Hell Happened (Book 1)

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  “A bullet from this will put it down,” Rusty had said confidently, patting the Smith & Wesson 500 he had holstered on his hip.

  “Don’t bet your life on it, and don’t bet my life on it, man,” he said to the tattooed man. “We shot one five or six times at close range with a Desert Eagle and a 30-06, and it still wanted to eat our brains out. It had half its arm missing, a hole you could see through in its chest and part of its neck gone and it didn’t stop that damn thing.”

  “So how do we kill them? Blow them to smithereens? I didn’t bring any TNT with me and wouldn’t that kinda blow up the whole freaking place? Seems like the hard way to go shopping to me.”

  “A good head shot that takes off the brain stem will work. They don’t seem to bleed much, but if you can shoot their legs or arms off, do it. Don’t waste ammo on the gut or chest because that doesn’t seem to stop them very fast. They’ll be eating your face and your eyes will be falling out the hole you just shot in its stomach. You’ll be dead and it will eat your brains before it dies. It won’t care that you killed it and you’ll be dead.

  “Also, don’t think these things are like zombies in a movie. They move faster than hell and they will bite the shit out of you first chance they get. Shoot ‘em a lot and shoot ‘em again and don’t stop shooting until the son from the pits of hell is flopping on the ground like a fresh caught catfish.

  “They look like a human on triple doses of steroids, but don’t think their moaning is going to give them away. They come out of nowhere and their huge black eyes see really good in the dark. A bright light will blind them, but they don’t give a shit, they’ll still come after you and snack on your pancreas.

  “They gather in groups of two or three, maybe more, in dark places. I don’t know how they survive or why they want to eat us who haven’t been turned into zombies. There’re plenty of slow moving cows and dogs still around they could snack on. If there were any scientists left we could ask them, but we don’t so it’s a mystery, but I know I don’t want to become a McHuman for those creepy bastards. I’d rather blow their head off and watch them flop on the ground like a drunken college cheerleader.”

  Eddie wasn’t sure of all the “facts” he’d given them and he might have exaggerated some, but he wanted these people to know how dangerous and scary the zombies were.

  Eddie parked the SWAT truck and Josh and Rusty climbed out of the truch. Eddie followed the two out and directed them to either side of one of the doors.

  “Okay, turn ‘em on. When I open the door, you,” he pointed to Josh, “go left and you,” to Rusty, “go right.” Both men, AR-15s with 30 round clips in their right hands and thermal imagers in their left, nodded to Eddie. For just a moment, he wondered what the men, both well over 10 years his senior, thought about the 22-year-old giving them orders. The moment passed when he opened the door.

  The thermal imagers showed heat signatures in the distant corners of the building, but they weren’t clearly defined. Eddie motioned the men back out of the building and slammed the steel door.

  Pulling out his walkie-talkie he called Katie and her crew to the back of the store. When they arrived he laid out his plan. “We need the food in there and they don’t. Let’s go in in threes. One with the spotlight, two with guns. We shoot anything that moves and we shoot it until it doesn’t move no more.”

  “Josh, you and Rusty take the lights. You guys know where you saw the images on the thermal. Katie and I will go for the right side, Danny and Sade, you go for the left side. If they start getting to close, say within 10 feet, start screaming your ass off and we’ll all back out. Sound like a plan?”

  Although he was asking, it was still the plan they were going with. Josh and Rusty got the hand held spot lights out of the truck. The others made sure they had the safety off on their guns, a round in the chamber and their side arm ready. “Don’t hesitate,” he told them, “because they won’t.”

  When everyone was ready, Eddie took the handle of the door in his hand. The spotlights which were held over the head of everyone were on and creating shadows of Katie’s and Sade’s head on the door frame. They’d go in first, followed extremely close by Eddie and Danny and then the spot lights.

  Eddie pulled the door open quickly and two zombies were right there waiting for them. Sade was caught by surprise, but Katie started pulling the trigger on her AR-15 like a sewing machine. The zombie was a large, heavily-muscled woman, and Katie had to put six rounds into the damn thing’s head before it stopped reaching for her. It went down and Katie put two more rounds into the thing’s black, greasy hair. She was then being pulled back out the door by someone.

