Hell Happened (Book 1)

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  “I don’t want you thinking this is going to be easy,” Jerry told them. “Some of you haven’t encountered the vigilantes or the zombies out there. One is vicious and the other are killers. The vigilantes will shoot to wound and then use you to draw out zombies. The zombies hide in the dark, but when they come out, they’re almost unstoppable. They’re super strong and eat flesh while you’re still alive. It can’t be a good way to die.”

  “Monica here was lucky that Randy and Eddie had big guns when they grabbed at her, but even then, the zombies were hit four or five times and still didn’t die right away.” The looks on everyone’s faces were less excited than before.

  It was Nick, one of the five men who came in the most recent convoy who spoke up. “I don’t care if they’re vigilantes or zombies. I’ll kill every one of them. My family is all dead. My kids, my wife, my dad and my friends….all of them are dead. But this place is better than being alone so I’ll defend it,” he said with complete conviction.

  There were agreements around the room.

  Jerry looked at Monica, who had not raised her hand. He wondered if she were afraid to go foraging. “Sorry boss,” she said, mimicking Eddie. “Me and Tony are going to set you up a security system so we know if anyone tries to sneak up on us. He’s got some good ideas we were going to show you this morning, but since you brought this up, I figured you’d want to know what we’re up to.”

  She started to bring out a note pad her and Tony had been using. Jerry held up a hand. “Let’s decide how we want to do the run to Odenville first. I don’t want to send everyone.

  “Eddie, you’ll go for sure since you know the area.” Eddie smiled. “Take your truck with two others as protection.

  “Danny, why don’t you drive my truck with a trailer and someone for protection? That makes five going, three always holding guns. You should be able to clear a building, but don’t take any chances. If you get a chance to get more diesel fuel, great, but don’t risk yourselves. We have one full reserve and the other is mostly full.” Rusty, Josh and Sade were also chosen to go foraging.

  “It’d be best to leave in the morning so you can scout around the location for vigilantes. Look for tracks around any place you go in to. Be real careful of the hurricane damage because you might go into a building and have it collapse on top of you if you touch anything.

  “We also need seeds if you can find any. We’ll start growing as much as the gardens will let us and the weather allows.”

  Katie, the other woman besides Mrs. deJesus that was part of the most recent convoy, was a middle-aged woman whose face showed the loss of her world. She raised her hand. She talked little, but always helped where she could. “I ran a Christmas tree nursery with my family in Arkansas. I can help.”

  Jerry, seeing an opportunity to engage the woman in something other than her thoughts, nodded to her. “Thanks Katie. You’re now our head gardener. Make sure the people going on the foraging trip know what seeds we can use best.

  “Bullshit. I’m going too,” the woman said, surprising everyone with her intensity. Jerry would not stop her from going after that declaration.

  There was some more housekeeping details Jerry went over with everyone and then the group broke up into smaller groups outside the shelter. Jerry and Kellie finally got around to having their first meal of the day. He hadn’t realized how much time had gone by until Tony began calling for the International Space Station again.

  Jerry had work to do on the farm, but he couldn’t bring himself to go outside yet. He had to learn more about what the ISS wanted with them.

  Tony spoke with headphones on to better hear the station. Jerry, Kellie, Monica and the others listened as he spoke with the man in the stars. After a few moments, he pulled one of the headphones off. “Commander Rustov, I think his name is, said he is sure the emergency escape ship can land in the Gulf of Mexico. He said they are very accurate with landing the ship and if we can have a boat ready off Gulf Shores, Alabama tomorrow evening, they will try for there.

  “The commander said they can land an hour before dark, in the orbit they are in, and land close enough to us to make it feasible.”

  Jerry knew where Gulf Shores was and told Tony to tell the Russian space station commander that they could be there and they would find a big enough boat to rescue his crew. He made sure Tony wrote down the details for everything, from the time of day they should expect the rescue ship to come down, how far out from shore to be, to how to open the ship up when it landed. Jerry told Tony that he needed to be the expert on everything and make sure the people going on the rescue knew as much as they could and have all the tools they needed.

