Hell Happened

by Stenzelbarton, Terry

  His story told why.

  “Me and Jeff wanted to just get away from here for a few hours and have some fun,” he began. “We know Mr. Saunders didn’t allow smoking of any kind, so Jeff came up with the story of the gun shop he’d heard about. We knew he would let us go if we said something about it enough.

  “We thought he’d let us take the truck, but when he told us we could take his quads we were, like, ‘cool – cross country.’

  “We drove to Odenville because Branchville was all burned up. Jeff used to work at a bodyshop in Odenville and he said he knew of a place where we could probably get some more weed. We stopped a couple of times to smoke and we were feeling pretty good.” The language made Jerry cringe, but he didn’t want to interrupt Tony.

  “We parked the quads behind some building because we saw a truck on the highway and heard some shooting. We were half-baked and we really weren’t thinking clearly. Jeff said he was hungry for something besides the shit,” he stopped there and thought for a moment, “the food Terrill had been making for us. He said he wanted raw hotdogs, cookie dough and taco-flavored chips.”

  “We saw the store where you found us and we watched it for a while. It had big front windows and we figured those would keep the zombies from being there. We didn’t see anyone around and the truck that we’d seen before was long gone we’d guessed because we didn’t hear it.

  “Jeff said he was sure there was no one around and the store didn’t look like it had been ransacked. He didn’t see any dead bodies around so we snuck around the side of the building, thinking of going through the back door like burglars. For some reason I thought it was funny as hell at the time and Jeff kept telling me to shut the…kept telling me to shut up, but I kept laughing.”

  He stopped his narrative and took another drink of water before continuing. His longish hair was still matted to his head, but Monica had cleaned his face. There were obvious bruises from being hit.

  “The back door was open and we looked inside. It was dark, but not too dark to see that it was stacked with boxes of shit. Jeff went batshit and said he had found heaven. We got inside and started ripping open boxes when we heard the zombies.

  “If you never seen zombies, be glad. I hope I never see them again and if I do, I’m going to put every bullet I have into them except my last, which I’ll put through my own head.

  “They grunt when they move and are faster than they look. They have great big black eyeballs and their skin looks like it is stretched really tight and let me tell you, they are scarier than anything you ever saw on TV.

  “We heard them and we both dropped the boxes we were cutting open and ran for the door, ‘cause, you know, they don’t like the light and we sure as hell weren’t going to be able to fight them in the dark.

  “Just as we ran out the back door, someone slammed it behind us and these guys tackled us and beat the shit out of us. Jeff took the worst of it and he was swearing and screaming about killing the guys who caught us.

  “I wasn’t much of a threat. One guy punched me in the face and I went down. He put his knee on my gut and beat me up until I quit struggling, which didn’t take very long.

  “Jeff did better than me, but there were four guys and some chick that jumped him. He was still high a little and they really had to fight to get him to stay down. They kicked him in the nuts and the gut and one of the guys hit him with the butt of a rifle.

  “Then they start tying us up. It was the chick’s idea, a huge black lady, to tie us up. They took us over to that building where Eddie shot at them this morning. They kept us tied up all night, trying to decide what to do with us. There were nine or 10 guys and two women in the building.

  “Half of them wanted to kill us right way and the others wanted to just let us go. Jeff made up some story about me being his queer and that we’d come from Birmingham looking for other people. They never asked about you guys or our quads.

  “The lady in charge, Sasha was her name I think, came up with the idea of tying us to the light post out front of the store this morning. She told us that they’d lost two women and a man trying to get food from there and the zombies kept killing anyone who tried.

  “She figured if we were tied out front, the damn zombies would come out tonight for us and they’d rig us to blow up and kill all of them outside the store.

  “That’s when Jeff went crazy. He was struggling so hard to get away because he didn’t want to be bait for any damn zombies. I tried to help us get free, but in the struggles he broke my fingers and the wires tore at my wrists and neck. He was thrashing and struggling and just losing his mind. One guy tried to put a wire around Jeff’s neck and Jeff kicked him with both feet and that guy probably won’t ever piss without hurting again.

  “That’s when some big guy named Alberto or something jumped on Jeff. He broke his neck. I was so scared I pissed myself as they dragged us out and tied us up. I tried to get away, but when I fell, Alberto kicked me in the ankle and after that, I couldn’t even stand. I cried until I had no tears left. I didn’t want to die being eaten by the zombies and I begged them to kill me but they just laughed at me.

  “I was screaming at them to not leave me there, that they only needed one body to draw the zombies out and anything else I could think of to get them to come back and not leave me alone with a dead body.

  “I don’t remember what I said but someone came back and slapped me in the face several times and my head hit the concrete. That was the last thing I remember clearly before you guys showed up.

  “You know the rest.”

  No one said anything. They all sat there, not in shock at the story, but because there were still people who were so cruel and heartless to use other people as bait. Tony hadn’t hidden his mistakes. He admitted that what they had done had gotten Jeff killed in a brutal way.

