Hell Happened

by Stenzelbarton, Terry

  Zombie

  Vs

  Horsepower

  Tia saw the men raise their weapons. She was a

  very bright woman and knew in an instant why they

  were aiming in her direction. “Oh shit,” she said to no

  one and looked in the rear view mirror. The zombies

  had just cleared the hole she’d made and were coming

  straight at her and the men who were on her crew.

  “Like hell, you sons of bitches,” she hollered and

  threw the Escalade into reverse. The little woman,

  whose feet barely reached the floor, pulled on the

  steering wheel and stomped on the accelerator again.

  The back window was shattered by the head of one

  of the zombies as she hit the two coming out first with

  the rear bumper. She felt the bodies being crushed

  beneath her truck, and shredded by four spinning tires

  as she gunned the SUV’s 400-horse powerplant.

  She briefly recalled how it felt when she drove her

  old Durango too fast over speed bumps.

  The Cadillac felt the same way driving over zombies.

  Copyright 2012, Terry and Jordan Stenzlebarton, All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  Published by White Feather Press, LLC

  www.whitefeatherpress.com

  ISBN 978-1-61808-049-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover design created by Terry Stenzlebarton

  Acknowledgements

  The idea for this novel came after a conversation I had with a fellow author following the sermon at the church we attend. We were talking about Star Trek novels and other ideas when Skip mentioned zombies. I didn’t give it much thought until I was on my way home because I’d never written a zombie novel.

  The storyline just exploded in my head while driving and singing to classic country songs on the radio. Yes, it’s true, classic country songs gave me the kernel of an idea for a zombie novel.

  I say exploded when I tell the story of where I got the idea, but I didn’t have characters or an environment in which to put them. There were plot holes you could drive dump trucks through, no characters that needed redemption, no decent antagonist, no drama at all.

  It was a narrative with no life. If it had been a horse, it would have been dog food by Monday morning.

  Enter my son, Jordan. He and I usually spend Sunday afternoons foraging for food at the local stores, eating lunch at the ethnic restaurant and playing tennis with friends.

  When I explained what I was thinking, he was more than willing to talk about zombies. What bothers him about typical zombies is they’re dead. It was his idea to make the zombies included in the book not dead, but zombie-like. He and I talked for hours hammering out their attributes.

  Jordan also listened to the story develop over the three weeks it took to write. He changed dialog and personalities of the people about who I wrote, changed the obstacles they faced to add realism and added the proper emotional responses.

  But what Jordan did more for this book, and either of the other two I’ve written, was he pushed me when I locked up. I could stare at the words for hours and not see where to take the story. I’d read what I’d written to him and stop where I was stuck. From there, he’d bounce ideas off me until we came up with the story you’re about to read.

  Were it not for Jordan, it would not be the story it is.

  Without my editor Kristen, however, this book wouldn’t be as readable as it is. She spent a fortnight fixing my screw ups and poor grammar and she did it with a smile. I wish I’d used her as an editor on my other books and they might have done better. She is absolutely the very best.

  Then there’s Tia, the real person, not the Tia in the book. They are nothing alike, but I like the name so used it. She gave me the encouragement when I was tired and motivation when I slacked off. She’s been my best friend for years and will get the second copy the publisher gives me.

  Shout outs have to absolutely go to Russ, Cheryl, Kayla and Lisa, my dear friends who’ve been there for me through this ride. They heard I was again in my writing mode and cheered me on like the good people they are. To paraphrase Pastor Joel: if you want to know who I am, look at my friends. I’d say my friends are the best.

  Last, but far from least, I have to say thanks to my Life Group, from whom I have freely stolen first names, not their personalities, just the names, for characters in the book. They put up with my attitude when I was tired, my anger when I was mad, and regularly overlook my failures.

  Bless them all

  Chapter 1

  “D ammit all to hell,” Jerry cursed as he closed the main doors to his underground shelter with a slam. “What in God’s name was Jeff thinking?” He slammed both bolts to their locked position, slapped his palm flat against the frame, then turned around and leaned against the heavy oak doors.

  Jerry had not been having a good day and it was not looking to be a good night either.

  Kellie knew it was not going to be a good night. She was grateful Jerry had not killed her when she and her little dog Molly had stumbled upon his shelter. He almost did when she came walking through his back field just before sunset three weeks earlier with her story of escaping a band of violent vigilantes. She’d come to know Jerry more by what he didn’t say than what he expressed in words. She knew when he was angry he would and could use cursing as his outlet for frustration.

  She knew he was pissed right now because she seldom heard him swear. Jerry read the bible regularly and he was a kind and gentle man of simple means and simple words and simple pleasures. He wasn’t an angry man, so she just listened to him while he took off his work boots and jacket and muttered his displeasure at the turn of events. At 40 she’d had experience with violent men, including her ex-husband, and Jerry wasn’t the type to be demonstrative, but when it came to cursing in frustration and anger, he could string together a line that was both entertaining and instructive.