  The spotlights didn’t seem to slow the zombies at all. Sade hesitated for a heartbeat and almost died for it. The zombie grabbed his throat and was leaning in for a bite before the Nigerian-born American started shooting. The zombie’s abdomen was being turned into Swiss cheese but the beast had him in a choking death grip.

  Danny got his AR in play with surprising speed, pushing Eddie and Katie to the side. He had a dozen rounds into the zombie’s neck and jaw, splattering the two men with zombie flesh, blood and bone as Katie and Eddie backed out.

  Grabbing a knife with a 12-inch blade from his hip, Danny sliced through the sinew and tissue of the zombie’s arm as it began to fall, trying to take Sade to the floor in its dying seconds.

  Eddie pulled Sade and Danny back out and Rusty slammed the door. They tripped and fell over Rusty.

  With the door slammed shut they looked at each other. Both had blood and flesh splattered on them and Sade had dark bruises on his neck.

  Sitting on the ground, wiping off the blood and guts Danny looked up at Sade. “What the hell, man? Why’d you hesitate?” Sade looked at Danny. He was still in a little bit of shock. He didn’t know what to say for several moments. “I thought it was Bill Murray. You know, from that zombie movie.”

  Danny’s jaw opened and stayed there. Katie rolled her eyes. Eddie knew the reference and started to laugh. “What, you were going to ask him? ‘Bill, wanna play golf?’” everyone then started laughing. Maybe they didn’t know the movie, but Bill Murray and the golf reference were so out of place in what they had experienced in the last 15 seconds, it had to be funny.

  When they had settled down and the ones who had fallen got back to their feet, Sade deadpanned, “I like to golf,” and everyone broke into laughter again. They moved back to the far side of the SWAT truck and cleaned themselves of the gore.

  “I think we need another plan,” Eddie admitted. “They knew we were coming and they were waiting. I thought they would be stupid and didn’t give them credit. Next time we do it different.”

  “We got any rope?” asked Danny. “I got a plan.” Eddie climbed inside his truck and brought out a length of repelling rope. Danny cut a piece off. He tied one end to the door handle and walked back to the rear of the truck.

  “Eddie, you and Katie go lay over there,” he said pointing to the back of the trailer the Ford was pulling. “Take the light Eddie, and don’t forget to reload, Kate. You went through a lot of ammo. Me, Josh and Rusty will go over here,” he said pointing to an opposite oblique from Eddie and Kate. “Sade’s going to pull the door all the way open from back here, 20 feet from the door.”

  “Okay, I see what you’re saying. Let’s outsmart those dumb asses,” Eddie said and got into position with Katie. When they were all ready, Eddie gave Sade a signal. Sade pulled the door open.

  Katie got the first kill with a three-round grouping the size of a quarter through the neck of a large male zombie. The back of his neck blew out along with what was left of the thing’s spine. It dropped.

  Danny and Josh combined to put down the other zombie that had been waiting at the door. There were now four badly mutilated bodies of zombies lying in or near the doorway of the food mart.

  “Spot lights!” Danny called. “See anything?”

  Neither Eddie nor Rusty could see any more Zombies lurking.

&nbs
p; “Let’s try the thermals again,” suggested Danny, who seemed to have a firmer grasp on the situation, so Eddie let him lead. Sade and Rusty grabbed the thermals they’d put behind the SWAT truck. They moved carefully to the sides of the door, staying clear of the fields of fire of Katie and Danny. Eddie and Josh swept the spotlights to the limits they could reach from their positions with one hand and held their pistols in the other.

  “I see nothing,” Sade called back to the group after sweeping the area with his thermal imager.

