Hell Happened (Book 1)

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  Randy and Eddie had entertained John and Hannah and kept them from being underfoot and their minds off the storm until they were tired. Every so often the people downstairs could hear the laughter and giggles coming through the open door to the boys’ room until the little ones had retired back to their mom’s room for more sleep.

  About 9 o’clock that morning, the winds died down to almost calm for about an hour. The eye of the storm was passing nearly overhead of them. The winds returned in a hurry with the same ferocity for another six hours. It had been a big hurricane and Jerry knew there would be damage to his farm. The storm continued through the morning and didn’t noticeably begin slacking off until late afternoon.

  It was 7 p.m. when Jerry finally believed it was finally safe enough for him and Randy to go check on the cattle. The winds had died down considerably and they could hear rain falling, but not as hard as it had been. They donned raingear Jerry had kept in the basement. He slid one of the walkie-talkies inside his rain coat after testing it with the one Randy had and the one Mike was using. Everyone had their own walkie-talkie now and it gave a feeling of safety. Randy put his in his front pocket so he could get at it easily under his rain gear.

  Jerry undogged the front door and he and Randy saw what had broken the door early this morning. It was still raining steadily, more of a dousing rain than the sideways wind-driven rain of earlier. Randy closed the door behind him and his dad.

  There was a 20-inch limb, at least 35-feet long outside the front door, across the parapet. Jerry didn’t have any trees that big within 200 feet of the shelter, so whatever wind had brought it this far, had to have been a real doosey.

  “Damn, dad. Look at the size of this. We’re going to have to get a chain saw to move it,” Randy said as they climbed over it.

  “Yeah, it’s too big to move now. We need to take care of the cattle first, if there are any left. Let’s go.”

  As the two men trudged down to the barn, the rain kept them from seeing too far. The hurricane winds had died down to less than 30 miles per hour, Jerry guessed, but there were still gusts that reached over 60 mile per hour.

  As they neared the barn, Jerry could see the farm house had taken a lot of damage. Most of the roof was missing and three of the walls had caved in. There were dozens of large trees in the yard that were up rooted and two of the smaller outbuildings he used to store his lawn tractor and some of his equipment was gone. The lawn tractor had been blown into the tree line, along with a lot of other debris.

  The cattle barn and garage had some major roof damage, but some of the steel and framework held. The damage was over the pens in the barn and not the equipment so it wasn’t a priority. The cows could stand to be wet, but he noticed eight of his herd was missing. The milking parlor no longer had a roof, but the equipment, lag bolted into the floor of six-inch reinforced concrete seem mostly intact except for a few of the plastic lines.

  The garage had taken a bad beating as well. Most of the siding had been ripped off, and the roof was gone. The big Ford and the Escalade had been pushed around and dented and some glass knocked out, but they were still there. The big Massey-Ferguson tractor was still sitting where he’d parked it, but it had a tree limb every bit as big as the one behind the shelter sitting across its hood.

  Both trailers were upended and now leaning against one of the supports in the back of the garage. There was nothing he could do about it now, but when the rain stopped, probably tomorrow, he and the rest of the people at the shelter had a lot of work to get done.

  Jerry counted himself lucky both buildings had been built into the hill and protected by the trees. The other out buildings were gone and the old concrete silos which Jerry had stopped using years ago had collapsed.

  It took almost two hours for Jerry and Randy to get the cows milked and taken care of for the night. They let the milk go down the drain in the holding room because they still had six full gallons in the refrigerator at the shelter and he didn’t want to start the refrigeration on the milk storage tank.

  Randy cleaned the stalls and pushed the manure out the back of the holding area with the skid steer Jerry had left parked inside the barn. There was a small lake where the manure pit used to be. He guessed they’d received about 20 inches of rain so far which meant the soybeans and corn and probably everything growing on farm would be ruined.

  Randy couldn’t do anything about it now but he hoped this hurricane hadn’t destroyed their ability to keep the shelter as a safe haven. He heard his crotch say something so he reached in for the walkie-talkie he’d put in his front pants’ pocket.

  “How’s it going?” asked Eddie. “Need any help?”

  “We’re just about finished here, Eddie. We should be up shortly.”

  “Okay. Kellie wanted me to tell you guys supper’ll be ready in about 20 minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Randy said, then put the walkie-talkie back into his pocket and parked the skid steer.

  He met up with his dad who was also finished. The rain had lessened in the two hours they’d been in the barn and there were peeks of sun coming through the cloud cover, very near the horizon. They were both awestruck by the cloud formations curling across the sky.

  Before they went in for the night, Jerry wanted to check the water wheel and generator by the stream. As he suspected, the river had flooded well over its banks and the wheel was long gone, but the generator and its housing were still bolted to the concrete platform he’d constructed and poured. It was salvageable.

  The wind turbines were gone from the back hill. He could see they’d been snapped off the poles on which they’d been bolted. If they were lucky they’d be able to find and repair them, but he wasn’t going looking tonight.

  The antenna tower for the CB radio was also knocked down, probably taken out by the tree that was now pinning it to the ground.