  Randy, who was used to his dad’s occasional outbursts, also knew it was not going to be a good night. He loved his dad and knew him better than anyone alive. He knew his dad was angry because someone had done something really stupid if he was muttering like he was.

  Randy knew it was best if he just stood quietly as his dad went on his little tirade. He made mental notes because his dad was really good at insulting people, and he might need some of the curses later.

  Monica, the no-longer grossly overweight teen who had grown up two towns over, put her head in her hands and started to cry. She was, it turned out, a bit of a drama queen, as everyone in the shelter knew by now. She also knew Jerry was pissed.

  Since he wasn’t pissed at her, she needed to do something to get their attention back on her so she started crying.

  No one cared. They had grown used to her crying.

  Jerry and Randy had found Monica on their first sojourn away from their shelter and into the small city of Moody. She was eating Little Debbie snack cakes in one of the few quick-stop gas stations that hadn’t been totally sacked and burned. How she’d survived on her own for so long was a surprise, but sometimes people just got lucky.

  Jerry and his soft heart took her in, and she had gone from an obese, lazy whiner to a stout drama queen over the past three weeks. She hated her life, but Jerry was firm about rationing and insisted everyone try to eat healthy. The labor needed on the farm to keep everyone fed and safe was real work and if she wanted to keep being a part of it, she had to pitch in as well. She didn’
t like it, but there was no alternative. Jerry, the owner of the farm and the shelter in which she was living was fair, but he didn’t enable her whining and laziness. Despite herself, she was becoming less of a bother and more of an asset, except for the need for attention.

  Eddie, Randy’s high-school friend who had survived the wave of death and collapse of civilization with nothing more than a “m’eh” attitude listened to Jerry’s rant in silence. He knew, on very rare occasions, Jerry could spout a string of curses that left women crying and small children afraid of the dark. He sat and watched the leader of their group with his usual blank stare.

  Truth be told, Eddie was from a younger generation who figured some type of collapse of civilization would happen, so was not surprised that it did. The speed at which came, from start to the death of more than 99 percent of the human population of earth was less than two months. His mother had been one of the first to die and his dad had never been around, which left him not as shell-shocked as most people. His mother had been a whore who slept with anyone who would pay her some attention and he never really liked her although he did love his mom and would miss her.

  Eddie liked Jerry, Randy’s dad, and had spent a lot of time with them rather than his mother through high school and Jerry let him work on the farm to earn money.

  He didn’t care one way or the other if Jeff, the man about whom Jerry was currently cursing, never came back because the brutish former wrench head was a foul-mouthed bully who took every opportunity he could to talk trash about Jerry and the rest of the people who had taken refuge in Jerry’s shelter.

  Eddie didn’t mind thinking that Jeff was being snacked on by some lucky zombies, or attacked by the vigilantes Kellie had told them about, but Eddie had made friends with Tony, the guy Jeff took on the scouting trip. Tony was a good kid and he and Randy made friends with the guy who was just a year younger, but a lot more adventuresome.

  Tony had been found by Jeff and the two had been found by Jerry. He brought the two back to the shelter.

  In the days before being found, Jeff and Tony had lost a third person in their group to vigilantes so there had been some shared adversity between the two.

  Mike, a former banking executive, and Terrill, a former homeless veteran, were already preparing the evening meal, and came into the foyer of the underground shelter to see what the commotion was all about. They, along with Kellie, were the most recent arrivals at the shelter Jerry had built and accounted for the entire human population of the shelter.

  “What’d Jeff do now?” Mike asked, taking Jerry’s AR-15 assault rifle and placing it in the gun safe that was always left open. Even though Jerry was nominally in charge, Mike always spoke in a manner which sounded like he was the leader. His life was a history of management and being in charge. It had been difficult for him to transition from banking executive to survivalist, but he was making the effort, even if his way of speaking didn’t always show it.

  Mike and Terrill had been found a few weeks earlier. Jerry had a C.B. radio and a 30-foot lattice tower with antenna. Mike was a C.B. enthusiast who picked up Jerry’s call out one night while scanning channels. While Mike was driving out of Birmingham, he found Terrill walking in the median of the interstate, looking lost and alone.

  Jerry, having handed over the weapon and bandolier to Mike, was pulling off his light jacket and kicking off his boots while shaking his head. “That stupid fool was supposed to be back here an hour ago with the quads. I knew I shouldn’t’ve have let them take the quads to Odenville,” referring to both Jeff and Tony. Terrill wiped his hands on the white apron he wore and suggested Jerry tell everyone about it over the evening meal, which he’d just put on the table.

  ~ ~ ~

  A war vet, Terrill was injured on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan from an improvised explosive device that killed his lieutenant and a specialist in the HUMVEE in which he was riding. They had been in the front seats, Terrill in back with the communications equipment. The explosion threw the vehicle 20 feet in the air and onto its side. Terrill blacked out for a moment and when he came to, he screamed.

  Terrill lost both his right leg below the knee and the hearing in his right ear. He had scars on his right arm and hand and burn marks on his face. He also lost his want to be in the military and took a medical discharge.