  “Me either...,” Rusty started to say, “wait! Up high!” He grabbed Sade and dragged him to the ground. A large shape came jumping down from the racking. Josh had the first shots and bullet holes appeared in the zombie’s chest and legs. As the beast staggered under the onslaught, he came into Katie’s sight picture and she finished the thing off with shots to the face and neck. It dropped to the floor, twitching. Katie and Josh hollered “clear!” so Sade rolled into a sitting position and shot four rounds from an M1911 into the zombie’s head until it quit twitching.

  “Who’s golfing with me this weekend?” Eddie asked everyone. “do you think there are any courses still open?” Everyone ignored him, but they did so with smiles.

  The crew checked the building again, first with thermals then with the spot lights. There was nothing left in the building but rats, mice and a family of raccoons, but they were easily shooed away.

  Once cleared, they started loading cases of canned goods and other non-perishables onto the trailer and then into the SWAT truck.

  It wasn’t a large store, but it had more than enough salvageable merchandise for the two vehicles. They took turns loading and keeping two others on perimeter making sure no one had been drawn by the sound of gunfire.

  When fully loaded with as much as they could safely carry, the day had nearly run its course. Danny finished strapping the load to the trailer when Eddie called the shelter telling them to expect the foraging crew in an hour.

  ~ ~ ~

  Randy spent the day with Monica and Tony setting up the video surveillance system for the shelter. He climbed the trees and towers while Monica ran the wiring. When Monica, Randy and Eddie had raided the electronic store on their trip to Trussville, they didn’t realize all they’d recovered from the store.

  When Monica and Kellie were going through the spoils, they found the boys had loaded a complete Q-SEE Advanced Series Surveillance System with eight outdoor cameras and four that had microphones. They’d also unknowingly grabbed seven rolls of wiring for the unit.

  Monica threaded the wiring through the shelter while Randy put cameras on both the antennae, aimed both ways down the road, one pointing along the path in front of the shelter, one down the path to the garage and barn. The seventh had the longest run of wire as it was places on a tree over Tia’s motor home and the eighth Randy pointed out across the garden.

  Randy got help from Cheryl with setting up the four audio cameras. These he placed as far from the shelter as possible and hid them high in the trees. He believed this would give the shelter advanced warning of invaders.

  Out of deference to the fact that Monica hated her guts, wanted her dead and would spit on her corpse, when Randy would tell Cheryl that Monica would be in the area, she would find some place else to be.

  Randy didn’t understand the depths of Monica’s hate for Cheryl. He thought it might be jealousy because Cheryl was long, lithe and beautiful, while Monica, while no longer obese, was still larger than average. Monica had become a stout woman rather than fat, her double chins had receded and her once fat face had toned up to where she was looking less like an over-stuffed couch and more like a roller derby blocker.

  When Randy knew that Monica would be in the area he’d let Cheryl know and he’d hear her shuffle off, chain clinking like little bells. He didn’t talk about his friendship with Cheryl to Monica because he knew how women were and he didn’t want to get in the middle of a cat fight. He also didn’t want to do anything to mess up his chances with Cheryl.

  The talk his dad and Kellie had with Cheryl this morning didn’t trouble him. He believed even Kellie would see that Cheryl had been a victim, that she was not in any way responsible for Mike’s death or the attack on the shelter. Cheryl was just an abused woman who was being held captive in a barn, without trial, and threatened with being banished, which Randy knew would be a death sentence.

  Randy didn’t see what Monica had seen the day of the attack. Cheryl had been standing by the door with the two men, not as a beaten woman just following her captors, but as a participant. She’d told Jerry what she’d seen and that’s what prompted Jerry to finally speak to Cheryl herself. Monica had told Randy the same thing, but what she saw wasn’t what Randy heard. The pretty, sultry voice of Cheryl’s sounded a more plausible reason for her being there.

  ~ ~ ~

  Tony worked on the set up in the shelter. He plugged the DVD into a 42” television in the main room so he could see it easily. As Monica ran the wires to each of the cameras, he’d check the adjustment of each one, and then tested the microphone pick up. He was still recovering from his broken ankle, although he was getting around better. Monica figured another three weeks before she dared take off the make-shift cast.