  While they were on top of the hill next to the antenna, the two men looked around their farm. There were gullies in the fields still flowing violently, but less now that the rain had slowed. There were trees and limbs and debris everywhere, including, from what they could now see from this vantage point, more damage to the roof of the garage where Jerry stored the wood they’d gotten yesterday.

  From the pattern of fallen trees that protected the front of their property and kept dust from the dirt road from the farm house, Jerry guessed winds had easily topped 190 or 200 miles per hour.

  Those same trees had outlasted at least seven other hurricanes, but now a lot of them were broken or uprooted.

  “Let’s get inside son. We’ll have a lot of work for us the next few weeks.”

  Once inside and with their gear hung up to dry, the two told of the mess they’d seen outside. The shelter, most of the cattle, the trucks and tractors were safe, but first thing in the morning they’d have to fix either the water wheel, which probably wouldn’t be practical until the water levels went down, or one of the wind turbines. The charge in the batteries in the basement would probably last another 24-36 hours Jerry guessed from the charge monitor on the wall.

  “We survived better than I thought we would,” Jerry said positively. “But we’re going to be pretty busy getting the farm back in shape.

  “The important thing is we made it,” Kellie said. “I’m willing to bet not everyone who survived the fall of the world survived the hurricane.” There was a long silence at the table for a while as that fact sunk in.

  It was Tia who broke the silence. “Do you think it’s safe for Boomer to go outside? He’s been a good dog today, but I think he might be exploding real soon.”

  “Sure, just open the door and let him run,” Jerry suggested. “He probably won’t run off and I doubt he’ll hurt himself out there. He might try to get around the cows, but they can take care of themselves.”

  “Oh I doubt he’ll go far,” Tia said as she got up to let the big dog out. “We used to let him run around the housing complex and he never caused trouble with anyone and won’t go far, but I’d
be careful where you step outside tomorrow. Some of his piles are epic.”

  Boomer ran outdoors into the dark that had fallen. The rain had slowed some more and there was a cool breeze out. Jerry asked Tia to leave the door open to allow the cool air to circulate throughout the shelter, replacing the air that had gotten a little stale. Molly, Kellie’s dog, for the first time that Jerry could recall, ran outside with the big Bull Mastiff. Her tiny little hid legs were churning to catch the big dog and everyone laughed.

  Kellie didn’t chase after the little dog she loved so much. “They’ve been playing all day. It’s good to see even she has a new friend.” They could all hear the dogs playing now that they were free of the confines of the shelter. It wasn’t so bad for the little four-pound mutt, but the 80-pound dog needed room to run.

  Quiet fell over the shelter as the rain lessened to a gentle thrum. It’d been one bit of excitement after another over the past week. The group of Jerry, Mike, Jeff, Randy, Eddie, Tony and Terrill, Kellie and Monica had been torn asunder. Jeff was now three days dead and the time for mourning had passed. Jerry hoped Terrill, who sacrificed himself for his friend Tony, was finally at peace as well. Jerry would forever remember what the young veteran had done and swore he would somehow erect a permanent marker for the man.

  Tony, who’d been captured by vigilantes and used as bait, would probably spend the winter rehabilitating from his broken ankle and the severe beating he’d received. There was no dentist available, so he’d have to live with the missing teeth.

  They had also taken in Tia and two adolescent children who would have to grow up in a new world and with new ways.

  Jerry had always been a bit of a loner, used to being out of doors, working the land, making his way in life as best he could. He’d been uncomfortable around large crowds, he wasn’t highly-educated or trained to be a leader of people, but neither was he an ignorant “good-ole-boy.” Jerry had graduated high school, but because his dad had died and left him with the farm, his continued education was mostly night classes at the community college when he could arrange it.

  All things considered, before the fall of civilization, Jerry felt himself to be in a safe life, happy enough, but still with hopes and dreams. He’d raised a couple of kids who did okay in school and never got into trouble so deep the cops had to get involved.

  Here sitting at the dinner table with nine people looking to him for leadership, he sometimes felt almost overwhelmed because decisions he was making affected others. It was worse when those decisions, like the one yesterday morning to send his son and his two friends off by themselves to look for supplies, might send people he cared about into danger.

  The dogs came running back into the shelter, giving everyone something other than their own thoughts, for those who were lost in them, or those who were just finishing up dishes and talking about the weather, to see some pure joy.

  Boomer had an expressive face and a big tongue he wasn’t afraid to use. When he came running in, his huge paws were covered in red Alabama mud and he tracked it to every place in the shelter he could splash it. He ran first to Tia and John who were in the kitchen, after slip sliding around the dining table, then to Jerry for a quick pat from him and finally over to where Tony sat on the couch. Tired from his run he laid down on Monica’s bedding and looked at everyone like he was surprised they were all yelling at him to stop running around.

  What increased the simple joy was Molly, who had followed Boomer in and was also covered in mud. The little dog’s black and red tongue was hanging out and dripping when she came through the door and found her favorite spot in the world: Kellie’s lap, on to which she immediate jumped, muddy feet and belly and all.

  Jerry and Mike both got a chuckle from the mud now on Kellie’s new clothes as she struggled to hold Molly above her lap. Tia, John and Hannah immediately dove for Boomer to get him off Monica’s sleeping area. Tia was pledging to clean up the mess and apologizing while John and Hannah man handled the big dog over to a mat by the door someone had found.