  Three years after his discharge, he was drinking his monthly allotment from the government and living on the streets of Harrisburg, about 12 miles southeast of Odenville. He was sleeping any place he could find that was out of the weather. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t hold a job because he no longer cared about being alive. He just wanted to drink away the memories of the lieutenant’s brains dripping onto his lap while he waited to be extricated from the damaged vehicle.

  He had to drink a lot. He became quite good at it.

  When people started dying all around the city of Harrisburg, he stole as much alcohol as he could and walked out of the city, pushing a shopping cart filled with various spirits and several guns. He didn’t think it was fair that so many others died a relatively painless death while he continued to suffer a painful life. He was too weak-willed to commit suicide, but he wasn’t going to let someone else take his life from him either. He had more drinking to finish before he went through the pearly gates.

  Terrill was walking along I-20 when Mike in his Escalade drove by. Mike almost drove on without stopping for the dirty, heavily-bearded man who was walking along the side of the road with a cart half filled with bottles and guns. Mike saw the military boots and camo pants and took the risk, stopping several hundred feet down the road from Terrill, just in case.

  Zombies didn’t drive, but Terrill knew vigilantes did, so he approached the luxury SUV carefully. He may have been homeless for a while, he may be a drunk at the time, but he was also a former soldier and he was armed with an M9 9mm pistol holstered under his dirty ACU (Army Combat Uniform) jacket. From 50 feet apart they introduced themselves.

  Terrill took Mike up on his offer to make contact with Jerry. It would at least get him further away from the big city and the vigilantes and the zombies. Where Mike picked up Terrill was only about 10 miles from Moody, Alabama, and the outskirts of where Jerry had built his survival shelter into the back of a hill behind his farm.

  There was suspicion from both of the people in the Escalade and they rode mostly in silence, but being alone for Mike was worse than being with someone who was silent. They made several wrong turns before finding the right farm. The last couple miles Terrill was able to help Mike by using the C.B. while Mike navigated around wrecked vehicles. It had been more than a week since Terrill had spoken at all and using commo equipment brought back bad memories, but Mike needed all his attention on the road.

  They pulled into the long drive. They’d almost missed it, what with the trees that were still in full bloom and Jerry had disguised it a little more to keep others from finding it easily. The dirt drive led up to a farmhouse. There was a barn and garage built into a hill and several outbuildings. The house looked vacant, the barn a little run down and yard and pasture were overgrown. There were some cattle in the distance grazing.

  They stopped the SUV in the parking area and climbed out of their vehicle. Jerry called out from the barn, asking if either was armed. Both said they weren’t, but Jerry didn’t believe the soldier and called him on it.

  Mike hadn’t known Terrill was packing the 9mm. He raised his eyebrows at the former soldier.

  When Terrill pulled out the handgun, Jerry asked him to put it on the hood of the SUV before he came out of hiding. He had to be sure it was safe to come out, and he didn’t expose himself to the men without someone to cover him. Randy and Monica were both hiding in the farm house with rifles and Eddie was in the loft of the oldest barn with a 12 gauge shot gun loaded with buckshot.

  Jerry walked out of his hiding space still carrying his AR-15, but kept it aimed at the ground. He introduced himself and asked a few directed questions to Mike and Terrill be
fore relaxing. The real icebreaker was the cold beer Terrill offered him. Jerry was not a heavy drinker, but he did like a cold beer. That act of generosity was enough for Jerry to allow Terrill to put his handgun back in its holster and invited the men to meet with the others who had been in hiding.

  The three men walked up the path that led behind the barns and around the hill to the shelter followed by the three younger adults who kept their guns loaded, but un-cocked. Mike said he could drive the SUV out of sight, but Jerry asked him to leave it where it was for now until he was sure he could trust these two men.

  There was being friendly, then there was being reckless and Jerry made sure they were not too much of either.

  ~ ~ ~

  Jerry had survived the fall of the government and the world, and he did it without losing his son, which not many people could say. He was alive and fed and had a reasonably secure shelter, not because he had ever believed the world would come to an end, but because he was bored with his life. It just worked out that he had made a self-sufficient shelter.

  Jerry was a divorced, moderately-successful soybean farmer. He grew up on his parent’s farm not far from Moody, Alabama and took it over when his dad died in a tractor accident just before Jerry’s 18th birthday. His mom passed on a few years later and everyone attested she’d died of a broken heart even though they found a lot of empty wine bottles and pills in her room.

  The basic shelter was built several years earlier after his wife had divorced him, leaving him lonely and pissed. It had started with just digging a big hole in the side of the hill in which he thought he’d bury yard waste. Using his International Harvester tractor and its front end loader, the more he dug, the better he felt.

  Jerry liked digging the hole and driving his tractor. The dirt he dug out, he piled as high as his tractor could pile it to form a parapet around the entrance to the hole he dug. He had no real plan, but he realized if the city tax assessor had discovered his hole, his estate taxes would go up, so he spent some serious time camouflaging the entrance.