was going to drive the long way around and enter through the back gate of Jerry’s farm. It would take longer, but it kept them off the main roads, away from anyone who might be looking for them and Jerry would drive right up to the entrance of the shelter. If someone were listening on the CB to their conversation, they’d be looking for someplace an hour away instead 20 minutes from where they were now.
Jerry drove in silence and Eddie sat quietly with his thoughts. Tony moaned, but there was nothing Jerry or Eddie could do to help him except get him back to the shelter.
He arrived at the back gate which was off a dirt road and well hidden by over growth. Jerry pulled out the key from the ashtray. He hadn’t been here in months and Eddie had to move some brush out of the way. The chain was rusted, but the lock had been coated with grease to protect it from the weather. Eddie opened the gate and after Jerry had pulled through he closed and re-locked it before climbing back in the truck.
Hell Happened Page 6