  Juan, who had been silent through most of the morning, spoke up. “I’m really not going to be much good doing any heavy work around the farm, but me and my wife know a lot about boating and navigation. Maybe we can help?”

  Jerry smiled at the elderly Mexican. “Sir, you will do just fine. You’re now in charge of the rescue. But just so you know, I want to go with you.”

  Juan smiled back. “I thought you might. But anyone going better not get easily seasick. I’m sure we’ll be going out past the breakers and it’ll be rough. And that hurricane hit pretty hard. It isn’t going to be easy finding a boat, so we better get started. There are a lot of unknowns and two days isn’t a lot of time. I say we should leave very early in the morning tomorrow.”

  “Okay, very early tomorrow morning, we’ll leave. You find out how many need to go to make this happen and we’ll let everyone else know.”The meeting broke up and everyone began their personal chores before really starting on the day’s work.

  ~ ~ ~

  Monica answered the CB when the call came in. Eddie and his crew were leaving the drive now for Odenville and foraging and were making the radio check. She would be their contact while on the road. Jerry heard the tone of Eddie’s voice and knew while he didn’t want anyone getting hurt, the five men and one woman wouldn’t mind a fire fight with zombies and there was no way in hell a vigilante group would get the drop on them.

  He turned to speak with Tony who was working on some RJ45 connectors for a computer network he was building, “Is there any way we can keep in touch with you and the space station all the way to the coast?”

  “I don’t know. Let me and Monica work on it while we’re sitting here,” he said and started pulling out electronic manuals.

  That left Randy with whom Jerry needed to talk. He’d give his son, who’d left with Cheryls breakfast, until lunch time to digest what Cheryl had said this morning. He was sure he knew what Kellie’d say, but decided he better ask her in case he was wrong. He looked at her and she saw his eyes dart for the door. She nodded and they both got up to go for a walk and to talk privately.

  Once they got outside, they saw Tia and her four kids in the garden, pulling weeds and harvesting the ripe vegetables. Tia, who seemed able to drive anything with wheels had fixed the garden tractor and pulled it around back with the small, two-wheeled trailer for the kids. The other new arrivals were working with her, knowing the garden would be providing them with food over the winter to come. Jerry and Kellie made toward the antenna on the far hill, in an effort to disguise that they were talking about something as serious as banishment. Once they were out of earshot of everyone, Jerry finally asked the question he thought he knew the answer to.

  He believed Kellie would side with Cheryl as a former victim herself and Jerry would have both her and Randy on one side and himself undecided. Kellie surprised him one more time.

  “I don’t believe her. I think she is a lying piece of shit,” she said vehemently, “and I think she is trying to play you and Randy. If you’re asking me, send her away as soon as possible before she hurts someone, because she will. I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something wrong with her story and I don’t believe her, not for one minute.”

  Jerry stopped in the middle of the field. Kellie walked a few feet more. The woman who had become Jerry’s
closest confidant and friend over the last three months because of her compassion and thoughtfulness and willingness to give everyone a fair chance, just told him she wanted the woman in the barn sent away. Jerry didn’t know how much truth there was to Cheryl’s story of how she had been captured and raped and possibly tortured, but even if it was only half true and Cheryl had been exaggerating and embellishing in hopes of not being sent away, he could probably forgive her for that. It was a ferocity he hadn’t seen in her before.

  Kellie turned around and looked at Jerry.

  “I’m sorry, Jerry. I just don’t believe her,” Kellie said with grim intensity.

  Jerry looked at her. He knew Randy had spent a lot of time over the past 10 days with Cheryl and he hadn’t once said anything about Cheryl trying to get away. If her story hadn’t jived with what she’s told his son, he was sure Randy would have said something. He wasn’t experienced with abused women and didn’t know how they acted or should act. Maybe Kellie was right about Cheryl and their prisoner was just making something up to save herself.