  Tony laid his head down on the pillow Monica had given him. There was a haunted sadness about him. He knew he was lucky the people who had captured him had not killed him too; lucky that Jerry and his band of people were friendly and concerned with his safety and had not left him out there to be eaten alive by the monsters of everyone’s nightmares.

  Kellie, Monica and Mike were all shedding tears. Monica put her hand gently on Tony’s head. Everyone sat in silence for a long time while they digested what Tony had told them.

  It was a long afternoon that stretched into a long evening for everyone.

  ~ ~ ~

  It was Randy who broke up the silence. He needed to milk the cows. He gathered up Eddie to help feed them. Mike picked up the bowls and took them to the kitchen.

  “I’ll be out in the garden,” Jerry told them and Kellie followed him. The garden was on the back side of the hill, the same side as the entrance, but far enough away to be out of sight, out of mind, and hidden from view from anyone on the road which passed in front of the farm. Jerry had planted it in the spring with tomatoes and sweet corn, cucumbers and beans and some other vegetables. It had been just a Saturday morning project, and when he put it in he had intentions of keeping it up because he did like fresh vegetables, just like every other year, the garden had been forgotten about and started to get over grown with weeds.

  Only after the fall did he really begin putting effort into maintaining the garden. Now it wasn’t just a fad, now the vegetables grown here would help feed him and the people under his roof.

  Most of the garden had been cleared of the biggest weeds and the plants were growing pretty well. Jerry started in the middle and Kellie joined him on the other side of the plants so they were working side by side.

  They didn’t speak for most of the row. Kellie watched how Jerry pulled the weeds out of the ground to take maximum amount of root with the weed. She tried to mimic his technique, but had to settle with ripping the top off most weeds. Her hand had never had to do manual labor, but she had learned over the past few weeks to do just that. She didn’t have the calluses Jerry had, but there was now dirt under her very short and unpainted fin
gernails.

  They finished the first row and threw the weeds they’d pulled into a pile and started on the next.

  “You okay?” she asked him as they started down the row.

  Jerry had several different replies he thought about, from say “yeah, I’m okay” to “dumbass got what he deserved” but couldn’t say any of them. He was conflicted and didn’t know what he was supposed to be thinking. “I don’t know, Kellie,” he finally answered. “Are any of us ever going to be okay?”

  He really didn’t think the former special education teacher was going to answer. They finished up another row of weeding and started on a third. “Jerry,” Kellie said, stopping weeding for a moment and sat back on her haunches like a kid might do. “What you did was the bravest thing I have ever heard of.

  “I don’t have the answers to the question of if we’ll ever be okay, but what you and Eddie did, what Terrill did, and how you got Mike and Monica to back you up, was what makes me think that no matter what happens tomorrow, or in all of whatever tomorrows we have left, that right here, in our little world, things are going to be okay.”

  Jerry stopped weeding and stood up. The sun had reached the point in the sky that he knew it was getting close to supper time. He looked down at Kellie who was still squatting. She wasn’t looking at him, rather looking at the ground where they had been pulling weeds.

  He looked around him. He had soybean fields, some corn and some hay fields that all needed attention from him. He had only a hundred or so gallons of diesel fuel for his tractors and now, an injured man who would be little help on the farm for the next eight to 12 weeks and six other people who depended on him in some way, including his son. Add to that he had now pissed off some vigilante thugs who would like nothing more than to find out who had rescued their bait.

  Things were actually worse for him than they were this morning.

  But what he realized, with the words that Kellie had brought into focus for him, was that he wanted to survive and help his son, and these other people survive.

  He was tired of reacting and decided right there in the garden that he was going to be a lot more pro-active. He’d always depended on himself to get things done. He depended on his son to a lesser extent, but after seeing how his son had manned-up and took initiative, he had more confidence in the boy.

  Jerry knew life was going to get worse before it got better and he damn well wasn’t going to hide in the garden every time something bad happened. He was going to stop letting things happen then react to them, he was going to think about more than tomorrow or the next day, he was going to plan for the winter months and the following year.

  He wanted these people who had trusted him today to do more than survive. He wanted them to thrive.

  Kellie was still playing with a weed at her feet.

  Jerry kicked some dirt at her hand.

  She looked up at him and smiled. “The old ‘toe-in-the-dirt-aww-shucks’ routine?”

  He had no idea to what she was referring.

  “Let’s go get some supper. I’m starving,” he said, instead of pretending he knew what the toe in the dirt comment meant.

  She started to get up and he offered her his hand. She took it and they walked along their separate rows, like he was escorting her, until the end of the row. Molly, who had been sunning herself at the end of the rows in which they were working, lifted her head. Her tongue hung to the side as she panted in the heat. She had a happy look on her face.

  Neither knew which of them let go first, but their hands separated and they brushed themselves off.

  Tony was sleeping when they entered the shelter, Randy was coming down the spiral staircase and Jerry could see he’d locked he hatch. Eddie must have been the one in the shower because Mike was in the kitchen already making the evening meal and Monica was napping in the chair beside Tony.