  Everyone was, for the first time, Jerry reflected, concerned with something other than the hell they were living. He saw they were actually living life in what was now their normalcy.

  The evening was an enjoyable night of frivolity and playing with dogs, shared memories of previously owned pets, and John teaching Mike the right way to play a video game while Tia taught Monica how to braid hair using Hannah as the subject.

  It was the release of tension the group needed so Jerry kept his serious discussion, in which he had planned on talking about the clean up and what they might have to do now that his crops were most likely destroyed, on hold for the next morning.

  Jerry, Randy and Mike were up before first light to get the cattle milked, cleaned and fed. Boomer joined them. Jerry was pleased to have the other two to lend a hand and get this chore taken care of first. As the three walked to the barn just as the sun was rising they could see better the damage the storm had wrought.

  While work Mike asked how much they should actually clean up the area if they wanted to remain hidden from casual view of anyone. Jerry hadn’t thought of this. He’d planned on sawing up the fallen trees to use as fire wood for the winter and hauling all the branches into a large burn pile. He’d always taken pride in his lawn and having dead branches lying around went against his nature.

  Mike proposed leaving as much damage as possible where it was. This would give anyone, should there be anyone left in the area, the belief the place was abandoned.

  Jerry felt differently. He felt they needed to maintain the property to give the people living here a semblance of the life they had before the fall. If the people living here thought they were always hiding or had to live like they were afraid of being discovered, they would be living in fear and that was something Jerry didn’t want.

  Both men gave it serious thought and debated each side of the issue casually while they watched Boomer run around the barn yard picking up different sticks to be thrown. It was Randy who found the compromise with which they could both live. Randy suggested cleaning up the areas that couldn’t be seen from the road. They could fix the damage in the barn and garage, but only clean up the debris on the back side of the hill where the doors to the shelter were.

  Instead of building a pile of branches for a bonfire, throw them all on the old farm house and burn it to the ground. That would lessen the chance of someone thinking there was something worth salvaging from the place.

  Randy also suggested it would probably be a good idea to allow the cows to free range now. He knew they’d come back at milking time because cows were creatures of habit and it would be less of the drain on the dry feed they had in stock.

  He looked at his dad and told him they were going to have to change the way things had been done, to ways that now would make more sense. “Eddie and I have been doing a lot of talking about this,” Randy said to his dad, while he, his dad and Mike headed back to the shelter. “We think we’ve come up with some good ideas on how we can make our lives easier and still be able to keep this place going.”

  “You and Eddie?” Jerry asked incredulously. “That boy has trouble pouring piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. His idea of work is ten minutes of doing dishes. Don’t get me wrong, I love the boy, but his biggest challenge before the fall was if he was going to be a stand-up comedian, a domestic terrorist or play video games for a living.”

  The other two laughed with Jerry at his description of Eddie. It was wholly accurate.

  “Seriously, dad. We don’t just play video games all night, well, sometimes we do, but we also talk a lot about what our future is going to be like.”

  Mike, who had stayed out of discussions between Jerry and his son did add his thoughts but in a way to make sure Jerry didn’t think he was intruding. “Things do change. They did before the fall and they will continue. A year ago, I was making $850,000 a year and had a boat on the coast. Things changed. Sixty years ago, I couldn’t ride in
the front of a bus. Things changed. One hundred years ago, my granddad couldn’t own property. Two hundred years ago, my ancestors couldn’t be free.

  “Everything changes, Jerry. Your son might have a point.”

  “But not all changes are good, Mike,” Jerry said without much enthusiasm for his side of the discussion. “We’ll look at some changes, but let’s not go overboard. Let’s start small and see where it gets us. Right now we’re doing okay. I don’t want our changes to make us less okay.”

  Jerry and Mike both seemed to accept that position.

  Boomer came up to the three men walking back to the shelter. This time he had the biggest limb he’d brought to them yet. It was easily six feet long and four inches in diameter. “Why don’t we find a way to harness his energy for the electrical system?” Randy jokingly asked. “He ain’t too right in the head.”

  “Speaking of that,” Jerry said as they walked into the shelter. “Let’s start on that first, right after breakfast.”

  ~ ~ ~

  For the next week, there was an unspoken rule that the shelter and farm needed to be the first priority. Everyone knew it was uncomfortable and crowded and everyone had to make the effort to not lash out when angry, although harsh words did get spoken and brows were furrowed more times than could be counted.

  Jerry and Randy, with John as their gopher, worked to repair one of the two wind turbines. It had taken three full days to get it working properly and they had to use parts from the second one they found that was beyond repair. Electrical usage in the shelter was brought down to a minimum and even then the gas generator had to be started to keep the batteries charged for the work in the barn.

  Mike, Eddie, Tia and Hannah did a lot of the farm work. Tia had a farming background in upstate New York and knew how to drive tractors and other heavy equipment. Mike and Eddie bowed to her expertise and Jerry just had to give her only very general instructions on which fields needed harvesting and which ones weren’t worth the effort anymore.