  He didn’t know which side to come down on.

  “Maybe it was that she said everything exactly right to evoke the greatest sympathy response from you and Randy. Maybe it’s because of the way she dresses. I know Randy took her a lot of clothes, but she chose what to wear. Maybe it’s because when she was captured by Monica, she was wearing Army boots and now she wears tennis shoes,” Kellie explained, not giving him proof, just justifying her feelings about something being wrong. Jerry knew Kellie had a degree in something and as a teacher, she had a lot of psychology, so he didn’t dismiss what Kellie was saying, but it was still just circumstantial.

  Maybe what would be best for everyone would be to put her some place where she wouldn’t be a danger to anyone, like an island.

  A light seemed to go off in Jerry’s head. “I have an idea that might allow all of us to sleep at night.”

  Randy knocked on Cheryl’s door. When she didn’t respond he knocked again. The door opened a crack. He looked through the crack in the door and Cheryl was lying on her bed.

  “If you’ve come to send me away, just shoot me now while I’m not looking,” she said, a tremble in her voice and not looking to see who was at the door. “I’m not going to go anywhere by myself. I won’t let you do that to me again. Just kill me and put me out of my misery.” Her body was curled into a fetal position, turned away from the door so only her back was to him.

  Randy entered the room and sat Cheryl’s breakfast on the chair his dad had so recently sat in.

  Randy could only see her trembling and heard what sounded like sobs. Her long dark hair had been brushed and left to hang, like she did every morning and how he liked seeing it. She must have done it before her conversation with his dad and Kellie.

  The tee shirt she had slid up on her torso and showed off her slender form. She had light olive colored skin and from where he was standing, he saw she was not wearing a bra. With her knees folded up and her arms holding them tightly, Randy could see the shorts she was wearing hugging tightly to the curve of her hips. He could see the uppermost tan lines on the back of her legs from where she had bikini tan lines on her incredibly long, well-tanned legs.

  For a 22-year-old man, here was a drowning woman and he wanted to save her. She was drowning in sorrow and he was a life preserver.

  “No one is going to hurt you,” he said with authority. “Not while I’m in charge.”

  “But you’re not in charge,” she said, no longer sobbing. “That woman, Kellie is, and I can tell she doesn’t like me.” She planted the first wedge between Randy and his father. Now she planted another. “She’s very pretty and I can tell your dad loves her and will do anything she says.” She let her voice crack a little for effect.

  Randy didn’t realize he was being played by an expert. “No, I am in charge of you. My dad trusts me and I believe you’re a victim. I’m going to tell him you can be trusted. He’ll listen to me over Kellie. All you have to do is make sure you don’t do anything that will cause him not to trust you.”

  Cheryl rolled over to look at the young man. Her face was wet with tears. Her movement uncovered her left breast to Randy, who, try as he might to not look, saw the well-formed breast. She pulled her tee shirt down swung her legs to the floor. “You’ll keep me from being sent away?” she asked in a whispering voice.

  “Yes,” he said, feeling his body react to how close she was moving to him. “Don’t you worry about it. I’ll convince dad you’re not a threat to us.”

  Cheryl stood up and hugged Randy like he had saved her life. “I won’t do anything to make him not trust me, Ran,” she whispered in his ear. He felt her hard body against his, her arms under his and pushing on his back to her body, pulling him close. Her face was buried in his neck and he could feel her eyelashes fluttering. He wondered if his statement about protecting her caused her to cry again. If she was falling for him, he was fine with that so he hugged her back, pulling her as close to him as he could.

  Cheryl felt his body respond and released from him when his hand reached the small of her back. She knew Randy was hooked and she was going to keep him on the hook for as long as it took to secure her freedom.

  “I hope you’re right, Ran. I was so scared and you’re saving me. I won’t forget it,” she said. He was getting ready to reach for her again so she innocently deflected his advance by going for her breakfast that he’d brought for her. She pretended not to see his reach. “I’m really hungry now. Thank you for bringing me something to eat.”