  When Eddie had finished, Jerry suggested Kellie get the shower next. All of them knew that showers and cleanliness was important when in such close quarters. Everyone showered almost every day and laundry was done daily. Jerry and Randy were the only ones with plenty of clothes so the others had to wash what little they had often.

  “Supper’ll be ready in about 10 minutes,” Mike said from the kitchen. Kellie hurried to the shower to finish before supper. Mike and Randy washed their hands and face in the kitchen sink and then sat plates on the table.

  The running water or Mike’s announcement woke Monica but not Tony. She reached over and checked his breathing and pulse gently, without waking him. Jerry could see her counting the thrum of his pulse while looking at her watch. She then carefully uncovered his right foot and saw that it was no longer blue but a healthy red and the swelling was noticeably lessened.

  This was the side of her he’d never seen. She had been sitting on the curb of a gas station eating a stack of snack cakes she’d scavenged. Jerry and Randy hadn’t frightened her when they pulled up. They figured she’s lost her mind a little.

  They talked with her for a short time while she ate and told her about their place. She was overweight, bordering obese, and the men knew she’d not last long if they left her where she was. They didn’t force her to come with them, but she almost didn’t volunteer. That’d been more than three weeks ago. She was still overweight, but her clothes were no longer tight on her and she was obviously losing weight with the work she had to do every day, and the lack of candy and sweets.

  There was still her drama they had to contend with, but even that was becoming less of an issue with everyone knowing everything about what was happening. There was no drama she could manufacture that was more incredible than what had transpired on this day.

  She obviously had some medical training, though she spoke almost nothing of her past except how much she missed her doting parents. Jerry was glad she was with them today because he couldn’t have done what she did for Tony and he was sure no one else could have.

  Kellie came out of the shower in her bra and a pair of Randy’s swimming shorts, modesty having had to have been suspended with the lack of clothes. She had a towel wrapped around her head and her dirty clothes in her hand. Jerry tossed her one of his clean shirts he’d brought up from the cellar.

  “Let’s eat,” Mike said, turning off the burner and bringing the large pot off the stove. Everyone sat down at the table, but had moved around so there were no empty seats between anyone. Jerry guessed they didn’t want to be reminded that they’d lost two of their own in the last 48 hours and another was injured on the couch.

  Supper was a stew Mike had put together. There were large chunks of meat, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and celery and it tasted pretty good to Jerry. It was flavorful and had just a bit of spicy without being overpowering. It hit the hunger spot he had. He told Mike as much and the old man smiled. “After my wife died a few years back, I had to feed myself. She had been a great cook and I missed eating her food. Restaurants couldn’t do it justice, so I started learning how to make a few of the meals she used to make.” Pointing to the stew, “This was one of her best dishes.”

  “I like it too,” Eddie said. “Me, too” and “Nicely done” came from others at the table. Mike seemed to inflate as he was able to share something of his wife, to whom he’d been married for 45 years, with these new friends. “I’ll be sure to let Shirley know,” he said.

  There was small talk at the table about the garden and the fuel and the people they’d encountered today but nothing in-depth and too serious. There was no talk of what part Jerry and Eddie had played. It was by unspoken agreement that their actions were a verboten topic unless they brought it up and neither did.

  After supper was over, the leftovers sealed up and put in the freezer except for a bowl Monica took in for Tony who was waking up, Jerry and Randy did the dishes so they could talk by themselves. Mike found a new book to read, Eddie put in a movie for himself, Monica and Tony, and Kellie went to her room to brush out her hair.

  Jerry told Randy about what Kellie had said in
the garden and bounced a few ideas off his son. Randy listened and nodded at some, thought seriously about others, disagreed with a couple outright. By the time dished were cleaned and put away, Jerry had decided what he was going to present to the group and he knew Randy, while not agreeing with everything, had been able to refine some of his ideas.

  He asked Kellie to come down when she finished and join the rest of them in the living room. Tony was looking much better for his ordeal and sitting mostly upright. The kid had taken a beating, however his eyes were no longer glassy and vacant but alive with the will to live. Kellie sat in one of the chair’s she’d brought in from the dining area and allowed Molly to jump up on her lap.

  Mike put his book down and Eddie paused the movie and everyone looked expectantly at Jerry as he sat down in his favorite chair he’d taken from the farmhouse.

  “We have got to get better prepared,” he said without preamble. “It sucks that we lost Jeff and Terrill, may they rest in peace, but we did because we’ve been thinking about this wrong…no, I’ve been thinking about this wrong.

  “I’ve been thinking ever since the world’s people died, Randy and I would just live out our lives here and pick up whoever came along and make them a friend and slowly build this into a little compound of people who survived.

  “Today we found out not everyone wants what I pictured.

  “Tomorrow morning we will change the way we think about the people left alive. We’re going to protect our shelter here better, going to find some supplies we really need, find ways to better communicate when we’re out and make sure the vigilantes think twice before screwing with us. We made some enemies today and they probably will come after us.

  “If they do, I want us prepared. So here’s what I want to do. Tomorrow, four of us are going out to forage for supplies and this is what I think we need most,” Jerry said, starting to hold up fingers.