  After that, Tony would still need a splint and physical therapy, but he was making progress and that was better than being dead. There were three orbits in every 16 in which the space station was within the line of sight for contact the shelter. Tony made sure he was available to listen and speak to the people there as well as working on the surveillance system. There was not much the people at the shelter could do for the ISS crew who were returning to earth, but Tony wanted to know everything he could to help them.

  The Russian commander gave explicit details on the recovery capsule, how to open it, what tools to have on hand and what precautions to take if the three mission specialists returning survived re-entry.

  Everything about the recovery was a long shot, but the people coming back accepted the risk. They knew chances were good they would die, but the two Americans and the one Canadian would rather die on earth than in space.

  Jerry collected the information from Tony and spent the afternoon arranging the recovery mission with Juan. Tony’s answer to real time communication between the shelter and the coast was dead end. The shelter had nine CB radios and it was about 300 miles to the coast. On a good day, which according to the station commander, the weather for landing tomorrow afternoon looked perfect on along the coast, the base station might reach up to 30 miles if tweaked, but the mobile units could only hope to reach five to 10 miles at best and they didn’t have enough time or power to set up a system. Tony also thought about getting a radio station working, but he didn’t have the talent or knowledge to get the Moody AM station back on the air and even that would be a one-way communication.

  Jerry told him to forget worrying about it. The station commander would be able to transmit to the receiver Tony already had. Tony would spend the evening hours putting his short wave receiver and an antenna in the Ford. The station commander would update Jerry and his rescue crew, but Tony doubted the short wave would reach 220 miles into space.

  They were just finishing the surveillance set up when Eddie called in that the foraging for food had gone well and they were on their way back.

  Tony and Monica began cleaning up the living area. Tia and the others who weren’t living in the shelter worked in the garden while the kids played. The fields had been as completed as possible so it was more housekeeping around the farm.

  Jerry, Randy and Kellie met at the final camera position. Cheryl wasn’t anywhere in sight. On and off during the day Jerry and Kellie had chances to talk about their morning conversation with Cheryl. Jerry had come to a decision which would make no one happy. He remembered during his divorce a judge saying if no one was happy, then it’s a fair deal.

  “Randy, I want to tell you I know you have been spending a lot of time with Cheryl,” he began as they head
ed back to the barn, being careful not to dismiss his son’s feelings or maturity. “I’ve given it a lot of thought today and I tell you, it hasn’t been an easy decision. I don’t think we can trust Cheryl. Maybe what she said is true, but I don’t think all of it is.”

  “Dad, she’s been through a lot. She’s screwed up in the head and she’s told me she is. I think we owe it to her to give her a chance, just like we have all those other people we have living here.”

  Jerry was getting pissed. He wasn’t asking for more input on his decision because he’d already had enough of the whole situation. He’d already made up his mind. Cheryl was bringing drama into his life and he hated that. He had to nip this situation quickly or a rift was going to come between him and his son and he wouldn’t tolerate that from anyone.

  Kellie was smart enough to see Jerry’s temper was being pushed. There was tightness in his jaw that she’d seen before. She had the good sense to say nothing, nor to try to comfort either of them. Whichever way she leaned, she’d alienate the other. She had to remain out of this situation. She walked between the two men, not touching either, but near enough to show Jerry she supported him, but also to show Randy she was not afraid of being here with them, that she stood with them, as a family should.

  “What I want to do is transport her to some other place, maybe find another encampment for her. While she is here and until we find another location for her, she is to remain in the leg irons,” Jerry said with finality.

  “Tony has talked to the Smith compound and in time, he may find something closer. But while she is here, she is bad for us. She is a constant reminder of the death of Mike. Somewhere else, maybe they can accept her, but I don’t believe all of her story and others here suspect she’s lying too. No one will be able to trust her.”

  “But dad, they don’t know her like I do. She’s been abused, raped and tortured and now you’re sending her away to someone else who might abuse her. She said she feels safe here. She doesn’t need to be in those damn leg irons like this is the 16th Century.”