  Randy knew the moment for intimacy had passed, but he looked forward to more intimate time in the future. “You know what would be nice, Ran?” she asked as she sat down on the bed. She crossed her long legs and leaned over just enough to tease Randy, but not allow him to see anything without moving.

  “A deserted island with no one but me and you and a shit load of ice cream?” he said, trying to sound witty.

  She gave an obligatory smile and giggle. “Not what I was thinking, but along those same lines. I haven’t had anything good to drink in months. I sure would like some beer. I used to get so drunk with my boyfriend, I’m surprised I didn’t get pregnant already.”

  And with that sentence, she dropped the allusion that when she got intoxicated, she would put out. Randy knew he was going to get some of dad’s beer and Cheryl and he were going to party. Randy didn’t have a chance against her. She had him controlled and he didn’t even know it.

  Chapter 9

  E ddie drove to Odenville with the same enthusiasm he had been doing everything lately, with gusto. He was driving his SWAT truck and he was hoping he got a chance to use some of the firepower he and a couple of the other guys riding with him, one of them a machinist, had done to improve the truck’s lethality.

  Morbid curiosity drew him to the food store where he’d first shot at another human target. It was the same store where Spec. 4 Terrill Ellison Jackson gave his life for his friends, so that they might live. Time and circumstance prevented them from returning for Terrill’s body, but Jerry had found two pieces of slate on which to engrave the names of Lt. Michael “Mike” Jamison and Spec. 4 Terrill Jackson. He placed them side-by-side on the hill where they’d laid old Mike to rest. Eddie thought it a fitting yet simple memorial to the two men who died after surviving what had killed more of the world.

  It had been over a month since that morning he, Jerry and Terrill had gone looking for their missing friends. He put it out of his mind now.

  Eddie was more interested in seeing what effects of the storm had east of the shelter. There were chain link fences, signs and all matter of debris on the highway, houses ripped from their foundation, cars smashed and littering fields and entire forests of trees blown down. There were dead carcasses from wildlife, both domestic and wild that had been preyed upon by vultures or other animals.

  Most promising, however, was there were no telltale signs that anything had been cleaned up or moved. He slow
ed as he drove up to the crossing where he and Jerry had crossed the road beside the store itself. The billboard under which they’d hid was gone except for the three telephone-sized poles that had held it up.

  The store was damaged extensively. Half the roof appeared to be sagging; the glass in front was all gone. Terrill’s body and all evidence that he’d been there was washed and blown away by the massive hurricane, which was what Eddie had hoped. The building from which vigilantes had shot at Jerry and Terrill was gone completely as well.

  While Eddie was sure no one would still be there, a part of him hoped that they were so the fight they’d had before could be resumed – this time however he had six people with guns and his SWAT truck, not just himself with a bolt-action rifle.

  The lamp posts in the parking lot had all been snapped off like matchsticks and the area looked so different than the last time he’d been here. He figured this must be what a city hit by a bomb would look like.

  Followed by the Ford and its trailer, Eddie directed the truck to park in front of what was left of the food store and illuminate the inside with both the two-million-candlepower spotlights that had been installed.

  Danny, who was driving the Ford, followed his instructions and after a careful search called it clear. Eddie drove along the back of the store. The doors were closed in back so there was no way to tell if there were not-deads inside waiting to ambush them. The SWAT truck had two thermal imaging guns and he asked Josh, a butcher by trade, and Rusty, a former tattoo artist, to pull them out of their cupboard in the back of the truck.

  Eddie had talked to everyone on the foraging crew before they left the shelter about the encounter he’d had with the not-deads. “The zombie will kill you,” he told them. “They are not real zombies, they’ve just mutated somehow. They’re stronger than a freaking gorilla and twice as mean. I shot one three times and it was still coming after us. The only reason we’re not dead is because of a brick wall and a big-ass amount of luck.”